House of Commons
Prayers
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Oral Answers to Questions
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
1. What recent assessment he has made of levels of investment in energy infrastructure.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
Average annual investment in energy infrastructure from 2010 to 2012 has been £8.5 billion, more than double the average for 1997 to 2010. Our electricity market reform and other measures are designed to continue this investment surge and sustain it.
Mr Davey
The hon. Gentleman will know that we are taking a whole range of measures. Obviously, the Energy Bill itself gives a very strong legal framework and the levy control framework up to 2020 gives visibility on the overall support for the system. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will also welcome the announcements we made on 27 June, ahead of schedule, with respect to the strike prices for renewables.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s decision to seek extra investment in the nuclear industry by selling the Government’s share in Urenco, which has many factories in my constituency. Has he entered into any negotiations on the treaty of Almelo to allow non-treaty countries to purchase shares in the company?
Mr Davey
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s comments. He will know that the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), wearing both his DECC hat and his Department for Business, Innovation and Skills hat, is very much at the centre of those discussions. We are talking to both the Dutch and the German Governments, who are key to this sale.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
The Secretary of State will know that one of the problems associated with infrastructure is the transmission charge in getting the energy to market. Project TransmiT came up with a reform package, but its implementation appears to have been delayed. I understand that it was supposed to be in place by next April. Is the Secretary of State able to tell us when it is likely to come into being and what he can do to push that forward?
Mr Davey
The hon. Gentleman will know that Project TransmiT is run by Ofgem, as the independent regulator. Clearly, it would be improper for us to put pressure on the independent regulator. He will also know that we have worked very closely with the Scottish Government on issues such as those relating to the Scottish islands, where there is particular concern about transmission charges. I am sure the hon. Gentleman supports the Government’s announcement last week that we will publish a consultation on strike prices for renewables on the Scottish islands.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Is the Secretary of State aware that this country has a problem with not having enough transmission and distribution electricity engineers and that that is holding up new generation projects from being connected to the grid? What can he do to try to resolve the problem?
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is important that the frameworks and policies that we put in place are stable and long-term in order to encourage people to invest in skills. He will be aware that Ofgem’s long-term settlement with the National Grid Company for the networks has been widely welcomed and will give incentives for investment.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
2. What steps he is taking to encourage shale gas exploration in Lancashire.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Michael Fallon)
The Government are creating the right framework to accelerate shale gas development in a responsible way, ensuring regulation is robust as well as streamlined and that communities share in the benefits which are created. Cuadrilla announced its updated exploration programme in Lancashire last week.
Andrew Stephenson
The British Geological Survey study of shale gas resources in Lancashire has doubled previous estimates of reserves and extended the potential drilling area right across to the east of the county. Although shale gas exploration and extraction has huge potential benefits to the UK economy, the people who live above need to see a real community benefit. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on his plans to ensure that that happens?
Michael Fallon
We are accelerating the search for shale, streamlining and simplifying the technical guidance for exploration permits, publishing clearer planning rules and consulting next week on fiscal incentives to encourage exploration and production. Later this year the developers charter will commit developers to earlier engagement with local communities and ensure that local areas that host shale benefit financially, directly and significantly.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
3. What steps he is taking to meet future energy demand.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
7. What steps he is taking to meet future energy demand.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
9. What steps he is taking to meet future energy demand.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
The Government published their energy security strategy in November 2012, and on 27 June, along with Ofgem and National Grid, we announced decisions on the capacity market and the use of National Grid’s existing system-balancing powers to secure the electricity supply in both the short and longer terms.
Mark Menzies
Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel, based in my constituency, employs more than 1,200 people. Will the Secretary of State do all he can to ensure that those people benefit from the next generation of nuclear reactors built in the UK, and will he visit at the earliest opportunity?
Mr Davey
As regards visiting the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and its installations, I shall consult my diary. At a meeting of the Nuclear Industry Council yesterday, we engaged on a range of issues, from skills to finance and future collaboration, and we have put in place the strongest ever supply-chain measures to ensure that the whole country, including people in his constituency, can benefit.
Mr Marcus Jones
I commend the Government’s effort to strengthen our energy system and bring about a sustainable reduction in electricity demand, but does the Secretary of State agree that we must take action to ensure that sufficient generating capacity is available in the short term?
Mr Davey
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. It is important that we take action on both the demand and the supply side. With Ofgem and National Grid’s proposals, which are out to consultation, we will see measures on the supply and demand side in the short term, and of course our proposal for a capacity market will do that in the medium term. I hope that he realises that we are looking at every single measure in a very structured way.
Andrew Bridgen
Given the projected energy gap, the time scales involved and the growth in the economy, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government should encourage further construction of gas power stations, especially given the potential exploitation of shale gas in the near future?
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend will know that we have done an awful lot to ensure clarity in the strategy to encourage private investment. As he will know, it is not for the Government to build gas power stations, but our gas generation strategy set out a long-term framework for gas investment last year, and with the announcement of the capacity market on 27 June, I think we have a process for encouraging that investment.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
Is the Secretary of State aware that the Severn barrage will contribute 5% of Britain’s electricity needs? In deciding on the Government’s response to the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s report, will he support the project in principle and treat it exactly the same as other major power station projects, such as Hinkley, round 3 offshore wind and so on, allowing Hafren Power to raise the risk finance for the necessary work on habitats, environmental impact assessment planning, the strike price and other issues? Otherwise, he might as well kill off the project now.
Mr Davey
Obviously, I shall not prejudge our response to the Select Committee, which, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, was not very positive about the Severn barrage scheme, not least because of the costs involved, but if he studies our announcements on draft strike prices for contracts for difference for renewables, he will see in there strike prices for tidal projects as well. It is absolutely clear that we will proceed only if we get value for money for the economy, the consumer and business.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
Has the Secretary of State made any assessment of the value of extending the National Grid proposals for a short-term strategic reserve on mothballed plants coming back into operation over a much longer term than is currently envisaged? Does he consider that doing that for only two years, rather than adopting a longer-term proposition, represents poor value?
Mr Davey
The hon. Gentleman always makes very informed contributions to our debates. He is proposing that we adopt the policy of strategic reserve, which is a long-term approach, using the powers that National Grid already has. We have looked at that and rejected it, because it is not the right approach to get best value for money and it would create perverse incentives for investment in the wholesale market. We believe that a combination of Ofgem and National Grid measures, using those existing powers, and the capacity market is the best way to meet the security supply requirements, not to impact negatively on the wholesale market and to get good value for the consumer.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Surely the best way to meet future energy demand is to reduce it, yet unfortunately the Government have focused on the supply side, not on energy efficiency measures. It will not be possible to meet future energy demand without real energy efficiency and reductions in demand.
Mr Davey
I am genuinely surprised at the hon. Gentleman’s question, because he knows that the Government have done a huge amount on energy efficiency for both consumers and industry. When the Energy Bill was before the House, we tabled amendments on Report for electricity demand reduction to be part of the capacity market. We are operating on both the supply and demand sides. That is a new initiative which has not been seen before, because other Governments have not done it.
Mike Crockart (Edinburgh West) (LD)
Next Wednesday I will hold a community energy event in my constituency, with the local council and local housing association among many others. Does my right hon. Friend agree that rather than carping about the green deal and perversely hoping for its failure, every member of the House has a duty to promote it and ensure that their constituents get all the help available?
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend makes a good point and we must promote not just the green deal as part of the community energy strategy, but all aspects of community energy. Right hon. and hon. Members may be aware that we published a call for evidence last month for a future community energy strategy, looking at energy efficiency, energy generation and purchasing energy. I urge Members to talk to their constituencies and to contribute to the formation of Britain’s first ever community energy strategy.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
Two weeks ago Ofgem published its latest estimates for future electricity demand and capacity, and warned of possible shortfalls in the middle of this decade. Commenting on its report, the Secretary of State said:
“Without timely action there would be risks to security of supply”.
Will the Secretary of State explain why Ofgem states that the likelihood of blackouts is roughly one in 12 years, while analysis by his Department suggests that the true figure is closer to one in 3,000 years. Why is there such a big discrepancy?
Mr Davey
I do not recognise the figures that the right hon. Lady has just given to the House; my officials have been working closely with Ofgem and National Grid. I hope she will acknowledge that the Ofgem figures she cites are from before the measures we announced last week, following the announcement by Ofgem and National Grid on the immediate future, and our proposals for a capacity market. I would have thought she would welcome the fact that this Government have taken action where the last Government failed.
Caroline Flint
I am afraid that the figures are from Ofgem and the Department of Energy and Climate Change, so I suggest the Secretary of State has another look. Such wildly varying forecasts of possible blackouts do nothing to help us plan our energy security for the future, so let us consider what the Government are doing about it.
On the “Sunday Politics” show on 30 June, the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) claimed that six gas-fired power stations had opened under this Government, and tried to blame the problem on the previous Administration. In an answer given to me yesterday to a written parliamentary question, the Minister confirmed that construction of all those six new power stations began under Labour. In five years of this Government, just one new gas-fired power station in Carrington in Manchester will be built. Will the Secretary of State confirm that that is the case? Would not the country’s energy security be better served if the Government and regulator could produce a coherent and consistent estimate of the likelihood of blackouts?
Mr Davey
The right hon. Lady says from a sedentary position that it all started under Labour, but I am afraid that the £29 billion of investment in renewables was announced by this Government. I can give the House some good news that the right hon. Lady might want to hear. For the first stage of electricity market reform, as the Energy Bill goes through the House of Lords, and after the deadline for applications for the final investment decision enabling project closed just a few days ago, we have received 57 applications. I am not sure whether they will all go through, but if they do, that would amount to more than 18 GW of power. That is our record on energy investment and we are putting right the appalling record of the previous Government.
Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)
4. What estimate he has made of the number of jobs created in the UK as a consequence of his policies on offshore wind power generation.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)
The trade association RenewableUK last year estimated that the wind industry as a whole currently employs around 12,200 people in Britain. As we announced in May this year, since 2010 more than £29 billion of investment has been announced in renewable energy, with the potential to support around 30,000 jobs. Of that, nearly £18 billion and more than 9,000 jobs relate to offshore wind.
Mr Brown
I welcome the Minister’s recent visit to the north banks of the Tyne where he saw the employment potential of that exciting new industry. The fabrication work that could be generated, were contracts placed domestically in the United Kingdom, would represent an exciting opportunity for former shipbuilding communities such as the one I represent, which has the skills and energy to do the work, if it could get the contracts. What more can the Minister do to ensure that at least some of that work comes to the United Kingdom?
Michael Fallon
I have provided at least two regional growth fund grants to yards on the Tyne, and I have visited two of them myself. Tyneside already contributes to future energy infrastructure development. It is becoming a leader in sub-sea technology. I want to ensure that it also benefits from the new generation of offshore wind that is now coming on stream.
Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)
This is my first opportunity to welcome the Minister to his portfolio—and a very welcome presence he is too—so may I tempt him with some highland hospitality? The Secretary of State will confirm that it can be very good. I invite the Minister to pay a visit to Kishorn Port Ltd in my constituency, which began with the concept of manufacturing offshore wind turbines and has submitted—and now had approved—a master plan with Highland council, the diaspora of which could see 2,500 jobs being created on that site. That would be a massive boost to the economy of the highlands, Scotland and the United Kingdom. Would he care to pay a visit, perhaps during the recess?
Michael Fallon
I will certainly see whether that is possible. I am already aware of—how can I put it—the power of Skye hospitality, and I would certainly like to see for myself exactly the potential for Skye to contribute to the offshore wind power that we need.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
I, too, represent a former shipbuilding community. I believe that Inverclyde has the skills and the infrastructure to play a full part in offshore wind generation. In that context, I have a meeting next Tuesday with RenewableUK. I extend an invitation to the Minister or the Secretary of State to attend that meeting with me and help to promote Inverclyde in playing a full part in that wind power generation.
Michael Fallon
Our diaries are filling up. I want our shipyards to reap the full benefit of the work that is now becoming available in offshore wind. I saw for myself recently on a visit to Cammell Laird on Merseyside just how much of that yard’s work now contributes to the Gwynt y Môr field in the Irish sea, and I am sure that there are opportunities for the Clyde as well.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
5. What steps he is taking to help households with their energy bills.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
6. What steps he is taking to help households with their energy bills.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
We have a range of initiatives to help households with their energy bills. From our proposals to get consumers on to the cheapest tariffs and the provision of nearly £1 million for the big energy saving network, to the green deal, and from the warm home discount to our promotion of collective switching, this Government are working to help households keep their energy bills down.
Ian Austin
Those schemes are supposed to help people such as my constituent Miss Kaur, who lives in a badly insulated home. She is in fuel poverty, but her energy supplier will not help with insulation. It also seems that the energy suppliers in general are not using carbon emission reduction obligation money at all. There is a gap between what fuel-poor households such as hers can afford on green deal finance and what it will cost to do the work. Will the Secretary of State look at the detail of her situation and perhaps agree to meet her with me, so that he can tell her and me how those schemes will help to reduce her energy bills and improve the insulation of her home?
Mr Davey
If the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me, we can first look at the details before we consider whether any meeting is required, because we might be able to help his constituent more quickly. He will know that part of the energy company obligation is for affordable warmth for people in fuel poverty. I do not know whether that would apply in her case, but if he writes to me with all the details, we will look at them very thoroughly.
Bill Esterson
Thousands of pensioners in my constituency would be up to £200 a year better off if the Government adopted Labour’s plan to put all over-75s on the cheapest tariff. The Energy Bill will not become law until next year, when the Government say they will put everyone on the cheapest tariff, but why not act now to help 4 million pensioners with their energy bills this winter?
Mr Davey
I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s argument. The proposals that we have put forward in the Energy Bill, working with Ofgem, apply to everybody, not just to a part of the population. We want to get benefits for everybody in our society. He says that he will have to wait for Royal Assent for the Energy Bill. He is not right about that: Ofgem is proceeding apace with its consultations for tariff reforms. The Energy Bill aims to support and strengthen that, in case there was any foot dragging by the energy companies, so actually we are acting very quickly—much more quickly than under the proposal he puts forward.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
One of the ways we can help the millions of households struggling with an average dual-fuel bill of £1,400 a year—up £300 since 2010—is through energy efficiency. However, less than 1% of households that have had a green deal assessment have so far gone on to take out a green deal package. Will the Secretary of State explain to the House why?
Mr Davey
The hon. Lady will know that an awful lot of people are using ECO—the energy company obligation. She did not mention that there are more than 82,000 insulations under the energy company obligation scheme, which shows that we are taking measures. On the green deal, she will also know that these are relatively early days. We have had more than 38,000 assessments. One would not have expected many plans to have been written by now. What she also fails to the tell the House is that some people are funding the green deal package through ECO or self-finance, and it is difficult to get exact figures on that. I would have thought that she would want to support the green deal, as it has the potential to transform energy efficiency.
Luciana Berger
It is because the previous Labour Government piloted a pay-as-you-save scheme that we want to see the green deal work. We are trying to hold the Government to account. We want to see 14 million homes insulated by 2020, and with the current trajectory that will not happen. I am very disappointed with the Secretary of State’s answer. The Government said that the green deal would be the largest retrofit programme the country has ever seen, but fewer homes are installing insulation since the green deal launched. Thousands of insulation workers throughout the country have lost their jobs, with some estimates putting the figure as high as one in four. This is a disaster for our economy. What is the Secretary of State doing about it?
Mr Davey
I have to say that I do not recognise the hon. Lady’s points. If one looks at what has happened in the insulation industry, one will see that there was a boom at the end of last year as people worked hard to meet their carbon emissions reduction target obligations to avoid fines. That was the biggest boom we have seen, so the figure was likely to come down, and it would be good if the Opposition admitted that. We are taking huge measures that will transform things not just for a year, but over decades. The problem will take decades to sort out. We are putting the measures in place to do that.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman came into the House 30 years ago. Question 8; we are grateful to the hon. Gentleman.
Mr Tim Yeo (South Suffolk) (Con)
8. What assessment he has made of Ofgem’s electricity capacity assessment report 2013.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)
The Government welcome Ofgem’s electricity capacity assessment as an authoritative investigation into security of supply over the next five winters. We will be working closely with Ofgem and National Grid to take decisive steps to ensure that security of supply is maintained in the short, medium and long term.
Mr Yeo
It is the excitement of your Speakership, Mr Speaker.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the quickest, cheapest and most environmentally friendly way to ensure that the lights stay on at a time when capacity margins are a bit tight is through demand-side measures? Will he explore how Smart technology could be used more effectively to extend time-of-use pricing, which would cut some of the peaks in demand and thereby reduce the need for some of the expensive new capacity that is being considered?
Michael Fallon
Of course demand-side measures have a role to play, but Ofgem will also be looking at better balancing the system as a whole, using some of the measures it has been using for more than 20 years. We will also be looking at whether some of the previously mothballed plant, or mothballed units at some plant, can be brought back into operation if needed.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister is obviously well aware that even on a sunny and slightly blustery day in different parts of the country, significant amounts of capacity and generation still comes from coal. We have talked about carbon capture and storage a number of times in relation to the long term, but I want to press him on a point that his predecessor, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), made in, I think, his final appearance at the Dispatch Box before moving to the Cabinet Office. He undertook then, in response to a question I asked him, to prepare a short-term strategy for coal. Does that commitment stand, or did it disappear off to the Cabinet Office with the previous Minister?
Michael Fallon
Our focus on coal over the past three months has been almost wholly on ensuring the survival of the Thoresby and Kellingley collieries, which are two of the four remaining deep-mine collieries in this country. I am pleased to say that UK Coal Operations Ltd entered its restructuring earlier this week, meaning that some 2,000 jobs have now been saved. That has been the focus for my Department, for officials from a whole number of Government agencies and for the management of that company.
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
10. What steps he is taking to encourage shale gas exploration in the UK.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
13. What steps he is taking to encourage shale gas exploration in the UK.
Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)
16. What steps he is taking to encourage shale gas exploration in the UK.
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)
Further to my earlier answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson), the Government have commissioned the British Geological Survey to carry out a study of possible shale gas resources in the Weald basin in the south-east of England. This will be published in the early part of next year. We are also carrying out a strategic environmental assessment with a view to launching a further onshore licensing round for oil and gas in 2014.
Mr Lilley
Given that 2 million fracking wells have been drilled in the United States without harm to life or property, will my right hon. Friend act vigorously to thwart the vexatious use of environmental laws by Friends of the Earth and others to keep shale gas in the ground? In particular, will he introduce early legislation to clarify UK red-line planning laws and to restrict them to surface installations? Will he also tell us what he plans to do to prevent the mining waste directive and the groundwater directives from being used expansively to delay and prevent the exploitation of shale gas in this country?
Michael Fallon
The Environment Agency has already announced its actions to streamline and simplify the system of permits required, which will be in the interest of everyone, including developers and local communities. My colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government will next week announce a simplified system of planning guidance so that the industry can be clear about the necessary planning permissions. As I have said, the Treasury will also announce next week the fiscal incentives that are necessary if we are to see this industry develop on anything like the scale that we have seen on the other side of the Atlantic.
Christopher Pincher
Further to the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), what action can the Government take to help to bust the myths about shale gas and hydraulic fracturing, so that local authorities—which are often a stumbling block—will be more inclined to grant planning applications? In that way, the Treasury, communities and energy users will be able to benefit from this vital national resource.
Michael Fallon
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We all have a responsibility to ensure that the debate over shale and fracking is conducted on the basis of evidence rather than myths. I want to ensure that the developers of potential shale resources and those who want to dig exploration wells engage early with local communities. I also want to ensure that those communities that want to host shale are fully aware of the procedures involved and of the significant financial benefits that could accrue.
Dr Lee
Given the likely significant increase in Government revenue from shale gas exploration in the north-west, would the Minister consider using a proportion of that revenue to transform the plutonium stockpile in Cumbria from a liability into an electricity-generating asset for the nation and, in the process, secure jobs for the north-west region?
Michael Fallon
We have a separate plutonium management strategy. I think that that will answer my hon. Friend’s inquiry on that matter. It is worth saying that local communities that are prepared to host shale will receive significant benefits, including some £100,000 for an exploration well and, potentially, between £5 million and £10 million over the lifetime of any production well. Those are significant amounts, and they would rightly recompense local communities for any of the disruption involved.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
Bloomberg’s new energy analysis of shale gas states that
“the expectation that UK shale gas could lead to gas prices similar to those which have been seen in the US in the last two years can be discounted”.
Does the Minister accept and agree with that analysis?
Michael Fallon
We know from the British Geological Survey, which we published two weeks ago, of the central estimate of 1,300 trillion cubic feet in the Bowland-Hodder basin. What we do not yet know is whether that resource can be recovered as economically or, indeed, technically as it has been recovered in the United States. That is why we need to get on and explore to see whether that resource can be made available in the same way and have the same significant reductions in the cost of energy for our businesses and our households.
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
But do we not have to be careful about going into those old mining areas where the miners and the miners’ welfares were ethnically cleansed by previous Tory Governments? [Hon. Members: “What?”] Yes, that is exactly what I said. In Calow near Bolsover, Cuadrilla is actually thinking of drilling in an area not a mile away from where methane escaped and nearly killed several hundred people in the village of Arkwright. I warn the new Minister: be careful where these people operate. As for some great nirvana—some great future—from this fracking, it has not been proved at all that there is all that much in it for Britain.
Michael Fallon
Let me utterly reject what the hon. Gentleman said about ethnic cleansing, which I find particularly distasteful in a week when this Government have assisted UK Coal in the safeguarding of 2,000 jobs at Kellingley and Thorseby collieries. We do not yet know the full potential of shale in this country. What is important is that we allow those developers to go down, have a look and see the potential. That is why we are simplifying and streamlining the planning and the environmental system to enable them to do that.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
11. What recent discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on reducing European carbon emissions.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
I have frequent such talks—bilaterally at European Councils and in other forums. Last year, for example, I invited other Ministers from member states that share the UK’s high ambitions to cut carbon emissions to join me in a new group called the green growth group. This has met three times, most recently in Luxembourg last month.
Rushanara Ali
I thank the Secretary of State for his answer. Last week, however, the European Parliament voted to hold back carbon credits from the EU emissions trading scheme. Does the Secretary of State agree that the 20 Conservative MEPs who voted against the proposals were voting not only against action to tackle carbon emissions and prevent climate change, but against the interests of British business?
Mr Davey
The hon. Lady will know that the Government, across the coalition, supported the backloading proposal that the European Parliament voted through. Obviously, I regret the fact that MEPs from Britain or any other member states did not vote for those proposals. But let us be clear: the backloading proposals are a first step in the reform of Europe’s carbon market. We need to go further so that we can get the carbon market and the carbon incentives that we need to see clean energy coming through.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
17. Will the Secretary of State clarify something for me? In the spending review of 2010, the Government committed £1 billion to carbon capture and storage projects. Given that this money has not yet been spent and that the Chancellor did not even mention it in his recent spending review, is carbon capture and storage a casualty of that review?
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
12. What assessment he has made of the first quarterly green deal and energy company obligation statistics.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
It is early days, but the green deal is building on solid foundations and a robust small and medium-sized enterprise supply chain. Nearly 40,000 green deal assessments have been carried out and more than 70,000 homes have already been given green measures through the energy company obligation. Innovative private finance is now starting to flow. While only four green deal finance providers had entered the market by June, that number has now doubled to eight and is expected to reach around 50 by the end of the year.
Zac Goldsmith
I strongly support the Government’s efforts to mainstream energy efficiency via the green deal, among other measures. However, it is widely felt that the scheme needs a serious boost if the Government’s ambitions are to be realised. To that end, will the Minister do all he can and use all his influence with the Treasury to ask it at least to consider bringing in some form of stamp duty rebate, or something similar, for homes participating in the green deal in order to maximise the chances of its success?
Gregory Barker
I am very glad to say that the Treasury is right behind the green deal and that the Chancellor has given £200 million to help drive demand for it. We are actively considering how we are going to spend more of it, as there is still a significant amount that has not been committed. We will make further announcements in the autumn.
I also congratulate my hon. Friend on his successful campaign to ensure that service families can benefit from the green deal and the ECO. I assure him that we are working closely with the Ministry of Defence to ensure that service family accommodation will for the first time mean warm and comfortable homes.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
In times of austerity, why on earth would people want to enter a green deal arrangement where the interest rate is three times higher than what they can get on the high street? Apparently, there are penalties for early repayment.
Gregory Barker
If ever there was an out-of-touch comment, that was it. How many of the hon. Gentleman’s constituents can get an interest rate on the high street of just 2% or 3%? That is just cloud cuckoo land nonsense. The vast majority of his constituents will be able to access green deal finance. I am glad to say that, with over 40,000 assessments, there is strong early demand. It is early days, but we are very encouraged by what we are seeing.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
14. What steps he is taking to promote investor confidence in renewable energy.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
The coalition is committed to cleaner energy and cheaper bills. That means unlocking billions in new investment across the energy sector. Transparency, longevity and certainty for investors are key. That is exactly what our electricity market reforms will deliver.
Andrew George
I am grateful to the Minister for that response, but investor confidence is essential and investors need to make decisions now, otherwise the UK will miss the boat in the forthcoming development of renewables. Therefore, what discussions has he had with investors and what advice have they offered the Government on what is required to establish investor confidence?
Gregory Barker
It is fair to say that the DECC ministerial team has an unprecedented level of engagement with investors, not just from the UK but globally. Last week, I was with the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and Masdar from the United Arab Emirates at the inauguration of the London array, the world’s largest offshore wind farm. We have proactive engagement with global investors, who all say the same thing: “We back your electricity market reforms, crack on with them, let us get deploying and get past the 13 years of under-investment that we saw under Labour.”
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
15. What assessment he has made of the effect of large-scale solar arrays on rural environment and agricultural land; and if he will take steps to help communities resist inappropriate developments.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
Solar PV has a big, bright future in the UK, but not at any price and not in any place. Our priority continues to be to work with the industry to drive down costs, but it is also to ensure that deployment is focused on buildings and brownfield sites, not prime agricultural land or areas of outstanding natural beauty.
Dr Wollaston
I am delighted that the Minister shares my concern and the concern of communities in Diptford, south Devon, and other areas about the inappropriate proliferation of very large-scale solar PV on greenfield sites. Could he go further and set out the practical steps that he is taking to ensure that these developments occur in the right places?
Gregory Barker
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Well-sited solar can be great and often is, but inappropriate development risks alienating public support. That is why I am pleased to say that, in the next few weeks, as a result of close work with the Department for Communities and Local Government, we will issue revised planning guidance for renewables. That will mean that renewable energy does not automatically override environmental protections and the planning concerns of local communities. It will also make it clear that care should be taken to preserve heritage assets and beautiful countryside, and include the impact of planning proposals on views and landscape when it comes to things such as solar. That is in addition to our sustainability criteria, on which we are working closely with the industry.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
18. What steps he is taking to help households with their energy bills.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer that I gave to the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin).
John Cryer
In the past few months, coal imports have risen sharply again. That creates questions about the future security of energy supplies. Does that not imply that there will be upward pressure on household bills over and above what is there already?
Mr Davey
No, it does not, because of the actions of this Government. The fact that we have made the announcements we have on the capacity market will ensure that the supply is there. If we had not made those announcements, there was a danger that wholesale prices would go up and peak at times of low margins, hitting consumers. The fact that we have taken action shows that we are on the consumer’s side.
Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)
20. What the Government’s preferred options are for structural reform of the EU emissions trading system.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
The UK supports urgent reform of the EU ETS including through cancellation of an ambitious volume of surplus allowances. We are also examining other options to deliver our climate goals.
Simon Wright
I thank the Minister for that response and I strongly welcome the role the UK played in securing a positive vote in favour of backloading in the European Parliament last week. May I urge Ministers to ensure that the UK continues to show strong leadership in strengthening the ETS and tackling the enormous over-supply of allowances?
Gregory Barker
I can assure my hon. Friend that that is exactly what we are doing, and we will continue to press for a higher level of ambition in Europe on a 2020 target as well.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster, which claimed the lives of 167 people, so I am sure the whole House will want to join me in remembering them, mindful of the pain their loved ones must still feel and the scars, both physical and mental, borne by the survivors. The best remembrance is to learn and prevent a repeat of that disaster; and their legacy, and that of Lord Cullen’s inquiry into the disaster, is an oil and gas industry that now has an enviable health and safety record. But of course there remain real risks in operating offshore, so we should be thankful to those who continue to brave the hazards of the North sea and elsewhere to keep our homes warm and our transport moving, and as we meet our energy challenges, let us pay the best tribute to the Piper Alpha victims and their families by doing it safely.
Andrew George
I am sure the whole House will wish to associate itself with my right hon. Friend’s remarks.
While the Government’s announcement on the strike price is very welcome, there are, as my right hon. Friend knows, many parts of the country that want to take full advantage of the future green energy revolution. Certainly in Cornwall we are very keen to become the green peninsula within the UK. Would he be prepared to come to Cornwall and speak to all aspects of the green energy revolution happening there, because we want to take this energy forward?
Mr Davey
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and his colleagues from Cornwall, who have been true champions for green energy and the impact that will have on jobs and the economy in Cornwall. He will know that I have already visited Cornwall, but I am very keen to visit again because it is such a powerhouse behind our low-carbon economy.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I beg your pardon, Mr Speaker. I was just caught there by the different opinions on the coalition Benches—whether to be pro-renewables in the south-west or not.
May I join the Secretary of State in remembering the 167 people who lost their lives on Piper Alpha 25 years ago? That stands to remind us continually of the vital importance of rigorous health and safety in our energy industry.
When I asked the Minister, the right hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), at the last Energy and Climate Change questions exactly how many customers on dead tariffs would be moved to a cheaper deal, he said:
“I cannot give the right hon. Lady the exact figure off the top of my head, so I will write to her on that.”—[Official Report, 6 June 2013; Vol. 563, c. 1646.]
Twenty minutes ago I received a letter from him telling me he did not know the answer, so let me tell the Secretary of State that companies like British Gas and SSE—
Mr Speaker
Order. May I just say to the shadow Secretary of State that we have a lot of questions to get through? What we need is a short sentence and then we can move on.
Caroline Flint
British Gas and SSE between them have more than 20 million customers, and they have told me that they do not have any customers on dead tariffs. Can the Secretary of State explain just how the Prime Minister’s plan to put everyone on the cheapest tariff is actually going to work?
Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
T2. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Stockport Hydro, a micro-power generation social enterprise, and will he explain how he is going to make it easier for similar projects to prosper in the future?
Mr Davey
I pay tribute to all the people who have worked on that community energy project. Micro-hydro plays a real role at community level. Last month we published the community energy call for evidence, which will cover issues that affect local community developers of micro-hydro. There have been problems, and my right hon. Friend has raised them with me, but I urge him and people who want to develop micro-hydro to respond to that call for evidence so that we can get it right in future.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
T3. Last year the Chancellor boasted he was the first to fund a green investment bank, but that is not actually the case, because the Government are now borrowing £158 billion more than planned, and we will not have a proper green investment bank until 2016 at the earliest. How can the green investment bank be part of a growth strategy, and will the Minister provide an update on this?
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
The hon. Lady could not be more wrong. The UK Green Investment Bank, which was introduced and created by this coalition—the Labour Government had 13 years to introduce it, but did nothing—has been going for only a matter of months but in that time it has invested £635 million and mobilised, in total, £2.3 billion. It has £3 billion of capital, which was added to in the last spending round, so billions of pounds for green investment are coming directly from this Government, using our genius for financial services. This Government are pioneering it.
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)
T4. Wind energy subsidies were supposed to deliver a reduction in costs by creating economies of scale and driving technological innovation. After the recent strike price announcements, it is clear that wind turbines work only because they are being given the same level of subsidy as before—subsidy begets subsidy, not sustainability. Does the Minister seriously see a future for wind turbines without subsidy and, if so, when?
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Michael Fallon)
My hon. Friend will be aware that the draft strike prices that we published a couple of weeks ago show declining support for offshore wind. We need to ensure that offshore wind is cost-effective and to balance that against the need to secure—I have been pressed on this earlier—a reasonable degree of UK content in the fabrication.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
T7. Ministers have rightly made it clear that replacement boilers under the green deal and the ECO should be technologically neutral, yet the reality on the ground is that most of the big six energy companies will not include liquefied petroleum gas or oil boilers within the scheme, citing cost. Yet again, it seems that off-grid customers are being left out. Can Ministers do anything to put pressure on these companies to include such boilers within the schemes?
Gregory Barker
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. Obviously, it is a commercial decision for each company that operates within the green deal which technologies they are going to stock and offer to their customers. If customers are not satisfied, they should shop around. The great thing about the green deal is that it involves a plethora of choice; there are more than 1,000—I believe there are 1,250 or more—green deal installers now, so customers should shop around. We want to drive choice.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
T5. The Minister will know that all existing nuclear power stations report operationally to EDF Energy in Barnwood, Gloucester—the home of British nuclear engineering. After my right hon. Friend has agreed the strike price and other details for the next generation of nuclear power stations, will he accept an invitation from me to visit Barnwood and the impressive nuclear academy training ground for so many graduates and apprentices in this vital sector?
Michael Fallon
I will consider that invitation, as I am sure my right hon. Friends will. My hon. Friend will know that I spoke recently in Gloucester at Horizon-Hitachi’s supply chain conference in respect of its proposed nuclear station at Oldbury. I confirm to him that negotiations with NNB GenCo on an investment contract at Hinkley remain ongoing and that agreement will be reached only if a deal is fair and affordable, represents value for money and is consistent with our policy of no public subsidy for new nuclear.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
This morning, six Greenpeace activists are scaling the Shard in what has been dubbed the “ice climb”. Does the Minister think that drilling for oil in the Arctic is an essential part of meeting our future energy needs? Or does he think that, given the huge environmental concerns about drilling there, it is a price that is too high to pay?
Mr Davey
The hon. Lady will know that the six nations that make up the Arctic Council and own the land have sovereignty there—the UK is not one of them. She will know that the Select Committee produced a report on this issue—I believe that was last year—and we responded to it. We want to be part of those discussions to ensure that if anything happens, it is done in the most environmentally friendly way possible.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
T6. Will Ministers set out what contribution this Government’s energy and climate change policies will make to the increase in jobs in the UK as a whole and in Greater London in particular?
Mr Davey
My right hon. Friend will know that our policies are playing a big role in that. Three years ago, the Renewable Energy Association calculated that more than 18,000 people were employed in renewable energy in the Greater London area alone. That represented 19% of the share and was a bigger share than any other region had, and we expect that to grow. Across the UK we expect green jobs to be a very important part of the boost that our energy investment restructure will give. The House may wish to know that earlier today we granted planning consent to what will be the world’s largest offshore wind farm off the Lincolnshire-Norfolk coast, with £3.6 billion of investment and 1,130 new jobs created.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
Can the Minister give some comfort to the green deal installers in my constituency by telling me how many installations he expects this year rather than how many assessments he expects?
Gregory Barker
The right hon. Gentleman knows that what is innovative and unique about the green deal is the fact that it is encouraging a huge plethora of new entrants into the market. It is not an old-style left-wing centralised monolithic programme run from London. It is unleashing competition, small and medium-sized enterprises, and diversity and plurality. We therefore want the most that we can possibly deliver.
Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)
T8. Setting up the green investment bank was one of the Conservative party manifesto pledges and I was pleased to hear in the reply to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali) of the progress that is happening. What specific projects has the green investment bank been backing?
Gregory Barker
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it was the Conservatives who set up the Wigley commission, which came up with the original scoping ideas for the green investment bank. In practice, it has been terrific. It has invested £30 million in the Wakefield waste project, £46 million in the Walney offshore wind farm and £57 million in Rhyl Flats. It is supporting the new industrial energy efficiency programmes and, of course, has put a significant slice of debt into the Green Deal Finance Company that will allow green deal finance to flow.
Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister has made much of the 40,000 assessments that have taken place, but it is my understanding that only four people have signed up for the green deal. How many installations will there be in the year ahead?
Gregory Barker
The hon. Lady must understand that this is a 20-year programme, not some knee-jerk reaction. I know that the Labour party is heavily invested in failure and is made up of a series of doom-mongers who are never happier than when they are talking down the green economy. I have much greater faith in SMEs to deliver a transformational green economy than they do.
