House of Commons

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

Monday 21 October 2013

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

1. What steps his Department has taken to make the planning system more accessible to local people.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

2. What steps his Department has taken to make the planning system more accessible to local people.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

For the first time ever, people who are not councillors or planning officers can get involved in drawing up a plan for their community that has full statutory weight. More than 540 communities have been designated as neighbourhood planning areas and a further 210 have applied.

[Julian Smith]

Constituents in Skipton, the gateway to the Yorkshire dales, continue to be frustrated about the overturning in Bristol of planning decisions have been taken locally in Craven. What advice can the Minister give to my constituents?

[Nick Boles]

The best defence and the way to guarantee that the local authority representing local people is in the driving seat is for that local authority to get on and complete its local plan. That is sometimes a difficult process, but that is the best thing to do—to get on and complete that local plan.

[George Freeman]

Does the Minister agree that for far too long under the previous Government planning seemed to be done to communities, rather than by them? Last week I attended and spoke at the public inquiry into the potential development of the Tiffey valley, which South Norfolk district council, with a five-year land supply, is defending. What assurance can my hon. Friend give me that under the Localism Act 2011, which we all supported in this House, councils that have a land supply and are seeking to implement a town plan will receive the Government’s support?

[Nick Boles]

It is true that we have finally, after a certain amount of effort, managed to scrap the regional strategies that the previous Government used to impose entirely unwanted plans on local communities. The best way to ensure that local decisions will be supported and will stick is for local authorities to have a clear plan which sets out how they will meet their objectively assessed needs. That means that they can pick and choose where and how those needs will be met.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Planning guidance about a material change of use from a residential house to a children’s home necessitating a planning application is unclear. Last July, in response to my Adjournment debate, the then Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government, and now the Comptroller of Her Majesty’s Household, the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr Foster), said that he would continue to keep under review the planning guidance in relation to that. Has there been any progress? As the Minister will appreciate, many local people would welcome the opportunity to contribute to a planning application because of the safeguarding issues surrounding children.

[Nick Boles]

We have no further plans at this point, but I am happy to meet the hon. Lady to explore the issue further, if she would appreciate that.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

In last week’s debate on high streets, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) said that on her high street Nos. 14, 37, 38 to 40, 44, 48 to 50, 52, 60, 70, 72, 93 to 95, 175 and 206 are all betting shops, payday loan outlets or pawnbrokers. Does the Minister honestly think this is what local people want? Will he explain to the residents of Deptford and elsewhere why his Government are making it harder, not easier, for communities to stop such premises taking over their high street and town centre?

[Nick Boles]

Local authorities have a range of powers under planning rules and licensing to restrict the growth of these various uses. However, the hon. Lady must say why the Government whom she supported did more to relax licensing laws to encourage the growth of gambling, and only now in opposition seem to have changed their mind about this business.

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

Local authorities whose local plans have been found wanting find themselves under siege from opportunistic developers. The result is planning applications in places such as Evercreech which are the reverse of what local people want. Can the Minister say that emerging local plans will have a material impact on planning decisions, and can he make sure that local authorities resubmitting plans get to the top of the list to stop this happening further?

[Nick Boles]

The best way to stop this happening is for local authorities to get their plan right the first time, but if revisions have been made, once the plan has been through the public consultation phase, it does not have a huge number of unresolved objections and it has been submitted to an inspector, it certainly can start gathering weight. The precise position is set out in the revised planning guidance that is currently open for consultation.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Is not the relaxation of planning laws over recent months making matters worse for local communities trying to deal with the growth of payday lenders, bookmakers and unwanted fast food outlets, are not the Government adding to the problem?

[Nick Boles]

No, that is not the reality, as is almost always the case when the hon. Gentleman asks a question about planning law.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to help first-time buyers get on the housing ladder.

[Miss Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

15. What steps he is taking to help first-time buyers get on the housing ladder.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)]

The Government are committed to supporting people’s aspirations to own their own home. In just six months, our Help to Buy scheme has helped over 15,000 households reserve a new home for themselves and their families. The scheme is proving extremely popular with first-time buyers.