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)
Does the Secretary of State agree with me that some people’s concerns about shale gas are based on fact but many are not? Will he ensure that his Department produces and maintains an up-to-date online database so that people can see what claims are evidently false and, where they are based on fact, what the Government are doing to address them?
Michael Fallon
That is an excellent and extremely positive suggestion that I will consider immediately.
Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)
The Department for Work and Pensions Minister responsible for health and safety will reply to this afternoon’s debate on the 25-year anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster. What is the Secretary of State’s Department doing to build on the safety regime that is currently in place to ensure that the men and women who daily risk their lives by working offshore, contributing a huge amount to the UK economy, have the safest working environment possible?
Mr Davey
We are doing a number of things, working with the Health and Safety Executive and the industry. Only last week I held a meeting in my office with a range of people from the industry and with key players to see what progress has been made since that tragedy and what more we can do. It is clear that there is no room for complacency, although there has been a great deal of progress.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
What steps is the Minister taking to promote the development of energy storage systems, notably liquid air, which would be a good solution to our energy problems in the future?
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
The Minister has talked around the question of how many green deal assessments have turned into measures being introduced in homes. How many is it, Minister? How many homes have signed up for green deal measures?
Gregory Barker
As we know from the official statistics published in June, only a handful have completed the process. That is because finance only became available in the couple of weeks before those statistics were published. As I said in my earlier answer, the number of finance providers has now doubled to eight and we expect about 50 by the year end. Opposition Members can continue to carp and we will remember that.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I thank the Minister of State for visiting the Burton Wold wind farm in Kettering on Monday. Did he gain a favourable impression of the level of community support for it?
Gregory Barker
I had a terrific visit to Kettering and I would like to praise my hon. Friend and his council colleagues for a project which is an exemplar of the way to involve communities in supporting onshore wind and a range of energy efficiency measures, which are seen as part of an holistic whole, bringing new housing, new services and proper infrastructure in a well-planned way that is supported by the community.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
We know that many older people do not adequately heat their homes, which puts them at risk of illness and death. Will the Minister update the House on any progress made in discussions with suppliers about the installation of cold alarms, which would alert householders and carers when temperatures become dangerously low?
Gregory Barker
I cannot give the hon. Lady an up-to-date view on that, but it is a very important measure in which I know that she has taken a great personal interest, so if I may, I will write to her and give her a bang up-to-date report of where we are.
Petition
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of the people of Stockton-on-Tees and surrounding areas in opposition to the Post Office’s proposal to downgrade our local Crown post office. It was signed by many hundreds of people over only a few days.
The petition states:
The Petition of the people of Stockton-on-Tees and surrounding areas,
Declares that the Petitioners totally oppose the franchising of Stockton Crown Post Office and believe the proposal will severely damage the provision of services.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to call upon the Post Office to withdraw their plans and retain Stockton Crown Post Office.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001195]
Business of the House
(11 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
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 is as follows:
Monday 15 July—Debate on a motion relating to justice and home affairs, followed by a motion to approve a European document relating to Europol.
Tuesday 16 July—Second Reading of the Defence Reform Bill, followed by a motion to approve a money resolution relating to the European Union (Referendum) Bill, followed by consideration of Lords amendments.
Wednesday 17 July—Opposition day (fifth allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced, followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments, followed by a general debate on Trident alternatives review.
Thursday 18 July—If necessary, consideration of Lords amendments, followed by the launch of a report from the Communities and Local Government Committee on the private rented sector, followed by the launch of a report from the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on “Revisiting Rebuilding the House: The Impact of the Wright Reforms”, followed by a general debate on the economic implications for the United Kingdom of an EU-US trade and investment agreement, followed by matters to be raised before the forthcoming Adjournment. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee. If necessary, consideration of Lords amendments. The House will not adjourn until the Speaker has signified Royal Assent.
The provisional business for the week commencing 2 September will include:
Monday 2 September—A debate on a motion relating to the future for postal services in rural areas, followed by a debate on a motion relating to the all-party parliamentary cycling group’s report “Get Britain Cycling”. The subjects for these debates have been nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 18 July will be:
Thursday 18 July—General debate on UK shale gas development.
Ms Eagle
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business.
The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority’s proposals for MPs’ pay and pensions in the 2015 Parliament have just been published. Does the Leader of the House agree that any decisions that IPSA makes after the public consultation on this package of measures should reflect wider economic circumstances and what is happening in the public and private sectors?
Last week I asked the Leader of the House to protect the extra time to scrutinise the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill. In response the Leader of the House said he would
“take steps to ensure that the time that is available for that debate is protected”—[Official Report, 4 July 2013; Vol. 565, c. 1061.]
On Monday and Tuesday we had more than four hours of statements, wiping out all the extra time that the right hon. Gentleman had so generously granted. Will he now tell us why his assurances to this House appear to carry such weight in the Government? And will he tell me exactly what was the point of appearing to grant extra time in the first place?
The Conservative party has a blind spot when it comes to women. First, the Mayor of London said that women only go to university to find husbands. Then the Prime Minister completely forgot about British Wimbledon champions Ann Jones and Virginia Wade when complimenting Andy Murray on his fantastic achievement last Sunday. Finally we had the Foreign Secretary exercising his well-known diplomatic skills by using a phrase about my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) that I cannot repeat in the House. This Tory party is so modern that its members either ignore women completely or casually insult them. It looks like the unconscious bias training that the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) is meant to be organising for them really is not working.
Apparently the Deputy Prime Minister was seen out for dinner last week with Mick Jagger.
Ms Eagle
Indeed. I hear they were discussing Lib Dem theme songs for the next election. How about “You can’t always get what you want”, or “Under my thumb”? Personally, I think that “It’s all over now” might be much more appropriate.
We have all been enjoying the glorious weather. It was lovely to see Tory MPs skipping gleefully around this place last Friday. The barbecues were sizzling, the birds were singing, and the Tory party was banging on about Europe. But even before their prime ministerial burgers were properly digested, they were back to their old ways. After the Home Secretary’s U-turn on the European arrest warrant, another Euro mutiny is brewing. She has been promising the Chairs of the Home Affairs, Justice and European Scrutiny Committees time to scrutinise the Government’s opt-out plan for the last nine months. Why, then, did the Leader of the House come to the Dispatch Box on Monday with an emergency business statement to force a vote, bypassing any kind of Select Committee scrutiny at all?
Not only have the Government shown no respect to those Committees or the House, but they have done so for no reason. The EU treaties, the Commission and even the Government’s own legislation say that they do not need a vote before beginning negotiations, so why is the Leader of the House forcing a vote on Monday? Will he recognise his mistake and put off the vote until the Committees have had time to scrutinise the Government’s plans, as the Home Secretary promised?
While the Leader of the Opposition is taking bold steps to remake our politics, the Prime Minister is failing to answer questions about his dodgy donors. Is not the truth, as the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) told the BBC yesterday, that in the Conservative party money buys influence. Adrian Beecroft donated half a million pounds and was then allowed to write a report calling for the destruction of workers’ rights. JCB chairman Anthony Bamford donated £2.5 million and was then allowed to write a report on manufacturing. At the recent Tory fundraising ball, the Prime Minister had the temerity to tell his millionaire guests that their donations enabled him to give a tax cut to all their millionaire pals and hedge fund friends. I have calculated that 18 hedge fund bosses donated over £24 million before attending their cosy dinners at No. 10.
The Prime Minister was forced by the scandal to ask Lord Gold to investigate, but it has been more than a year and we have not heard a word. Will the Leader of the House tell us when he expects this important report to be published, and does he know why it has taken so long? A quarter of those on The Sunday Times rich list are donors to the Conservative party. They said that we were all in this together, but is not the truth that this is a Government run by the rich and for the rich?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her questions—I think that there were one or two. As she rightly acknowledged, decisions about Members’ pay, pensions and expenses are not made by this House; they are now matters for IPSA, which is an independent body. IPSA has today published its recommendations on the future remuneration package for MPs from 2015. That is for consultation before any final decision is made in the autumn. I urge anyone who has a view on the proposals to use the opportunity to respond to IPSA. The Government, like the Opposition, have set out our views. We have made it clear that we expect IPSA to take the broader fiscal climate into account, in particular the context of the Government’s approach to public service pay and pensions. I expect that we will maintain that position in any further response to the consultation. I should add that my party’s view is that in tough times we should see the cost of politics going down, not up.
On the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill, I was in the Chamber for much of the debate and am confident that in the course of the debate we were able to examine those issues. Indeed, I was pleased by the way in which we were able to respond substantively and positively to the further report from the Parliament Commission on Banking Standards only a short time after its publication.
I am afraid that I do not agree with the shadow Leader of the House at all about her characterisation of the Conservative party’s views in relation to women. As the party of the first woman Prime Minister in this country, we have understood—I have certainly understood since I was but a boy in political terms—the exemplary role that women can play in politics and in other aspects of life. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. May I say to the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) that he should not continue to chunter noisily from a sedentary position and to gesticulate as well? It is unseemly and it is not statesmanlike in the way that I aspire him to be. We have a lot of business to get through and we will make speedier progress if we have brief contributions and some order.
Mr Lansley
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
As for tennis, I am of an age where I absolutely remember Ann Jones and Virginia Wade. I know that the Prime Minister merely spoke in a moment of excitement in recognising and congratulating Andy Murray. I do not think for a minute that my right hon. Friend would have forgotten them if he had thought about it for a further second.
I did not know that the Deputy Prime Minister had had a meal with Mick Jagger, but I am looking forward to the “Moves Like Jagger” moment that will no doubt result from it.
May I explain the vote that will occur next Monday to the shadow Leader of the House? It is very straightforward. The Government published their Command Paper. It is not essential—nothing legally requires it—for the Government to have a vote of the House before the opt-out, but back in October the Home Secretary made it clear that we would have such a vote. The vote on Monday is an opportunity for the House to support the opt-out. It is not a vote about the character of the opt-in. Since the negotiation the House is able, in addition, to vote on Monday to take note of the Command Paper. That is the basis on which having opted out in due course, as we are intending to do, the House and the Select Committees of the House will then have an opportunity to consider the opt-in. I am afraid that it is simply not true to say, as the shadow Leader of the House does, that the Select Committees will not have an opportunity to consider the character of the opt-in; they will be able to look at that at the same time as my right hon. Friends are conducting the negotiation with the Commission and with other member states.
May I say a word about Prime Minister’s questions? I listened very carefully, Mr Speaker, when you responded to a point of order from the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), and of course I absolutely agree with everything you said. In the context of what happened this week, I think that, as you rightly pointed out, the public expect high standards of us, but they also expect Prime Minister’s questions, in particular, to be pretty robust. When the public out there listen to the House, sometimes they hear something that is a bit different from just the noise level in the Chamber, and that is okay—that is fine.
However, this week, if I may say so in agreement with you, Mr Speaker, the noise was excessive and it will have had an adverse impact on the public because it will have made it impossible to hear in the normal way the character of the answers that were being given and, indeed, sometimes the character of the questions being asked. I knew exactly what was happening; I make no bones about it. In the context of the heat-seeking missile that was aimed at the Leader of the Opposition in the previous week about Unite’s relationship with the Labour party, Labour Members were throwing out noise and chaff. Of course, they knew they were doing it, we knew they were doing it, and it would be helpful if the public knew they were doing it. However, we will not stop making sure that that missile hits its target. The Labour party is bought by the trade unions. We do not permit donations to the Conservative party to have strings attached. We do not allow donors to buy policy, to buy influence or to buy candidates, and they cannot buy the leadership of this party, but the trade unions do all those things for the Labour party.
Mr Speaker
Order. As right hon. and hon. Members know, it is my normal, almost unfailing, practice to try to call everyone at business questions. I would point out, though, that today we have two Government statements after this, both of which are of course important and of which the House will wish to treat, and then two debates under the auspices of the Backbench Business Committee, both of which, especially the first, are significantly subscribed. It therefore may not be possible for me to accommodate all colleagues today, though I shall strive to do so and will be greatly assisted in the process by brevity from Back Benchers and Front Benchers alike, first to be exemplified by Mr Peter Bone.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Will the Leader of the House adopt a policy on programming whereby he gives a protected number of hours to main debates? As you were saying, Mr Speaker, today we have the problem that Back-Bench business is being squeezed, but if we had agreed a motion providing that it could last for six hours from whenever it commenced, it would have solved the problem entirely. Such a thing has been done before, so does the Leader of the House agree that that would a good tactic to adopt?
Mr Lansley
Our practice on programming is to be flexible. It is sometimes in the interests of the House for time to be protected, but sometimes that would be an unnecessary constraint. As I made clear last week, in the run-up to the recess, there will inevitably be pressing reasons why the Government make additional announcements and statements, which will have an impact on business, but we will do everything we can to ensure that that does not frustrate us in conducting our business in good time.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
May we have a debate or a statement from the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport about the serious situation that has developed at Coventry football club? The Football League has said that the club can play in Northampton, which would involve people making a 70-mile round trip at great expense. The Football League should have allowed the dispute between the club and the owners of the Ricoh arena to be resolved before it took that disgraceful decision, so may we have a statement or a review of the regulations?
Mr Lansley
I know from previous questions, not least from my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), that the situation greatly concerns people in Coventry South and neighbouring constituencies. I will raise it once again with my colleagues at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, but I suggest to the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) that the matter is precisely the sort of thing that he might wish to raise during next Thursday’s pre-recess debate, should he manage to catch Mr Speaker’s eye.
Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)
While I do not share the Leader of the House’s view that Mrs Thatcher was a honky-tonk woman, does he share my view, and sense of surprise, that Sir Bill McKay’s report and recommendations found their way into the public prints this week, apparently before there had been any meaningful discussion in the coalition or across the Floor of the House? This is about proposals on English votes for English-only legislation and on dealing with English and Welsh legislation. Does he have any idea of how the situation came about, and will he tell us the current status of discussions in the coalition and across the Floor? Where does the issue go from here, because many of us who are involved in the Scottish referendum campaign feel that it is better to settle the future of the Union before we get on to deciding how to handle English and Scottish business in a continuing House of Commons?
Mr Lansley
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, but I am slightly surprised by what he says. I saw the press report to which he refers but, as far as I am concerned, it did not represent an announcement of anything. Indeed, it did not bring Sir William McKay’s report into the public domain because I believe that it was published in March. As we have reported to the House before, we continue to discuss the report, which we welcome, and we will make a fuller response to it later in the year.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Last week, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions refused to accept that the reason 500,000 people in our country have to access emergency food aid is social security delays. When I tabled a parliamentary question on the matter, the reply told me that Lord Freud had not even visited a food bank. The Trussell Trust confirms today that the delays are the result of changes that have been made since April, so may we have an urgent debate attended by all Work and Pensions Ministers so that they can acknowledge that we have a problem in this country?
Mr Lansley
Like the hon. Lady, I heard my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State speaking about precisely that issue during Work and Pensions questions. The situation is not as simple as she characterises it. It is clear, as the Trussell Trust itself rightly says, that the availability of food banks has increased, and they have been advertised through jobcentres, which was not the case before the election. The number of people accessing food banks increased by many times before the election and it has increased since.
What I think has been a particularly pointed issue is whether benefit processing times and delays were themselves leading to people accessing food banks. I tell the hon. Lady that benefit processing times have improved over the past five years. The number of benefits processed on time—that is, within 16 days—is up 4% since 2009-10.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
Following an unannounced inspection of Derriford hospital in Plymouth, the Care Quality Commission said yesterday that the hospital had failed to meet five of the nine nationally required standards in protecting patients undergoing surgery. Although I know that the chief executive of Derriford hospital is doing a very good job in trying to get this right, may we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Health on the progress being made to ensure that we are not producing any more “never events”?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will be aware that the Health Secretary and his colleagues will answer questions on health matters next Tuesday. Having visited Derriford hospital, I know that it is a big hospital with a lot of dedicated staff who are trying to do an excellent job. When I was Health Secretary, we instituted professionally led, unannounced inspections by the CQC and it is important that they take place. They expose where standards are not what they ought to be and I know that the staff will try to respond.
As Health Secretary I extended the list of “never events” and introduced the open publication of the number and character of them by trust, so that we can see what is happening. I think that that transparency in itself will, as it does in so many other ways, help us drive down the number of such events in the future.
Mr Speaker
It sounds like there is scope for a debate, if in fact we have not already had it.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
May we have a debate on the dangers and evils of imperialism and annexation of another country’s territory, whether it be Saddam Hussein in Kuwait or, at the other end of the spectrum, the Westminster Government who, as the front page of The Guardian reports, are bullying Scotland as part of “project fear”? Free peoples across the world will condemn that and stand with Scotland in the name of freedom.
Mr Lansley
Given that the hon. Gentleman’s question is occasioned by the front page of today’s Guardian, I hope he will be pleased to hear that the Government have not commissioned contingency plans for Faslane. Ideas of the kind described have not come to the Defence Secretary or the Prime Minister and they would not support them if they did.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
The Leader of the House is well aware of the phenomenal success of the cancer drugs fund since it was introduced in 2010, but there is growing concern among charities, clinicians and patients about the lack of clarity about its replacement. In a well-attended meeting in March, the Secretary of State for Health said that he would make a statement about this before the summer recess. Will the Leader of the House update us on progress with regard to that statement?
Mr Lansley
I repeat that my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary will be here to answer questions next Tuesday. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) is assiduous in taking up these issues and I absolutely agree with him: the cancer drugs fund is tremendously important. It was always clear that it would enable us to meet the needs of patients in accessing new and innovative medicines and it has done so in about 27,000 cases, which is tremendous news. It is expected, however, that from January 2014 we will have a system that will enable patients right across the NHS to access the latest innovative medicines at a price that represents value for money for the NHS.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Yesterday the Committee on Climate Change published a report on adaption, which said that by the 2020s the gap between water demand and water supply could be 120 billion litres—the amount that our farmers extract each year. This is an incredible strain on our resources and farmers. May we have a debate on water extraction and the potential effect on the irrigation of crops?
Mr Lansley
The Select Committee could seek, in the usual way, to have a debate through the Liaison Committee.
Barry Gardiner
It was not the Select Committee; it was the Committee on Climate Change.
Mr Lansley
I beg the hon. Gentleman’s pardon. He and others may wish to seek a debate through the Backbench Business Committee. He will be aware of the publication of the national adaptation programme and the importance attached to it in delivering our proactive response to the potential risks and consequences that flow from climate change.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The Leader of the House will be aware of the problems caused by Travellers occupying council or private land, as highlighted by a recent incident in my constituency. I recognise that the Government have made it easier for councils and landowners to take action, but recent incidents highlight that problems remain. Will he find time for a debate on this matter?
Mr Lansley
I am sure that many Members will understand and share the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend. He will know that we have taken many steps to ensure fair play in the planning system—I draw particular attention to the recent written ministerial statement on planning and revoking the equality and diversity in planning guidance—and to enable a sense of fairness across the community. That is not, in any sense, to underplay the needs of Traveller communities in the planning system, but to ensure that there is community cohesion because everyone is seen to be treated fairly.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
Unfortunately, Durham and Tees Valley airport’s regional growth fund bid was rejected in the latest round, yet the Government saw fit to give £145 million to national programmes in which HSBC and RBS were winners. Like many others, I was under the impression that the regional growth fund was meant for the regions, so can we have a statement on why £145 million has been given to the banks, rather than this country’s regions?
Mr Lansley
I cannot comment on the particular reasons for a decision made under the regional growth fund, but today the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), will be announcing additional allocations of resources to support the regional growth fund, which has had a positive impact and played a significant part in the creation of 1.3 million new private sector jobs since the last election. I think perhaps the hon. Gentleman would be better off applauding that in the first instance.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
In view of this week’s ludicrous decision by the European Court of Human Rights on whole-life sentences, may we have an urgent debate on the effect of the Court’s decisions on the confidence of the British public in our legal system, particularly our criminal legal system?
Mr Lansley
I am sure that my hon. Friend knows that the Government are deeply disappointed by this week’s judgment. We believe that whole-life tariffs are appropriate for exceptionally serious murders. The judgment does not mean, of course, that any offender who has received a whole-life tariff will be released immediately or that they will ever necessarily be released. The Court found a breach because there was no review point in the sentence. The Government will consider the detail of the judgment to determine what action might be necessary or possible, and we will make a further statement in response to the concerns expressed by him and others soon.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
I have in my hand a letter from the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary in which they commit themselves
“to ensuring enhanced Parliamentary scrutiny of EU justice and home affairs matters, including the 2014 decision.”
It came with a list of 136 opt-ins for justice and home affairs matters in the EU. Why, therefore, are the Government pressing ahead with a motion on Monday that lists for consultation only the 35 issues in the Command Paper? What happened to the promise that consultation would take place on all these items? Is it not time to abandon this divisive motion?
Mr Lansley
Perhaps I should reiterate what I said to the shadow Leader of the House. It is very straightforward: the Home Secretary has published in the Command Paper the Government’s conclusions on the opt-out—last October, she made it clear that the Government’s policy was to opt out and then decide whether, and to what extent, to opt back in—and policy conclusions. Monday’s debate will enable the House to respond to that and to vote in support of the opt-out, but to note that we are entering negotiations that will lead to a vote in 2014 on the extent of the opt-in.
Guto Bebb (Aberconwy) (Con)
For a decade or more, many parts of Wales have received European money at the highest intervention rate, with little obvious effect on the economy. In view of the UK Government’s generous settlement for Wales—again—and the latest round of EU funding, may we have a debate on the effectiveness of EU funding in helping the GDP of areas such as Wales and other parts of the United Kingdom?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes an important point. There were many happy consequences of the Prime Minister’s negotiating success in the budget negotiations. One was to reduce the overall size of the budget, and another was to give us the flexibility we are looking for, and focus on, improving our international competitiveness, and Wales will receive more than €2.145 billion in European funding from 2014 to 2020. We are focusing those funds on regions with lower GDP per capita, and using the full flexibility available. Among other things, that will provide west Wales and the valleys with an increase of €91 million compared with what the allocation would have been by applying the European Union formula alone.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
When can we have a debate on the failure of the Government’s prohibition of mephedrone, which resulted in a 300% increase in its use? The likely effect of the ban on khat will be to drive a wedge between the Somali and Yemeni populations and the police, and also increase use. When can we have intelligent drug policies that decrease use and harm, instead of more populist, prejudice-based policies that increase harm and use?
Mr Lansley
I believe we have an intelligent policy that focuses not just on harm reduction but on trying to get people off drugs altogether. That is the proper answer and where we need to get to, not just the shift from heroin to methadone with some of the risks and consequences that flow from that, including the risk of reverting to heroin use. I cannot promise a debate, but the hon. Gentleman will have noticed that the Home Secretary and Home Office Ministers will be in the Chamber on Monday and he may like to raise that point with them.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Further to the point from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), is it time we had a debate and vote on whether we should withdraw from the European convention on human rights, following the latest bizarre, perverse, and frankly idiotic, ruling on whole-life sentences? The British public do not want Ministers to say they are deeply disappointed; they want them to do something about it such as leave that ridiculous organisation that is full of pseudo-judges, many of whom are political placemen rather than properly qualified judges.
Mr Lansley
As my hon. Friend knows, we agreed in the coalition agreement that obligations under the European convention on human rights will continue to be enshrined in British law, and he will appreciate that we took considerable positive steps forward during our presidency of the Council of Europe and in the Brighton declaration, which will help. He and others across the House will continue to be concerned at the nature of decisions by the European Court of Human Rights and its interpretation of convention rights. There will be an opportunity to consider the implications of that on our future relationship with the convention, although I cannot promise that in the immediate future.
Mr Speaker
Order. I appeal to colleagues to put single, short, supplementary questions without preamble, and to the Leader of the House for comparable pithy replies, by which route we might be able to include everybody.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
An innovative scheme to reduce fuel poverty in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees is being placed in jeopardy because of excessive but legal charges by BT to refix poles to the side of private houses once work is completed. That matter falls between the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills—
Mr Speaker
Order. I asked colleagues to put a simple question. Please do so.
Alex Cunningham
I apologise, Mr Speaker. Will the Leader of the House encourage the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to back my call for an investigation into excessive charges made by BT for repairs following work for a fuel poverty scheme in Stockton-on-Tees?
Mr Lansley
I will raise that point with my colleagues and ask them to respond to the hon. Gentleman.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
Youth unemployment in my constituency is down 15% since the last election. May we have a debate on the success of the Government’s economic policies and on what more can be done to ensure that all young people have the dignity of work?
Mr Lansley
Youth unemployment is down by 43,000 this quarter and 60,000 since last year, and I am pleased to hear what my hon. Friend says about additional youth employment in Croydon, which is important. I cannot promise a debate immediately, but the Opposition could always take up the issue in the Opposition day debate next Wednesday.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
I know the Leader of the House will not want to upset millionaire moonlighters and parliamentary part-timers on the Government Benches, but I think being a Member of Parliament should be a full-time job. Given the brilliant speech made earlier this week by the Leader of the Opposition, may we have an urgent debate on how we can ensure that Members of Parliament spend their time in Parliament serving their constituents, not outside lining their pockets?
Mr Lansley
The hon. Gentleman might not have had a chance to read IPSA’s report this morning. Although it says that additional employment and outside earnings are not strictly in IPSA’s remit, it does offer views on the subject. One of the crucial things that IPSA says is that relatively few Members of this House have any significant earnings from outside and about only 10% have second jobs. He might remember that the Committee on Standards in Public Life looked at this issue and reached the conclusion that there was no reason to place any bar on outside employment for Members of this House.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
Will the Leader of the House comment on the need for compassion to be shown by Somerset county council on the occasion of medical emergencies? My constituent John, who lives in Cheddar, had to empty his colostomy bag because it was leaking. He needed to fix the situation urgently, but he received a parking ticket while he was doing so. In spite of his many appeals to the county council, it has not budged and he is now threatened with forced collection.
Mr Lansley
I can offer neither, but I know, as other Members will, that if the county council sees my hon. Friend’s reference to the issue in the House, it will, I hope, respond positively. Some councils do, and I hope hers might.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
May we have a statement or at least a meeting with the relevant Minister to find out why the bid from Durham Tees Valley airport was turned down by the regional growth fund? The bid could have created 1,400 jobs and leveraged in another £40 million of investment.
Mr Lansley
I cannot comment on the bid, but of course I will talk to Ministers at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Whenever there is a bid, it is always good practice to offer as much feedback as possible to those who are unsuccessful.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
This week the International Monetary Fund upgraded its forecast for economic growth in the UK, at the same time as lowering the forecast for the rest of the world. May we have a debate about the UK economy, which is now moving out of intensive care, following the record bust created by the last Labour Government?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is right. We do not know what the Opposition’s choice of debate for next Wednesday will be, but they might like to consider the opportunity to debate some of the economic good news. The deficit is down by a third and we have close to record low interest rates and 1.3 million more people working in the private sector—these are the kinds of things that it would be good for us to focus on. Our success in winning in the global race depends on sustaining the policy path we are on now.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
May we have a debate on Prime Minister’s questions? My 83-year-old mother Beryl loves it, and not just because she gets a chance to see me in the Chamber. As a member of the trade union that helped her when she was injured at work as a dinner lady lifting tables, she would understand the noise that was generated by the remarks of a Prime Minister trying to demonise trade unions, from a party that is funded by millionaires and spivs.
Mr Lansley
My mother is 92, and although she enjoys Prime Minister’s questions, she prefers business questions more.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
Youth unemployment has fallen by 8.3% in my constituency in the last year. However, I am not being complacent and my hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) and I are running a jobs fair in my constituency on 24 July. Will my right hon. Friend welcome that jobs fair? May we also have a debate on what the Government are doing to reduce youth unemployment and what individual Members are doing to help young people to get into work?
Mr Lansley
It would be great if we could have that debate—perhaps the Opposition will take it up. My hon. Friend is to be congratulated on the work he is doing to support young people to get into jobs. Many of my hon. Friends are doing similar things, organising job fairs locally, and we can see the benefit. We can see new jobs being created and young people going into those jobs. It is right not to be complacent; therefore local action is absolutely the right thing to do.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Why are the Government insisting on Monday on a vote on both the hokey and the cokey? We will have to vote on the opt-out and the opt-in, when there is no requirement to start the negotiations for a vote on the opt-out. The Select Committees will have had no opportunity to look at the evidence on the individual measures, nor will there be any guarantees that we will be able to do simultaneous opting out and opting in.
Mr Lansley
I have explained to the hon. Gentleman and the House that the vote on Monday will enable the House to take a view in response to the Government’s publication of the Command Paper, at a point when my right hon. Friends are conducting a negotiation. That will strengthen their hand in negotiation. We have been clear about the opt-out. Support for the opt-out is the essence of the debate on Monday. The extent of the opt-in will be the subject of a further vote in 2014.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
May we have a debate on how Jobcentre Plus can advertise more jobs locally, for instance in industries such as fruit and vegetable growing and packing, so that local people seeking work are made aware of them?
Mr Lansley
That is an important point. In fact, I will raise it with my friends in the Department for Work and Pensions and ask them to respond. In many constituencies Jobcentre Plus does a very good job, but we should be tireless in trying to ensure that we match people out of work to the unprecedentedly high number—more than 500,000—of vacancies. It would be really good news if we did that.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The whole country can see the IPSA car crash unfolding. We all know that the Prime Minister will be forced to intervene eventually, so why do we not have a debate before the summer recess on what we need to do to amend the IPSA rules and put this fantasy proposal to bed now?
Mr Lansley
I repeat to the hon. Gentleman and the House that just four years ago—not a long time ago—this House passed legislation to create an independent body. Many of the problems emerging from this issue stem from the simple fact that Members are not willing to let go. We no longer have a say on our pay and pensions. We can express our view, but we do not determine them. It would be immensely to the benefit of the House and the public debate if that were recognised by the public and the press. We do not have a say: IPSA has the say. Go and express views to them. We will do so on a personal and party basis.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Unemployment in Tamworth is now at its lowest level since 2008—before Labour’s crash. That has been driven partly by the distribution and logistics sectors. May we have a debate on those sectors so we can explore the job opportunities they provide, particularly to young people?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend understands well from the geography of his constituency—it is in a central position—how distribution and logistics work. We have competitive sectors, but we are in a global race and constantly have to improve our competitiveness. That is why the fact that this country has moved up in the competitiveness league tables is great. What is equally great news is that the UK was regarded in a recent survey as the best place in the world in which to do business.
Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)
When the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate visited my constituency recently it found more than 70 separate breaches of the law governing how people are paid, and £100,000 owing to local workers through underpayments. The Government’s consultation on the recruitment sector closed on 11 April, so may we have a debate on the future of the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate?
Mr Lansley
I fear I cannot offer an immediate debate; I do not have one immediately in prospect. The hon. Gentleman and colleagues with like interests may care to raise the issue with the Backbench Business Committee, but I will of course raise his point with my colleagues at the Department for Work and Pensions.
Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
Residents in my constituency are becoming increasingly concerned about the local plan being developed by Warwick district council. They feel that their voice is not being respected and I believe that the council needs to rethink its ill-conceived proposals. Will the Leader of the House agree to a debate on planning policy and on how we can give greater democratic control of the planning system to communities?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend makes a specific point relating to his constituency and his local council. I hope his local council will listen to what he says. The Localism Act 2011 sets out to give power to local authorities and neighbourhood plans, and tries to ensure that they take account fully not only of the simplified national planning policy framework, but do so in the context of local decision making by local people. He is right to stress that point.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The independent living fund has transformed the lives of severely disabled people. May we have a debate on the likely impact of the decision to transfer the fund to local authorities? Severely disabled people are greatly concerned about the likelihood of losing their independence.
Mr Lansley
I will of course talk to my hon. Friends in the Department for Work and Pensions; it seems that I shall need to do that quite a lot today. The hon. Gentleman is describing the transfer of those funds into the hands of local authorities. Those local authorities will have the ability to look at a range of benefits and assess how they will work in the context of the link to people’s own housing responsibilities, and I know that that is proving to be a positive way of enabling people to manage to a budget more effectively. In so many of these circumstances, however, the ability to have discretion at the margin to deal with difficult cases is something that every council will have to look at carefully.
Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)
In recent days, two companies in Montgomeryshire—Control Techniques and Invertek Drives—have announced 90 new local high-tech jobs. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to make a statement on how we can work with the Welsh Government to build on this success as the UK moves out of recession?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend is a great cheerleader for mid-Wales, and he is absolutely right to suggest that there are some great businesses helping the UK to compete in the global race by investing and expanding their operations. I will draw his comments to the attention of the Secretary of State, but if he is in his place next Thursday when the Secretary of State is responding to questions, he might have a further opportunity to raise the matter then.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
The Leader of the House will have noted that IPSA is back in the news. May we have a statement on what IPSA is going to do to improve its cumbersome IT systems, which waste an awful lot of MPs’ staff time, and to address the fact that the organisation remains incommunicado for large parts of the day?
Mr Lansley
I will not promise a statement at the moment but, if I may, I will draw the hon. Gentleman’s point to the attention of my colleagues on the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority. I know that the Committee has raised a number of issues with IPSA as a consequence of its examination of the organisation’s estimate. We will take the hon. Gentleman’s point on board when we further consider some of these IPSA issues.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
In recent months, my visually impaired constituent, Doug Hollingsworth, has been having great difficulty in accessing audio correspondence from the Department for Work and Pensions. May we have a debate on how people with visual impairments can gain better access to that Department?
Mr Lansley
I am sure that the House will be sorry to hear of the difficulties that my hon. Friend’s constituent is experiencing. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing them to our attention. I will raise the matter with the Department for Work and Pensions, which I know has the facility to offer a range of formats, provided as “reasonable adjustments”, for visually impaired or blind people, including materials in audio format, large print or Braille. I shall bring the case to the Department’s attention, so that it can look into whether it is making the necessary adjustments.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Has my right hon. Friend seen my early-day motion 389, which deals with the sudden closure of the Maypole club in Harlow?
[That this House is shocked and saddened at the closure of the Maypole Club in Harlow; notes the vital contribution that the club made to the community of Harlow; further notes that many Harlow residents had special occasions booked at the club, and football teams will no longer be able to use their pitches with immediate effect; believes the staff and managers of the club should have received notice before it closed; and therefore urges the new owners to provide an alternative clubhouse and alternative pitches to local football teams.]
On Tuesday, I was shocked to hear that, after an overnight sale of its lease, the Maypole club, which makes a huge contribution to our local community, had been boarded up. No notice was given to management, staff, members or the many sports teams that use its facilities. May we have an urgent debate on small community clubs, and will my right hon. Friend contact the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and ask him to look into this matter?
Mr Lansley
I will draw my hon. Friend’s early-day motion to the attention of the Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson). I know that the people in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) will be grateful to him once again for raising their concerns about community services.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
When will the Bill to ensure that foreign nationals will be charged for using the NHS come before the House? Will it address the concerns of the constituent who wrote to me this week to say:
“As an NHS nurse of 33 years…I find I am providing care for elderly patients with chronic health needs who have never lived in the UK at any point of their life, who have come to live with their family members who have recently settled in the UK…most recently from Bulgaria, Greece and Slovakia”?
Mr Lansley
My hon. Friend will recall that, the week before last, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health published a consultation relating to access to NHS services for those coming from abroad. That consultation will enable us to introduce the legislation described in the Queen’s Speech later this year. On my hon. Friend’s point about his constituent, any NHS services provided to older and retired people from other European Union member states can be charged back to the member state, and that is what we do.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
Order. Points of order come after statements. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that, and that it had just momentarily slipped his mind. I feel sure that we will see him later today, and perhaps hear from him as well.
Health Services (North-West)
(11 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about changes at Trafford general hospital and, separately, about the provision of vascular services in Cumbria and Lancashire.
Our primary objective as a Government must be for the NHS to provide the best service for patients. Sometimes that means taking difficult decisions. Both of the decisions I am announcing today fall into that category, but both are necessary if we are to provide safe and sustainable health care in the north-west.
Let me first address the changes at Trafford general hospital. Greater Manchester is home to some of the best and most innovative health care in the country. The reconfiguration of acute stroke services in Manchester has contributed to an overall reduction in deaths of around 250 since the changes were implemented. Salford Royal and Wythenshawe are two of the finest hospitals in the country. The area is blazing a trail in the integration of primary, secondary and social care services, but more needs to be done to ensure that emergency care continues to be safe, which is why the local NHS proposed some important but difficult service changes, which affect A and E provision at Trafford general hospital.
On 8 February 2013, I received a letter from the chair of the joint health scrutiny committee for Trafford borough council and Manchester city council, formally referring proposals about the future delivery of health care services at Trafford general hospital. I then asked the Independent Reconfiguration Panel for its advice on the proposals, which I received on 27 March 2013. Today, I have accepted its advice, which will be published on the panel’s website, in full. I have also written to the chairs of the panel and of the joint health scrutiny committee and to local MPs, informing them of my decision.
The clinical case for change in Trafford general hospital is clear. It is one of the smallest hospitals in the country. Its accident and emergency department is the second smallest in the country. Between midnight and 8 o’clock in the morning, the A and E department sees on average only two patients an hour. Even at peak times, the unit sees on average only seven patients an hour. Over half of local residents already use accident and emergency services outside Trafford. Trafford clinical commissioning group’s chief clinical officer, Dr Nigel Guest, himself a local GP, said:
“This makes it difficult to attract new doctors, it means that services cost more than they should and it compromises our ability to ensure good clinical outcomes. In short, it means that for too long local people have not been getting the type of service they should and deserve to receive.”
The problems are not confined to A and E. The low number of patients using intensive care means it, too, is not sustainable, and is likely to become unsafe in the future. According to the Greater Manchester critical care network, the unit needs to treat a minimum of 200 patients a year to be safe, but it treats fewer than 100. Emergency surgical services are also not sustainable. The Royal College of Surgeons states that emergency surgery should serve a population of at least 300,000— ideally 450,000 to 500,000. Trafford general hospital serves a population of around 100,000.
Trafford is currently able to provide a range of high-quality clinical services. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to safeguard those services in a way that is sustainable in the long term. As a result, the National Clinical Advisory Team of independent health professionals has advised me that there will be clinical and safety issues if the hospital continues practising as it currently does. I accept its advice.
Initially, the A and E at Trafford general hospital will be replaced by an urgent care centre. The A and E currently sees just 100 patients a day. The majority of those patients—around 75%—will continue to be seen at the urgent care centre. That means around 25 patients a day will be treated at the three neighbouring large university hospitals, all within a 10-mile radius. In the longer term, as services are developed over the next two to three years, the urgent care centre will become a minor injuries unit. Trafford general hospital will become a centre of excellence for elective orthopaedic surgery. That will see all other in-patient surgery stop, but there will be an expansion of day surgery, such as ophthalmology and other vital local services.
On 24 January this year, the PCT cluster, NHS Greater Manchester, approved the implementation of these proposals subject to the prior fulfilment of six conditions. Those included addressing transport issues for local residents, accelerating the implementation of a local integrated care system and ensuring continued access to out-of-hours mental health services when the urgent care centre eventually closes. Progress will be assessed and evaluated throughout the transition by NHS England in conjunction with the local joint health scrutiny committee. Following the advice from the Independent Reconfiguration Panel, I am also satisfied that the four tests for reconfiguration have been met.
As a result of the changes I am supporting today, Trafford CCG will be able to reinvest an additional £3.5 million to deliver what local people have asked for—more choice, more preventive care and more services closer to home. That will include community matrons and a community geriatrician, a 72-hour rapid response team, as well as an in-reach team to A and E to support people with complex needs and mental health issues.
I know that the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) and my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) have met the Under-Secretary of State for Health to raise their concerns. Others, including the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), have written to me directly. That is why I have wanted to reassure myself since receiving the advice that the NHS has arrangements in place to ensure patient safety is not compromised during the transition to new services. I can assure all Members that there will be a rigorous assurance process overseen by NHS England and that no changes will occur until unequivocal assurances have been given by a provider’s board or chief executive that their organisation can safely receive additional patients and activity, however small.
Because A and Es around the country have been under increased pressure over the past few months, I also make a commitment today that changes at Trafford will take place only if the three neighbouring A and Es that will need to treat additional patients are consistently meeting their waiting time standards. Progress will be assessed and evaluated throughout the transition by NHS England in conjunction with the local joint health scrutiny committee. The Department of Health has also set aside funds to support investment by the University Hospital of South Manchester NHS Foundation Trust in expanding Wythenshawe hospital’s A and E department. That application for funding will be treated as a priority.
I turn to the provision of vascular services in Cumbria and Lancashire. On 19 February, the chair of Cumbria’s health scrutiny committee wrote to me formally to refer proposals about the provision of vascular services in Cumbria and Lancashire. I subsequently asked the Independent Reconfiguration Panel for its advice, which I received on 19 April. Today I have accepted its advice in full, which will be published on the panel’s website. I have also written to the chair of the panel and of the Cumbria health scrutiny committee, as well as to local MPs, informing them of my decision.
The changes will concentrate vascular services in three specialist centres, in line with the IRP’s advice for a population of around 2.8 million people. More routine services will continue to be provided locally. Seven hospitals, including the three specialist centres, will continue to provide services such as screening, out-patient clinics, day surgery, diagnostic tests and rehabilitation services. The centres will be at North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust in Carlisle, East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust in Blackburn, and Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in Preston. Day casework and out-patients will continue to be assessed and treated in local hospitals across the region.
The three centres will provide sufficient cover both for the sparsely populated north of the region and for the densely populated south, which includes significant pockets of deprivation and unmet health needs. The concentration of vascular services is in line with national policy, as recommended by the Vascular Society of Great Britain and Ireland. The move will give patients access to better care and treatment than is currently possible with vascular services spread more thinly across the region.
The IRP accepts, as do I, that an inevitable consequence of concentrating specialist services at centres of excellence, is that some patients will have to travel further for treatment. However, the IRP informs me that the evidence in favour of concentrating services is particularly strong in relation to vascular surgery and that there is a strong clinical consensus that doing so will improve outcomes for patients. I know that Members representing north Lancashire and south Cumbria are particularly concerned about the distance patients will need to travel for specialist treatment. I do sympathise, but in the end have taken the difficult decision that the clinical benefits of concentrating specialist services outweigh any disadvantages in terms of additional travel times. I add that the Royal Lancaster Infirmary along with six other hospitals will continue to provide more routine vascular services.
These changes offer an opportunity to provide significantly improved vascular services to the people of Cumbria and Lancashire. I am therefore asking NHS England, working with local NHS organisations, to address the outstanding concerns raised by Cumbria health scrutiny committee. Local people need to know that changes are indeed leading to improved outcomes and that reasonable steps are being taken to support those with further to travel. In line with the IRP’s advice, I also want to see a programme of public information about the changes.
The public are rightly concerned about any major changes to health provision, and I particularly recognise the concerns people have about having to travel further, which is significant not just for patients but for their families and friends. However, my priority, and the Government’s priority, has to be what offers the safest and best clinical outcomes and what will save the most lives. That is why, after careful consideration, I have accepted independent clinical advice on both these decisions. I have also accepted the view of the IRP that the process leading to the decisions has been the right one, and I thank it for its work on these decisions.
I commend this statement to the House.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement on matters that are of major significance to the NHS in the north-west of England, but I am not the only north-west MP taken by surprise this morning by the lack of advance notice. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), in whose constituency Trafford hospital lies, was heading home, but had to abandon her journey at Stoke and is now heading back down to try to get here. This is not just a major discourtesy to her and the House, Mr Speaker; it is an insult to the people of Trafford, and it is no way to treat people who have campaigned to save their A and E, and who should have rightly been able to expect that their voice be heard in this House today through their elected Member of Parliament.
It says a lot about this Secretary of State. His advisers could find time to get texts sent to the Murdochs with market-sensitive information before an earlier statement he made, but he could not find time to give a local MP advance notice of a statement about the closure of her accident and emergency department: disgraceful.
This is not just any A and E: 65 years and six days after Nye Bevan opened the NHS at Trafford hospital, we have the spectacle of this Secretary of State scurrying to the House to rush out an announcement without the scrutiny of local MPs about a major downgrade of the hospital. What clearer symbol could we have of a Government who disrespect and disregard the views of NHS staff, patients and local people?
My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston is trusting that the west coast main line will get her back before the close of this statement, and I hope you will allow her to contribute, Mr Speaker, even though she has clearly missed the opening of this statement.
Let me now turn to the substance of what the Secretary of State has said. He is right to say that the IRP provides excellent support and advice to Ministers. It did so to me and my predecessors in the last Government, and I am sure it is doing the same for the current Government. Where it can be shown that changes will save lives and reduce disability, in my view all Members of this House have a moral obligation to support them. Changes to vascular services in Cumbria and Lancashire clearly fall into that category. The concentration of this highly specialised surgery on three sites will save and improve lives, but given the geography it is essential that people are supported with travel. The Secretary of State made a vague commitment, but can he be more specific about the support that will be made available to patients, particularly in the sparsely populated northern part of our region, who will now have to travel much further to receive this life-saving surgery?
Although we support the Secretary of State’s decision on Lancashire and Cumbria, we have much greater concerns about the process that has led to the decisions today about Trafford hospital. While the IRP has undoubtedly done what it has been asked to do, I wrote to the Secretary of State in November last year to express serious reservations about the Trafford review proceeding ahead of Healthier Together, a much wider review of acute and emergency services across Greater Manchester. Speaking as a Greater Manchester MP, I cannot see why it makes sense to pick off Trafford hospital ahead of this review without looking at things in the round. It does not feel to me that this is part of a coherent plan for the NHS in our city region, and I ask the Secretary of State today why his decision is justified, given that the wider considerations affecting health services in Greater Manchester have not yet been completed.
The Secretary of State claims that the patients affected by the closure of Trafford can be easily and safely absorbed by the neighbouring A and Es. How can he say that when all the A and Es that will now have to absorb extra patients missed his own A and E target for at least four months during the worst winter in the NHS for a decade? Have the Secretary of State and the IRP made their decision looking at the very latest evidence of growing pressure on A and E departments in Greater Manchester? He mentions extra funding for Wythenshawe, which is welcome, as the hospital was built for 70,000 patients a year and is currently seeing almost 100,000, but will other affected A and Es also receive additional funding?
Finally, Mr Speaker, the appalling mishandling of this statement today, which has left the people affected unable to put the Secretary of State under scrutiny, is just the latest example of the wider mishandling of hospital reconfiguration under the coalition, which has seriously damaged public trust in our ability to make changes to hospitals. Picking off Trafford ahead of a wider review broke the illusory moratorium on hospital changes announced just days after the general election outside Chase Farm hospital by the Secretary of State’s predecessor and the Prime Minister—incidentally, that hospital is also now downgraded.
Sir David Nicholson has today said:
“If a political manifesto does not say that service change is absolutely essential and that you need to concentrate and centralise services—it will not be being straight forward with the British people.”
Might he just have had the last Conservative manifesto in mind when he made that statement? Will the Secretary of State today admit that this false moratorium was a cynical and dishonest policy designed to win votes in marginal seats, and will he commit never to repeat it?
Worse still, the Secretary of State’s officials have been in court in the past few days trying to justify the indefensible: a decision to rob a local community in south London of a successful A and E to solve problems in another trust that were not of its making. Is all this not causing severe damage to trust in how these decisions are made? Will he give a commitment to the House today that if the court finds against him, he will abandon his plans to downgrade Lewisham A and E? Labour Members will support changes where they are clinically justified, but where communities are picked off unfairly by this arrogant Government we will stand with them and fight for fairness.
Mr Hunt
Many members of the public are understandably concerned about these decisions, but from someone who was Health Secretary and who argued the case many times for changing services what we have heard today is not sensible argument, but political opportunism.
Let us examine what the right hon. Gentleman said only last week in Hastings. He said that people like him have a moral imperative to support the doctors who are making these decisions. Well, these changes are supported by the Trafford clinical commissioning group, Greater Manchester critical care network, the Royal College of Surgeons and many other doctors. How many doctors does he need to support this decision before he actually does what he said he would do last Friday, which is support doctors making difficult decisions? On the very day that NHS England is talking about the need to protect services for patients by facing up to difficult decisions, his approach is more than inconsistent—it is irresponsible, and he knows it. Let us examine what he said about changes in Trafford when he was Health Secretary—
Mr Speaker
Order. We must have order from those on the Opposition Front Bench, and I know that the Secretary of State will want to respond to the questions asked of him. I just remind the House that it is not a generalised debate; it is a statement and a response to questions.
Mr Hunt
Absolutely, Mr Speaker. I think that it is very important that on both sides of this House we have consistent arguments. It is very important to the questions that I was asked that I remind the right hon. Gentleman of what he said when he was Health Secretary. “I am disappointed,” he said, that politicians
“are going around Greater Manchester undermining the clinically-led process”.—[Official Report, 30 March 2010; Vol. 508, c. 620.]
The local medical director says that these changes will save—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. The temperature needs to fall. This is a very highly charged matter, there is considerable sensitivity about it, it is extremely important and we want to hear what the Secretary of State has to say. When he has said it, everybody will get a chance to come in, but please let us lower the decibel level. We certainly do not want to imitate what happened to the considerable discredit of the House yesterday.
Mr Hunt
The other point the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) made was that we should not make these changes to A and E services when those in other hospitals are under pressure. It is important that I remind the House of what he did when he was Health Secretary. After 2004-05, Labour missed its A and E targets in 12 quarters but closed or downgraded 12 A and Es. Now, in Wales, the A and E target has not been met since 2009, yet Labour is embarking on a big reconfiguration programme with his full support. So it is one policy when Labour is in opposition, another when it is in power. There is one person who agrees with the right hon. Gentleman, and he was campaigning in Trafford on Friday—Len McCluskey. When it comes to a choice between supporting local doctors or the unions, the Opposition support the unions.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
Order. We cannot have points of order in the middle of a statement. The Secretary of State has been asked specific questions and I know that he will now respond without any delay to those specific questions and nothing more. Other Members wish to contribute and there is other business. The Secretary of State is an extremely important man, of course, but there are a lot of other people involved, too, and we need to get on and hear them. I call the Secretary of State to respond briefly.
Mr Hunt
Thank you for that rare compliment, Mr Speaker.
The right hon. Member for Leigh asked a specific question about travel and I will ask the local NHS trusts to work closely with the overview and scrutiny committees to ensure that proper arrangements are put in place for people who have to travel further. He asked me about deferring the decision until the Healthier Together programme for the whole of Greater Manchester was decided, but the IRP specifically said that it would be wrong to defer the decision—the point is that local doctors are saying that doing so would not be safe for patients, and that is why I am accepting the advice.
The NHS is a great institution, but we have to take difficult decisions sometimes. The proposals will help patients, but I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman is interested only in politics.
Mr Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale West) (Con)
Many people will be disappointed, of course, by the decision on Trafford general, but I thank my right hon. Friend and his ministerial team for their openness in hearing the concerns of local Members and Trafford council in building up to what has obviously been a serious and carefully made decision. I thank him for the extra investment for Wythenshawe and for making the changes contingent on ensuring that the capacity is there in surrounding hospitals to ensure that this is safe. Will he also give us an assurance that the Trafford health economy will not suffer financially if those contingencies are not met in time?
Mr Hunt
I thank my hon. Friend for the constructive approach he has taken in this process. I assure him that this will help the local Trafford economy. Three major teaching hospitals are used by the people of Trafford. Two of the three are meeting their A and E targets and one is not. These proposals will help the one that is not meeting its target to do so. They will also mean that an extra £3.5 million can be invested in community and prevention services, including local geriatricians and community matrons. That will be of huge benefit to my hon. Friend’s constituents and to many other people in the local area.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
May I first ask the Secretary of State to respond to the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) about the lack of notice of the statement? I have had good news for my constituency from the Secretary of State, but many of my colleagues have had bad news and it is genuinely discourteous for the House not to have been informed. This is not a market-sensitive issue, after all, and we could have been told yesterday or earlier.
Secondly, on the merits of the concentration of vascular services in Lancashire and Cumbria, may I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the decision that he has made, not least in respect of East Lancashire Hospitals Trust in Blackburn? This is an important vote of confidence in the excellence of the facilities in Blackburn at a time when many of the clinicians and others have been under great anxiety because they have been subject to the Keogh review. I think all my constituents recognise that sometimes they will have to travel, as mine have had to travel to Blackpool for many years, for very serious cardiovascular surgery. Provided the outcomes are much better where there is a concentration of resources, and assistance with travel is given in appropriate cases, I think my public and that across the north-west will accept these decisions.
Mr Hunt
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his wise words. If we level with the public about these difficult changes, they do understand that there are times when they get a better outcome even if they have to travel further. Perhaps the most dramatic example of that has been how trauma services have been centralised on fewer hospitals. Even after incidents as dramatic and dangerous as road traffic accidents, people are not necessarily taken to their nearest A and E. They are stabilised and then they are taken to an A and E that has the equipment that is necessary to give them the treatment that is most likely to save their lives. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that.
I absolutely followed and would always want to follow the procedures of the House with respect to advance notice of statements. The request for a statement went in only last night. The Speaker made his decision this morning. I am delighted that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) is here and I hope she is allowed to speak. I said to her on the phone this morning that I am willing to meet her separately to go through any concerns that she has. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I thank the Secretary of State for his courtesy. I know the right hon. Gentleman well, and I know that he would not seek for one moment to mislead the House. He was trying candidly to respond to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw). For the avoidance of doubt, let us be absolutely clear. I can quite accept that the Secretary of State requested, within the Government machine, permission to make a statement today. However, the House will wish to be aware that I myself was aware of the request to make a statement only this morning. Let us be clear about that.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
There is a strong clinical case for the concentration of vascular services in Cumbria and Lancashire at three sites, but is it not ludicrous that the three that have been chosen are so geographically located that one is virtually on the Scottish border, then there is a gap of almost 100 miles, and then there are two that are nine miles apart? Does not that leave south Cumbria and north Lancashire dangerously under-provided for? Given the current difficulties, shall we say, at Morecambe Bay, does not robbing Morecambe Bay of those skills and that expertise make a difficult situation potentially even worse?
Mr Hunt
I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned, rightly, to represent the concerns of his constituents about the extra travel that they will have to undertake. I would like to reassure him that we considered that issue very carefully. The Independent Reconfiguration Panel recognises that travel is a consideration, but also believes that for his constituents, even for the people who have to travel further, there will be better clinical outcomes for specialist vascular surgery. We are not talking about routine surgery, diagnosis or rehabilitation work but about conditions such as aneurysms and carotid artery disease which require specialist care. Patients can get much better help if that is concentrated in specialist centres.
As to why those particular centres were chosen, it was a genuinely difficult decision. There is a bigger concentration of population in the south of the region and there is also more social deprivation and more unmet need. I know it was a difficult decision, but it was decided that that would be best for the 2.8 million people in the area and also better for my hon. Friend’s constituents.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I am very grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to ask a question, and I apologise for missing the opening statements. As you know, I think, it was only when we saw this morning’s Order Paper that we knew that a statement would be made this morning, and I was on the way to Manchester at the time to meet constituents. I am very grateful indeed for the opportunity to ask the Secretary of State a question. My constituents would be horrified were I not in the Chamber this morning to do so.
This has been one of the most contentious and difficult issues facing the health economy in Trafford since my election. Although I welcome the Secretary of State’s offer to meet me and I was grateful for his time on the phone this morning, he will understand that people are concerned that doubts and fears about the future of Trafford general hospital are already leading to a downward spiral in people going to that hospital and the level of staffing and service that they receive there. What absolute guarantees can he give my constituents that there will be no diminution whatsoever of the service they receive during what may have to be a very protracted transition process, and that in particular there will be no repeat of our experiences over the most recent winter months, when neither Manchester Royal infirmary nor Wythenshawe A and Es were able to meet the accident and emergency waiting time targets on more than 15% of occasions?
Mr Hunt
I recognise that the hon. Lady would have liked to have been here for the statement, and indeed that she made a huge effort to get here. As I told her on the phone this morning, I am more than happy to meet her separately to discuss her concerns. With regard to her concern about a downward spiral, I hope today to reassure her constituents that a clear decision has been taken that will secure the hospital’s future as a successful and important hospital, a centre of excellence for elective orthopaedic work, and a hospital that has a very important role to play in the local health economy. We are making huge efforts to ensure that there will be no diminution of services but that services will improve. Of the three major teaching hospitals that will now provide A and E services for her constituency, one—Central Manchester university hospital—is not meeting its A and E targets. The measures announced today will help it meet those targets and make it more likely that her constituents will get a better service in A and E. However, as I made absolutely clear in my statement, I will not allow the changes to be made until all three hospitals are consistently meeting their A and E targets.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend reassure my constituents that the decision on Trafford general hospital should not be seen as putting the provision of A and E services at Fairfield hospital at risk?
Mr Hunt
This decision is about Trafford general hospital’s A and E services. What we are considering in this decision is whether the other hospitals can absorb the extra patients who will come to them as a result. We think that the neighbouring A and Es will initially have to absorb only about 25 patients in total. It is not a decision about the future of other A and Es.
Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)
The new service in Cumbria will have to be managed, and part of the problem in Cumbria is poor management, yet we have been waiting for two and a half years for Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust to take over in Cumbria. When will we see that acquisition?
Mr Hunt
I am keen to resolve that issue as soon as possible. Indeed, I think that it is really important, given what we heard this morning from NHS England about the big challenges facing the NHS, that we try to take these difficult decisions much more quickly than normally happens. When we have paralysis and decisions being put on hold, that creates uncertainty and the worries that the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) talked about, so I want to ensure that we decide these things as quickly as possible.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
Dr Nigel Guest, chief clinical officer at Trafford clinical commissioning group, has said that making these changes to services at Trafford general hospital
“is vital to secure a long and vibrant future for the hospital.”
Can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that that will be the case?
Mr Hunt
Yes, and I hope that what we have announced today will give my hon. Friend that reassurance. We have announced a future for Trafford general hospital as a centre of excellence for elective orthopaedic work. We have also announced a significant increase in investment in community services, an extra £3.5 million that will pay for community matrons, community geriatricians, a 72-hour rapid response team and better support in A and Es for people with mental health needs. This is a very big step forward, but it is part of the country that has gone further and faster than many others in delivering integrated care. This announcement will take that further and will mean that it stands out as a beacon of what good care can look like in an ageing society.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
May I echo the comments of right hon. and hon. Friends about the lack of notice? It really is outrageous that Members with a constituency interest were not given adequate notice.
May I ask the Secretary of State specifically about the funds that he says have been earmarked for the expansion of the A and E department at Wythenshawe hospital? That is essential, because at least another 4,500 patients will be coming to the A and E following his decision. Can he confirm absolutely this morning that that funding will be made available in full, in advance of any changes? How will the funding be made available? University Hospital of South Manchester is a foundation trust, which means that it cannot receive NHS capital, and it has already borrowed to the limit.
Mr Hunt
First, let me say to the right hon. Gentleman that 25 extra patients a day will have to be absorbed by the three neighbouring hospitals to Trafford, so it is not a large number. We want to make sure that all hospitals, including Wythenshawe, which I have visited—it is a superb hospital—are able to absorb that capacity. It is currently meeting its A and E target. The application that has been made for extra capital grant to help it to expand its A and E department will be treated as a priority.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
Safety should always be paramount, but public confidence is also important. As the Secretary of State faces further tough decisions on reconfiguration in the coming years, will he assure me and other Members of this House of two things: that he will be conscious of not applying urban solutions to rural areas; and that where alternative pathways of care can be put in place, that will happen before changes take place?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend makes two important points. I explicitly said that we will not proceed with any of these changes until neighbouring hospitals have been consistently meeting their A and E standards and any necessary changes have been put in place so that we can be sure that they will improve care for patients. That is really important if we are going to maintain confidence.
On my hon. Friend’s point about urban versus rural, part of the underlying reason for these changes is that we need to get more care out of big hospitals, which are often in urban areas, and into the community—into settings near people’s homes. That is very important for rural communities where there are often large concentrations of older people. Today’s decision will mean an additional investment in those community services. As we look at the big changes we need to make in the NHS, we will need to make more decisions that allow more to be invested in out-of-hospital care if we are to prevent the illnesses that ultimately put so much pressure on our A and E departments.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Is any consideration being given within the Secretary of State’s Department or NHS England to reconfiguring the A and E services between St Helens and Whiston hospitals and Warrington and Halton hospitals? He might not be aware that the chief executive of Warrington and Halton hospitals and the chair of its trust board recently told me and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) that they think they will run out of money in about 18 months’ time such are the pressures that they have at the moment. Will the Secretary of State investigate this and tell me whether any consideration of that reconfiguration is taking place?
Mr Hunt
With regard to pressures on A and E, we are working very hard with A and Es across the country to make sure that they learn the lessons from what happened last winter and are properly prepared for this winter. Those discussions will include the A and E departments that serve his constituents. He will know that any decisions about service changes or reconfigurations are a matter for the local NHS; they come to me only if they are referred to me following a formal proposal by a local health overview and scrutiny committee, and that has not happened in this case.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
Like other Members across the House—I speak particularly on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock)—I condemn the poltroonish way in which this statement has been handled. Will the Secretary of State concede that instability is corroding health services right across Cumbria? Will he guarantee that when North Cumbria University Hospitals Trust is acquired by Northumbria Trust this decision will not be yet again reconsidered?
Mr Hunt
Today is a sitting Thursday and we have followed parliamentary procedures. I am doing everything I can to help the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) to have as much engagement as she needs given that she was not able to be here at the start of the process. With regard to stability, the hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. If he wants stability and wants decisions to be taken decisively, then he has to support the Government when they take difficult decisions like today’s and not be opportunistic, in the way that the shadow Secretary of State was.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) about the apparent benefits of relocating to Blackburn and concentrating resources, but despite seemingly being a beneficiary of this reconfiguration, I am worried about the treatment of Lancashire and Cumbria MPs. What notification was given to those Members, and what consultation took place with them on the decision?
Mr Hunt
The process has taken a long time because we have consulted extensively with the local community and local Members. There have been debates in the House about it, and Members have regularly asked about it during oral questions. I asked for hon. Members to be given advance notice of today’s statement. Consultation is important, and we asked for advice from the Independent Reconfiguration Panel—
Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Secretary of State cites social deprivation as a justification for his decision on the configuration for Cumbria and Lancashire. I fully support that principle, so will he take it further by ensuring that those of us who represent constituencies in which health outcomes are much worse than those in the south of England, for example, get larger allocations of cash in future distributions of moneys? If he is going to use the principle once, he must do so consistently.
Mr Hunt
That is already built into the funding formula. We made reducing health inequalities a duty of NHS England in the NHS mandate, and that needs to be done in a way that is also fair to socially deprived people living in the countryside, in rural areas and even in the fringes of affluent areas. We have to find a way of ensuring that the process is fair to everyone who is socially deprived and to do what we can to reduce health inequalities.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
No one should be in any doubt that there will be huge shock back home in Greater Manchester at the announcement about Trafford. The conurbation has specific problems with its hospitals, such as mine in Tameside, where we have finally changed the management. We have the Healthier Together process, which is reviewing practically everything, and we are still coping with the impact of the reorganisation with which the whole country has to contend, and now we turn up at Parliament on a Thursday morning to hear the unilateral announcement that Trafford is going. Given the scope of the Healthier Together process, how can the Secretary of State honour the assurances that he gave in his statement? He could not answer the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) about foundation trusts and capital at all. What further changes to hospitals in Greater Manchester is he going to spring on us in the future?
Mr Hunt
Foundation trusts can apply for a capital grant, and I said in my statement that, as soon as we get a business case, we will give that a high priority. We are sympathetic to awarding it, but we have to wait for the business case to be presented.
In a period in which the NHS faces huge pressures, it is important to show leadership, and that means local MPs understanding that difficult decisions sometimes need to be taken that are in the interests of their constituents, as a number of Members have done today. It also involves supporting what local doctors have been arguing for over many years, but taking the line of the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) by supporting the unions, not the doctors, is totally irresponsible.
Mr Speaker
Order. May I say to the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) that I am sure that she would not seek to use this statement as a back-door method of talking about health services in Lewisham? If she wishes to expatiate on health services in the north-west, we will hear from her.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
I am grateful, Mr Speaker.
The Health Secretary repeatedly said that changes will be made at Trafford only if the neighbouring hospitals that have to take additional patients are consistently meeting their waiting time targets for A and E. Will he define “consistently” and clarify exactly what he means by that? Will it apply to all A and E reconfigurations throughout the country?
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
I say to the hon. Lady that it is only exceptionally that points of order are taken between statements, and if they are taken they must relate to the matter just discussed, which I rather suspect hers will. I am not going to have a general debate; I shall take one point of order from the hon. Lady.
Ms Abbott
I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker. Is it in order for a Secretary of State for Health to announce the closure of another Member’s A and E, which is a very serious matter for all MPs, without making any effort whatsoever to even advise the Member concerned that they might wish to attend the Chamber the following day?
Mr Speaker
It is quite simple. The short answer is that nothing disorderly has taken place. The Secretary of State is entitled to come to the House and make a statement at a time of his choosing. I have experienced a great many Ministers in my time in the House. Different Ministers adopt different approaches. In some cases Ministers have conversations with Members in advance—I know that the Secretary of State himself has done so on other occasions—and signal an intention to make a statement, or the possibility of a statement, at a particular time, but on other occasions they do not do so. On the strict question of whether it is in order, I can confirm that the Secretary of State’s conduct is not disorderly. Beyond that, it is for hon. and right hon. Members to make their own assessment of the handling of the matter. There is scope, as with so many matters, for different points of view. I think that is the fairest thing I can say.
Electronic Tagging
(11 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the Ministry of Justice’s electronic monitoring contracts with G4S Care and Justice Services and Serco Monitoring.
These contracts provide for the tagging of individuals on bail and offenders under supervision in the community. The current contracts were awarded under the previous Government in November 2004 and are due to expire shortly.
The House will recall that I made an announcement on 17 May indicating that my Department had identified a number of issues surrounding the way in which we have been billed for monitoring under the current contracts, and that as a result I had ordered an independent audit of the billing arrangements under both contracts.
Let me begin by explaining to the House the nature of the issues that prompted the audit. As part of my Department’s work on tightening up procedures—both to prepare for the new electronic monitoring contracts which are now out to tender and to improve the quality of our contract management—we identified what appeared to be a significant anomaly in the billing practices under the current contracts. It appeared that we were being charged in ways not justified by the contracts and for people who were not in fact being monitored.
Following this discovery, I took immediate steps to investigate the issue, commissioning an audit by PricewaterhouseCoopers. I also sought assurances that there was no risk to the public as a result of issues we discovered, and I am clear that these billing issues have not given rise to any risk to public safety.
This audit has now confirmed the circumstances in which the Department was billed for services. This has included instances where our suppliers were not in fact providing electronic monitoring. It included charges for people who were back in prison and had had their tags removed, people who had left the country, and those who had never been tagged in the first place but who had instead been returned to court. There are a small number of cases where charging continued for a period when the subject was known to have died. In some instances, charging continued for a period of many months and indeed years after active monitoring had ceased. The House will share my view that this is a wholly indefensible and unacceptable state of affairs.
The audit team is at present confirming its calculations, but the current estimate is that the sums involved are significant and run into the low tens of millions of pounds in total, for both companies, since the contracts commenced in 2005. The audit shows that the overcharging began at least as far back as the commencement of the current electronic monitoring contracts in 2005. It might even date back as far as the previous contracts let in 1999.
The audit also reveals that contract managers in the Ministry of Justice discovered some of the issues around billing practices following a routine inspection in 2008. Although it appears that these contract managers had only a limited idea of the scope and scale of the problem, nothing substantive was done at that time to address the issues. None of that, however, justifies the billing practices followed by the suppliers. The House will share my astonishment that two of the Government’s biggest suppliers would seek to charge in this way. The House will also be surprised and disappointed, as was I, to learn that staff in the Ministry of Justice were aware of a potential problem and yet did not take adequate steps to address it.
Let me set out for the House what we are doing in response to these findings. The billing practices in question were clearly unacceptable and the Government will take all necessary steps to secure a refund for the taxpayer. In view of the seriousness of the issue, however, and having taken full legal advice, I am clear that, as Lord Chancellor, I must not only take action in terms of financial recovery, but seek to rule out the possibility that what went on involved dishonesty by anyone involved in the contracts. I have therefore put it to the two companies that we should now carry out an independent forensic audit, not just of the contractual arrangements, but of the evidence, such as internal e-mail trails between their executives, to establish the detail of what happened. I have now received their responses.
Let me deal with each company in turn. Serco, which is one of the Government’s biggest and most important suppliers, has agreed in full to such a forensic audit. It has said that it will co-operate fully with our auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and that it takes the issue extremely seriously, and it assures me that senior management were not aware of it. It does not believe that anything dishonest has taken place, but we have agreed that if the audit does show dishonest action, we will jointly call in the relevant authorities to address it. Serco has also agreed to a forensic audit of all my Department’s contracts with it to ensure that there are no other issues. In addition, it has decided that it would not be appropriate for it to continue to participate in the current tender process for electronic monitoring and has agreed to withdraw. I am grateful to Serco for its co-operation.
Let me now turn to G4S. We put the same proposal for a further detailed forensic audit to G4S last night. It has rejected that proposal. I have given careful consideration to how to respond. I should state that I have no information to confirm that dishonesty has taken place on the part of either supplier, but given the nature of the findings of the audit work so far and the very clear legal advice that I have received, I am today asking the Serious Fraud Office to consider whether an investigation is appropriate into what happened in G4S and to confirm to me whether any of the actions of anyone in that company represent more than a contractual breach. I am also disappointed that G4S still feels it appropriate to participate in the tendering process for the next generation of electronic monitoring contracts, which we are in the process of renewing. I have therefore started a formal process to determine whether to exclude it from this competition. Furthermore, we will be commencing forensic audits of all existing contracts that the Department has with G4S.
Let me deal with some other immediate procurement issues that I need to address. My Department was also due to announce the results of the competition to take over the management of prisons in Northumberland and Yorkshire. I can tell the House that the winning bidder for Northumberland is Sodexo, and that this transfer will continue as planned. However, the leading bidder in Yorkshire was Serco. I have decided that we will delay the award of this contract until the audit process I have put in place is complete, and clearly it will only be awarded if that process is completed to our satisfaction. We have also begun work on two new house blocks at prisons run by Serco and G4S. Since these are construction contracts at existing prisons and are an essential part of our replacement strategy for the older parts of the prison estate, I intend to proceed with this construction work.
As I have said, it is not only the behaviour of the suppliers that needs to be examined closely. I am making changes in my Department because it is quite clear that the management of these contracts has been wholly inadequate. I have put in place an entirely new contract management team, led by my procurement director and validated by the independent auditors. The Permanent Secretary is also instituting disciplinary investigations to consider whether failings on the part of individual members of staff constitute misconduct. I have also commissioned an urgent review of contract management across my Department’s major contracts, which will report by the early autumn. It will include independent audit expertise and will be overseen by my Department’s lead non-executive director, Tim Breedon, the former chief executive of Legal and General. I want to put in place arrangements that are robust and at all times deliver value for money for the taxpayer.
On wider Government contracting, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr Maude), is today announcing a review of all contracts held by both G4S and Serco across Government. In addition, this review will determine how Government will better manage similar contracts in the future. Separately, the National Audit Office is looking at the scale of Government contracting activity with key suppliers and how effectively those relationships are being managed by Government.
I have made it clear from the outset that I regard this as a very serious issue and have taken immediate action to address it. I would, though, like to reassure the House that, however serious these problems are, they concern billing arrangements rather than wider issues of public protection. I remain committed to the use of electronic monitoring as a powerful tool in supervising offenders. The steps we are taking to retender the contracts will deliver a significantly improved service that will be subject to robust contract management in the years ahead. I believe that the private sector brings significant benefits in delivering efficient and cost-effective services to the public, but we will not tolerate unacceptable activity of any kind, no matter who is responsible. I am angry at what has happened and am determined to put it right. I commend this statement to the House.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
I thank the Justice Secretary for advance sight of his statement, which I read in the presence of his officials 20 minutes ago. I can honestly say that I was left speechless.