May I also take this opportunity to pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), for all his hard work, commend him for the gracious way he has handled himself and thank him for his generosity towards me?

[Paul Maynard]

I welcome the Minister to his new post. Many critics of Help to Buy point to the possibility of a housing bubble, but they clearly have not visited the north-west, where house prices have fallen over the past year. Why should first-time buyers in Blackpool North and Cleveleys be prevented from getting on the housing ladder because of metropolitan snobbery and petty envy?

[Kris Hopkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I agree that at the moment there is a huge media focus on London and the south-east. As a northern MP, I know that if we remove London and the south-east from the national figure of 3.8% for price rises, we get 2.1% for our part of the country, but several other parts have seen no increase at all, so we need to stick up for the Blackpools, Burnleys and Bradfords as well.

[Miss Smith]

The average earnings for my constituents working full time last year were under £23,000, so they know all about why it is right to cap benefits in order that people who work hard are not undermined by those who live off the taxpayer. Meanwhile, the average home in Norwich North sells for around £145,000. Does the Minister agree that Help to Buy can help make the dream of home ownership a reality for those people?

[Kris Hopkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. Since the housing crash in 2008, many families in her constituency have struggled to get on the housing ladder, and the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme, in particular, helps people like those she has mentioned. The tremendous response that RBS, for instance, has had, with some 10,000 inquiries in the first four working days, demonstrates that the Government are on the side of hard-working people and will support people such as the constituents she mentioned.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his new responsibility. Last week the Communities and Local Government Committee had the Department’s permanent secretary and officials before us. We asked about the impact of the Help to Buy scheme on new house building. They said that the equity share element would add a maximum of 5,000 new homes a year, but they could not give us any assessment at all of the impact of the mortgage guarantee element. Is that because the Government, like everybody else, now believe that the scheme will have a minimal impact on house building but a significant impact on house prices?

[Kris Hopkins]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words and look forward to working with the Select Committee. The Government have delivered 334,000 houses so far, 84,000 of which are affordable homes, and put a range of mechanisms in place to deliver houses. That is what is really important to people out there.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

23. The Government are absolutely right to help first-time buyers, but of equal importance are those who wish to move up the housing ladder but cannot do so without the first-time buyers entering the market. Does the Minister agree that the second-hand market is therefore as important as the sale of new homes, and what will he do to support it?

[Kris Hopkins]

New build is really important, but my hon. Friend is right that we must also stimulate the existing housing market. The mortgage guarantee scheme covers existing housing, so I suggest that he goes out to promote it to residents in his beautiful city of Carlisle.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

One of the real problems for first-time buyers is that simply not enough homes are being built to meet demand. In Lewisham, of the 15,000 homes that have been granted planning permission over the past six years, more than 9,000 are yet to be built. Is it not about time that developers were told, “Use it or lose it” when it comes to planning permissions?

[Kris Hopkins]

I want to promote investment in the housing market and to give developers confidence. The reality is that we have delivered 15,000 new homes through our Help to Buy scheme, and 1,000 of those were in London alone.

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

4. What steps he is taking to encourage local communities to fund social enterprises through crowdfunding and other new forms of finance.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

I follow my ministerial colleague in thanking my immediate predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr Foster), for the smooth handover into this post; it is always a good idea to be nice to the Chief Whip.

My Department established the community shares unit in October 2012, with £590,000 of funding over three years. Since then, communities have raised £16 million from 70 share offer launches. That is a significant increase on the £3 million raised the year before.

[Mr Sheerman]

I welcome the Minister, who was a very good member of the Education Committee under my chairmanship, to his new job. Is he aware that crowdfunding is how we could get a real renaissance of communities up and down the country? It is in peril at the moment because in the private and social enterprise sectors it is threatened by inappropriate regulation from the Financial Conduct Authority.

[Mr Speaker]

I am told that the hon. Gentleman has kept a list of all those members of his former Committee who went on to become Ministers. He will have satisfied himself of the causal link.

[Stephen Williams]

Mr Speaker, there are many distinguished alumni of that Committee, and I greatly enjoyed my three and a half years under the hon. Gentleman’s chairmanship.

The hon. Gentleman is chair of the Westminster crowdfunding forum. At the moment, the sector is completely unregulated; I am aware that the hon. Gentleman has recently raised concerns in The Sunday Times. If he has specific concerns about the heavy hand of regulation, he should write to me and I shall raise the matter with colleagues at the Treasury, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Cabinet Office.

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

5. What steps he is taking to promote the take-up of the community rights introduced by the Localism Act 2011.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

The provisions of the Localism Act 2011 have been able to be adopted for the past 12 months, and there have already been more than 1,000 such uses. We continue to promote use of the 2011 Act through local partners and the media. In addition, I am discussing the potential for cross-Government working, combining community rights and volunteering.

[Sheryll Murray]

A play park in East Looe in my constituency has been identified for possible housing development. It is the only green space in the area where children can play and where wildlife can live. What steps can the residents take under community rights to protect their long established and important local amenity?

[Stephen Williams]

My hon. Friend and other coalition colleagues across Cornwall will be pleased to know that Cornwall is a hotspot for use of the 2011 Act. In my first couple of days in office, officials showed me a map revealing that the 2011 Act had been incredibly popular, with more than 50 assets so far having been registered as being of community use. Through local plans across Cornwall itself, or through neighbourhood plans, local communities should be able to identify areas for special protection and use a local neighbourhood plan to attract sufficient homes, jobs and other essential services. My advice to my hon. Friend is that she should perhaps use a neighbourhood plan.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

When the Secretary of State visited ex-Ministry of Defence sites in Lincolnshire, he saw first hand the poor state they can be left in when the transfer of community assets is done badly by the MOD. What discussions has the Department for Communities and Local Government had with the Ministry of Defence to ensure that in future there is better transfer of assets, such as those in the Kirton-in-Lindsey area in my constituency, and that we do not have continuing sores in our communities, as has been the case in parts of Lincolnshire as a result of heritage?

[Stephen Williams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that issue; he will understand that I have not been aware of it in my first couple of weeks in office. I understand that the Secretary of State is aware of it and has already corresponded with the Ministry of Defence about it. I am sure that we will be in touch as soon as we hear an answer from ministerial colleagues.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

Will the Minister join me in congratulating my parish council in Chalfont St Peter on taking advantage of the Localism Act and producing a fantastic neighbourhood plan, which has been published this month and will be consulted on until 29 November? Does he agree that an important part of localism is getting local people to respond to such plans? Will he give some encouraging words from the Dispatch Box to residents in Chalfont St Peter, to ensure that we get maximum feedback on that excellent local plan?

[Stephen Williams]

One of the areas I was really pleased to find that I had responsibility for when I took up this post was neighbourhood planning, because my own constituency has made good use of it. The residents of Chalfont St Peter should be congratulated on embarking on this process. I am sure that any assistance that the Department can give and any guidance that is available will lend a hand.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

6. What steps his Department is taking to bring empty and redundant buildings back into use.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

With the new homes bonus we provide £235 million in grant and £130 million to local authorities for homes brought back into use. We have revised and are further reviewing permitted development rights. Since 2010, over 40,000 homes that were long-term empty have been brought back into use.

[Pauline Latham]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that bringing empty homes back into use is important not only as a sustainable way of increasing the local housing supply but because it can alleviate the negative impact that neglected empty homes can have on communities in constituencies like mine and similar areas?

[Mr Pickles]

My hon. Friend makes a very reasonable point. Derbyshire has benefited from £600,000 of empty homes funding, and I am sure that that will make quite a difference to her constituency. The substantive point is that this not only gets housing back into stock but means that streets and communities are not blighted. It is a win-win for just about everybody.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

But what about the 300 empty homes in Wirral since the advent of the bedroom tax, including a block in my constituency that now looks set to be demolished without any plan for a replacement? This threatens dereliction in parts of Wirral. Is the bedroom tax not causing empty homes and risking antisocial behaviour, and is it not a false economy, never mind bringing empty homes back into use?