Tagging is a crucial part of the criminal justice system, and the use of this technology has allowed the much greater use of curfews and home detention over the past 20 years. The Justice Secretary’s statement is a serious one, with wide-reaching consequences, and I have some questions for him. What other sanctions has he considered taking against the companies concerned? I remind him of what has happened: charging for people who were back in prison and had had their tags removed; charging for people who had left the country; charging for those who had never been tagged in the first place, having been returned to court; charging continuing when the subject was known to have died; and, in some instances, charging continuing for many months and years after active monitoring had ceased.
To the lay public, that appears to be straightforward fraud: obtaining property by deception. The Justice Secretary mentioned the SFO, but does he not agree that both companies should be investigated by the SFO, not simply G4S? Will he pass on all the papers from the audit to the police and the SFO and ask them to investigate whether any criminal offences have been committed? I am sure he will agree that the law applies to everyone, including big multinationals. What we need is the police and the SFO going to G4S and Serco offices and preserving evidence, not some cosy arrangement with one of the two companies. Will he confirm that all the evidence has been preserved by the two companies, as well as the Ministry of Justice? A forensic audit is one thing; what we need now, though, is the proper external authorities to investigate. I hope he agrees.
How soon will G4S and Serco be repaying the amount overbilled, or, as some will infer, claimed by fraud, and how much will it be? Have the companies concerned accepted guilt? Have the MOJ officials accepted their part in this? In May, I asked the Justice Secretary to ask the Public Accounts Committee for a full investigation into this? Will he now ask it to do so?
In 2012 and 2013, G4S and Serco were paid more than £500 million of taxpayers’ money just by the MOJ, and the MOJ paid nearly £800 million—10% of its entire budget—to five companies. Will the Justice Secretary agree an independent audit of all contracts with the MOJ? How confident is he that none of the other private companies with which the MOJ has contracts has over-billed?
I understand that G4S and Serco have a number of contracts with the Home Office and a number of other Departments—I know the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), raised a number of concerns over the past year about the conduct of G4S. Serco and G4S are two of the Government’s biggest contractors. The Justice Secretary mentioned the Cabinet Office, but in the light of his statement will he agree to the National Audit Office investigating all contracts that those two companies have with the Government?
There appears to have been a systematic pattern of fraud, and if we add to that the events of the past week and the inquest verdict, the fiasco at last year’s Olympics and the security that G4S failed to provide, we see a pattern emerging. Will the Justice Secretary confirm that those two companies will not be awarded any further Government contracts? Giving that tagging involves potentially dangerous offenders, we must be sure that public safety has not been compromised. Some 20,000 people are tagged at any one time, so what specific assurances can the Justice Secretary provide that public safety was not undermined at any time?
At the same time as serious failings have been exposed in the way the MOJ buys in hundreds of millions of pounds of services, the Justice Secretary is proposing a massive expansion in the amount of work handed over to private companies. He will be aware that the same two companies responsible for today’s statement are responsible for a number of other contracts in the MOJ—he has already referred to the prisons contracts—and they are the leading contenders for the privatisation of the probation service. In the light of that, will he confirm whether he intends to bar those companies from the retendering process for tagging and from any future contracts? He will be aware of concerns about the risk register and the privatisation of the probation service. Given today’s statement and its implications for G4S and Serco, will he delay the roll-out of the privatisation of the probation service to allow full and proper consideration of those findings?
The Justice Secretary has raised serious matters and we must not only get to the bottom of what has happened and see justice, but lessons need to be learned. We hope that the Justice Secretary will learn the right lessons.
Chris Grayling
On the last point, it is important to say that we are learning the right lessons. That is why the issue emerged in the first place. The tighter contract management procedures that we are putting in place have revealed shortcomings that took place under a contract that was let in 2005, and information that came to the Department in 2008. The right hon. Gentleman will remember who were in government in those two years. This Government are taking a more robust approach to contract management, and this issue has arisen as a result.
The right hon. Gentleman makes a point about the privatisation of the probation service. We are outsourcing probation to a range of different organisations not linked to today’s situation, and a large number of organisations have expressed an interest, including those from the voluntary sector that have immense skills in this area. I would not countenance a situation in which those organisations are tainted by the actions of two individual companies, or where we allowed a debate about two contractors to taint the reputations of outsourcing organisations that work and do a good job across government.
The right hon. Gentleman made some specific points about the two companies involved. Last night, we put to those companies that we would ask for a forensic audit, at a level that will meet any kind of investigative standards, to be carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of our leading independent auditors that works on such investigations. I am satisfied about the quality of the investigation it will carry out with Serco, and the management of Serco has accepted that the consequence of that investigation, if dishonesty is found, will be a joint reference to the authorities. To my mind, that audit meets any test we need to address. Unfortunately, G4S has not chosen to accept such an audit, and we have therefore passed the matter straight to the Serious Fraud Office.
I must be careful because this is a sensitive legal process. At this time, I do not have evidence of dishonesty. I have a situation of unacceptable practice, but not of dishonesty, and that is why I have commissioned a detailed forensic audit from those with expertise in such matters. For G4S we have done what people would expect us to do and invited the Serious Fraud Office to rule on the matter.
The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office. I confirm that the National Audit Office has been aware of this investigation from the start. It is already investigating contracts within Government, and we are liaising closely with it. He mentioned all other contracts, and my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General will today set out his plans to take forward work he has already started to address contract management across Government. The review I have announced led by Tim Breedon, our lead non-executive director, will address the issue raised by the right hon. Gentleman about all contracting with major contractors across the Department, including smaller contractors.
I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman on public safety as I sought to establish that very early in this process. I have seen no evidence whatsoever to suggest that public safety has been compromised. The issue is about people who were recalled to court or to prison but where the charging continued, so I can lay to rest the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns on that point. He also asked about the acceptance of guilt, but, in the legal process, I cannot comment on the position of the companies. They must set that out themselves. I have said that Serco is being constructive and collaborative, and I have set out the process for G4S. I say clearly that there have been failings at the Ministry of Justice that go back over the past decade, possibly longer. Those shortcomings are now being addressed but they should not have happened in the first place and I have indicated that, if necessary, disciplinary proceedings will be undertaken.
These are serious matters. We are entering a legal process and hon. Members across the House will understand that I must be cautious in what I say to avoid compromising legal proceedings. The House should be under no illusion, however, that I am dealing with the issue with the utmost seriousness. We will take all appropriate action and we cannot allow such things to continue unchecked.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
May I praise the strong, expeditious and decisive action taken by the Lord Chancellor in response to this issue, and the way he has co-ordinated the Government’s response with the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General, and the Attorney-General? As he indicated in his statement, Whitehall needs to raise its game on contract management. Will he continue to work as closely as possible with our right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General to get this matter resolved at permanent secretary level as soon as possible?
Chris Grayling
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments and I give him that assurance. Looking back to when the issue first became visible in the Department, it is clear that existing expertise in contract management was not up to the job. Those failings and shortcomings should never have happened, and I intend to introduce measures to ensure that they never happen again.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
This is a shocking statement and I believe that the Lord Chancellor has acted swiftly and decisively in dealing with the issue. G4S should never have got another Government contract after the shambles of the Olympics. G4S and Serco hold 17 contracts worth £118 million with the Home Office, and although I accept what the Lord Chancellor has done in referring G4S to the Serious Fraud Office and the police, I think he should have done the same to Serco. When its chief executive appeared before the Home Affairs Committee on 25 June, he said that he did not believe that Serco had overcharged. The right hon. Gentleman is right to have acted as he did, but he should not take a different approach to Serco. We need the high-risk register that the Home Affairs Committee recommended after the Olympics. That register should be held by the Cabinet Office, and any company that has failed the taxpayer should be on it and should not get another contract.
Chris Grayling
Let me be clear about the different treatment of G4S and Serco. I have followed the legal advice I received very closely, and the right hon. Gentleman and all Members of the House would expect me to follow such advice in the interests of the taxpayer and the Government. I have done that, and the approach I have chosen follows closely the legal advice I received. I would not expect any Member of this House to expect me to do otherwise.
As for how the Cabinet Office approaches contracting, my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office, who is sitting next to me, will have heard what the right hon. Gentleman said. The Cabinet Office is taking both this issue and the broader issue of contracting very seriously, and my right hon. Friend will be saying more in due course.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
These are very serious matters indeed. Like others, I welcome today’s statement and the measures that the Secretary of State is taking. We have had interesting reactions from the two companies, and I hope that there will now be a robust means of oversight in his Department and in others, as contracts are looked into. The public’s concern is whether this is a security issue, so will he confirm to the House that this is a billing issue and that it had no impact on public safety?
Chris Grayling
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. This was obviously a matter of great concern to us, as we looked at these issues back in May for the first time. I can confirm that the Department has looked closely at the individual cases. The audit carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers so far has gone through cases line by line. We have found no evidence of any issues that would give rise to public safety concerns; this is a financial issue.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
First, I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and also for his courtesy in letting me know that he was going to make it, although I quite understand that, for reasons of commercial sensitivity, he could not inform me of its content. I share the intense anger and shock of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) and, above all, the Secretary of State himself about this issue, not least because it was during my watch in 1999 that the original contract was let, before I was again responsible for the contracts between 2007 and 2010. It is a matter of deep regret to me that these failings happened at a time when I was the Secretary of State responsible for them. I want to know exactly why the failure happened, and I am glad to hear that steps are being taken to ensure that robust systems are put in place.
When the Secretary of State said in his statement that there was “a routine inspection in 2008”, but that “nothing substantive was done at that time to address the issues,” can he say whether the “nothing substantive” included not telling Ministers? I do not have complete recall of the contents of my 365 boxes in 2008, but I do not recall the matter ever being drawn to my attention. It would helpful to know whether it was. Lastly, I commend the review that the Minister for the Cabinet Office is establishing, because the control of long-term contracts with outside contractors is an issue that has bedevilled successive Governments for many decades.
Chris Grayling
I have seen no evidence to suggest that the issue reached the right hon. Gentleman’s desk. I can reassure him that there is no suggestion that he was briefed about it. There is no evidence that we have so far seen that the Department was aware of the nature of what was happening up until 2008. There have subsequently been a number of interchanges in relation to this matter. In no case do we believe that the Department had full sight of the scale of what was happening, but it is clear to me that things were known at a junior level about what was going on and it should have been addressed. One of the things we are investigating is why it was not, and that might include disciplinary action, as I set out earlier.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) referred to the Public Accounts Committee. As a member of that Committee, may I say how welcome it is to see the firm, fair and quick way in which the Minister has brought the issue before the House and gripped it in a way that is different from many other areas that come before the Public Accounts Committee?
Further to the question from the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), will my right hon. Friend say explicitly whether the contracts were let before 2010, in which case the over-billing would predate the last general election? Will he also be clear that the reason the issue has come to light is because of the way he is gripping the renegotiation of such contracts?
Chris Grayling
I can confirm that the contracts were originally negotiated in November 2004 and implemented in 2005. The original contracts date back, as the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, to 2009.
Chris Grayling
To 1999—I beg the right hon. Gentleman’s pardon.
As for how the issue has been addressed more recently, let me be clear that none of the team leading the effort in the Ministry of Justice today was in position when the matter first came to the Department’s attention in 2008. The team who are leading the renegotiation have done a first-rate job of putting together a much tighter contract management framework, which highlighted this issue. It is to their credit that they found it, and I am very grateful to them that they did.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, which is quite shocking in its content. Does he not think there is a case for advising local government and the national health service, both of which have large contracts with both companies, of what action he is taking and why he has taken it, to see whether they might care to look at their contracts with the two companies and the performance of them? Does he not think for a moment that his almost love affair with contracting out services to the private sector should be tempered by possibly thinking of a public service option for delivering such important government services, rather than taking the first position, which is always to go to a private contractor?
Chris Grayling
I am absolutely certain that my colleagues in the Cabinet Office will make both local government and health service bodies aware of what has happened. That would be right and proper.
On the hon. Gentleman’s latter point, I appreciate that he did not always agree with the leadership of the previous Government—I give him credit for that—but when he talks about a “love affair” with contracting out, I would remind him that the contracts were not let by this Government, but by the last Government.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
May I add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend on the robustness of his response? The emphasis of his statement is quite right, but will he extend his remarks and say something about the legitimate levels of pricing in such contracts? Earlier this week I visited the Cabinet Office to see how the Government Digital Service is wrestling with some really quite appalling pricing levels, which are the legacy of the last Government. Will he be able to drive down the cost of such contracts in future?
Chris Grayling
I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. In fact, we are about to launch a revolution in tagging generally. The arrival of GPS tagging will enable us not simply to monitor whether an offender has left their home, but to understand whether they are breaking a curfew or, for example, whether a paedophile is going close to a school. That will transform the way in which tagging works and will do so—I can assure him—at a much lower price than we have paid up to now.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
I join others in commending the Justice Secretary for the action he has taken and the statement he has made today. I say that as the Minister for prisons and probation in 2004, when the contracts were awarded. If there has been wrongdoing, he is right to root it out in the way that he has set out.
May I press him a little further on his plans for the probation service? I can only ask him to accept my word that I do so not in a partisan way, but because, like him, I care about the protection of the public. Given that two major players are facing serious questions and are likely to be out of the game, does it not make sense to look at having a more limited competition for certain services in one part of the country, rather than moving so rapidly to a national roll-out?
Chris Grayling
I would make two points to the right hon. Gentleman. First, we must be careful not to apply the judgments that will inevitably be made after today’s announcement to all private sector contractors that work with Government. That would be a great shame and the wrong thing to do. I should also say that even in the two companies in question, there are large numbers of people—all our constituents—who are at work today, doing their best to operate on behalf of the public sector. We should not allow them individually to be tainted by what has happened.
At the same time, when we look at our plans for probation reform, we see a large number of organisations —public and voluntary organisations, as well as potential mutual organisations from staff—interested in providing a solution to what is a glaring problem, whereby at the moment people who go to prison for less than 12 months get no supervision at all. The longer we wait to introduce the reforms, the longer those people will walk our streets without supervision. When people talk about “leading candidates” for contracts, I am clear that there are no “leading candidates” for contracts in our probation reforms. We have not started a contracting process. We are actively encouraging as wide a range of participation as possible. I have been talking to the social investment sector to bring in social capital. We are working actively with the Cabinet Office to encourage employee mutuals to come forward, either individually or in partnership with potential investors. This is not a world that will simply be handed over to a couple of big companies. I am very much of the belief that there is expertise out there, which I want to capture, and skills that will help to bring down reoffending.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
G4S is headquartered in my constituency and operates a number of contracts there, so these fraud allegations in connection with electronic tagging are deeply troubling. May I seek an assurance from my right hon. Friend that, as the local Member of Parliament, I will be kept up to date with the investigation, particularly as it will be concerning to many of the day-to-day, honest employees who work for the company and who are going about their business?
Chris Grayling
I give my hon. Friend that assurance absolutely. I say again that, as of today, I do not have evidence of dishonesty in either company. What I do have is legal advice that says that, on the back of the audit we have carried out, I have a duty to do further detailed forensic work to establish where there is a possibility of dishonesty. Serco has agreed to co-operate with that work. To my regret, G4S has not. That is what has prompted me to believe that I have no option but to ask the Serious Fraud Office to consider whether a formal investigation should take place.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
First, I put on record that I welcome the firm action the right hon. Gentleman has taken today. I would like to push him a little further on the point raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw). Although we have established that no Ministers were told of this, the Secretary of State said:
“contract managers had only a limited idea of the scope and scale…nothing substantive was done”.
What does he mean by “limited idea” and “substantive”? To use the word “substantive” means that something must have been done. On the “limited idea” of the scale of the problem, why was that then not followed up with further action?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman raises a good point to which I do not yet know the answer fully. It is clear that, between 2008 and the present, on various occasions information has reached the Department that suggests something was amiss. It is also clear that that information was never followed up in a way that would have presented the true picture of the problem. We are now launching formal proceedings internally, which are likely or may well include—depending on the circumstances of the individuals—disciplinary proceedings to establish precisely what did go wrong. Something clearly did go wrong. Enough knowledge came into the Department to flag this issue some years ago, but it was not acted on.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and for the strong and decisive action he has taken. Given that both companies are substantial major companies, we may reasonably expect that all the moneys will be recovered. That will effectively amount to an unanticipated lump sum of income for the Ministry. Will the Lord Chancellor say at this stage what plans he has to use the lump sum? May I suggest that perhaps it be used to improve, modernise and upgrade the tagging system?
Chris Grayling
I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend’s ambitions. The upgrade of the tagging system will happen anyway within the Ministry’s existing budgets. The difference in the next couple of years will be marked. It will provide a much greater and more effective resource to both those monitoring offenders and to the police guarding such places as our town centres, to understand who is where at any particular time. It will also, at times, exclude people from suspicion of an offence, because tag records will show if they were not at the scene of a crime. He can be reassured that that is happening anyway.
I have every intention of getting back every last penny to which we are entitled. Our auditors are working on the exact sum at the moment. That is the right thing to do for the taxpayer.
Points of Order
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will recall that during the statement from the Health Secretary, considerable concern was expressed regarding the lack of notice given to Members of Parliament with hospitals and accident and emergency units in their constituencies that would be affected by that statement. Speaking personally, I was informed by my Whips Office just before 9 o’clock this morning that the statement was to be made. I had had no contact at that point from the Secretary of State.
The statement has major implications for Trafford General hospital in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green). She found out about the statement when I phoned her. She was on the train to Manchester and had to get off the train and get on to another train going back to London to be here in time. Fortunately, she caught your eye, Mr Speaker, and you allowed her to speak. You ruled earlier that nothing disorderly had happened, but surely something discourteous happens when such important decisions are announced without any notice being given to Members. I wondered whether you could give us any further advice.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of order, which was put to me in the measured and courteous terms that are his hallmark. As he implies, there is a distinction between disorder and discourtesy. The Secretary of State was not guilty of disorderly conduct in any way. Ultimately, it is for Members of the House to judge whether there was a discourtesy. I did indicate in my response to an earlier point of order that there are ways of handling these matters. It is often the case that a Minister will seek to inform Members in advance at least of an intention to make a statement on a matter, even if the Minister is not in a position to guarantee it or indicate the precise date. These courtesies are important. Members must form their own assessment, but I hope that in the future we can operate, in respect of matters of this kind, in a way that commands general assent across the House. That, I think, would be helpful to all concerned. It is probably best if we leave it there for today.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. At last week’s Work and Pensions questions I asked the Secretary of State about the increasing number of people accessing emergency food aid from the Liverpool central food bank in my constituency. I put it to him that one of the chief causes of the increase were delays in receiving social security support. In his reply, the Secretary of State told the House:
“The story that the cause is an increase in waits is not true”.
He also claimed that a director of the Trussell Trust, the UK’s biggest provider of food banks, had said that the real reason was
“The growth in volunteers and awareness about the fact you can get this help if you need it”.—[Official Report, 1 July 2013; Vol. 565, c. 604.]
The executive chairman of the Trussell Trust has since written to me to say that this is not correct. Further, figures released today by the Trussell Trust confirm that more people proportionately are being referred to food banks with benefit-related problems since the Government’s welfare reforms came into effect in April. Mr Speaker, can you please kindly outline by which means the record can now be corrected?
Mr Speaker
The hon. Lady, who is as perspicacious as any Member of the House, has identified the required method and she has deployed it. In that respect, she has found her own salvation. The concerns of the people in her constituency have been placed on the record. If a Minister judges that the content of an answer requires clarification, or indeed correction, it is incumbent on the Minister to provide it. Meanwhile, the hon. Lady has discharged her obligations. We will leave it there.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I realise you are in a difficult situation when Ministers wish to make statements to the House, but could you advise that, where possible, Ministers should always inform Members whose constituency or constituencies will be affected by a Government statement so that they can at least be sure to be in the House and represent their constituents on those matters?
Mr Speaker
The short answer to the hon. Gentleman is yes, I think that that would be helpful. Obviously, where Ministers are making statements of national application it is not reasonable to expect anything of the sort, and I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is suggesting that. Where a statement affects a particular area of the country, and perhaps even a relatively small number of constituencies, or something a little greater than that but which has, if you like, a local or regional character to it, I should have thought that it would be regarded widely in the House as courteous to try to offer, if it is at all practicable, some indication in advance of the likelihood of the statement, because presumably the Minister would wish to be questioned on it.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will have noticed the intransigence of the Leader of the House over withdrawing the motion on Monday relating to the opt-out. As there is such anger across the House and in Select Committees, which have not been consulted, how late will he accept amendments to Monday’s motion? Many people want to resolve this situation by joint action to ensure that we are consulted properly on all 136 items to which we have to opt in or opt out.
Mr Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I am conscious of the displeasure that has been voiced in different parts of the House on both sides of the House, and by Select Committee Chairs from opposite sides of the House on this matter. The answer to the hon. Gentleman on the question of how late amendments can be tabled is that they should be tabled by tomorrow. It is, however, open to me to select—I offer no guarantee that I shall do so—a manuscript amendment as late as Monday. The hon. Gentleman is a very experienced Member of the House and he knows that the scheduling has now been made. That is absolutely not a matter for the Chair. The Government are absolutely within their rights so to have scheduled, but it will be possible for amendments to be considered, if necessary, even as late as Monday. I hope that is helpful both to the hon. Gentleman and to others in the House.
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Further to the point of order raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), Mr Speaker, it will not have escaped your notice that this is the second week running that we have had a problem with individual Members not being given notice of statements that affect their constituencies. Last week, you made a number of comments about the statement on the reserve forces. A Territorial Army centre in my constituency will close as a result of the measures announced in that statement, but I was given no notice of it taking place. For how long do you feel that this discourtesy can continue?
Mr Speaker
I think I have made my attitude to recent matters clear, and I have tried to be helpful to the House. It is my responsibility to help Members to help themselves, and indeed to help each other. I would say to the hon. Gentleman that most hon. Members will be looking forward to an agreeable summer holiday and a bit of rest and recuperation, and to the prospect of returning in the autumn and operating in a way that safeguards their own interests and shows due respect to the interests of others. The hon. Gentleman is normally a cheery soul, and of an upbeat disposition, and he must hope that matters will improve in September.
Backbench Business
Arms to Syria
(11 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
15:26 - The House divided: - Ayes: 114 / Noes: 1 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House believes no lethal support should be provided to anti-government forces in Syria without the explicit prior consent of Parliament.
I should like to thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to support the motion and to thank other colleagues across the House for supporting it. Matters of war and peace are extremely serious, whether we are talking about direct intervention, the provision of lethal support or, in this case, the narrower matter of arming the Syrian rebels. They therefore involve serious decisions for the Prime Minister—or for any Prime Minister. Lives are at risk, and while we accept that no decisions have been made on this matter to date, it is appropriate that such decisions should have the support of Parliament.
In many ways, the debate on this matter has already been a success. When we first discovered that the Government were seeking to lift the EU arms embargo, there was no statement from the Government; we discovered it for ourselves. Initially, there was some confusion. There was certainly no clarity as to whether Parliament should vote to authorise any arming of the rebels. At first, there was talk of consulting, and there were hints and indications. These were confirmed in media exchanges only three or four weeks ago, when colleagues on both sides of the House who support arming the rebels advocated that Parliament would not be bound by any such vote and that no such vote was required before a policy to arm the rebels was decided upon and executed.
Through the efforts of parliamentarians on both sides, and through the general debate on the matter, we have achieved greater clarity. The Government have firmed up on their promises over the past couple of weeks, culminating in the Foreign Secretary’s unambiguous statement to the House yesterday that any such decision would be subject to a vote in this place before such a policy was executed. That is definitely a positive move, and we now have greater clarity than when we first started this journey. That is very welcome.
I want to make a further point about parliamentary oversight. Having opposed the interventions in Iraq and Libya, and observed the morphing of the mission in Afghanistan into a nation-building programme, I sympathise to a large extent with the view that Parliament sometimes comes late to these decisions. We debated and voted on the question of Iraq as the troops were on the start line. When the mission in Afghanistan morphed into one of nation building, it was suggested—although not promised—that we would be in and out without firing a shot, but 440 lives later we are still counting the cost. The vote on Libya took place almost as the jets were leaving the airfields, so there are lessons that need to be learned on the parliamentary scrutiny of these important decisions.
Many Members believe that this debate is of paramount importance, because we fear the consequences of arming the rebels. There are no easy answers in regard to the bitter and bloody civil war in Syria—atrocities are being committed by both sides—but I and others would caution against the UK getting more closely involved from a military point of view. If humanitarian concerns are uppermost in people’s minds, which I do not doubt for a moment, it beggars belief that anyone could suggest that pouring more arms into the conflict would not add to the violence and suffering. The United Nations Secretary-General was absolutely right to say that there could be no military solution to the conflict. That is why putting more arms into the conflict would not be helpful.
Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)
Could we be sure, if we were to arm the rebels against Assad and Hezbollah, that we would not be supporting al-Qaeda or creating a Shi’a-Sunni cross-border conflict, and that we would not be supporting a proxy war between Russia and the west? Is it worth the risk?
Mr Baron
My hon. Friend makes a valid point. One of the problems with this conflict is that there are extremists on both sides. On the rebel side, for example, we know that al-Nusra has close links with jihadist and extremist groups including al-Qaeda. The Government have not been able to answer the question about how they would track and trace weapons to ensure that they did not fall into the wrong hands. We need to remember that in that part of the world weapons are tradable assets. Very little escapes the bazaar. Given that the situation on the ground is fast moving and fluid, it would be nigh-on impossible to ensure that such arms did not fall into the wrong hands.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that things have moved on a great deal since we voted for or against the intervention in Iraq? That was a mess, and many people are now sorry that they voted as they did. It is important that we should be able to work out what is happening and make the decision ourselves. This should not be a decision for the Government.
Mr Baron
I take on board what my hon. Friend has said, and I agree with him in large part. There is a deficit of trust on these issues, partly courtesy of the Iraq decision but also because of Afghanistan. That is why it is even more important for Parliament to express its view. We should not be bounced into a decision simply because we are heading into a recess.
We need to learn from our mistakes in other respects as well. For example, we armed the mujaheddin in the 1980s, and we armed Saddam Hussein when he attacked Iran. Some of those weapons were eventually pointed against us. Many of the weapons supplied to Libya have ended up in Syria and northern Mali. We have made mistakes on this front, and we must learn from them.
Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend at least acknowledge that doing nothing also has a cost, and that if we do nothing, two things will happen? The Assad regime will continue to try to slaughter its own people into submission. Where 12 months ago there were hardly any Jabhat al-Nusra on the ground, there are today perhaps 5,000, 6,000 or 7,000, and if we continue to do nothing, we create the space to allow more and more jihadis to come into the ground. If we support the moderate opposition, that will stop the flaking off from the Free Syrian Army to Jabhat al-Nusra.
Mr Baron
I take on board what my hon. Friend says, but I think it does him no service to try to create the impression that those of us who suggest that we should not arm the rebels are insisting that we do nothing. It is actually quite the opposite. I think there is an awful lot that we could be doing—on the humanitarian front and on the diplomatic front. I will return to the issue in a minute or two, if my hon. Friend will bear with me. I will allow him in again, if he wishes to come back to me.
If I had another concern, it would be that, as has been hinted at already, the civil war in Syria is in many respects a proxy war being fought out at different levels—whether it be Sunni versus Shi’a Muslim; the old Persian gulf rivalry of Iran versus Saudi Arabia; or indeed the west versus Russia and China. The risk of pouring more weapons into this conflict and of pouring more fuel on to the fire is that we not only increase the violence within Syria but extend the conflict beyond Syria’s borders in very large measure. That would be a mistake of historic proportions.
Returning to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) about doing nothing, I would suggest that there is a lot more that we can do, particularly on the humanitarian and diplomatic fronts.
Mr Jenkin
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I am listening carefully to what he is saying. Has he considered the risk of how this debate and his motion will be interpreted? The arms are pouring into Syria from the Sunni factions in Qatar and Saudi, and the Russians are pouring weapons into Syria, yet we seem to be sending the message that we will do nothing for the other side—the forces of democracy and freedom. Is that the message that my hon. Friend wants to send, because it may inadvertently be the message that the Russians will understand from this debate?
Mr Baron
I think my hon. Friend does himself a disservice by misunderstanding the stated intention of this debate. It is not that we should do nothing; it is that we as a Parliament should have a say and that our explicit authorisation should be given before any arming of the rebels. We are not making a decision today about whether we should or should not arm the rebels. The motion is very clear that no decision should be made about arming, or, rather, that no policy should be implemented about arming
“without the explicit prior consent of Parliament”.
That is an important distinction. Let me move on, because the issue has been raised before.
The argument is often made that we are to do nothing. Well, there is an awful lot more we can do. On the humanitarian front, for example, why are many refugee camps desperately short of basic amenities? Britain has done more than its fair share—I do not deny that for one moment—but the bottom line is that there are still desperate shortages, so we could do even more there. On the diplomatic front, most people would accept that there can be no military solution to this problem in the longer term; there has to be a diplomatic solution. Why, then, as is presently the case, is the west trying to exclude Iran, a key player in the region and within the country, from the forthcoming peace talks being arranged by the Russians? Time will tell when those talks take place, but there is no doubt that there is an intention at the moment to exclude the Iranians, which is nonsensical.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for introducing this debate. Is he aware that the UK’s humanitarian assistance to the Syrian crisis currently runs at £348 million, and is already the single largest funding commitment ever made by the UK in response to a humanitarian disaster?
Mr Baron
I am aware that we are leading the field when it comes to humanitarian relief. My response was really aimed at those who suggest that because someone does not believe in throwing more weapons into the conflict, they are advocating doing nothing. There is a lot more that can be done, even taking into account the assistance we are already giving. It cannot be denied that a number of these refugee camps are desperately short of basic amenities. As I say, more can be done on that front, despite the aid we are already putting in.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I am conscious that there is a categorical difference between humanitarian aid and arming rebels against a Government. Irrespective of whether we support the rebels in their aims, the reality is, according to the Commons Library brief, that doing so might be an act of aggression under article 2(4) of the UN convention, so it might be illegal for us to do it anyway.
Mr Baron
I take on board my hon. Friend’s points. With law—international law in particular—one can find lawyers to substantiate both sides of an argument. I therefore tend not to focus too much on international law, although I have a sneaking feeling that we will return to the subject later on.
Mr Baron
I hear what my right hon. and learned Friend says. That is why I think it is important that we focus on the practical and moral implications of such a policy.
In answer to colleagues’ points about doing nothing, I think that history provides a guide to what we should do. The last decade would suggest that trying to promote democracy and human rights, which is the Government’s stated objective, by force of arms can often be counter-productive. If we look at north Africa and parts of the middle east, we see the seeds of democracy stuttering into life where we have committed relatively few resources. If we look at Iraq and Afghanistan, however, it is not such a rosy picture, despite the huge cost in lives and treasure.
If we wanted to go back further, we could look at our interventions since the second world war. They have had a tendency to have an embedding effect—to reinforce the existing regimes. It is no coincidence, I put it to the House, that communism has survived longest in those countries where the west actually intervened—Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, even China. We have to be careful about our interventions.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Gentleman mentioned North Korea. Could we for the record confirm as a matter of fact that it was not the west that intervened in North Korea? It was actually the United Nations that was involved in defending the Koreans against aggression from the north and from China.
Mr Baron
To a certain extent, but the hon. Gentleman well knows that both sides put in forces up to the 38th parallel. Yes, the northern forces attacked, but the bottom line is that both sides—including the UN—put in forces initially. Putting that to one side, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would not detract from the point that interventions have tended to have an embedding effect, particularly in the other examples I provided. We have to be very careful about intervention.
As an aside, I certainly believe that we need to make greater use of soft power—the ability to coerce and persuade by non-violent means—which can often be more effective and cost-effective than conventional hard power. It saddens me to say this, although I will do so while the Minister is in his place, that we are making cuts to our soft power capability, including the BBC World Service, the British Council and, indeed, the Foreign Office itself. We need to ensure that our military are up to the mark—one is not saying anything else—but the emphasis in the past was too much on hard power. We should better nuance our approach to foreign policy, particularly in this information age.
In conclusion, I am conscious that the debate has been over-subscribed and I look forward to hearing the contributions from hon. Members. It is terribly important that we put a marker in the sand, saying that Parliament must be consulted and that no lethal interventions can take place
“without the explicit prior consent of Parliament”.
That is not to prejudge the decision itself, but the principle is there. I welcome the fact that the Government have in recent months been on a little bit of a journey on this, particularly given the indications they gave at the start, which contained no conclusive confirmation that a vote would take place before any arming of the rebels. I welcome the development and I welcome the efforts of colleagues of all parties—and indeed this debate—in helping to crystallise that fact. I very much look forward to hearing the debate that follows.
Mr Speaker
Order. In view of the number of hon. and right hon. Members seeking to contribute to the debate, I have imposed a seven-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches, with immediate effect.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) spoke eloquently for the majority view in the House, as does the motion. May I apologise in advance for having to leave the Chamber if the debate runs past 3.15, as I have a long-standing speaking commitment?
I am not a pacifist. I was a Cabinet Minister when the decision was taken to invade Iraq. I was Africa Minister when we sent troops to save Sierra Leone from savagery. But as a former Foreign Office Minister responsible for middle east policy, including Syria, I vehemently oppose British military intervention of any kind in Syria.
We all share the Prime Minister’s genuine anger at the humanitarian disaster. We all agree that Bashar al-Assad has become a callous butcher who, instead of responding positively to non-violent protests when the Arab spring reached Syria in March 2011, drove his people into carnage and chaos. Russia and Iran have been culpable in the unfolding horror, and so have the Saudis and Qataris. But Britain, too, is culpable. We should have promoted a negotiated solution from the very beginning. Instead we began by demanding Assad’s unconditional surrender and departure. However, calling for regime change meant chasing an unattainable goal at the cost of yet more bloodshed and destruction, and so did supporting a rebel military victory.
That was fatal. Britain should have offered a practical strategy to end a deepening civil war, because this was never simply a conflict between a brutal regime and the Syrian people. Assad and the ruling Shi’a-aligned Alawite minority form a 10th of the population and were never going to give up power if it meant, as they fear, being oppressed by the Sunni majority. Christians and other minorities are similarly nervous about change. Together those behind Assad amount to nearly a third of the Syrian people; add the Kurds and the total reaches about 40 per cent. Few of them like Assad or his Ba’athist rule, but they fear even more the alternative—becoming victims of genocide, jihadism or sharia extremism.
This is not some simplistic battle between evil and good. Nor is it simply a battle between a barbaric dictator and a repressed people. It is a civil war, and a highly complex one into which Britain treads at its peril. It involves Sunni versus Shi’a, Saudi Arabia versus Iran and, a cold war hangover, the US versus Russia.
Mr Jenkin
I do not necessarily demur from a single word of the right hon. Gentleman’s analysis of the complexity of the conflict, but what effect does it have on the efforts to bring those parties to the negotiating table when the International Criminal Court makes it virtually impossible to manage any kind of orderly transition, let alone continuity in the existing regime? He seems to be suggesting that that might be one of the options.
Mr Hain
I will address that point in a minute.
Regime change in Damascus could be the outcome of a negotiated solution, but if, as the UK and the US are effectively doing, getting rid of Assad is set as the precondition for talks, the carnage will continue. Surely we should by now have understood from Britain’s long and bitter experience in Northern Ireland that setting preconditions will prevent attempts at negotiation from even getting off the ground.
The Prime Minister’s “good guys versus bad guys” prism is hardly made credible by the presence of al-Qaeda fighters among the west’s favoured rebels, nor is it by the barbarous murders of innocent Syrian citizens by some rebels. Other parties have started to intervene, such as Hezbollah, in turn dragging in Israel, another lethal development. The collateral impact of 1 million Syrian refugees in Jordan is especially dangerous. Iran will not back off because of its key interests.
If the regime were somehow toppled without a settlement in place, the country could descend into even greater chaos. Russia fears that anarchy because, like the US and the UK, it has key strategic military, economic and intelligence interests in the area; for example, Syria provides Russia’s only Mediterranean port in a region where the US is well placed militarily. The only way forward is to broker a settlement, with Russia using its leverage to ensure Assad negotiates seriously. Like it or not, Russia is critical, as is engagement with Iran: otherwise, a Syrian settlement will not happen.
The guidelines for a political transition approved by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council at the Geneva conference a year ago on 30 June 2012 still provide the best road map for a Geneva II, but the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia and their allies must drop their present stance and help to implement that. Preventing Iran and also Assad from attending a peace conference means that it will not even get off the ground. Transitional arrangements that reach the end point of democratisation are crucial, but their pace must be negotiated, not imposed. However unpalatable, Assad and his henchmen may have to be granted immunity to get them to sign up: hardly worse than the continuing barbarity and devastation of ancient heritage. All state employees, including the ranks of the armed forces, must be allowed to keep their posts, to avoid a repeat of the chaos caused by America’s de-Ba’athification in Iraq. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call on 9 October 2012 for both a ceasefire and an embargo on more arms going to the opposition as well as Government forces, should now be heeded. A Yemen-type process may even figure. There a hated president did not actually resign but equally did not stand for re-election.
This will all be incredibly, tortuously difficult, and I understand that Foreign Office Ministers are seeking to grapple with this on our behalf, but what is certain is that UK policy was always going to fail. The Prime Minister began with a demand for regime change, which did not work. Then he supplied “communications equipment” and other resources, which failed too. Then he tried to supply British arms and got the EU arms embargo lifted, until cross-party opposition in Parliament made that very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
Unless there is a radical change, all the hand wringing and condemnation as atrocity follows atrocity is empty. Two years after the Syrian uprising, it is high time for Britain, France and the United States to change course. They, as well as their allies, including Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, need to recognise that neither side is going to win the civil war now destroying Syria. Instead a political solution has to be the top priority.
Britain needs to work with its friends in the Syrian opposition and persuade them to go to Geneva with a credible plan for a compromise: local ceasefires, access to humanitarian relief, and the names of prospective members of a new Government of national unity, which will include Ministers from the current Syrian Government. Together they can initiate a process of constitutional reform for new parliamentary and presidential elections with UN observers. Only through mutual concessions by both the regime and the opposition can the people of Syria be saved from the current nightmare. All this is going to be incredibly difficult, as I said, but it is the only way forward, I strongly submit. The present policy and past policies have got us into this awful mess.
Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
I must begin by apologising to the House, and indeed to my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), for not being present at the outset of the debate. I was attending a meeting of the Intelligence and Security Committee, which was held outside this building.
I agree almost completely with what my hon. Friend said and, not for the first time in the House, I am able to say that I agree in similar terms with the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain). This debate is not strictly about the supply of arms; it is about whether the House should have a role in determining whether that supply should take place.
In considering the question at the centre of the motion, we must pay some regard to the consequences and to the questions that would necessarily arise. The first question is one I have repeated elsewhere: to whom would we supply arms? If we did supply them, in whose hands would they ultimately rest? What would we give? The sort of things that are being discussed are highly sophisticated—it is not like loosing off several hundred rounds from a Kalashnikov. Therefore, how would we ensure that any arms that we gave were properly used? We could only do that by sending either military or civilian technicians. That might not constitute boots on the ground in the traditional sense, but it would certainly constitute intervention.
The third question to which I believe we are entitled to seek an answer is this: what impact would the supply of arms have on the relationship between Russia and Syria? As we have already seen in the supply of shore-to-ship missiles over the last few weeks, anything that the so-called west attempts to do would be bound to be met by a similar incremental approach by Russia.
Andrew Bridgen
Does my right hon. and learned Friend also agree that the supply to anyone of technically advanced weaponry would probably require training, which would also be boots on the ground?
Sir Menzies Campbell
I thought I made that point a moment ago.
We have in this House in recent years established not a precedent in any formal sense, or, indeed, a convention in any constitutional sense, but on the occasion of military action against Iraq the House was given the opportunity to vote, and more recently on the occasion of possible involvement with France, supported by the United States, in relation to Libya again the House was given the opportunity to vote. It might be argued that the supply of arms does not fall neatly into that category, but my argument would be that it constitutes a major change in the foreign policy of this Government, with unknown political, military and perhaps even constitutional significance. That being the case, I would argue as strongly as possible that the House is entitled to pass judgment on this policy before it is implemented. Indeed, I go further than that: were the Government to implement a policy of this kind without allowing the House an opportunity to pass judgment, it would be an abuse of process, and would most certainly be regarded as such outside this House.
Mr Newmark
The devil is always in the detail. I hear what the right hon. and learned Gentleman says about not giving arms directly to the opposition, but does he then believe that if we are selling arms to a third party such as Saudi Arabia and those arms then go on to Syria, we should again seek the approval of the House before selling any further arms to a third-party country such as Saudi?
Sir Menzies Campbell
My hon. Friend will be well aware that there is an agreement called the al-Yamamah agreement which regulates the sale of arms from the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia, and if he is suggesting we should violate that agreement I think he had better consult Ministers in the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence and perhaps also the chief executive officer of BAE.
The point I want to make is that this is a decision of such significance and with such important potential consequences that the House should have the opportunity to pass judgment. There are those who say, “All right, we are doing nothing then.” That is true, in that we may not be doing quite as much as some of us would like, but I do not think it is an issue for regret that we are the highest single donor of humanitarian aid. I think we should be immensely proud of that, and having taken that decision, we should be encouraging others to do the same.
Let me give an illustration of that. Jordan is a country with which we are closely allied, and it is a neighbouring country in the region which has received very large numbers of refugees. The refugee camps are characterised by forced marriage, rape and violence, and the impact on the fragile economy—and, indeed, the fragile Government—of Jordan of an influx of refugees on the scale now being experienced must inevitably have an effect on that country. If we were preparing our humanitarian effort for its own intrinsic merit, we would also be creating a pragmatic outcome in helping to protect from possible instability a country that is of great importance to us and of great importance in the middle east, not least because it, along with Egypt, signed a peace agreement with Israel.
Another point the right hon. Member for Neath made very eloquently is that no solution is possible without Russia. That may be thoroughly distasteful to us, but it is a fact, and therefore establishing some agreement with Moscow and joining together—as John Kerry, the US Secretary of State suggested—could be a very powerful factor in providing the political solution that everyone agrees is necessary.
The Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), has twice said from a sedentary position that no one was barring Iran from any conference in Geneva, and I am delighted to hear that. He would give me even more comfort if he were to say positively that Iran would be invited, however, because this issue is of very considerable regional significance, and Ahmadinejad has been replaced by someone who is alleged to be of a less combative nature, and we now have an opportunity to test that out, and to see whether there is genuinely a change in Iran’s attitude on issues of this kind.
One further thing we can do, which I do not think has been mentioned yet, is to counsel Israel against intervention. The Golan heights, occupied by Israel, remain an issue of great political significance in Syria, particularly for the current President, whose father was the Minister of Defence when the Golan heights were lost. Israel has an interest in that regard, but I do not believe its interests would be properly served by becoming engaged militarily. I hope the British Government are putting that argument in the strongest possible terms to the Government of Israel.
Let me conclude by reiterating that this is a very significant foreign policy proposal. The Government have said that they have not yet decided whether to implement it, but if they want to have the discretion to take a decision of this kind, it can only be because they have considered that decision among a range of options. We need only look at who has signed this motion to see that they come from across the entire political spectrum. The motion is therefore the determination of those from all parts of this House, and that is why I believe the proper course of action is for it to be passed.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on initiating this debate. I am opposed to arms being sent to the rebels in Syria, but let me make this absolutely clear: if I had a different viewpoint, I would still be of the opinion that it is Parliament that should decide whether or not such a decision should be taken. A great deal is said about reforms and changes for Parliament, but one of the most important aspects of the House of Commons is that major decisions such as whether arms should be sent in such circumstances should not be taken without the express and direct consent of the House of Commons.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman but, in furtherance of his argument, would he also accept that even if it were not generally the case that Parliament should have its say before such a step is taken, when it is widely known that there is very substantial opposition to what is proposed, and that it is very likely that there would be a heavy majority of opposition in Parliament, it would be particularly unwise for the Government to go ahead without letting Parliament have its say and have a vote first?
Mr Winnick
I could not have put that better myself. It is very rare for the hon. Gentleman and I to agree. I hope that does not mean that we are in the wrong on this issue. My concern is that we are going into two long recesses and the Government could make a decision arguing that, given all the circumstances, it was necessary to arm the rebels in Syria, and although the House would almost certainly be recalled, the decision would have already been taken. The Government would be asking for support from their own Members on a three-line Whip. That is why is there is a good deal of anxiety—all the more so as we start our recess next week.
During the statement yesterday the Foreign Secretary said that it is “possible to anticipate” the supply of arms and that therefore there is no reason why it should not be debated “in advance”. Let me say to the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) that those words have been carefully noted and the Foreign Secretary will be held to account on them by all of us if any other decision is taken when the House is not sitting.
During that statement the Foreign Secretary also spoke about the amount of support already going to the Syrian rebels—those we support. We are talking about armoured vehicles, body armour and communications equipment. Moreover, as was stated, another £20 million of supplies will be sent in the coming months. Might not the argument then be, “With all these supplies already sent, why not lethal weapons?” These things escalate, although I am not altogether certain that what has been sent has been justified.
Let us be clear about the background to this debate. Nearly 100,000 people have died in Syria since the conflict started. So many of the people who have been killed have been civilians going about their normal lives—or trying to do so; these are the men, women and children who have been killed, on both sides. The bloodshed and the suffering continues now. The argument for the supply of arms is that the stronger the rebels—at least those rebels the British Government support—the more likely it is that the Assad regime will be brought to the negotiating table. That is the basic argument, and no doubt we will hear further arguments along those lines from the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), the former Foreign Secretary.
I would not dismiss that view out of hand; it is possible that there is some logic in that argument. Is it not, however, much more likely that arms supplies from the west, including from this country, would simply lead, as other hon. Members have said, to even more arms for the regime from its current backers? We would have an escalating arms race. Why do we believe that if the west started to supply arms to the rebels, the countries supporting Assad’s brutal, murderous regime—Russia, foremost, but also Iran—which, without question, has no legitimacy, would not increase the arms supply likewise? As I say, an escalating arms race can lead only to further death and destruction. As has been said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain), neither should we overlook the sectarian aspect to the conflict, with support being given to both sides in accordance with a religious divide between Sunni and Shi’a. Again, we should not intervene in that.
I want to make it clear that there are circumstances where armed intervention from this country is justified. Nobody could have been more in favour of the support given in Bosnia and Kosovo than me. I believed that we had a duty in those places to provide support, and I was pleased to be among those who did so when Muslims were facing outright massacre. In the mid-1990s, at the time of the Bosnian conflict, I said that such support should be given—unfortunately, it was often not to be given until too late—but in Bosnia and Kosovo we were not faced with extremist elements; we were not faced with elements such as those in Syria, who obviously want to bring about a form of state run along more or less the same lines as the Taliban. Syria is a different situation altogether and that should be very much borne in mind.
What should we do in the circumstances? I could not agree more with the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) that we should, first and foremost, maximise humanitarian relief in every possible way, bearing in mind the suffering that has already occurred. More relief should be given. Every help should be given to innocent people who have been caught up in the conflict.
Finally, we must redouble our efforts to try to bring the conflict to an end, not by sending arms, but by trying to persuade Russia and other such countries to come to the negotiating table to end the suffering, to end the war and to bring about a situation where people in Syria can once again go about their everyday lives, however much there was a dictatorship there. That is a far better way of trying to deal with this terrifying problem than sending arms to those in Syria whom we believe are on the right side. Of course, we have no guarantee that if we were to do so, those arms would go to the people we believe should be supported.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) and echo the apology of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) for missing the opening comments of his speech because of the Intelligence and Security Committee meeting. The right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) began his comments by saying that he had supported the Iraq war but believed that intervention of the kind being considered in Syria would be inappropriate, but I come at this from exactly the other way around. I opposed the Iraq war but I have, over the past year, come to the view that intervention of the kind we are discussing would be not only ethically justified, but politically desirable.
The fact that I have come to that view is not that important. What is particularly significant is that President Obama, who has been hugely reluctant to be involved, in any way, militarily in Syria, has nevertheless been persuaded, with all the advice available to him and with all the analysis that has been made, that the time has come to change position and give military support. The British and French Governments, who have supported the European embargo, have been forced to change their view towards a different position. Governments are often accused of pandering to public opinion—going for votes—but here it is the other way around; public opinion is against supplying weapons in Syria. No votes are to be won by doing this, so it is worth asking why three of the major Governments in the world have gradually come to the view that, far from being an irresponsible act, it may not be a good solution but it is less bad than the alternatives. That is the judgment we are being asked to make.
When we use the terms “rebels” and “Government”, we must remind ourselves that more than 100 members of the United Nations—more than half the UN—have broken ranks with Syria and have recognised the Syrian opposition as the legitimate spokesmen of the Syrian people. The Arab League has expelled the Assad regime and invited the Syrian opposition to take its place. So the term “rebels” is not necessarily as significant as it often is.
Mr Newmark
Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that we must not conflate wishing to support, and supporting, the moderate majority and the Free Syrian Army, with condemning Jabhat al-Nusra and others, who also may condemn the regime?
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, because it has been part of Assad’s tactics from the very beginning to try to force his own people and the wider international community to believe that there is a stark choice between the Assad regime and jihadi extremists such as Jabhat al-Nusra and to ignore the fact that the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian secular forces and moderate Islamic forces, represent between them the overwhelming majority of the Syrian public, and to suggest that they are somehow irrelevant to this debate.
Let me share with the House why I changed my view over the past year. I did so for two reasons, the first of which is the humanitarian situation. More than 100,000 people have died so far. We are not talking about soldiers, militia or rebels; the vast majority of them were innocent men, women and children. All the analysis by human rights organisations—by Amnesty International and others—says not that every one of them was killed by the Assad regime, but that the vast majority were killed and slaughtered because of indiscriminate bombing by the Assad regime throughout Syria, particularly in the urban areas, where the opposition was active.
Mike Gapes
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that it would be much more effective and better to provide a no-fly zone and humanitarian corridor to help the humanitarian situation than to give weaponry to people who might pass it on to other elements of the opposition that we might not wish to have it?
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but I do not think that a no-fly zone is practical. It could not be legitimised by the Security Council and would involve massive attacks on Syrian air defences, which would essentially mean Britain, America and other countries going to war. That would not be appropriate or justified.
On a humanitarian basis, quite apart from any other argument, the Syrian opposition deserve weapons to protect their own communities. This time next year, 200,000 men, women and children will have been slaughtered in Homs, Aleppo and the various other centres that the Assad regime is trying to recontrol. From that point of view, such an approach is a consideration.
My second point goes straight to the comments made by the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). I hope that we are all agreed that a political solution will ultimately end the conflict, but to have a political solution requires getting people to Geneva who are willing to make the compromises required. On what possible basis should Assad contemplate such an approach when he has refused all along to contemplate not just his own demise but any transitional Government or any new Government involving the Syrian opposition? He has ruled that out entirely. At this moment, he is even less likely to be interested in that argument.
The hon. Gentleman talked about escalating new arms supplies from Russia or Iran, but the one thing the Syrian Government and Assad regime do not need is more arms. They are satiated with arms and they have been supplied with them for the past two years. Assad knows that supply from Russia and Iran will continue for as long as he needs them, but on top of that he has Hezbollah militia fighting with his forces. That is foreign intervention and, incidentally, it shows the weakness of the Assad regime that it could not recapture the small town of Qusair by itself a few weeks ago but had to get several thousand Lebanese Hezbollah militia—
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
I have given way twice already, I am afraid—[Interruption.] But as it is my hon. Friend, I will give way.
Mr Baron
I appreciate the fact that my right hon. and learned Friend is being so accommodating and I shall keep my question short. Can he answer the practical question that the Government have so far been unable to answer? How does one track and trace the weapons going to the rebel cause to stop them falling into the wrong hands? Up to this moment, that answer has not been supplied.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Let me go straight to that point. It is perfectly fair, but I do not think it is as convincing as my hon. Friend clearly believes. First, if we provide the weapons that the Syrian moderate secular opposition want and of which they are desperately short—they are the only people who do not have such weapons as the jihadi nationalist extremists and the Assad regime already have them—on what common- sense grounds should we anticipate that to any significant degree, the Free Syrian Army, for the first time given proper means of defending themselves and advancing their cause, should wish to hand them over to the jihadi nationalists who already have them and are their sworn enemies? Jabhat al-Nusra is not even part of the Syrian National Coalition. Of course, we cannot exclude the possibility that the odd weapon might go in that direction, but to rule out providing them on those grounds alone seems unwise and unreasonable.
The broader point is that if Assad knows that he not only has Hezbollah forces fighting for him, which he needs to advance on Homs and Aleppo, but has been promised Iranian revolutionary guards and if he has the weapons, what possible reason would he have to be prepared to reach a compromise that involves his sharing power, never mind giving it up? When hon. Members who take a different point of view say that we must have a diplomatic solution, I agree. When they say that lots of things can be done on humanitarian grounds and through diplomatic initiatives, I utterly agree. They know as well as I do, however, that in the middle of a civil war, diplomacy by itself will not deliver the results required. Why should it? That happens only when both sides to a civil war realise that they cannot get military victory by themselves and therefore must compromise.
At this moment in the conflict, the Assad regime has no reason to come to such a view. It is not short of weapons and it is not short of fighters from other countries—Lebanon and Iran—so such an approach will not succeed. By all means, let us say that this is not our war and that it is all terribly tragic. By all means, let us accept that events will go on as they have been, but hon. Members must not kid themselves that anything that relies on diplomatic initiatives alone, without the real pressure that strengthening the secular opposition would provide, has even the remotest prospect of bringing peace and preventing the continuing slaughter of tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrian men, women and children over the months and years to come.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Democracy was born in Greece some 2,000 years ago and has come to these islands in stages. In most sophisticated democratic states, they would regard it as astonishing that we are discussing whether the elected Parliament has the right to declare war. That is taken as obvious in most states. We have begun to debate whether we should go to war rather than who should take the decision, but that is what we should be talking about today.
Dr Julian Lewis
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that even those people who believe that we should arm the rebels ought to vote aye for this motion, given what the Foreign Secretary and others have said from the Government Front Bench?
Paul Flynn
I absolutely agree. The assumption is being made that Governments decide whether we go to war, but even that is not true. The decision to go to war rests with the monarch under the royal prerogative. That is a key point, particularly as we might well have a change of monarch in the foreseeable future—although it is a long way off, we all hope. The change of monarch would not strengthen the case for continuing the status quo when we know that the future likely monarch has written letters that we are not allowed to see because it might endanger his status and his future prospects as the Head of State. A decision was taken by the Government, after a freedom of information inquiry and a decision by a High Court judge that anyone who lobbies Parliament should have the contents of their lobbying letters published, to censor that correspondence. That person will be in a key position on any decision about going to war. We might say that that does not matter, but it does.
The same issue came up in a little-known practical example published by the former MP for Cambridge, Robert Rhodes James, who wrote of the fear in the Conservative party, when it decided to get rid of Mrs Thatcher, that she might call a general election. At that time, she was much more popular in the country than she was in her own party and she could well have come back. No one could have stopped her in Government, in the Cabinet or in Parliament, but one person could have stopped her calling a general election if that person had said that Mrs Thatcher was a Prime Minister who was acting in her own interests and not in the country’s. I think we all know that the present Queen had the strength of character to ensure that Mrs Thatcher did not act in her own interests.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman was diverted —or allowed himself to be diverted—by the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), but I know that he will now return specifically to the subject of a parliamentary vote on Syria.
Paul Flynn
The reason we need Parliament to be supreme, and not the Government acting under royal prerogative, is the bitter experience we have had. In 2003, this House was bribed, bullied and bamboozled into voting for the war in Iraq.
Mike Gapes
I am very sorry, but some of us voted the way we did because we believed that it was right to protect the Kurds in Iraq and for the Iraqi people to be liberated from fascism. I do not feel that I was bamboozled or bribed and I hope that my hon. Friend is not impugning my integrity.
Paul Flynn
My hon. Friend is referring to Parliament and the majority here: 139 Labour Members voted against. Nearly 50 Labour Members who had already signed motions against the war and who were already opposed, were pressurised into changing their minds and abstaining or voting for the war. That is the truth of what happened then. It was on the basis of what was probably a lie or a misunderstanding. It was certainly untrue. We went there to defend our country against non-existent weapons of mass destruction allegedly held by Saddam Hussein. We proceeded to the second greatest error that we have made in recent times. That was in 2006 when we went into Helmand province, as has been said. The hope was that not a shot would be fired and we would be out in three years, having cleared up the drug trade. We now know what happened. At that time only two British soldiers had been killed in combat. The number is now 444. What were they doing in Helmand province? Defending the country against a non-existent Taliban terrorist threat to this country.
Around 52 terrorists have been convicted for actions within the United Kingdom. Not one of them is from Afghanistan. They are mostly people who were born and brought up in this country. So we have had two wars on which we embarked on a false premise, and it is right that we should ensure that the decisions are taken by the House on the best information that is available. While people are rehearsing what the argument should be in the future, we have to escape from the influences on this House. There are many influences, including the influences on politicians.
We know what happens to those in Government of all parties when the prospect of war is heard—with the drumbeats banging away, they adopt a Napoleonic posture, dig out the Churchillian language and try to write their page in history. We know the pressure from people in the arms industry. Frederick and Kimberly Kagan were at the side of General Petraeus in Afghanistan. They were at every secret meeting. They wrote part of his report to the Secretary of State in America and they constantly put pressure on to keep the war going and to discourage any peace initiatives. The Kagans were not employed by Petraeus. They were not employed by the American Government or the military. They were employed by the arms contractors in America.
There is a pressure for perpetual war. We know that millions were made in Iraq by the firms there after the Iraq war. We know that they will have contracts in the Syrian conflict. After those two great errors, pressure is on us now to prepare ourselves for war in Iran to protect ourselves from non-existent long-range Iranian missiles carrying non-existent Iranian nuclear bombs. We have to look to all these pressures, which have sent 623 of our brave soldiers to their deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those decisions are made here. We take them, we should be responsible, and there certainly should not be any Government pressure that settles those decisions. We should do it in future in free debate.
There should be alterations to our constitution. We have conventions now—the one going back to 2003. That should be our model for the way we face every armed conflict in which our troops might be employed.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
Given that the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Leader of the House have given firm pledges about having a vote before arming any rebels, the motion is somewhat academic. With everything that is going on in the middle east at present, I mean no disrespect to the Minister when I say that I regret that we are not having a wider debate on the middle east, possibly with the Foreign Secretary replying.
The concern arose when the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary said yesterday said that there was possibility that they would have to act without having time for the House to express an opinion. I think that that is not an unreasonable position, and I for one trust the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary to make the right decision if they find themselves in those circumstances.
Mr Baron
May I respectfully suggest that my hon. Friend could not be further from the truth when he says that this is an academic debate? Quite the opposite. There is a clear showing that the Government have moved some way since we first discovered that they were lobbying for the arms embargo to be lifted. No assurance was given in the early days, as illustrated by the fact that there were media exchanges where proponents of arming the rebels were clearly making the point on the Governments behalf that they were not confined by a vote in this place. This debate, plus the efforts of parliamentarians on both sides, have been useful in getting clarity from those on the Front Bench.
Richard Ottaway
I have no wish to quarrel with my hon. Friend. What I was saying was that the motion was academic. The debate is very important. On his second point, the words that the Foreign Secretary used yesterday were almost identical to the original words used by the Prime Minister.
A number of criteria must be met before we intervene in these situations. We must be clear that the situation has been properly thought through. The first criterion should be that we should not intervene unless it makes a difference to the lives, prosperity and security of the Syrian people. When we examine that closely, it is a hard ask. It is increasingly unlikely that we will move to a situation where President Assad is forced out. He has the support of Iran and Hezbollah and Russia, who are using as a justification for their support for Assad their concern over the interpretation of the Libya resolution. They argue that there was a generous interpretation of that resolution and the bombing campaign went too far. I see that as a diplomatic excuse on their part. The Russians are concerned for two primary reasons. One is that, with an eye to Chechnya and the Muslims at their back door, they do not wish to offend their Muslim community and they do not want to lose their port on the Mediterranean.
The second criterion that must be met is that we ask ourselves whether we have exhausted all diplomatic solutions. Hopes must rest on the Geneva conference but optimism is fading. The earliest that the conference will take place is in September. I agree with others when I say that I believe Iran should be present at such a conference. I wish the Secretary of State for the United States and Mr Lavrov on behalf of the Russians well in trying to set an agenda. The most likely outcome is a rehash of the Annan plan and that President Assad will stay in office. That may turn out to be the least bad option.
On this point, I detect that the Government have changed their position. At the outset it was a precondition that President Assad should go. Of late, speeches by the Foreign Secretary and the Minister in the House of Lords have dropped that requirement. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm when he winds up whether it is a pre-condition that Assad should go as part of any negotiated settlement, or whether he accepts that we may yet have to work with him.
Thirdly, we have to ask ourselves whether there are military operations that we can sensibly undertake that will make a difference. The region is in turmoil. It is no longer the regime versus the rebels. The rebels are split into good rebels and bad rebels. Chemical weapons have clearly been used, although it is not clear by whom. The concern now, and it may well be the reason why the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary set out the option to take action without consulting the House, is that those chemicals stocks may fall to the rebels. I would be grateful if the Minister, in his winding-up speech, could confirm his assessment of the risk set out by the Intelligence and Security Committee the other day and what steps he will be taking if there is a threat that they may fall into the wrong hands.
On the military side, where do we go from here? I for one do not think that throwing a few cases of rifles into the rebels’ hands will make a difference. As many have pointed out, the Saudis and Qataris are already supplying a large number of weapons. If we supply more sophisticated weapons, that will produce a response from Russia, which has pledged to match like for like. However—this is important—it might be the only way we can bring Assad to the negotiating table, so to that extent I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind).
Andrew Bridgen
My hon. Friend is making his points with great passion. I recently saw an interview with a very reasonable gentleman who lives with his family in Damascus. He made the point that although he was no fan of Assad, if the rebels win, his wife will probably have to take the veil and his daughters will not longer be able to go to school. He felt that his country would go back 100 years. What is my hon. Friend’s view of that?
Richard Ottaway
I think that is a slightly exaggerated view, but no doubt there is a risk that women will be intimidated in a fundamentalist Islamic society.
To return to my point about bringing Assad to the negotiating table, I am beginning to agree with the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes)—I am afraid that I must disagree with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington—that some form of no-fly zone might yet turn out to be the only credible solution, and it would address the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay about weapons falling into the wrong hands. We have to ask ourselves whether that is possible with a sophisticated air defence system. If it does happen, it should be on an international basis. Why must we always look to the west for solutions? Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Turkey all have perfectly good air forces, and there is a case for an international coalition.
The fourth criterion that must be considered is whether we are prepared for the long term. We have learned many lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan and much needs to be done to stabilise the region. The fifth criterion is this: exactly what is our national interest? That must be spelt out before any intervention. If chemical weapons are to be used as a justification for an intervention—I have made this point to the Minister before—the House should be shown the evidence about their use. All options must be on the table, which is why I am uncomfortable about the motion, because in truth they are not.
Finally, where has international law gone? I believe that there is more than a grain of truth in the remarks my hon. Friend made a moment ago when he argued that to intervene would be illegal. I am not convinced about the legality of an intervention. The intervention in Libya was legal because it followed a UN Security Council resolution. Taking sides in what is essentially a civil war has no legal precedent and no legal authority. Whatever the outcome of this situation, the United Nations must seriously reassess the basis of humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
The House owes the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) a debt for securing the debate, and I was pleased to support him in the Backbench Business Committee to ensure that it would take place. I hope that the House will agree with the motion, even though the Minister has already indicated that a Government motion will be tabled before any arms are sent to Syria. I look forward to his confirmation of that when he responds.
This really goes to the heart of the power of Parliament, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) said, because anyone outside this place, and indeed anyone outside this country, would find it extraordinary that in the 21st century we still do not have a war powers Act and that the Prime Minister can still use the powers of the royal prerogative to take us to war, supply arms, sign treaties or anything else. Surely a democratic Parliament and democratic accountability of the Executive require a vote in the House of Commons before any major decision can be taken that would have enormous implications for our foreign policy.
Indeed, the vote on whether to intervene in Iraq was not the first consideration of the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair. He came to that conclusion somewhat later, and I expect as a result of expediency on his part, because he wanted to corral a lot of MPs into backing the war and because many of us were demanding that a vote be held so that we could register our opposition. We have had 10 years since to pass war powers legislation, but we still have not done so. I note that next week we will debate the progress of the Wright report. It was a very good report, but perhaps we could make it a little more progressive and a little faster by making some progress on this matter.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
A Minister who did not follow the terms of such a resolution that had been passed could be referred to the Privileges Committee for contempt of Parliament.
Jeremy Corbyn
That presupposes that we pass the resolution and that the Government do that but do not consult us, so we are about four stages away from a Minister being in contempt of Parliament. If a Minister was to be held in contempt of Parliament, the House would have to deal with it. It is more important that we get to a point at which there is proper consultation.
I believe very strongly that any decision of the House must be made well in advance of any action. I remember the House being recalled in January 1991 to support the Government’s intervention in the Gulf war, at which time a large number of British and American troops were already in the area preparing to go into Iraq, so the die was already cast. We do not want to be brought back here in August when the Government have arranged large shipments of arms to go to the Syrian opposition, which will all be stacked up at Stansted airport ready to go, and we will be asked to approve it. We want a serious decision well before any such action is even contemplated by the Government.
Mr Hain
Does my hon. Friend accept the distinction between action that pretty much has universal support across the House—for example, going to war against Hitler or sending troops to Sierra Leone—and this or similar situations where there is clearly no consent, or at least substantial cross-party opposition, which is why this motion is so important?
Jeremy Corbyn
My right hon. Friend is right. The motion is so important because there is such a large degree of concern over the parliamentary process and the actions that might or might not be envisaged by the Government at the present time. I do not know how many Conservative MPs are opposed to arms being supplied to Syria—I have heard lots of figures, including 50 and 80. We do not know what the figure is. I also know that a large number of Opposition Members are equally concerned about it. There is a big Back-Bench opinion on this, which is why we have secured the debate and why I hope we will get this decision, encouraged by the strength of Back-Bench opinion.
Those Members with long memories will recall that interventions and arms supplies have all kinds of unintended consequences. When the Soviet Union went into Afghanistan in support of the Najibullah Government, who were under a lot of pressure, the USA responded by supplying vast quantities of arms to the mujaheddin opposition, along with training, facilities, logistics and all the other things that are now being talked about in relation to Syria. Those arms all ended up with what eventually became the Taliban, and then with what eventually became al-Qaeda, and they are still around and have perpetuated the most appalling situation in Afghanistan for many years, including our intervention in that country. We should think a little more carefully about where the arms go.
Other Members have made the point about the more recent intervention in Libya and the supply of large quantities of arms to a rather complicated set of opposition groups that are not interlinked, and where are those arms now? They are in Mali, Senegal and all over north Africa. They are promoting all kinds of conflicts across the region. Were we to be so unwise as to supply arms to the opposition in Syria, where will they end up, in whose interests will they be used, and who will use them against anybody else within the civil war in Syria?
I say all that not because I am in any sense an apologist for the Assad regime. The Oxfam report estimates that about 93,000 people have already died in the recent conflict and that there are 1.7 million external refugees and a very large number of internally displaced people. The situation is truly appalling, as are the human rights situation and police state methods of the Assad Government. However, there is a far from clear commitment by all the opposition groups in Syria to any respect for human rights or any democratic approach. If we send arms, we will be supporting groups whose intentions we do not know, nor do we know where those arms will end up. All we know is that we are sending arms into a situation, people are going to use them, more people are going to die, and the prospects for peace are much further away.
We should also recall, again for those with short memories, that there have been times when the Syrian Government have been very popular with the west. Syria has been a supporter on various occasions. There are suspicions that it has been used as part of the extraordinary rendition process. There have been lots of temporary allies across the region. Indeed, successive British Governments sought to have good relations with Gaddafi at various times, and there have been many others.
Finally, I want to make two brief points. First, on the refugee question, there are a very large number of Palestinian refugees in Syria who have made their way there from Nakba in 1948, from Iraq after its invasion, and at many other times. They are now being driven out, being treated very badly by many of the opposition groups in Syria, or ending up in Lebanon with very little support or resources, just like all the others.
Secondly, the answer has to be to look for a political solution to the whole issue that must involve Iran, Russia and all the neighbouring countries. Qatar and Saudi Arabia are pouring money and arms into the situation. Russia is supplying arms to Syria at the present time. Iran, as a neighbouring state, feels that the war in Syria is a precursor to a future invasion of Iran. I want the Minister to say that there is a serious attempt to use the opportunity of the new President of Iran to engage with the Iranian Government. We should obviously condemn Iran’s human rights record—the executions and all the other human rights abuses—but we will not achieve a political solution in the whole area unless we engage with all the powers that be, which must obviously include Iran. A date needs to be set for Geneva II so that we can bring about some kind of political solution that will end the fighting. All wars have to end with a political solution; let us have it now rather after another 100,000 are dead.
Mr Speaker
Order. The excellent speeches so far have nevertheless been somewhat longer than expected. As a consequence, the time limit on Back-Bench speeches must now, with immediate effect, be reduced to four minutes.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I begin with a word of appreciation to the Backbench Business Committee for selecting a debate on this motion. Without wishing to be over-pedantic, I think it is necessary to remind the House of what the motion states:
“That this House believes no lethal support should be provided to anti-government forces in Syria without the explicit prior consent of Parliament.”
This is not a debate about whether lethal force should be made available to the Syrian opposition: we will want to have that debate if and when the Government propose to supply such lethal assistance. I have to say that some Members, though not the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), have made entire speeches that made virtually no, and in some cases absolutely no, reference to the terms of the debate.
I shall indeed keep my remarks short—perhaps even shorter than the four minutes that I am now allowed—by making one specific point about the debate and one specific point about the debate after this one, which I hope we will get if ever we reach the possibility of lethal weaponry being supplied. If the assurances from the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Leader of the House are worth what we wish and believe they are worth, there should be no prospect whatsoever of anybody on the Front Bench or on either side of the argument about supplying arms voting any way other than for this motion. I trust that they will do so. I also trust that there will be a vote today, even if its mechanics require a certain degree of contrivance by those of us who have sought to bring this debate to the House.
I have been making my point about the debate after this one week in, week out, month in, month out. It is a simple point about weapons of mass destruction. Weapons of mass destruction—chemical weapons—are known to exist in very substantial quantities in Syria. We went to war in Iraq precisely to keep al-Qaeda from any possibility of getting its hands on weapons of mass destruction—chemical weapons—that were thought to exist in Iraq. In this situation, people who wish to supply lethal aid can have no guarantee that, if Assad falls, the chemical weapons that he holds will not fall into the hands of the jihadists who are fighting on the side of the opposition. You do not have to believe me, Mr Speaker—you just have to look at the Intelligence and Security Committee’s annual report, which says at paragraph 67:
“The security of these chemical weapons stocks”—
that is, Assad’s stocks—
“is also of serious concern. The Chief of SIS noted the risk of ‘a highly worrying proliferation around the time of regime fall.’ There has to be a significant risk that some of the country’s chemical weapons stockpile could fall into the hands of those with links to terrorism, in Syria or elsewhere in the region—if this happens the consequences could be”—
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a very powerful case. There is already some evidence that certain rebels have swapped sides to the al-Nusra Front.
Dr Lewis
I am extremely grateful for that intervention. I am absolutely certain that there can be no guarantee—in playing with weapons with an opposition as mixed as this one—that the people who end up on top will be the moderate, secular, democrats about whom we have heard so much in this debate. I must finish the quote from the ISC report, which concluded that
“if this happens, the consequences could be catastrophic.”
There are almost as many strands in the alliance of opponents of supplying weapons to the Syrian opposition as there are in the Syrian opposition itself. I have not made some great journey from the Thatcherite right of the Conservative party to the centre left of the political spectrum—despite your excellent example, Mr Speaker, in that respect—and I do not intend to do so. I believe in the security of this country, so I will vote no in the future debate about supplying weapons to the opposition, but we should all vote yes in today’s vote on Parliament having its say first.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), because I recall that he and I went to Sierra Leone together when we were both members of the Defence Committee when our Government had, rightly, intervened to defend democracy against people who were practising a form of terrorism against the population.
I am, by instinct and nature, a humanitarian interventionist. I support the responsibility to protect. I believe—I still say it, and it will get me criticised in some quarters—that voting for the intervention in Iraq in 2003 was the right thing to do, and I will not apologise for it. I believe that there are sometimes circumstances where it is right to take action without a United Nations Security Council resolution. For example, when John Major’s Government introduced a no-fly zone they did so without a UN resolution.
Mike Gapes
I will come to Kosovo, but I do not want to get diverted into the Balkans at the moment.
I also believe, though, that we have to look to the consequences of our actions and make judgments. I am not persuaded about suggestions that we provide sophisticated weaponry to opposition groups in Syria; in fact, I am very concerned about them. I am a member of the Committees on Arms Export Controls. We have accountability through the House and its Select Committees, and we monitor the transfer and sale of arms to states. However, the Government seem to be preparing to adopt a position that is not about transferring weaponry to states, but about providing weaponry to factions within a state. We might say that the National Coalition is the sole legitimate representative, although I do not hear that phrase being used quite so forcefully now, but it is certainly not the Government. Our Government would therefore be taking a decision to supply weaponry to a faction within a wider faction, within a state that still has a Government who control part of the territory, while other areas are controlled by warlords and tribal clans—the Kurdish people have almost total autonomy in one part of the country, as was the case for the Iraqi Kurds. Fundamental questions are being raised, so there would need to be an explicit vote in the House if such an action were taken, because it would set a lot of precedents. We all remember things such as arms to the Contras in the United States.
I will support the motion not simply because it is time to assert parliamentary sovereignty once more, but because there would be wider implications of such a decision by the Government. I am also worried that arms would be given to neighbouring states and then passed on, which raises additional problems. We need to explore issues such as end-use agreements, but any proposal will require an explicit vote of support.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
For many reasons, it is absolutely right that the House expresses its view before any lethal action is taken in Syria. If we arm the rebels, that is likely to be the first of many interventions. We cannot place arms in the hands of rebels and then wash our hands of the consequences, and history tells us that we cannot get half-involved with lethal force in a conflict zone and then expect a quick, simple and bloodless exit at the time of our choosing. If we impose a no-fly zone, as has been mentioned, we will need aggressively to remove anti-aircraft assets, and if we arm the rebels with sophisticated weaponry, we will need to get in there and train them. This step would be the first of many on a slippery slope, so Parliament must have its say. If step one is to arm the rebels, step two is to become engulfed in a war and to be dragged into all the consequences that follow or, worse still, to risk the moral hazard of abandoning the rebels we wished to encourage and support. By arming rebels, we also risk catalysing an explosion of violence in the middle east.
We cannot half-fight a war by arming rebels, so I urge the coalition Government to honour their commitment on giving Parliament a say. It would be unwise to oppose the motion, as it confirms the Government’s position, and they would stand to gain by taking note of the motion, which expresses the views of the majority of the British public.
When it comes to declaring war and sending our troops into battle, I for one believe that it is the Government’s job to decide. War making is the Government’s responsibility, but arming rebels is a different matter. While the view of the House today will not be binding, it would be unwise to forbid it, or to ignore its expression, which is why I support the motion that was kindly tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron). The motion puts us in a position in which we can debate and vote, and thereby avoid the first step on the conveyor belt to all-out conflict, so it is right that we are having today’s debate and that Parliament is allowed to express its view.
I shall cut down my speech, given the time limit, but let me say that war is a serious business, so there is honour in a calm, considered and reflective approach that takes account of the interests and wishes of the people as expressed through their Parliament. Parliament must be allowed to express its view. We must not lead Britain into a foolhardy conflict on a false premise for reasons of misdirected concern. Britain should not dive head first into another bloody conflict with a tenuous link to our national interest, as has been said. Such a conflict could cost us dearly in terms of lives and repercussions over decades. Action should certainly not be taken without the buffer of a prior parliamentary judgment. I want to play no part in fuelling a conflict in pursuit of an ill-defined goal, so I urge hon. Members to support the motion. Above all, however, I urge the coalition Government to support the motion because it confirms their current position.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
As the House may recall, in 1992-93, I was the first British United Nations commander sent into Bosnia. I was sent for humanitarian reasons and with the mandate of the Security Council. The Bosnian Muslims were fighting for their lives, with precious few arms or equipment, primarily against the Bosnian Serbs, who had largely appropriated the weapons and equipment of the Yugoslav national army. In comparison with the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serbs—and indeed the other warring faction, the Bosnian Croats—were well equipped. I never saw a Bosnian Muslim tank. The only armoured vehicles they possessed seemed to be a few 4x4s with makeshift metal plates strung along their sides.
I remember despairing that so many civilians were dying but no one was able to defend them. In my reports up the chain of command, I repeatedly argued that we should get involved, as well as arm, equip and train the Bosnian Muslims so that they could better protect themselves, even though that would have meant challenging the then European arms embargo. Of course I felt that way on the ground—who would not have done, given what my soldiers and I witnessed? If I was in Syria today, I would feel exactly the same way. My heart bleeds for anyone trapped in that country.
With the passage of time, I have often wondered whether there would have been a change in events if we had armed selected belligerent parties in Bosnia. My conclusion now is that it would not have made much difference. However, Syria is not like Bosnia, and I shall cite two obvious differences.
First, the Bosnian Muslims were united, unlike the diverse groups that constitute the Syrian rebel opposition. Worse still, it seems that the most militarily successful group among the rebels is the al-Nusra Front, which is directly affiliated with al-Qaeda. The rebels in Syria are hardly a credible, unified entity. Even if we were to arm the apparently moderate Free Syrian Army, there is no way we can forecast its chances of securing power after the eventual fall of Assad.
Secondly, we operated in Bosnia under Security Council resolution 775, which was agreed by all five permanent members of the highest international authority in the world. However, there is no international mandate for action in Syria—Russia and China will not sign one.
I would be willing to consider supporting humanitarian active operations into Syria itself. Under certain circumstances, I might even support some form of international military protection for aid convoys. However, I have two caveats. As things stand, there is neither the agreement of the warring factions to such operations, nor a Security Council mandate for action. In truth, addressing those circumstances seems highly unlikely in the foreseeable future. Unless circumstances or the current situation change radically, I would not support British arms being sent to the Syrian opposition, if such a question ever came before the House.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on securing the debate. Given the shortage of time, I shall focus on the wording of the motion. As my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) said, we are discussing the principle of the House having a vote on any decision, not the merits of sending lethal assistance into Syria. I believe very strongly that it is Parliament that should decide and that we should give the Government our steer. A second debate would give us all the opportunity to give our views and listen to contrasting ones, and then we could decide whether we should get involved in Syria and how. That is what today’s debate is about: giving this House its say.
I believe that many people in this country feel there is a democratic deficit. They do not feel engaged with us in this place and I think that if a decision is made outside this House, it will further widen that gulf. We should give Parliament and Members of all parties a say. We were voted in here to represent people’s views and that is what we should do.
When we sent troops into Iraq it was controversial and many people had a view on it. I was not a Member of this place when that decision was taken, but it was voted on here. If the decision about Syria is made elsewhere, how will we be answerable to our constituents? If we make the decision here, we will be. This is about the democratic deficit.
There is no bigger decision for an elected member than whether to send our troops to war—it is a huge decision—but deciding whether to send arms and lethal assistance is a close second. That is why the decision should be taken by this House. It should be taken not only for ethical reasons, but for democratic reasons. This House will be held responsible for the decision no matter who makes it. We will have to answer to our electorate, whether it be through our surgeries, e-mails or letters. That is why I think that we as Members should be allowed to contribute to the decision.
As has been said, the British public remember Iraq and Afghanistan. Outside these walls, I sense among my High Peak electorate a growing reluctance for this country to get involved in foreign conflicts. My constituents ask whether it is our place to be the world’s policeman. We could debate these issues in a second debate, to which my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East referred so eloquently earlier on. If we have that second debate—I believe we should—the public may not agree with the decision this House makes, but if they can see that it has been made through democratic means in this Chamber I think they will acknowledge it. If it is not made in that way and is made in a closed room, I think they will be unforgiving.
It is ironic that in a discussion on democracy in a far-off land we are debating our democratic right to make a decision. Democracy is a very precious commodity —that is why we are talking about it. Other countries would love to have it. Democracy should not only be held and cherished; above all, it should be used. In this case, it is crucial that we use it, and use it in this place.
Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
I am pleased to be able to contribute to this debate and I shall be as brief as possible.
Like other Members present, I spent some time as a member of the Committee on Arms Export Controls, which gave me a picture of some of the issues at stake. Like every previous speaker and many of my constituents, I am appalled by the unfolding events in Syria—by President Assad’s attacks on his people, the bloodshed, the destruction of whole communities of whole towns and cities, and the huge transfer of refugees out of, and displaced people in, the country. Like many other contributors, I am frustrated that the usual levers do not seem to work, that ethics and morality do not seem to have any force, and that nations outside Syria are making the situation ever more complex. Even an appeal to the basic common sense and pragmatism of the country’s leaders is not delivering results. In the meantime, the killing and destruction continue. There is also the threat of chemical weapons, which I will ask the Minister about when I conclude.
We are, of course, very angry about our impotence in this situation. I caution the Government against letting their anger spill over into a feeling that something must be done to assuage it. This has to be about principled and measured steps. There are already at least two bulls in this particular china shop and we should not put a third bull in there.
That brings me to the issue of any proposal to supply arms and military equipment to the Syrian National Coalition and its affiliates. There are many issues on which the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), who introduced the motion, and I do not agree, but on this issue we very much do agree. Of course, it is right for this or any Government to use careful and deliberate decision-making processes when deciding whether they want to use force and, if so, what level of force. Of course, they will want to keep their cards close to their chest—they do not want every card they hold to be put up in lights before it is played—and, of course, they will want to choose the timing of any announcement, not simply because it might meet this House’s satisfaction, but because it may be very important in terms of international negotiations. I accept all of those constraints —if I may put it that way—on how the Government might proceed, but I have to say that successive Governments have a very poor record of judging which cards to play and how and when to play them.
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that what should not be lost in the political debate is the people aspect and the fact that 4 million people are internally displaced in Syria, more than 1 million people are refugees outside Syria and more than 100,000 lives have already been lost? Surely the Government’s focus should be on both an humanitarian and a diplomatic resolution.
Sir Andrew Stunell
I shall devote at least 15 seconds of my remaining time to precisely that point. Examples have already been given—I will not elaborate on them—of decisions taken by previous Governments of all colours that have not always turned out for the best.
I say to the Government that it would be really unhelpful if all their thinking, assessments and deliberations resulted in them activating their decision on, let us say, 29 July, bypassing this House completely. I believe that that is the concern that lies behind the motion. It would be just as unfortunate if Ministers were to say on 29 July that the House had considered the issue today. This is not the debate about whether this House approves or disapproves; it is a debate about this House approving. I am delighted to see that the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) is nodding. I know that he is a gentleman of great good will and understanding and I look forward to his explicit confirmation of that point.
What assessment has my hon. Friend made of the risk of chemical weapons falling into the hands of al-Qaeda and its affiliates and potentially being directed, ultimately, at the United Kingdom? Will he acknowledge robustly that the constitutional and parliamentary situation has evolved in the past decade and that the Government now accept that this Parliament must have oversight in good time and must be the body with authority when the decision is taken?
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on securing this important debate on parliamentary consent for arming the Syrian rebels.
Last month, I wrote to the Prime Minister to highlight what I believed were the very real concerns among colleagues and the public about the possibility of British involvement in Syria escalating, and I asked for assurances that prior to any decisions being taken to supply arms to the Syrian National Coalition, or any other groups in Syria, a full debate and vote would be held in Parliament, and that if Parliament were in recess, it would be recalled to facilitate this important debate. In addition, I wrote that I believed that the division and sensitivity the issue evoked, among colleagues across the House and the general public, dictated that the matter be subjected to full parliamentary scrutiny and debate before we potentially became further involved in another middle eastern conflict.
More than 80 colleagues on the Government Benches co-signed the letter, as they were concerned that this action could be taken without the consent of this House. The only precedent during this Parliament for the use of military intervention abroad is Libya, where a Government motion was carried after the intervention had started. I accept that events dictated that swift action was necessary in that case and that in some matters of defence time does not always allow for a parliamentary debate, but I do not believe that this constraint applies to the proposal to arm rebels in Syria. I point out that I still await a response from the Prime Minister to the letter.
On my specific concerns about arming Syrian rebel groups, I return to Libya and what has happened since the collapse of the Gaddafi regime during the Arab spring. Professor Michael Clarke, when giving evidence to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee a couple of weeks ago, stated:
“There is a lot of evidence that Libyan weapons are now circulating pretty freely in the Levant”—
the Levant comprising several countries in the eastern Mediterranean with unstable regimes or internal issues. He also made the following shrewd observation:
“Weapons never go out of Commission; they just go somewhere else. Almost all weapons find a new home once a war is over”.
That sums up two principal concerns of many Members: about the groups it is proposed be armed and about what control we and other NATO members would have over those arms once supplied. The evidence in Libya suggests that the new Government have little control over weapons stocks and that they have seeped out of their control, no doubt finding their way on to the weapons open market and into the hands of the highest bidder.
These concerns need to be addressed in a parliamentary debate, especially given that they are held by many groups and individuals outside the House. For instance, Amnesty International has stated:
“Unless the UK government can first ensure and demonstrate that such requirements are met and there does not remain a substantial risk of misuse for serious violations of human rights or International humanitarian law they should not supply any weapons or munitions to any Syrian armed opposition groups.”
It also points out that although it is clear that the Syrian Government are committing the majority of war crimes, armed opposition groups are increasingly resorting to hostage taking and to the torture and summary killing of soldiers, members of pro-Government militias and civilians.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) said, on 14 June the United States announced that it would supply direct military aid to the Syrian opposition. I would ask the question—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, but I must now call Mr Walter.
Mr Robert Walter (North Dorset) (Con)
I echo many of the sentiments expressed today; any decision on arming rebel forces must rest ultimately with Parliament.
I want to stress that this type of decision cannot be taken lightly. I have visited refugee camps in Turkey and talked to those who have fled for their lives, and I believe we need a chance to scrutinise the situation carefully and to consider the consequences of our actions, for which we would all be responsible. We all want to see the balance of power altered so that the Syrian people have a chance at rebuilding their country, but my concern is that the Government’s suggested proposal—that to strengthen certain rebel groups would bring Assad to the conference table—is like a very high-risk chess move or a game of bluff that could go badly wrong. One has only to consider the reaction of Russia and Iran to the easing of the EU arms embargo. They immediately bolstered the Assad regime militarily.
I want to consider another question that underscores the complexity of the challenge. Why, after more than two years of fighting, is Assad still in power? We can point to the material support provided by Iran and Russia, which is significant; another factor might be the international community’s reluctance to intervene militarily; but what is often underestimated is Assad’s domestic backing from key communities beyond his core Alawite constituency. The Ba’athist regime has promoted a secular society in which the Christian community, which constitutes 10% of the 22 million population, as well as Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, Turks, Druze and other Shi’ites and secular Sunnis have coalesced to shore up Assad’s base.
What motivates and unites these communities is not so much any inherent love of the Assad regime, but fear—fear of the chaos that would ensue if Assad was overthrown; fear that the rebels will bring about not the peaceful, multi-sectarian society to which we all aspire, but violent retribution against them. This is where my concerns lie.
Rebel groups have been accused of the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas such as Aleppo, and there are reports of extrajudicial killings of pro-Government civilians. Human Rights Watch found that Syrian rebels have kidnapped, detained and tortured Government fighters and supporters, and we all know that when the heavy lid of authoritarian rule is lifted, sectarian and tribal aspirations are often violently unleashed.
If the Government’s plan A is to force Assad to the conference table and it fails, and if plan B is for the various opposition groups to succeed militarily, we may face a humanitarian catastrophe. Those groups already show no mercy and will, I fear, set out to massacre any group seen or perceived to have supported the Assad regime. We will then not be dealing with 1.5 million refugees, but with perhaps 4 million, 5 million or 6 million people fleeing across the borders to Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan. I believe the priority is to bring Assad, Iran and Russia to the conference table.
Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)
In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king, and I have probably spent more time in Syria than most Members of this House, including meeting Bashar Assad up to 10 times over a six-year period. My experience of Syria is very different from the Syria we have heard about today. Syria has always been a highly secular country. There is no Salafi tradition in Syria; it has more of a Sufi tradition and a mystical approach to Islam. There was no sense of radicalism there, so how have we got from where we were to where we are today with a highly sectarian divide and the potential for a fragmented Somalia on the Mediterranean?
We must remember how this began, which was when a 13-year-old boy in Daraa had the audacity to urinate on a poster of President Assad. The security forces took him, beat him up, killed him, cut off his penis, and returned him to his parents. That sparked massive outrage among civilians in five different cities and was the beginning of the Arab Spring. Those who point to hardly any complicity of the Assad regime in causing what is happening today should think carefully. It made a very bad situation worse with civil disobedience met by repression. Ultimately, individuals felt that they had to protect their communities, and small militias were set up in various towns. The Free Syrian Army was really a fragmented group of people, and only more recently has it become a little more co-ordinated under General Idris. The Syrian National Council has been equally dysfunctional and has not sought to reach out at all beyond the Sunni community.
In February when I was in Cairo, there was an opportunity and the Russians said that they would try to lead engagement. The regime was feeling insecure, but unfortunately Minister Lavrov dropped the ball. He did not do anything and, in fact, the opposite happened. Iran and Russia provided more arms, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard bolstered the Assad regime, including his personal bodyguard, which became a member of the IRG. Until then I had always believed in engagement, but Al-Qusayr was a turning point. The regime knew it could not win alone, so Iran and Hezbollah came in and gave it the support to win Al-Qusayr. I changed my mind and believe that one needs to do a little more than simply provide humanitarian aid. From my understanding of Assad, he will have to be pushed, or driven kicking and screaming to the negotiating table.
My solution is fivefold. First, radical diplomatic engagement is absolutely necessary including—I agree with all Members of the House—with Rouhani and the Iranian regime. This is time to press the reset button.
Mr Jenkin
Does my hon. Friend agree that if we persist in doing nothing, the situation will continue to deteriorate and the radical Sunni factions will come to dominate the opposition to Assad? They are providing a playground for terrorism, where British citizens are going to train as terrorists and coming back to this country.
Mr Newmark
Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. In fact, there are 70 to 80 citizens of the United Kingdom who are today with Jabhat al-Nusra and the more radical groups. However, those groups represent only 5,000 or 6,000 people on the ground, versus the silent majority of 15 million Sunnis.
The second part of the strategy, beyond radical diplomatic engagement, should be containment. We must protect the likes of Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Turkey from becoming infected by this explosion. Thirdly, we must provide more aid, not just to Jordan and Lebanon, but internally.
Bob Stewart
I am in favour of considering military intervention to escort aid into Syria. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Mr Newmark
Yes, I do, although that is not without its dangers. When we ask the UN to do something, we have to think about what protection it will get.
My fourth point is that the Syrian National Council must become less dysfunctional. It cannot be a puppet of the Qatari regime, which it has been to date, representing just the Sunnis. It must reach out to the Alawites, the Kurds, the Druze and the Christians.
My fifth recommendation is this. I am not asking for British soldiers on the ground or for our pilots’ lives to be put at risk; I am asking for what the Syrian people have set out to me time and time again. We need to rebalance the situation on the ground. We need to arm the Free Syrian Army and support General Idris. If we do not, unfortunately more and more of the Free Syrian Army—the moderates—will drift towards the extremists. I am afraid that inaction will breed extremism and the fragmentation of Syria. Supporting the Free Syrian Army is also more likely to bring Assad and Russia to the negotiating table.
Returning to the point of this debate, I would not wish to bind the hands of the Executive on a foreign policy matter where our soldiers’ and our pilots’ lives are not at risk. Therefore, I would oppose the motion.
Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs told the House in 2011:
“We will also enshrine in law for the future the necessity of consulting Parliament on military action.”—[Official Report, 21 March 2011; Vol. 525, c. 799.]
Today we are making a far smaller request to the Government. We are not asking for a veto on declaring war, or even on the right to be heard before using deadly force. Many would argue that we should, but we are not. We are simply saying: let us vote before our Government sell or give weapons to people who may one day want to turn them on us. Today is not about whether we should arm the rebels; it is about whether the Government will listen to their MPs. As has been said, if we were to give arms, what possible assurances could the Government provide us with that such weapons would not find their way into the hands of terrorists or jihadists? Today we are asking for Parliament to be allowed to share the enormous responsibility for such a decision.
We in this Chamber do not act for ourselves; we act together, collectively, on behalf of a nation. We did not get a vote—nothing was put to Parliament—in 2001 following the deployment of British troops to Afghanistan or when British troops were deployed to Mali. They were far greater commitments, risking the lives of British servicemen and women. Those men and women and their families have no choice but to put their trust in their elected Members of Parliament to protect them from the Executive when the Executive might have been misled. We can all look back through history to see where mistakes have been made. That is relevant, because the consequences of arming the rebels might not lead to the deployment of our troops, but they will still be the target of terrorists and they will need the support of the public.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is even more important that Parliament should have its say and a vote before any such thing was considered because the British people are uneasy about the interventions made in their name in other places in the last decade?
Bill Wiggin
As always, I have no difficulty in agreeing with my right hon. Friend.
We are behind our forces because they are fantastic. They are fantastic because they perform brilliantly, morally and humanely, and we are proud of them because they protect us. We, as MPs, must protect them from the risk of terrorism, and from fights and wars that we do not need.
We have a precedent for lethal force debates. All we are asking is for a similar opportunity to vote before arming the Syrian rebels. On Libya, Parliament was given a say. In March 2003, the Labour Government held a debate and a vote on the deployment of British troops in Iraq, even though they were not obliged to hold a vote and not obliged to take heed of the result. However, Parliament was given the opportunity to express a view.
We ask today that the coalition Government extend a lesser courtesy to us than the Labour Government did in 2003. After all, Parliament is elected to act on behalf of the people. How can we act on behalf of the people if we are not given the chance to vote on a matter as important as involving ourselves in a foreign conflict?
Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)
My speech has changed about four times in the course of the debate as I was trying to find a way, without fear of repetition, of saying things that have not been said already. I note the motion, and I note that essentially this is a legal and constitutional debate. With all due respect to those on the Front Bench and the Minister, I wonder why there is no legal representation here.
The debate is necessary because of the complexity of Syria and the wider region, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) on securing it. I look up at the Annunciator screen, which shows the title of the debate as “Arms to Syria”, and wonder whether it should say “Arms to the Middle East”. We are considering arming the Free Syrian Army, but we also have arms contracts going back many years with Saudi Arabia and other countries in the region. We have never come to this Chamber to authorise the Government to make those arms deals. I am therefore not in favour of the motion.
If the motion concerned committing British forces on the ground in Syria, I would suggest it appropriate, for reasons that pre-date my time in the House, to have a debate and a vote. On Iraq and on other conflicts we have been involved in, the public have lost faith in the democratic process in relation to how Britain engages in military conflicts around the world. All I see in the world at the moment is increasing chaos, so I suspect that we will find ourselves involved in other conflicts in the middle east in the near future. We need to take the British public with us, and that involves our being able to go back to our constituencies and make a case for intervention.
Syria is a country created by the colonial pen strokes of Sykes-Picot, and other countries across the middle east were created by former colonial masters. On top of that, one lays the Sunni/Shi’a split, a sense of an Islamic reformation taking place, and the unresolved issues concerning democracy and Islam. I am no historian, but it feels like the Catholic Church in the 16th century wrestling with how to give power back to Governments of free and increasingly democratic nations. Because of the complexity of the situation and the fact that we are trying to look at these issues through the prism of countries that will probably not exist in 10 years’ time—there will be fragmentation—it is extremely difficult to come here and talk about sending arms to a particular country that would not have existed had it been created on tribal lines and by taking ethnic loyalties into account.
I have a lot of sympathy with my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench, but UK foreign policy should be about what is in Britain’s best interests. I think it is in Britain’s best interests to have as coherent and consistent a policy as can be applied across the middle east. After Syria, this situation could fall into Lebanon, Jordan and, dare I say it, Saudi Arabia, with the consequent impact on energy prices and so on. It is in Britain’s interests to garner the trust and support of the wider Arab public, and not just intervene and fiddle around the edges. I could come here and vote for a commitment on the ground in the middle east. I struggle to come here to vote for a commitment to arm just one particular force.
Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)
Last year, when I was in north-east Lebanon, I went to a village that had been shelled by the Syrian regime. I met a woman who had just come over the border. She had lost her children, her husband and her legs when she was hit by a Syrian army shell while fleeing from her village. Imagine being in a village in England with the Royal Artillery shelling the village, then being harried by the Grenadier Guards and 42 Commando the Royal Marines. It is unthinkable.
I totally accept that it is perfectly reasonable for a Government to do something without the consent of Parliament in an emergency, in order to maintain surprise or while conducting covert operations. However, we are not talking about Bosnia today; we are talking about Syria, and the House of Commons should be given a say.
I want to echo something that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said earlier about public distrust. I agree with him, given the disastrous cock-ups in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a journalist and as a Member of Parliament, I have seen the way in which pliant officials in the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign Office have done the will—or what they think is the will—of their political masters. In future, if it is possible, we need the reality check of a Commons vote in order to create clarity and avoid the activities of some of the more pliant civil servants who will always play back what they think their political masters want.
Mr Speaker
Order. Before I call the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) to speak, I should inform the House that I have asked the Front Benchers to stick to 10 minutes each, which they have kindly agreed to do. It will then be possible to have a brief wind-up speech from the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron).
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to participate in the debate. The Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), said that the debate was academic, but with all due respect, I disagree with him. He then proceeded to make many valuable points in an excellent speech, which rather defeated his earlier argument. It is a delight to follow the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr Holloway), who eloquently illustrated the seriousness of the situation in Syria through an individual experience.
I have only a little time, and many hon. Members have already spoken, but I shall of course make reference to the horrific situation in Syria, and to the fact that more than 90,000 people have died there. I shall not focus on that, however, because, as the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) has pointed out, the motion relates to the question whether a debate and a vote should take place before lethal support is supplied to any opposition group in Syria.
On this side of the House, we have for some time supported the provision of non-lethal support to Syria, including water purification, vehicles and other support of that nature. But we and many Members from across the House remain sceptical about the merits of sending yet more weapons into Syria’s brutal war. For many months, Labour has been calling on a regular basis for Ministers to come to Parliament to make their case before any decision was taken to arm the Syrian opposition. It is therefore highly appropriate that we are debating the matter today, and I thank the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) for securing the debate. I also thank those who supported the application to the Backbench Business Committee to secure the debate. It is important that we require the Government to come back to the House before any decision is made to supply lethal weapons to anti-Government forces in Syria.
The House still has no codified role in approving participation in military action. In 2003, the Iraq war debate established a working precedent—certainly a powerful political precedent—that UK troops should not be committed unless there had been an opportunity for Parliament to express its view on the matter. In addition, retrospective approval for the deployment of forces to Libya was sought on 21 March 2011—three days after the announcement of British participation.
Opposition Members believe that this House should observe the existing convention and help build a convention that before UK troops are committed to conflict, the House of Commons should have an opportunity to debate and to vote on the matter—except, of course, where there is an emergency and where such action would not be appropriate.
The national debate about the Iraq war defines the present context in which the approach to intervention takes place. We have seen that intervention of itself does not secure answers. Rather, it is a starting point, which can have both positive and negative consequences. The United Kingdom has a long history of involvement in the middle east—a history that colours perceptions of any actions that we take in this area. We must take account of those perceptions when assessing whether any intervention we take will be for the best. We must also define very closely indeed what the intervention should be. If lethal equipment is supplied, to whom will it be supplied and how do we ensure we support its end-user?
Andrew Bridgen
Given that the United States announced on 14 June that it would supply direct military aid to the Syrian opposition, what could we provide that the Americans cannot?
Ian Lucas
I think the hon. Gentleman should direct that question to the Minister rather than to me. I am sure that the Minister will respond to it in his winding-up speech.
The motion does not relate specifically to the deployment of British troops. The unique nature of the issue—supplying arms to a non-state actor—was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes). We are supplying arms to a selected group within the opposition. While there might be a strong breadth of international support for that group, in the context of an ever-evolving and moving situation in Syria, it is difficult to know exactly who these people are and how on earth we could in any sense restrict the supply of any equipment to a particular group. We need a real opportunity to discuss the issue closely before committing to supply lethal equipment. We need to discuss it and to vote on any Government proposals before a final decision is taken. Difficult questions must be addressed and answered before any steps are taken to commit lethal UK resources. We have a responsibility to ensure that our actions will not make the position for the people of Syria worse.
My right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary wrote to the Foreign Secretary at the beginning of this month to ask what assessment the Foreign Office had made of the EU common position on arms sales, to which the UK is a signatory. My right hon. Friend asked whether the Foreign Office would share that assessment with the House. Can the Minister confirm whether that assessment of the common position will be shared with us? We are clear that the need to have a debate on this issue is not an alibi for ceasing to strive to reach a negotiated political transition at a Geneva II peace conference. We want that to happen as soon as possible, and we would welcome an update from the Minister about the current status of preparations for such a conference. Picking up a point made by the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is it a precondition of UK Government policy for President Assad to step down before any discussions take place? That needs to be clarified at this juncture because that was a precondition at an earlier stage.
We are aware that the UK, the US, Russia and other countries have agreed in principle to a Geneva II conference, but there are delays. One reported reason for the repeated delaying of the conference is the disagreement among different groups over electing a new leader for the opposition. Now that Ahmed al-Jarba has been elected, when is the conference likely to convene? It is obvious that the need to secure a ceasefire is of the utmost urgency, so will the Minister please confirm that anyone who can play a role in securing a ceasefire can be involved? Earlier, he seemed to indicate from a sedentary position that that was the case. I would be grateful if he clarified that at the Dispatch Box.
What role is the Arab League now playing? It was active at an earlier stage in trying to secure some breakthrough but we have heard much less about its role in recent times. If any party at all is being excluded from the talks, can the Minister explain what the grounds are for exclusion?
The continuing tragedy is that Syria is a stain on the institutions of the international community because we have all failed to prevent the scale of the killings in the past two years. We must not lose sight of the scale of the horror that is happening in the country. I am sure that the Minister will do his utmost to secure some kind of breakthrough, but it is equally important that the House has the opportunity to discuss the implications of supplying lethal equipment to opposition groups in Syria before that decision is made. We have heard this afternoon that the House, not universally but overwhelmingly, supports the motion. I would be grateful if the Minister did so, too, on behalf of the UK Government.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) for raising the issue. I agree that it is more than useful to have this debate. I have no intention of opposing the motion before the House today. I would like to set out briefly the situation in relation to Syria, to comment on the substance of the motion and then to deal with some of the questions that have been raised on the motion and wider issues. Clearly, however, so much was covered that we will not be able to get through it all.
The situation in Syria is genuinely appalling and is getting worse at an ever-more rapid pace. As the Foreign Secretary said yesterday, the number of deaths will soon exceed 100,000 people. Since last July, on average, 170 people have been killed every 24 hours. By the end of the year, 10 million people—half of Syria’s pre-conflict population —will be likely to be in need of humanitarian assistance. Neighbouring countries are struggling with the refugee crisis.
The brutal Assad regime has used chemical weapons on his own people. We are concerned to see new, unconfirmed reports over the weekend of further chemical attacks in Homs. We judge that Iran is providing personnel, equipment, weapons and financial assistance to the Assad regime, which is also being supported by thousands of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon.
The Syrian people and the legitimate opposition are caught between this brutal regime and its backers on one side, and extremists on the other. We must not accept what Assad wants us to believe—that the only alternative to his brutal regime is extremists and terrorists. I am keen to disabuse any colleagues who have strayed into that area during their remarks. There are millions of Syrians who want a peaceful and democratic future, and legitimate forces are fighting for their interests. We should be on their side. However, the extremist groups operating inside—affiliated to or aligned with al-Qaeda—are taking advantage of ungoverned spaces created by the conflict. They pose risks to UK national security. We judge that more than 100 UK-linked individuals of concern have travelled to Syria. Some individuals returning to the UK could pose a long-term terrorist threat.
As the Foreign Secretary said yesterday in his statement to the House, faced with this growing and protracted crisis to which there is no end in sight, we have three objectives: to promote a political solution in Syria, which I again make very clear is the Government’s overriding imperative; to help to save lives; and to protect the national security of the United Kingdom.
To this end, we have doubled our humanitarian assistance for Syria to £348 million. I commend to colleagues a very good document—this is straying into the interests of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development—on UK aid in response to the Syria crisis, dated 4 July. It deals with some key facts on what we are doing. I will ask my right hon. Friend to make sure that it is e-mailed to every colleague, because, as more than one Member has mentioned, the humanitarian assistance is not a by-product of the UK’s involvement. We are entitled to be very proud of what this country is doing in that regard, and I would like colleagues to be well aware of what we are doing and to talk about it. We must not consider it to be some sort of backwater.
Alistair Burt
No, not yet.
We are also providing technical assistance for the protection of civilians. That includes advice and training on how to maintain security in areas no longer controlled by the regime, on how to protect civilians and minimise the risks to them—including in respect of helping the opposition counter regime forces as they attack towns under opposition control—and on co-ordination between civilian and military councils, and on how to maintain security during a transition.
Amending the arms embargo on Syria in May also supported these aims. As the Prime Minister has said, lifting the arms embargo on the Syrian National Coalition sent a powerful signal that there is no moral equivalence between Assad on the one hand and the legitimate representatives of the Syrian people, recognised by over 130 countries, states and other entities, on the other. It also increases pressure on the regime to negotiate seriously. We now have the flexibility to respond in future if the situation continues to deteriorate and if the Assad regime refuses to negotiate.
Let me come to the nub of the motion, just to be clear once again to the House. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said yesterday in his statement to the House:
“On the question of any future lethal support—arming the opposition or intervening militarily ourselves—the Government’s position has not changed. No decision has been made, and any decision would be put to the House on a substantive motion.”—[Official Report, 10 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 379.]
And as he said in the House on 18 June:
“We certainly would not want to pursue any aspect of our policy on this issue against the will of the House of Commons. That is neither feasible nor desirable, so of course we have made clear that there would be a vote. I have also made it clear that we would expect it to be before any such decision was put into action.”—[Official Report, 18 June 2013; Vol. 564, c. 746.]
Mr Baron
I absolutely applaud the Minister and I have great respect for his being absolutely clear. I agree that there has never been any change to the policy or the wording of the view that no decision has been taken, but I suggest with great respect that there has been movement by the Government on the assurances in the wording of the motion since it first travelled this journey. I urge the Minister to look back at what was said initially when many of us in this place urged the Government to put such a motion to a substantive vote.
Alistair Burt
Well, I do not believe so. Let me comment on something that is at the nub of this: the long shadow of Iraq. I am convinced that when this Government took office we were very well aware of the deficiency in trust felt in the nation on account of that. My sense is that, particularly in respect of the area my portfolio covers, in the last two or three years both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary have repeatedly updated the House on circumstances as they have arisen. They have been very conscientious in doing that. The National Security Council was created precisely to try to find a structure that could address the concerns about foreign policy decisions that people had felt in the past. I believe that right from the beginning as the UK considered all its options—and I repeat, despite whatever I have said, that all options remain on the table—both the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister have been very keen to ensure that the House has been engaged, because ultimately this is an issue of trust.
That leads me on to the point made by the right hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) about the possibility of something being sneaked through in the recess. The hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) also talked about that. The whole point of what the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary have been doing has been to generate trust in the House. If the Government were to do something and then seek retrospective support in respect of an issue where Members felt we should have come before the House in advance, that trust would be broken, which would run contrary to what the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister wish to convey. It may still be the case, of course, that emergencies arise that require the Head of Government to have the flexibility to make decisions in the national interest, as the House would expect, and the debate on Iran some time ago indicated that no hands should be bound. The clear intention of what I am saying and what the Foreign Secretary has sought to do, however, is that the Government want to keep the confidence of the House by going this extra step. So there is no question of our trying to use the recess or another opportunity to do something, because we would then have to come back to the House—and what would be the House’s reaction? I have tried to make clear the intention on which the Government are determined to act.
In the brief time available, I wish to cover one or two more of the questions raised, including those about Geneva and President Assad put by the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas), who spoke for the Opposition. I know that you are very generous to us, Mr Speaker, so if I stray for one minute, having taken an intervention, I hope you will kindly let me do so.
My hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham) said that many people were asking what is in our national interest. Importantly, whether a decision is made to arm or not, there is a UK interest that needs to be considered. Let us make no mistake: whether we continue on our current course or do something different, we are involved. As a permanent member of the Security Council, we have an interest in promoting peace in the most conflict-ridden areas. It is to the discredit of the international community that that has not been possible, but that has not been due to any sparing of effort on our part at the United Nations. The conflict has been spilling over into neighbouring areas, as we have seen with Hezbollah and Lebanon. As my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) said, if empty space is used, that is where a threat to and an attack on the United Kingdom can come from. We know that people are going out there to be radicalised, and that will come back to bite us as well. Whatever is done—whatever decision is taken—nobody in this House can escape the fact that there is British interest in Syria. Accordingly, our main interest is in closing this down and ending the conflict. This is not a plea from me to arm; I am saying that unless the conflict is ended, British interests will continue to be further damaged.
Iran clearly has an interest in this. It did not accept Geneva I. Who knows what is possible, but Iran’s interest is noted and is there. The removal of Assad is not so much a precondition from the United Kingdom; this is not the UK’s involvement in negotiations. It was clear from the beginning that this issue is difficult for an opposition that is being killed daily by Assad’s regime, but the practicalities now are that there are no preconditions if people can get to a position to negotiate that we want.
Richard Ottaway
Will the Minister clarify that? If a negotiated settlement comes out of Geneva, does he accept that it may result in President Assad staying in office?
Alistair Burt
The point I want to make is that if a negotiated solution emerges, it will have been negotiated by representatives of the Syrian National Coalition. I think that, in a way, it is their call; it is not for us to say. The reason we take the view that Assad’s legitimacy is gone is plain from the facts, but the United Kingdom is not involved in setting preconditions for the negotiations; that is for the parties involved.
I want to correct one misconception that has been abroad: that all the opposition is the same and we are allied with people we have seen performing extremist acts and acts of the greatest brutality. That is not the case. On 20 April, the Syrian National Coalition declared its commitment to democracy, ethnic and religious pluralism, and the rule of law, and it rejected discrimination and extremism. It also declared that it would guard against the proliferation of any supplied lethal equipment and would return such equipment at the end of the conflict, and confirmed that the supreme military council operates under the civilian authority of the coalition.
As for whether each side is as bad as the other, we condemn human rights abuses perpetrated by anyone involved in the violence in Syria, but we note that the last report by the UN commission of inquiry on Syria, published on 4 June, said that although there was evidence of human rights abuses committed by the opposition, those
“did not…reach the intensity and scale of those committed by Government forces and affiliated militia.”
There is no equivalence.
My final point is that if colleagues here are to get us to the position we all want to get to—a negotiated peace—they would do well to consider the graphic description by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) of why that might not happening at the moment. No matter what we decide to do in the future, I suspect that his remarks, and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree, should be taken in by everybody here as we go forward and take the difficult decisions we have to take. This is not easy—there is more than one side to the question—but the arguments raised by my two colleagues will take some consideration by all of us.
Mr Baron
This has been a well-informed, well-attended and useful debate, in which the wording of the motion has been paramount. Since we first discovered that the Government were aiming to lift the EU ban on arms exports, the Government have travelled some way. There was a lack of clarity at the start of the journey, as illustrated by the fact that very recently—only a few weeks ago—Members who are in their places in the Chamber today were appearing in the media believing that the rebels should be armed and expressing the view that Parliament did not need to give its explicit prior consent. We have that clarity now and I thank the Minister for it. I also thank Members on both sides of the House for pressing for clarity from the Government.
Let me turn briefly to the specific issue of whether or not to arm. There has been no answer to the charge that more weapons would mean more violence and more suffering, to the charge that it would be nigh on impossible to track and trace weapons to stop them falling into the hands of extremists on the rebel side or to the charge that if one pours more weapons into the conflict and adds more fuel to the flames it could extend the conflict beyond Syria’s borders. Most who have spoken would agree that more can be done on the humanitarian and diplomatic fronts.
I urge all Members to support the motion, regardless of their views on whether we should arm. I for one will not press it to a vote, but I would fully understand colleagues who might wish to do that given the strength of feeling on the issue. I urge all Members to support the motion, if they can.
Question put.
Piper Alpha Disaster
(11 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Frank Doran (Aberdeen North) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster.
On the night of 6 July 1988, an incident occurred on the Piper Alpha platform that led to the deaths of 167 men. It was the worst tragedy in the offshore oil and gas industry anywhere in the world. It was the direct consequence of negligence, bad management at every level, poor maintenance, extremely weak regulation and failure to have proper work systems in place or a proper safety strategy for major incidents. The regulation management and safety systems failed at every level. Those 167 men died, survivors suffered the most traumatic experience that any of us could imagine, many of them being seriously injured, and of course the families and relatives of those involved have been irrevocably damaged.
I am very pleased and proud to have the opportunity to open this debate to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha tragedy and to remember those who died and their families, and, of course, the rescue services involved and those who supported the survivors and families after the incident. As well as the Piper Alpha victims, it is important to remember all those who have died during the lifetime of the UK oil and gas industry, whether at sea, on land, on a platform, or on transport.
Last Saturday, along with several hundred others, I attended a memorial service in the Piper Alpha memorial rose garden in Aberdeen. I met many of the survivors and the families of victims. I was delighted to see the Secretary of State for Scotland and the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran), at that event representing the Government and the Opposition. Four hundred of those who attended were survivors or families of victims. Most of the individuals and families have moved on, but the mood on Saturday was as sombre as the mood in 1988. It was quite clear that for most of the people involved the memory of the horror of that day in 1988 remains just as vivid and distressing as it was then. The pain does not go away. Many things stand out about that service, but the most poignant and difficult was the roll call of victims—as graphic and emotional a way of underlining the sheer scale of the tragedy as any.
The 25th anniversary of the tragedy has had a good deal of media coverage, and it does not serve any real purpose to go through again all the detail of what happened on that night. However, I would like to focus on just a couple of issues relevant to the present and possibly also to the future.
As colleagues are well aware, following the disaster Lord Cullen was appointed to lead an inquiry into the disaster. He made 106 recommendations. The Cullen report was welcomed on all sides. It has changed the safety culture in the North sea and throughout the global oil and gas industry. Aside from the practical workplace and management issues, the most important recommendation was on the question of who should be the regulator. From the beginning of the North sea industry, the Piper and all other North sea installations were regulated by the then Department of Energy. The Department had two fundamental problems. The first was the conflict between its responsibility to maximise oil production and its duty as a regulator. More importantly, the Cullen report made the Department’s inadequacies abundantly clear. Cullen recommended that responsibility for offshore safety should be handed over to the Health and Safety Executive, where it resides today.
In the main, the HSE, through its offshore division, has been a good regulator, and there has been substantial improvement in the industry’s safety record. Recently, however, concerns were raised when the HSE announced that the offshore division was being merged into a new energy division. The announcement was made without any apparent consultation with the industry, unions or Members of Parliament. That raised concern on all sides, particularly as to whether the decision was driven by cuts in funding. However, we eventually received from the chair the rationale for the move. Ministers also came in with a promise of some extra inspectors.
The most recent information I have on staffing in the offshore division is that it has 109 full-time equivalent staff—14 more than 2010, so that is significant progress. However, across the HSE the total number of inspectors has fallen by 75 from 1,316 to 1,241. In future, with a merged division, it might be much more difficult for us to identify the precise numbers of dedicated offshore inspectors. Broadly speaking, there has been a steady improvement in the safety regime and in accident rates, but the industry remains dangerous compared with other UK industries. In 2011-12 the fatality rate was 6.9 per 100,000 workers compared with 0.6 for all UK workers. The major injury and fatality rate per 100,000 workers for offshore oil and gas is 130.8, compared with 90.4 for all UK workers. However, at a major event last week, a representative of one of the major oil companies cited a statistic suggesting that, on the basis of last year’s figures, the industry was the third safest, behind banking and education, but I have not seen that information.
Beyond safety, the other major issue facing the industry is the continuing problem of gas escapes on offshore platforms. We should remember that a gas leak led to the Piper Alpha tragedy. In 2011-12, there were 94 hydrocarbon releases, 44 of which were classified as significant. Nine of those were identified as a major incident, which is a leak that, if ignited, would cause an explosion capable of causing multiple casualties. Those nine cases were therefore very serious incidents. Last year, the Elgin-Franklin complex, which is operated by Total, was closed down because of a major gas leak. It was restarted, but then shut down again, and it was not fully operational until March this year. Gas leak statistics, like those for injury rates, are showing a steady improvement, but the volume of escapes and the scale of the Elgin-Franklin problem show that there is still a lot of work to do.
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that one life lost is one life too many, and that that is why all the authorities and companies must work together to achieve maximum safety and security for all those working in such dangerous places to ensure that no life is lost in the future?
Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this valuable debate. Does he share my concern about reports that the number of planned inspections throughout the HSE’s entire operation in Scotland is likely to be significantly reduced this year? Given that last year, unfortunately, the number of casualties in Scotland increased overall, there is utterly no room for complacency on health and safety at work.
Mr Doran
I will come to that point later in my speech, as I am dealing with the offshore oil and gas industry at the moment, but I recognise the point that my hon. Friend makes.
The HSE has been increasingly proactive. It has embarked on several projects, one of the most important of which is the key programme project, which involves an assessment of the integrity of offshore installations. The KP3 report, which was published a few years ago, followed an assessment of 100 platforms. It told us that, in a number of cases, the industry was slipping back on areas such as the maintenance of platforms. In the run-up to the 20th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster, the then Secretary of State for Work and Pensions ordered a review of KP3, which showed that the industry had responded to its findings and that improvements were being made.
We have now reached the KP4 stage, and the interim report identifies several issues relating to ageing plant. Oil and Gas UK, the industry body, has established working groups to produce guidance and promote improvements. I understand that, as at the end of March, HSE had undertaken KP4 inspections of more than 75% of operators. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has also set up a senior oversight group, which includes the HSE, to supervise the implementation of the review’s recommendations. Such an integrated approach is necessary and appropriate.
While the industry is making progress on safety, the KP3 report shows that the regulator needs to be ever vigilant. A good job has been done, but several points still need to be considered. The trade union side recognises that progress has been made in the industry, but its officials are aware that there are several installations on which workers are afraid to bring up safety issues with their employers. Some employers tell union officials that they are put under pressure by the staff of the operator—the client—to cut corners.
The regulator also identifies problems. At the Piper 25 conference, Steve Walker, the retiring head of the offshore safety division, made several points, including about the control of work. The inadequacy—and failure—of the permit-to-work system led directly to the Piper Alpha disaster, and it is still a key weakness for the industry. Poor isolation and inadequate adherence to permit systems remain a common thread during incident investigation.
Another key Cullen recommendation is not being fully adhered to by some companies. The regulator is regularly taking enforcement action for maintenance and testing temporary safe refuges. A Health and Safety Executive inspection in 2011 found that there was still variation in the implementation of safety representative legislation. In other words, it is not being applied properly.
That last point is important, because one of the major steps that has been taken by the industry, with the full support of the HSE, is to recognise that safety offshore can only improve with the full engagement of the work force. That process is being led by Step Change in Safety.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. I was on the energy desk at the Treasury when the Piper Alpha accident happened and it was truly terrible. One of the things I remember is that there were communication difficulties, because at that time quite a lot of foreign workers working offshore on British and American-managed platforms simply did not understand what was going on. Does my hon. Friend know whether that situation has improved in the past 25 years?
Mr Doran
That certainly was not an issue for Lord Cullen. I think that the communication difficulty was the failure to have a proper management structure in place with a process to deal with such an incident. The only message that was put out was a mayday message. From recollection, I think that two foreigners—a Frenchman and, I think, a Spaniard—were killed in the Piper Alpha incident, so there was no issue there.
Under Step Change in Safety, materials have been produced and conferences held to encourage employers to accept that top-down management does not work. Full engagement and involvement of the work force at every stage of the work process is crucial. There is no doubt that there is a great deal of traction in the principles being set out by Step Change in Safety and most operations offshore are embracing the changes, some more enthusiastically than others.
At the Piper 25 conference, I attended a session where employees of Maersk Oil, which is fairly new to the North sea, spoke about its approach. It has gone for full engagement and has introduced a system that involves new rules about handling safety issues, encouraging workers to come forward with ideas to improve safety and to report safety concerns without fear of sanction and so on. Maersk Oil has produced statistics which show that since the inception of the new ideas, accidents have declined significantly and profits have increased. They present a win-win scenario—safer workplace, increased profit.
Others, while accepting the basic principle and making some progress, have been less enthusiastic. Old habits die hard and trade union officials and regulators tell me that as soon as they step off the helicopter and on to an offshore platform they can read the mood of the work force and what sort of approach the employer is taking to work-force engagement.
Despite that, there is no doubt that serious progress is being made. I have been involved with the oil and gas industry in one way or another for nearly 40 years. For most of that time, management was top down, harsh and very anti union, with a few exceptions on the contracting side. I would be a fantasist to suggest that the industry fully embraces trade unions. However, significant progress is being made. The industry recognises that the unions can make a valuable contribution to the workplace and safety. Trade unions are represented on the board of the industry training body OPITO—the Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation—and one of the representatives chaired it for a number of years. Two full-time union officers were appointed to the separate taskforces set up to look into the Super Puma helicopter disaster a few years ago and the consequences of the Macondo incident in the gulf of Mexico. At this year’s industry safety awards the keynote speaker was the general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress.
One of the major issues for the industry this year has been the threat from the European Union to take control of offshore safety. A number of very senior figures in the industry have assured me that the turning point in a meeting with the Commission was the presentation made by John Taylor, a full-time official of Unite who would put to shame the Prime Minister’s cartoon image of Unite members—I guarantee it—and who is totally dedicated to the interests of his members.
I raise these issues because my biggest fear about the integrity of the steadily improving safety environment in the offshore industry is that the process is running in direct contradiction to Government policy. If we leave the union relationship aside, the industry is putting huge effort into its worker engagement and involvement strategy. It recognises the value of the worker on the shop floor, seeing him or her as a vital part of the business, contributing to the safety of the enterprise and—if we follow the Maersk line—its profitability.
Meanwhile, at the national level, we have various reports, including the Beecroft report, whose objective seems to be to take us back to Victorian times, chipping away at rights at work and job security, and changes to health and safety legislation. At a time when the oil and gas industry is still operating in one of the most dangerous work environments in the country, placing responsibility for safety on its work force and valuing each individual as a key part of the enterprise, I do not want to see these gains whittled away by Government action. Out of the Piper Alpha tragedy, there is clear evidence of serious progress on safety brought about by the close working together of industry workers and trade unions, but the North sea is a dangerous place and we cannot be complacent. The memory of the fate of the workers on that night in July 1988 should spur us on to achieve and maintain a safe working environment for all workers.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Unfortunately, to get everyone in, we will have to have a five-minute limit.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) for securing this debate and his work over many years campaigning for improved safety for those who work in the North sea. We should listen carefully to his words and advice; he was in the House at the time of the Piper Alpha disaster, and one of the challenges we face is that with the passage of time, those with direct experience of the horrific night of 6 July 1988 and those in office at that time are moving on, although I anticipate that he will be in his place for some time to come. There is a danger that those direct experiences and lessons learned might fade away and that the pursuit of safety might become a routine box-ticking exercise. This must not happen, and we owe it to the memory of the 167 men who died always to ask ourselves what more must be done to improve safety in this dangerous working environment.
I represent a coastal constituency where for centuries the economy and jobs have been inextricably linked to the North sea: in fishing and over the past 40 years in the oil and gas sector. While Piper Alpha was in the northern North sea, the tragedy could have occurred anywhere, and the people who work in the sector are often drawn from communities in Scotland, the north-east and East Anglia. They share a bond and invariably there are no boundaries to where they work. At present, increased activity in the North sea in both the oil and gas and renewables sectors presents East Anglia with considerable job creation opportunities. I want us to make the most of those opportunities, but in doing so we must always keep safety at the forefront of our minds. Corners must never be cut and we must always strive for the highest standards. The Government and business owe this ultimate duty of care to all who work at sea. The North sea has plentiful assets, which we must utilise responsibly, but always remembering that it is a dangerous place, particularly where hydrocarbons are present.
In recent days the newspapers, television and graphic words of those who saw the horrific events of 6 July 1988 unfold before their eyes have brought home to us the dreadful events of that night. This was not an unpredictable “act of God”, but an accumulation of errors and questionable decisions. Lord Cullen’s thorough and excellent inquiry left no stone unturned in establishing what happened and made 106 recommendations to improve safety. All these were accepted and implemented, and some have been taken further.
It is important that his legacy endures for a long time and that there is no room for complacency. The North sea is changing, and new challenges lie ahead. The blueprint that Lord Cullen set down should be viewed as a living document that must evolve to meet these challenges. To be fair, though, I do not detect any complacency from the Government in their pursuit of the highest safety standards. In the 10 years following the Step Change in Safety initiative in 1997, the number of fatal and major injuries fell by 70%. The 2010 target for reducing the number of hydrocarbon releases by 50% in three years looks as if it will be achieved, while the Piper 25 conference last month focused the minds of those who worked in this sector.
This debate provides an opportunity to pause, reflect and pay tribute to those who lost their lives and took part in the rescue mission. We must also remember that the lessons learned from Piper Alpha are as relevant today as they were in 1988, and a vivid reminder of the consequences of failure to manage health and safety properly. Yes, lessons have been learned and a very different approach and attitude prevail today, but there is an ongoing challenge for all involved in the oil and gas sector to continue to strive for the highest safety standards. In the words of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, we should ask, “What more should we be doing?”
The North sea is one of this country’s most important assets. In realising the opportunities it affords, we must not only respect and nurture it, but place at the top of our list of priorities the safety and well-being of those who work there.
Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). I want to make a short contribution to this debate because when I was a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, I responded to the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) five years ago, and I pay tribute to him for ensuring that we do not forget what happened at Piper Alpha.
To echo the hon. Member for Waveney, we must remember the human side to this tragedy, and I beg the House’s indulgence if I give the personal testimony of someone who was pretty well known to us—Gavin Cleland, a pensioner from Glasgow. I want to read some extracts from a speech he made to a conference on safety and corporate criminal accountability in October 2003. He opened by saying:
“My name is Gavin Cleland and my younger son, Robert, was killed in the Piper Alpha disaster, just over 15 years ago. On 6th July…167 men on board the Piper Alpha oil rig were killed, and Robert was one of them…My story is just one of those many tragedies. When Robert was killed he was 33 years old…Before I tell you of some of the things that I have done over the past 15 years to get justice—”
he was a tireless campaigner—
“I want to say a few words about our dear son, Robert.”
This is what will, I hope, bring the issue home to us as politicians.
Robert was born in 1954 in, as Gavin said,
“the best room of his granny’s council house, in…Carntyne”.
He was the youngest of three boys, and he left school and served his apprenticeship as a plumber. He joined the Royal Highland Fusiliers and went to work in the North sea in the offshore oil industry.
As you will be aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, there was probably no constituency in Scotland that did not feel the impact of the Piper Alpha tragedy. Many men—the boys, as they were often called—would leave every other fortnight to go to the North sea. They included people from the area where I lived as much as those from around Aberdeen. It was a time when young, talented and skilled men had to get a job.
Gavin goes on to say that he could not believe at first what was happening to him and his family, and to that lovely young boy born in his granny’s council house, and he became a tireless campaigner all the way through what was left of his life. Scottish Members will remember that there was probably no conference that Gavin did not attend, and there was rarely a situation that he did not write about, or as he said, “pester” MPs, Prime Ministers and MSPs, to try and get, as he saw it, justice for the people who died on that terrible night.
I remember it well. I was making my children’s breakfast before they went to school and we could not believe what was unfolding in front of our eyes on television. If my memory serves me right, the voice of Jane Frankie—a BBC journalist of some renown—tried to bring this story into our kitchens, living rooms and homes, and we should never forget that. That is why the challenge for the Government and the Health and Safety Executive outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North is crucial. We cannot cease to be vigilant about what is happening in the North sea.
I want to ask the Minister some questions to test him on whether the commitments I gave five years ago—on behalf of government in its generic sense—have been pursued and to find out what progress has been made. The partnership between trade unions, workers and operators is crucial. We need to ensure that it is strengthened and deepened. Is that happening? My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North mentioned the KP3 report. I would like to know what is happening on that front. The amalgamation with the energy section has flagged up concerns about the focus of that new division in the Health and Safety Executive. It is not just people in this House, but the Gavin Clelands of this world—all the mums, dads, brothers and sisters who lost their sons and brothers in the Alpha disaster—who deserve to have the confidence that the HSE will continue to be vigilant.
Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)
I am pleased to take part in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing it. Indeed, I acknowledge all the work he has done, both inside and outside the House over many years, to campaign on safety in the oil and gas industry.
Like the hon. Gentleman, I was at the memorial service in Aberdeen, on a sunny morning last Saturday in the memorial garden. I was moved perhaps more than I expected to be, particularly when the families were invited to come up with their wreaths—we are talking about 400 people. Watching young adults, who were obviously babies when their fathers were killed, holding up tiny children just to touch the names of the granddads they never knew brought home to me in a personal way just what a human tragedy this was.
I was on a trade and industry visit to Romania at the time. It is worth recording the fact that the incident was all over before I had even heard about it. There was no e-mail and no mobile phones. I felt a long way from my people who were suffering and unable to do very much—although to be honest, I am not sure that that is when Members of Parliament are at their most useful. What we did have to do, obviously, was provide support to the families and the bereaved, ensure a process that would get to the bottom of what was wrong, and put in place mechanisms and a culture to ensure it would never happen again.
Oil and Gas UK and its contractors produce figures from time to time. Usually, my constituency has the highest or second highest number of people working in the industry. It is important to remember, 25 years on, that the industry is still huge. It is still the driver of our economy. Although a 100% guarantee of safety is never possible, there are still thousands of people working or travelling offshore who need the assurance that everything is being done to ensure that safety is paramount.
A number of the events around the 25th anniversary have illuminated the fact that there are still some worrying cultural problems, to which the hon. Member for Aberdeen North alluded. He talked about the danger of a top-down approach. My instinct is that I genuinely believe top management when they say to me, “Safety is paramount.” They believe that that is what drives their culture. The problem is that people down the line have a dilemma. Their job is to produce oil and gas. If somebody says, “I’ve got a problem,” or, “I’ve got an anxiety,” there is a tension. Bob Keiller, the chief executive of the Wood Group, made an impressive speech at a dinner a couple of weeks ago in Aberdeen, in which he highlighted that dilemma. His view was: “Safety is paramount—period.”
That is crucial, but it is worth making the point—Maersk is a good example of this—that safety is paramount because there is a moral responsibility to ensure that people get back to their families, but in the end, if a company does not act, its commercial viability will be destroyed. Whoever hears of Occidental in this part of the world now? Indeed, after the Macondo and Texas disasters, one more disaster would be the end of BP. Had Total not got on top of Elgin, it would have been the end of Total. I give the company credit for the work it did and for not rushing back into production until it was fully satisfied that it was on top of things.
I noticed in the very good documentary that was shown on the BBC this week that one of the men said, “We always thought that the biggest risk in this job was the journey to and from the rig,” and that is still the case. It is ironic that only yesterday the Civil Aviation Authority said that it is ready to give clearance for Super Pumas to come back into operation. I think there will be a great deal of caution and reservation about that, and nobody should be getting into a Super Puma until everybody is sure that everything possible has been double-checked to ensure a proper degree of safety.
We should recognise that this is a dangerous environment and that a culture of safety must be paramount. Nobody at any level should ever think twice about stopping production if there is the remotest concern about safety—it is in the best moral and commercial interests of their organisation. If anything can be learned from Piper Alpha and the excellent Cullen report, it must be that.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing this important debate on this tragic anniversary. None of us who saw the television pictures of the Piper Alpha disaster will ever forget the horror of that night and its tragic aftermath.
The oil and gas industry is a vital part of the local economy in my constituency, as it is in many others throughout large areas of Scotland. I have many constituents who are employed in the industry not only in the North sea, but around the world. Many companies in my constituency do a great deal of work for the oil and gas industry. Many of my constituents have friends and relatives who work in the industry. They all want to ensure their safety at work.
Twenty-five years ago, 167 people died and 62 survived. It is right that we reflect on them and on the tragic impact on their relatives and loved ones. Many survivors suffered huge trauma. The families, as we have heard from tales told on television in the past couple of weeks, suffered greatly with them. We need to remember the heroic work of the emergency services, in particular, the crews of the fast rescue craft, who, I understand, recovered 45 of the 62 survivors in very difficult circumstances. Their bravery was commented on by Lord Cullen in his report.
The Cullen report put forward a large number of recommendations, which substantially improved safety offshore, and that work continues. We can never afford to let our guard down and we must ensure that we maintain the safety record that has now been established in the North sea industry. The emphasis on safety is vital for those who work offshore, for those constituents whose friends and family work offshore, and for all of us who recognise the economic importance of the industry.
As has been mentioned, a range of events are taking place to mark the 25th anniversary of Piper Alpha: the restoration of the memorial in Hazlehead park in Aberdeen; the major conference that has been mentioned; and the film referred to by the right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), “Fire in the Night”, which has recorded for ever the testimony of those who survived the disaster, and that of their families. These events will ensure that we never forget what happened.
Oil and Gas UK’s health and safety report was published last month. It showed a 48% reduction in the number of reportable hydrocarbon releases over three years; a much better record on non-fatal accidents; and a steady reduction in the incidence of over-three-day injuries. However, the industry faces difficulties on safety. One thing that has been apparent for some years is the ageing work force in the North sea. Many of them remember Piper Alpha and have been brought up in that safety culture. That is changing now, as more and more young people are being encouraged to join the industry through very good work by OPITO. There is a danger that many youngsters do not remember what it was like before Piper Alpha. We must ensure that the safety culture is understood by everybody, and especially by the youngsters now going to work offshore.
The industry itself is changing. Many installations in the North sea are quite old, with some coming to the end of their lives. They pose an inherent danger, and it is important to recognise that and for there to be proper safety inspections. The industry is moving: the traditional North sea is a mature basin these days, but the industry is still exploring the Scottish coast. New exploration is taking place west of Shetland, in very deep and dangerous conditions. It will be very difficult to get oil out of there, and it is important that we continue to send out the safety message. It is of paramount importance that our constituents who go out to work on the rigs to get the oil and gas that is so important for our economy are able to work in a safe environment.
Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on giving us this opportunity to pay tribute to the victims of Piper Alpha and to ensure that we remember the lessons that need to be learned. I should of course remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests that relates to the oil and gas industry, particularly my shareholding in Shell. However, my interest in the debate, like that of the hon. Members for Aberdeen North and for Angus (Mr Weir) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce), stems from the fact that we represent a part of the country that is touched by, and lives with, the oil and gas industry on a day-to-day basis.
We need to remember that the work force in that industry, particularly the offshore work force, come from throughout the country, and that people from all parts of the United Kingdom were touched by the tragedy. Our thoughts today are with the relatives and friends of those who lost their lives, and with the survivors, as we remember the terrible events. The re-dedication of the memorial garden involved a poignant and moving service that reminded us that, above all, the oil and gas industry is a people business. It might contain a lot of big industrial structures and high-tech industry, but ultimately it is people who make it work and it is people who suffer when it goes wrong.
I also pay tribute to Lord Cullen for the lessons that he has given us, and the legacy that he has left us. His investigation led to a sea change in the whole offshore safety regime, and to a permanent restructuring and refocusing of the system. It also led to the introduction of the safety case regime, after which companies could no longer simply tick a box and say, “I’ve complied with the regulation, so I’ll be okay if something goes wrong.” Under the regime, a company has to assess the risks and come up with its own safety case. That, too, is a lasting legacy.
The Piper 25 conference brought together representatives of the industry, the work force and the regulators, to refocus their efforts to ensure that all the lessons are being learned and all the issues are being dealt with. I want to pay tribute to the organisers of the conference. It would have been easy to have had a conference that simply paid lip service to the 25th anniversary and went through the motions, but the hon. Member for Aberdeen North and I, who were both there, agreed that it was a genuine attempt to take forward safety matters and to ensure that more lessons were learned.
We must avoid complacency. It has been pointed out that there are still many leaks, although fortunately they have not been ignited. If they had been, there could have been equally tragic consequences, so a redoubling of efforts is crucial. There have been other incidents in the North sea, and more lives have been lost, although not on the same scale as Piper Alpha. They are none the less equally tragic for the victims and their families and friends, and we must remember them, too, at this time.
There has been a refocusing on safety, but a danger is creeping in because the risks that are the easiest to measure are the slips, trips and falls—the people safety risks. There has, therefore, been a chasing of statistics that has focused on that element, and perhaps a lack of recognition of the importance of structural safety and integrity. The KP3 and KP4 reports focused on ensuring that that was understood. Structural safety issues might not show up so often in the statistics, but when something goes wrong, the effects are far more dramatic and serious. That structural safety element must be paramount.
Certain challenges remain, including that of ageing infrastructure. Ironically, the really old platforms were so over-engineered that, even though some of their equipment and processes might need rededication and redesigning, the actual structures have many years left in them. In a sense, the more dangerous legacy is the stuff that was built at the time of low oil prices when costs were kept to a bare minimum. The structural integrity of those platforms needs a great deal of investigation.
We have heard about the concerns relating to the new energy division. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen North said, some reassurance has been received, but the jury is still out. Much of what was attempted was designed for the best of motives, but it was perhaps not presented in the most effective way. Post-Macondo, we have the restructuring of the safety and environment regime as a result of the EU’s intervention, which will divert resources into resubmitting safety cases, rather than looking at new safety cases. Someone working offshore now aged 30 was just starting primary school when Piper Alpha happened. It is important for that legacy to be passed on to the next generation and to the new owners who have mainly not inherited the same culture as the original owners of the platforms. Redoubling safety is the best legacy for the members of Piper Alpha.
Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran), who knows as well as any and perhaps better than most that things changed for ever as a result of the events of 6 July 1988. They changed for the families, the wives, the children and the parents of the 167 who died. Things changed for the 61 who survived, who remain haunted 25 years on by the memories they still have of the events of that day. Many of those men still live with both the physical as well as the mental scars of surviving when so many others—colleagues and friends—did not.
Things changed for ever, too, for the families of the survivors who have had to live with the effects on their loved ones and on the communities from which the men who died came. I know that things changed for my neighbours who worked offshore when they suddenly realised, “There but for the grace of God”; it was not until the Piper Alpha disaster that they realised just how dangerous the job was. It certainly changed for ever the offshore oil and gas industry, which woke up to the dangers of the business and how heavy a price had to be paid if safety was not embedded into everything it did. Here was a stark and tragic illustration of just how important a strict safety regime is, and how crucial it is to carry out maintenance in a timely and safe manner, in order to keep the workers safe. It is terrible that it took the worst offshore disaster in history to act as a wake-up call to an industry that had in many ways behaved like the Klondikers of the American west.
The biggest change, of course, was the implementation of all 106 recommendations of Lord Cullen’s report. All those recommendations were accepted by both the Government and the industry, and the offshore culture did change. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North, I think the most significant recommendation was that the Department of Energy could no longer be the regulator of the industry, and responsibility was passed to the Health and Safety Executive.
When I was a student, I worked in the purchasing department of Occidental’s headquarters in Aberdeen throughout the summer of 1977. Occidental was the operator of Piper Alpha, and it was found culpable by Lord Cullen’s inquiry. Despite that, no one was prosecuted. It was enough, however, for Occidental to disappear as a company and in a supreme irony, the building that housed Occidental in Aberdeen, where I had worked throughout that summer, became the home of the Health and Safety Executive, and it was renamed “Lord Cullen House”.
On Saturday morning, I attended the incredibly moving ceremony to mark the 25th anniversary in Hazlehead park at the Piper Alpha memorial garden in my constituency. There was much poignancy—a fly past of a Sea King helicopter, the seven minutes it took to read out all 167 names and the touching of the memorial. Some may say that marking the anniversary of such a disaster is somehow maudlin, wallowing in tragedy and should be only for those directly affected, but I am not one of them. The memorial is very important for the whole offshore industry. It acts as a stark reminder of just how important it is to take safety seriously, never to let standards slip and to listen to people who are expressing concerns about particular working practices. Memories do fade, and attention to a safety regime can fade too, so regular reminders of what can happen when safety is not at the forefront of people’s minds are necessary as well.
Although there has been a Step Change in Safety in the offshore industry and attention to safety is much more prominent now, it remains a dangerous industry. Lives were lost most recently in the helicopter crash of 2009 when 16 people died. Remembering events such as Piper Alpha forces those working in the industry to pause and to take stock of what improvements could be made, to shake out any complacency that may have crept in, to emphasise the need for regulations and to question whether there are enough inspectors of a high standard working in the HSE’s new energy division to keep an eye on the ageing infrastructure in the North sea.
The offshore industry is not only important to the economy and prosperity of the north-east of Scotland but is one of the main economic drivers of the UK economy. It is a crucial industry, but the wealth it creates should not come at the cost of the lives and well-being of the people who work in it. The 25th anniversary of tragic events such as Piper Alpha serves to remind us all of how high the human cost can be in making sure that the oil and gas on which we all depend in our daily lives keeps flowing.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I too congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing the debate.
No one who watched the BBC documentary on Tuesday evening or who saw the pictures at the time can have failed to feel tense and even horrified at what happened 25 years ago at the Piper Alpha platform. The horrors were evident, as was the tremendous courage of the people who worked on the platform or were involved in the rescue attempts.
Twenty-five years ago, I was in my third year working in public relations for British Gas in the northern region. I had been privileged to visit offshore platforms in the North and Irish seas—and it was a privilege to rub shoulders with those who lived on a pile of steel many miles offshore to find and extract the vital energy our country needed. I pay tribute to them. On Teesside, we built many of those steel piles utilising some of the most highly skilled workers in the world, and there are many hundreds from the area I represent helping to maintain and operate the platforms not just in British waters but all over the world.
I know that health and safety—words often ridiculed as the most dangerous in the English language in terms of being a barrier to advancement and profit—has come a long way in 25 years and is not something that is important just offshore. It is a way of life. So it worries me, and worries the people who put their lives at risk working offshore, that we could be moving a little bit backwards in our commitment not only to having the highest standards, but to monitoring and enforcing them.
The tragic events that befell the Piper Alpha platform remain, to this day, the world’s deadliest offshore oil disaster. While 61 survived the events of 6 July 1988, we cannot repeat enough the fact that 167 people did not. Eight of those who lost their lives were from the Teesside area, where my Stockton North constituency is located. So were some of the survivors.
Lord Cullen’s critical report in November 1990 changed the entire safety culture for offshore firms and workers alike. The 106 recommendations he made for improving safety in the North sea resulted in a root and branch overhaul being accepted and implemented by the Government and the sector. I am sure that Members will wish to join me in applauding the HSE for its work in developing and implementing that regulatory framework, but it needs to remain in a strong position to address the issues as they arise and to continue the work to prevent disasters.
I was horrified to hear the HSE announce at a meeting of the Offshore Industry Advisory Committee that the planned restructuring will involve the abolition of the offshore safety division, the very inspectorate set up on the recommendation of the Cullen inquiry into the Piper Alpha disaster. On 1 April, as part of a Government exercise to restructure the HSE, the OSD was merged into a single division covering the whole of the UK energy sector. As Members may already be aware, on 5 June, I tabled early-day motion 192 in connection with that. I was appalled that that decision, which will pose a challenge to the significant and continuing progress made in offshore health and safety, was taken without a meeting first being held with industry bodies, the HSE and the trades unions to discuss the transfer of that highly specialised role.
In pushing through plans to restructure the HSE and abolish the OSD, the Government could be demonstrating a certain level of contempt not only for Lord Cullen’s recommendations, but for the safety of the 30,000 or so offshore oil and gas workers plying their specialist trades in the North sea. Arguably, those irresponsible actions fly in the face of the European directive introduced last month, which requires member states to nominate a “competent authority” covering offshore safety to implement the directive’s provisions on planning for responses and preventing major hazards. Prior to the reorganisation of the HSE, I would have thought that such a move was unnecessary for the UK, as that extra regulation would largely mirror the reality on the ground. Now, however, I am not so sure. Not having a body responsible solely for offshore safety seems to me to be incompatible with the spirit of this directive and flies in the face of the lessons to be taken from Piper Alpha.
Concerns at the cessation of a stand-alone, specialist offshore safety inspectorate within the HSE and the link to the safety of the work force have also been voiced by those active within the industry. A survey in May this year of 5,000 offshore workers found that 75% think that the decision to scrap the OSD will undermine safety, with 62% venturing that changes of this nature risk a repeat of Piper Alpha. This is not a risk we should be taking, particularly at a time when platforms and infrastructure are ageing and the risk of safety issues is potentially increasing. Indeed, when speaking with a constituent who was aboard the Brae B platform at the time of the Piper Alpha tragedy, it was made exceptionally clear to me that this move could undermine the fight against complacency in the industry.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing this important debate.
As we have heard, 25 years ago 167 men lost their lives 120 miles off the coast of Aberdeen. My constituency of Inverclyde lost five men that night. They were fathers, sons, brothers, uncles, husbands and partners. It is said that my constituency is just one big village, so each and every community knew someone from Inverclyde who was lost on that dreadful night.
We can all recall where we were and what we were doing when we first heard the news of the disaster—it is one of those moments in time. I remember being on holiday back in July 1988 and finding myself frozen in front of the TV as I watched the unbelievable pictures on the screen. I knew then that men who had taken their skills into an industry whose business was extracting oil and gas in one of the most demanding of environments had paid for that with their lives.
The dangers could only be imagined at that time, but they came horribly true that night as the safety errors began to stack up. For the men lost that night who had families, those families will now be grown up and have families of their own, but each and every day they remember those who never returned from work. For these families, I dare say that 25 years has not passed quickly or easily, and for those who survived, the events of that night feel as if they happened yesterday.
If any Member missed the BBC 2 documentary on Tuesday evening, I encourage them to view it. It described the true terror and horror that night in the words of survivors. Even after 25 years, men were reduced to tears when recalling their escape and those they knew who had not escaped.
Each time we turn on our heating or ignite the gas to prepare our meals, I wonder if we ever give a moment’s thought to those who work in these extremely challenging environments. I wonder if we ever consider the level of risk under which these people, who apply their skills in cutting-edge exploration to find and retrieve oil and gas to meet our ever-increasing demand, are working.
So what went wrong that night? The causes of that terrible disaster are complex, yet they involve failure in some of the simplest procedures. Even though the initial explosion and fire were large, they should not have resulted in the total loss of the platform.
There seem to be two important reasons for the severe escalation in the events of that night. First, the Tartan and Claymore platforms continued to feed oil and gas to Piper in spite of the fact that they could see Piper was on fire. They did not stop the oil and gas flow because the communications systems had been destroyed in the explosion and
“no one told them to stop.”
The second reason for the severe escalation was that the pumps where the initial explosion occurred were not protected by a blast wall. Piper Alpha had originally been built in 1976 as an oil platform and was later converted to handle gas. The original structure had only firewalls. With the addition of gas, these should have been replaced with blast walls. Like so many disasters before, it would be an accumulation of errors that would bring about the Piper Alpha disaster.
What came out of the investigation afterwards were over 100 recommendations on safety improvements. Even basic health and safety procedures were scrutinised and found wanting. The men of Piper Alpha had paid a terrible price to emphasise yet again the need always to prioritise health and safety.
Twenty-five years have passed and we can be thankful that we have seen no other disasters of this scale in our offshore oil industry. However, complacency on safety in the environments we now look to explore could again exact a terrible price if we do not remember Piper Alpha. We have seen again evidence of concern with the BP environmental disaster in the deep waters of the gulf of Mexico, which reminds us that we are pushing the boundaries of oil and gas exploration and retrieval. The men of Piper Alpha should never be forgotten as those who paid the ultimate price; they were pioneers prepared to work in one of the most dangerous environments, so that we can enjoy an uninterrupted supply in our energy demand. The lasting legacy of Piper Alpha should be a legacy of dedication to good health and safety practices. We rightly remember the men of Piper Alpha in this Chamber today, but let us also remember the families who lost a loved one. May they continue to have strength and courage each day to bear their loss.
Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)
Last Saturday, I, attended, on behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition, the remembrance service for the victims of Piper Alpha at Hazlehead park in Aberdeen, as did many hon. Members here, including the Secretary of State. As hon. Members have said, it was a moving tribute that reminded us of the full scale and depth of the tragedy, and we saw again the sorrow of the families left behind. In this House today, we offer them our deepest sympathy.
I, too, remember Piper Alpha and the pain that was felt throughout Scotland at the loss of those who had given so much for a vital Scottish industry. May I, like others, pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran), who has been a constant advocate for the victims of Piper Alpha and has consistently worked since then to ensure the safety and protection of the workers in the oil industry? He speaks with great authority and has gained much respect for his work on these matters.
We have heard from many hon. Members about the events of 6 July 1988, and no matter how many times we hear these stories, they do not get any easier. Most of us have waved a husband, wife, son or daughter off to work in the morning—it is part of the rhythm of life—but few have had to deal with them not returning. That is what happened to the families of the 167 men who died as a result of the disaster on the Piper Alpha platform. The families of those who work in the North sea already make the sacrifice of having long weeks with loved ones away from home, and they worry about them working in a potentially dangerous environment. The very least that those who work in hazardous conditions can expect is that we have done all we can to guarantee their safety. With Piper Alpha, and with the whole oil and gas sector at that point in the 1980s, that was, sadly, simply not the case.
When Lord Cullen was appointed to lead the inquiry into the disaster, the then Government gave him a wide-ranging mandate to investigate the sequence of events that night and to make recommendations about how to prevent a similar disaster in the future. As many hon. Members have said, he completed his inquiry in 1990, producing a comprehensive and far-reaching report, and we still owe him a debt of gratitude for the work he did to bring in a new safety regime for the North sea.
Before turning to Lord Cullen’s recommendations, I want to spend a moment or two revisiting some of the points made by hon. Members about the sequence of events on board the platform on that terrible night. As has been said, the first explosion happened at just after 10 pm, when there were 226 people on board. Most of the witnesses remember the final thing they heard before the explosion as the pips from the radio news and the start of “News at Ten”. The captain of the Lowland Cavalier, which was stationed 25 metres away from the platform, reported seeing the start of the explosion, which looked like “a gas burner”. He said that
“it seemed to go along the bottom of the platform like a light blue explosion or ignition.”
Between four minutes past 10 and eight minutes past 10, three mayday calls were sent from Piper Alpha. Mike Craig, former chair of what was the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee, was a radio operator on board another platform in July 1988, and he remembered hearing the first of the maydays from his radio room that night. He recalled recently that
“the radio operator on the Piper was heard sending a series of alarmed Mayday messages, and the whole horror of the disaster began to unfold. It was a long and harrowing night.”
At 20 past 10, another major explosion occurred on the platform when the Tartan gas riser ruptured, and the first men began jumping into the North sea from the north-west corner of the platform. By 10 to 11, there was a further massive explosion caused by the rupture of another gas riser, this time from MCP-01. That was the most powerful, projecting debris over 800 metres and with enough force to be felt more than a mile away.
All that time, the majority of the remaining survivors on the platform were following the instructions they had been given for emergencies, which were to gather in the accommodation unit and await rescue, but by this point no helicopter rescue was going to be possible. As Lord Cullen notes in his report:
“there was no organised escape. If leadership occurred in these escapes, it arose by individuals joining those who seemed to know their way around.”
Those actions probably saved the lives of the 28 men who escaped the accommodation block, but, as we know, many more did not make it out and when the block was salvaged later in 1988, 81 bodies were found inside. Just three hours after the first explosion, the centre of the platform had collapsed into the North sea and the few survivors who remained were picked up in the hours that followed.
The full horror of what happened on Piper Alpha can be seen from the many photographs that were taken that night. They show the platform engulfed in flames, fuelled by a constant stream of gas from the risers that did not properly shut down. The effect, according to one eyewitness, was like a giant “bunsen burner”.
The scale of the disaster called for a radical rethink of the safety measures in place in the North sea and that is what Lord Cullen provided. His 106 recommendations covered the safety regime, design of platforms, procedures for evacuations and the involvement of the work force. The safety case regime meant a rigorous system that elevated responsibility for safety on the platforms to board level. The move of the regulator from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive removed the conflict of interest caused by the Department being both regulator and beneficiary of the oil and gas extracted from the North sea.
Those wide-ranging changes in the oil and gas industry were absolutely necessary, but Members should be in no doubt that they could not have happened without the pressure brought to bear by the families of victims, their supporters and their trade unions.
Since then the industry has done much to mitigate risk and, as has been said, we have seen a significant reduction in the number of fatalities in the industry in recent years, but we must not be complacent. Concerns remain, particularly around the regulatory environment and the Government’s proposed changes to the Health and Safety Executive.
One of the linchpins of the Cullen report was the establishment of the regulator in a separate part of the HSE. After the Government’s proposed reorganisation of the HSE, the regulator for oil and gas will become part of a new energy division inside the organisation, ending the dedicated division for the first time since Lord Cullen’s recommendations were implemented. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) said, that was done with a lack of proper consultation with trade unions and with oil and gas companies.
In conclusion, will the Secretary of State assure the House that those changes will not affect the UK’s safety case regime and that that world-leading safety regime will not be affected? The increased risk that comes with operating ageing platforms and drilling in more hazardous environments and the events in the last year on the Cormorant Alpha platform, as well as the major gas leak from Total’s installation in the Elgin field in March 2012, mean that it is more important than ever that we do not forget the lessons of Piper Alpha. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that he is satisfied with the inspection regime? What action has been taken on the issues identified in the interim report on key programme 4 and when will we find out when that report is to be published?
In particular, will the Secretary of State tell the House what discussions he has had with the oil and gas industry regarding the HSE’s observation that when it comes to ageing infrastructure,
“more innovative work is required…to involve the workforce”
in health and safety issues.
Twenty-five years ago Piper Alpha took 167 lives. The youngest victim was just 19—Mark Ashton from Inverurie. The oldest was David Wiser at 65. They were all men with lives left to live. Speeches in honour of them in this place are a fitting memorial, but today we should rededicate ourselves to taking continued action to ensure that such a disaster never happens again. In that way, we pay due respect to the victims and their families.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (Michael Moore)
As the speech from the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) has just underlined, the events on Piper Alpha 25 years ago this week remain deeply shocking. The legacy of the tragedy has been profound. It is right that in this House we remember those who died and focus on what we must do to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing this important debate through the Backbench Business Committee, supported by the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and others across the House. They have all made hugely important contributions to the debate and I hope that in the brief period available I will be able to respond to a number of the points that have been raised.
As many have observed here this afternoon, the events of 25 years ago on the Piper Alpha platform were truly horrific—unimaginable, indeed. But the loss of 167 lives is something that families and communities across Scotland, the rest of the UK and overseas have to deal with every day, to this day. We must never forget those who lost their lives. On Saturday, like so many others, I had the honour of attending the service to mark the 25th anniversary of Piper Alpha at the memorial in Aberdeen’s Hazlehead park. Along with the First Minister, the Provost of Aberdeen, the shadow Scottish Secretary, local MPs and MSPs, and many industry representatives, I was privileged to join hundreds of family members and others in the act of remembrance.
The service led by Chaplain Gordon Craig was a moving and fitting tribute to those who lost their lives on 6 July 1988. The floral tributes from the families were many and varied. All were beautiful and all were a powerful reminder of the pain and loss so many have suffered. The flypast by the RAF Sea King helicopter reminded us of the work of the emergency services. The roll-call of those who lost their lives was a haunting reminder of the human cost of the disaster. The garden of remembrance, fully restored in time for the anniversary, provided a beautiful setting for the service. The restoration work in the gardens now allows the memorial to be set off appropriately.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for allowing me to intervene. May I ask him a question in relation to the emergency services? The Royal Air Force played a very important part in responding to the tragedy, including the loitering of a Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, which performed vital tasks. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that the UK is now the only North sea country not to have a maritime aircraft capability, and could he explain how the tasks that were performed by the Nimrod 25 years ago could be matched, should there ever be a tragic accident again?
Michael Moore
I join the hon. Gentleman in the tribute that I pay to the RAF of that time and since for the work that it does to maintain our maritime safety and in so many different guises. If he does not mind, I will not revisit the debate, which I appreciate he has sought to have on many occasions about maritime safety, other than to say that we remain thoroughly committed to the highest possible standards of maritime safety, as I hope the rest of my remarks will underline.
Before and after the service on Saturday we all had the chance to speak to some of the survivors and families and those, such as the social workers, who have been by their side all these years. That was a humbling part of the proceedings—the quiet dignity of the survivors; the shared stories of the families; the determination that the legacy of Piper Alpha will be an endless quest for the highest possible safety standards.
The right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) underlined that with her speech, highlighting the tireless efforts of Gavin Cleland and other family members over the years. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) rightly focused on the safety culture that needs to run right the way through all organisations. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) stressed the importance of ensuring that new and young entrants understand the safety culture. My hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) focused on the industry’s efforts, particularly at the recent Piper 25 conference, to ensure that serious impetus is given to structural safety and that many other aspects are not forgotten.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) rightly underlined the importance of the memorial in her constituency, which looks fantastic. By the time the roses are out, it will be a truly special place. The hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), like the hon. Member for Waveney, highlighted the fact that this is not just about Scotland; it is a broader tragedy. He rightly made some challenging comments about the Health and Safety Executive, to which I will return shortly. The hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie), repeating some of the earlier themes, highlighted the extreme complexity of the series of problems that occurred that tragic night. The hon. Member for Glasgow East gave a graphic reminder of the disaster and its legacy. I hope to deal with the points she raised in the remaining time available.
As well as focusing on the families, as was right, every contribution we heard today also focused on safety. In my role as Secretary of State, I have seen at first hand over the past three years the work of many companies in north-east Scotland that are at the forefront of the industry. The people who work for them are at the front line, and all the way back through the supply chain it matters that safety counts at every turn. The industry employs over 29,000 people offshore at any one time and supports hundreds of thousands more jobs onshore, and £11.2 billion was paid in tax on production in 2011-12, so it is really important to the country.
The industry faces challenges in the years ahead as we seek to access reserves that are becoming ever harder to reach. We are rightly focused on ensuring that the correct fiscal regime is in place to drive the necessary investment to maximise the returns from the UK continental shelf and underpin future decommissioning, but that will count for nothing unless we maintain the strongest possible safety regime for those working offshore. We need to ensure the viability and security of that key sector of the UK economy, but every bit as important is the protection of the individuals who work in it.
We have heard many observations this afternoon about the Cullen inquiry. We still owe Lord Cullen a huge debt for his recommendations, which have been implemented in full. A revolution took place in North sea safety as a result of the lessons learnt from the Piper Alpha catastrophe. We have a duty to maintain the highest possible standards. Only recently the European Commission published its directive on oil and gas safety and environmental measures. It borrows heavily from the United Kingdom’s regime, which we welcome. We are committed to meeting the implementation deadline in July 2015 and will immediately be working with the industry, the work force and other interested parties to develop the necessary legislation. We envisage the formal consultation taking place from the spring of 2014.
Piper Alpha might have revolutionised North sea safety, but Deepwater Horizon, the Cormorant oilfield and the Elgin leaks remind us that there is never any room for complacency, and that must begin in government. We recognise that this is not just about action from the industry; it is also about the role we must play at every turn. Regulators must share lessons and evolve to meet current and future challenges.
A number of Members mentioned the Health and Safety Executive and the creation of a new energy division that will bring together its offshore division, its gas and pipeline specialists, both onshore and offshore, and its mines inspectorate. At the heart of these changes is our desire to enable the HSE to meet the wider challenges of emerging and new energy technologies but also to underpin the core efforts that we must continue to make in the North sea and the offshore sector.
Our approach to inspections will not change. We will still have the proactive programme, as in the past, and that is important. The HSE has also been given ministerial approval to recruit additional offshore staff and to widen the range of recruitment methods to maximise the chances of identifying suitable recruits. Hon. Members have made detailed points and broader points about health and safety, and I will ask the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), to address them after this debate.
Another issue that has been raised is the impact of asset life extension on safety in the North sea, and it is right that we should turn our attention to that. In the 2008 debate mentioned by the right hon. Member for Stirling, there was a commitment to review the key programme 3 report on asset integrity, which had shown some less than satisfactory outcomes. The review found that the industry had allocated considerable new resource and effort to improve offshore assets, supported by evidence of good progress in addressing more general issues identified by the KP3 work. The findings of the review show that we all need to recognise the ongoing need to keep our focus on the assets that we have. That is why it is so essential that the HSE-initiated KP4, the ageing and life extension inspection programme, also comes to fruition. That programme will run until December this year before finalising its findings. An interim report was published last autumn and we aim to publish the final report as soon as possible after it has concluded.
Throughout the debate, Members have rightly focused on the role of the work force in the North sea. We continue to seek the highest level of engagement with the work force at every turn, particularly in relation to safety. Nobody is closer to those hazards or understands them better than those who work on the different platforms and installations, and we have to ensure that we work closely with them in designing and maintaining our safety regime. However, as Members have highlighted, safety culture cannot be achieved simply through legislation. It is a combination of many factors, including leadership and basic competence that translates into a set of behaviours at all levels in an organisation. That is why it is so important that the industry keeps working with all its different stakeholders to ensure that safety is at the heart of every regime.
I pay tribute to the Backbench Business Committee and to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North for bringing forward this debate in this particular week. It is so important that we remember the tragedy of 25 years ago. Above all, we must not forget the lessons of the past. We must not forget those who lost their lives on Piper Alpha. We must continue to take the action necessary to ensure that safety is at the heart of everything in the North sea.
Mr Doran
First, I thank all colleagues who have contributed to the debate. It is an important debate not only, as has been said, for those of us in the north-east who are in direct contact with the industry, but for those whose constituents work in the industry. Those workers come from all over the country and from many other countries. As everyone has recognised, it is a significant industry that makes a huge contribution to the Exchequer.
Two thoughts occur to me. First, it is always helpful to have a debate about the reality of health and safety and the consequences for those who work in any industry of poor safety systems, a lack of safety systems, or poor management of safety systems. We have been talking about the awful reality in, yes, an admittedly extreme case. Away from the cauldron of party and ideological differences, we have made the important point that health and safety is fundamental, as Bob Keiller said and as many others involved in the North sea are recognising, as are, I hope, people throughout the country.
Secondly, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) reminded me of Gavin Cleland, whose son tragically died in the incident. I first met Gavin in the Shadow Cabinet Room after it happened. He was part of a group I had brought down to London because they wanted to meet the various politicians involved, including the then Secretary of State for Energy. One of Gavin’s ambitions was to campaign for a prosecution, because that is one of the key things that is missing from the case. Despite all the evidence in the Cullen report and everywhere else, there was no prosecution. I am not calling for a prosecution at this stage, but at a time when many historical cases are being looked at in retrospect, such as Hillsborough and events in Northern Ireland, re-examining the Piper Alpha case is worth considering. What holds me back, however, is the fact that that might be difficult for a lot of those who were involved, especially the survivors and the families—
Business without Debate
Franchising of Stockton Crown Post Office
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of the people of Stockton-on-Tees and surrounding areas in opposition to the Post Office’s proposal to downgrade our local Crown post office. It was signed by many hundreds of people over only a few days.
The petition states:
The Petition of the people of Stockton-on-Tees and surrounding areas,
Declares that the Petitioners totally oppose the franchising of Stockton Crown Post Office and believe the proposal will severely damage the provision of services.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to call upon the Post Office to withdraw their plans and retain Stockton Crown Post Office.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001195]
Planning Guidance (Children's Homes)
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
Over the past couple of years, there has been an increase in public awareness and understanding of the myriad problems facing children and young people who live in children’s homes. I welcome the Government’s recent initiatives to improve the quality of care in children’s homes and the clampdown on the high number of children placed miles away from home, as well as the improved collection of data on missing children. I am also pleased that the suitability of an area is to be taken into account before a children’s home is allowed to register because that will stop clusters of children’s homes springing up in run-down hot spots where there might be drugs problems or a bail hostel housing released sexual offenders.
A joint parliamentary inquiry by the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults, and the all-party group on looked-after children and care leavers, which I chaired last year, revealed that a significant minority of vulnerable young people living in children’s homes are targeted for sexual exploitation. Recent high-profile court cases, such as the Oxford case, have also highlighted that problem.
I shall focus on planning legislation in my speech because it is the final piece of the jigsaw on children’s homes and tackling child sexual exploitation. I also want to explore how we can marry the Department for Education’s new and admirable proposals to stop children’s homes springing up in the wrong areas with the fact that existing planning laws do not specify that that is a material planning consideration.
The national minimum care standards for children’s homes, on which Ofsted bases its inspections, state that children’s homes should be located in safe areas. The inspection should assess whether the
“home’s location and design promotes children’s health, safety and wellbeing and avoids factors such as excessive isolation and areas that present significant risks to children”.
The Department for Education’s new proposals, which are currently subject to consultation, take that further by including a requirement for the providers of children’s homes to carry out a risk assessment of the area in partnership with the police and the local authority. Registration will be refused or suspended if the area is deemed unsafe. In the light of those new proposals, I argue that we need fresh planning guidance to reflect the fact that a home deemed by the police and Ofsted to be in an unsafe area will not get registration and to state that that needs to be a material consideration at the planning stage.
It is crucial that planning guidance is re-examined; otherwise we will have a crazy situation similar to that recently brought to my attention in Birmingham, where the planning committee is considering a planning application to open a children’s home in an area renowned for prostitution, drug dealing and serious crime—a red light area. I find this staggering. The papers for the planning committee reveal that there has been a history of young girls in this area being groomed for prostitution, and that it even led to the closure of another children’s home on a nearby road. The concern is that opening a new children’s home in the same area would result in the same risks of vulnerable children in care being targeted by sexual predators. There have been an enormous number of objections, including from the police and the cabinet member for families and children, yet the council officers recommended that permission be granted because there are no planning grounds to refuse consent.
The decision clearly flies in the face of the Department for Education’s new proposals and illustrates my point exactly that the planning guidance from the Government needs changing. Of course, I accept that the planning system is separate from the child protection system, but it is hard for the public to understand how planning permission can be granted for a children’s home when there are so many objections on child protection grounds. I also understand that planning authorities have a lot of discretion and are able to turn down planning applications on any grounds that they think are appropriate and that are linked to local and regional planning policy.
I have been aware of planning problems for a number of years. On 1 February 2010, I held an Adjournment debate on planning applications for children’s homes. When I first worked as a social worker in Stockport in the 1980s, small, family-type care homes provided a family environment for quite young children, and the carers were often a resident couple. Now, younger children are placed with foster families and the young people placed in children’s homes are older with difficult and challenging behaviour. They often come into care with multiple problems and complex needs.
Stockport has 34 privately owned children’s homes—one of the highest numbers in the country. There are 241 children living in children’s homes in Stockport, but only 26 of them actually come from Stockport.
Stockport council recently held a scrutiny review of the relationship between its agencies, private children’s homes and the police. The review highlights concerns about current planning regulations and the proliferation of children’s homes in residential areas. It recommends changes to planning policy so that the number of existing homes in an area can be a material consideration at the planning stage of a new application for a children’s home. That arises out of concerns for the implications on local resources of children with complex needs being placed in the area from out of the borough.
When I first raised the matter of planning guidance for children’s homes in 2010, I was primarily concerned that certificates of lawful development were being issued for children’s homes opening in family homes where I felt if would have been more appropriate for planning permission to have been sought as a class C2 use rather than class C3.
The current rules relating to when a change of use for a building does and does not require planning permission are set out in The Town and Country Planning (Use Classes) Order 1987. Use class 3 is a dwelling house occupied by a single person or people living together as a family. It can also include not more than six residents living together as a single household, including a household where care is provided for residents. Use class 2 is for residential institutions and applies when there are more than six occupants, or when the occupants are not considered to be living together as a single household. The issue of when planning permission is required for a children’s home is still a matter to be determined depending on the circumstances of each individual case, which will turn on whether a “material change of use” has occurred from class C3 use to class C2.
In 2010, an appeal was made to the Planning Inspectorate because of a failure to secure a certificate of lawful use for a children’s home in Stockport. The planning inspector refused the appeal and concluded that the residents could not be said to be living together as a single household. It said that there was a lockable office and other rooms and that this was more akin to institutional, rather than normal family home life. He also said that the residential use of the property by troubled children could bring more disturbance than most family homes. That, among other factors, led him to conclude that there had been a material change of use.
A paper issued by the planning services department at Leeds city council in December 2012 entitled, “Guidance Note—Planning Permission for Children’s Homes C2 or C3”, said that the problem of whether a children’s home would fall into category C3 could turn on the definition of a single household. It quoted a North Devon judgment on the definition of a single household. Justice Collins said that it was unrealistic to expect children to look after themselves in a single household. It clarified that carers who provided 24-hour care but were not resident could not be regarded as living together in a household. The paper concluded:
“A children’s home run on shift patterns could not be considered to fall within Class C3…because clearly, this is not occupation of a dwelling house by a single person or people living together as a family.”
The judge said, however:
“Although it may sound somewhat illogical, it is accepted…that, notwithstanding that this may fall within Class C2, rather than Class C3, nonetheless planning permission may not be required if the change of use was not a material change of use.”
The courts have held that whether a change of use is material or not is a matter of fact and degree for the local planning authority to determine, having considered the individual facts of the case.
On children’s homes, the present use categories, C3 and C2, create confusion, and as the judge said, it seems illogical that having established that a proposed children’s home is in use class 2, which one would think would require a planning application for a change of use from class 3, it would then have to be established that the change of use was material and therefore needed a planning application. This adds further confusion. I accept that planning is a judicial procedure based on case law, but I think there is a lack of clarity from Parliament. I think the Minister will appreciate that my constituents also find it extremely confusing.
The confusion about material change of use could be sorted out by having a different use category for children’s homes, spelling out how a children’s home is defined, including, for example, rotating shift workers, visits by therapeutic staff and lockable offices. I understand, however, that the Government are reluctant to introduce new use classes, so my other suggestion would be the issuing of new planning guidance saying what constitutes a children’s home. However, the other issue is about when planning permission for a children’s home should be refused. I hope he agrees that it cannot be right that a children’s home can be recommended for planning permission in an area that is clearly unsuitable for vulnerable young people.
I would like to see planning guidance on when it would be appropriate to refuse planning permission—for example, when there are concerns about the safety of children because of activities in the area, such as prostitution or drugs, or where there is already a proliferation of children’s homes, which has implications for local resources. As I said, Stockport has one of the highest numbers of private children’s homes in the country. There is concern that the geographic distribution of children’s homes—more than 25% of all such homes are located in the north-west—means that children are being placed many hundreds of miles from their own areas. A change in planning guidance would also help to ensure a better distribution of children’s home to meet children’s needs.
Guidance would be extremely useful, because as the Minister knows, Government planning guidance is regarded as a material consideration in planning decisions. It is right, in the interests of the welfare of young people in children’s homes, as well as the wider community, that the suitability of the location be considered. In effect, I am calling for the kind of planning guidance issued for development on green-belt land, where the Government state what they would consider to be an inappropriate development, which is used as a material consideration in planning applications. If it can be done to protect our countryside, it can be done to protect our children.
That would also mean that the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government would be singing from the same hymn sheet. Under the new Department for Education proposals, which say that children’s homes should not be allowed to open in an unsafe area, it seems unlikely that the children’s home I mentioned would get registration. We therefore have the ludicrous situation where planning permission is recommended for a children’s home near roads that have been closed by the council to stop kerb crawling. New Government planning guidance that spelt out that the safety of an area to vulnerable children is a material factor to be considered would ensure that such a situation does not arise.
I hope the Minister will agree that it is time to clear up the confusion and issue new planning guidance on children’s homes to bring clarity to this unsatisfactory situation. The Government have—quite rightly—given priority to tackling child sexual exploitation and improving protection for children in our care, and I hope the Minister will respond positively to my suggestions, which are aimed at engaging his Department in achieving that admirable objective.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Don Foster)
I thank the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) for securing this important debate on planning guidance for children’s homes. As she said, providing safe accommodation for looked-after children must be a priority for all local authorities. Sadly, we are all too well aware of the outcomes for young people who have been let down by the care services. She has been a real champion for children in care, and I know she speaks with authority on these issues.
The hon. Lady raised a number of issues about the provision of children’s homes, some of which I know are based on specific cases. I hope she will understand that as such cases are subject to further consideration and planning decisions, I will not be able to discuss those particular issues, and I apologise in advance that my comments will cover such matters in their generality. I hope to show, however, that her proposed solution to these issues, and particularly the creation of a new class, is not the most appropriate way forward, and I believe that the issues and concerns she raises can be dealt with outside the planning system.
On the location of children’s homes, although we must give priority to the needs of vulnerable children, we must also consider the needs of the community in which they live. Government policy on looked-after children seeks to ensure that all children’s homes are properly run and situated in locations that take into account the safety and protection of the children living there.
The hon. Lady eloquently outlined the planning arrangements, and I hope she will forgive me if I go through them to make things absolutely clear. Use classes orders operate by grouping together land uses that have similar impact into “classes”. The order—this is the specific point—allows changes between certain land uses where the impact would be minimal, without the need for planning permission. Change of use is allowed within the same class, and there are cases, as the hon. Lady rightly says, where movement between classes is permitted. For example, premises currently used as a restaurant, which is class A3, could be converted to a shop—class A1—without seeking planning permission. That is because the impact of a shop on the surrounding area is likely to be the same or less than that of a restaurant.
The hon. Lady suggested the creation of a new use class category for children’s homes. The use classes order is intended to be deregulatory, however, allowing changes of use with minimal impact on land use and amenity. That removes the time and expense of making planning applications, and allows local authorities to concentrate their planning resources where they are most needed.
Under the use classes order, children’s homes—depending on their particular type—can either be in an ordinary family home, which as the hon. Lady rightly says is classed as C3, or in a dedicated residential institution, classed as C2. It is for local planning authorities to decide on a case-by-case basis into which class a particular use falls. I would expect most children’s homes to fall into the C2 category, which is the same class as other residential institutions such as nursing homes or training centres. Some smaller children’s homes could fall into family house class C3, which provides for small groups of people living together as a single household, including cases where there is an element of care.
When a change of use happens, the local planning authority must consider whether a material change has occurred that would require planning permission. It is an important principle that the test for planning permission being required is whether a material change of use occurs.
The hon. Lady has drawn attention to the need to consider carefully the location of a home for looked-after children in relation to the needs of those children and young people, and the host community. I absolutely agree that such considerations should be carefully applied, but I do not accept that such consideration can take place only in the context of a planning application, because planning is concerned primarily with the use of land and the effect on amenity of an alteration or change to the use of land. Planning is not intended to deal with problems such as antisocial behaviour by occupants or the location of a home in respect of other children’s homes.
The national planning policy framework clearly sets out that local authorities should work with public health leads and health organisations to understand and take account of the health status and needs of the local population, including expected future changes. It sets out the Government’s key priorities for the planning system, but we have given local authorities the freedom and flexibilities to make decisions locally about how best to meet their development needs. Therefore, we do not believe it would be right to set out specific planning guidance on this issue.
However, I agree with the hon. Lady that we must do more to ensure that all looked-after children in children’s homes are given the best possible support. In particular, they must be kept safe from exploitation and abuse. We have seen in the recent court cases involving children in Rochdale and Oxford that we have not always been able to do that. She mentioned the recent changes announced by the Government to improve the quality of children’s homes. I thank her for all the work she has done, through the all-party group and the Department for Education’s expert working group, which have greatly influenced the proposals.
The proposed reforms announced last month by the children’s Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson)—will lead to a much sharper focus on the quality of children’s homes and stricter measures to hold local authorities and care homes to account for their decisions, which is the critical point. We are therefore introducing rules so that Ofsted will allow new homes to be opened only in safe areas where they are run by competent providers. We will also ensure that homes already open in less safe areas demonstrate that they can protect children; otherwise, Ofsted will close them. As the hon. Lady said, the Department for Education is seeking views on various changes to the regulatory framework, including requiring the registered manager of a children’s home to complete an annual risk assessment of the area where the home is located. That work would require liaison with the local police and the local authority children’s services responsible for safeguarding.
The Department is also consulting on a parallel change to the Care Standards Act 2000 (Registration) (England) Regulations 2010—known as the registration regulations 2010—to require the potential provider of a children’s home to complete a risk assessment of the area in which they plan to operate and a list of safeguards regarding how they will mitigate any identified risks. That would include the sort of issues raised by the hon. Lady about prostitution, drug dealing and serious crime. The potential provider would be required to liaise with the police and the local authority about any concerns that might impact on the welfare of children, relating to the area where it is proposed to open a children’s home.
There will be a further requirement that the risk assessment and a list of safeguards are forwarded to Ofsted, so that it can consider whether the home has carried out an appropriate risk assessment and put in place adequate standards and safeguards. If Ofsted considers that a children’s home has not complied with those duties, registration could be refused or suspended. I hope that will reassure the hon. Lady that we are putting in place the necessary measures to ensure that the location of children’s homes and the safety of children will become a much more important consideration in the registration of homes than it has been in the past. We also want to reduce the risk of exploitation and harm by reducing the number of children placed a long way from their home—a point she rightly raised—and by addressing the quality of support provided in all homes.
Our changes will therefore include strengthening the current regulatory framework in respect of local authorities placing very vulnerable children at significant distance from their home. We know that such children are more likely to go missing from care and be at risk of exploitation. Proposals include a requirement for a senior local authority official to sign off all placements that are at a significant distance from the child’s home. They also require the placing authority to consult with the area authority prior to placement to ensure that it can meet the full range of the child’s needs.
The proposals set out that all homes should have an environment and culture to support positive behaviour that all staff understand and implement; and that homes should meet children’s emotional and behavioural needs as set out in their care plan. Such support can prevent vulnerable children from being exploited or getting involved in crime. We are consulting on plans so that children’s homes work much more closely with police and local authorities to prevent children going missing. We are strengthening the rules so that local authorities take decisive action where children are at risk of going missing, especially when they are placed away from home.
In conclusion, we fully agree with the hon. Lady’s aims, but do not believe that changing planning law is the best way to achieve them. The changes we are introducing to the statutory framework for children’s homes will, we believe, achieve the required outcomes that she is seeking. My Department receives numerous requests to change use classes orders. Some want to make it easier to change use, while others want to see greater restrictions. I think that we probably have the balance right at the moment, but I give the hon. Lady the assurance that we will continue to keep under review the use classes order in general, and we will continue to keep under review the issue of planning guidance, particularly in relation to the point she raised.
I end by saying a huge thank you to the hon. Lady for securing the debate and for the work she has done to help influence significantly important changes in Government policy. She should be congratulated and thanked.
Question put and agreed to.