[Mr Pickles]

The hon. Lady exaggerates. The spare room subsidy is a reasonable and effective way we can ensure housing for people who need it where there is a shortage of housing. It is absolute nonsense for Labour Members to complain about empty homes: on their watch, we lost 420,000 houses in this country, and that is a disgrace.

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

On our high streets 40,000 shops—one in seven—are sitting empty, partly because of very high business rates. Will the Secretary of State support our proposals to give local retailers an average saving of £450 a year by freezing business rates?

[Mr Pickles]

Under the previous Labour Government, business rates shot up. We have offered local authorities and small businesses a complete removal of business rates through discounts. Under Labour, it was much more difficult to obtain those discounts. Frankly, the hon. Gentleman has got a cheek to make that suggestion.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

7. What recent assessment he has made of the effects on people on low incomes of council tax support schemes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

These are local schemes and it is therefore for local authorities to ensure that the effect on low-income council tax payers is proportionate and fair. This coalition Government have made a £100 million transition grant available to help councils to develop well designed schemes and maintain incentives to work.

[Alex Cunningham]

That is a pittance. Last week the Minister said on the BBC that he was making sure that councils have the ability and the money to protect the most vulnerable people from his council tax benefit changes. How many of the vulnerable—the disabled, carers, war veterans and war widows—have been affected by the policies he has imposed on the nation?

[Brandon Lewis]

As I said, these are local schemes. I can confirm to the hon. Gentleman that under Labour spending on council tax benefit hit £4 billion a year, costing hard-working families almost £180 a year and costing more than education, defence and health combined. This Government are dealing with the mess of the economic deficit and debt left by his party’s Government.

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

Does the Minister believe that disabled people being summonsed to court, three-bedroom houses that cannot be let and poor people having to choose between paying their council tax bill and eating constitutes a success? If so, what would constitute a failure?

[Brandon Lewis]

Failure would be going back to the policies of the old Labour Government, when council tax and spending on council tax benefit doubled, costing hard-working families about £180 a year each. That is exactly why this Government have put in £100 million to help councils have the time and space to develop good schemes to protect the most vulnerable, which they have a duty to do, and it is also why we have protected pensioners.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

9. What recent guidance he has given to councils on delivering savings in local government.

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

I published “50 ways to save”, a practical guide for councils, which describes how they can make the most of their budgets to deliver savings, protect front-line services and keep council tax down.

[Damian Hinds]

East Hampshire district council has saved more than £5 million since 2010 by joining forces with Havant borough council and establishing a joint senior management team. What other such opportunities might exist elsewhere and what guidance has been given?

[Mr Pickles]

I commend East Hampshire and Havant councils for their excellent work together. To be frank, this is the future, whether we are talking about a relatively small district, a county or a unitary authority. It makes sense to work together on joint procurement, joint use of offices and shared services. That is probably one of the reasons why the recent BBC ICM poll shows that in many areas resident satisfaction in services such as rubbish collection, schools and libraries is improving.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister says that we are all in this together, but between 2010-11 and 2012-13 his local authority of West Oxfordshire—one of the least deprived in the country—is losing only £34 per head, compared with Hackney, the most deprived area in the country, which faces a massive cut of £266, and my constituency, which faces a cut of £234. Does the Secretary of State think that is fair and will he reassure the House that the local government financial settlement for 2013-14 will narrow the gap?

[Mr Pickles]

If the hon. Gentleman is going to ask a Whips’ question, he should at least try to memorise it. He will know that the top-spending authorities, which are largely Labour authorities, are getting something like an extra £700 per household. To compare a tiny district council with his own is utterly ridiculous.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Through the Secretary of State, may I thank the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis) for visiting Kettering borough council last week? Would the Secretary of State like to take this opportunity to congratulate the council, which for the past three years has frozen council tax, has not cut any front-line services and has maintained all its grants to the voluntary sector?

[Mr Pickles]

That just shows what a committed Conservative council will do, compared with Labour authorities, which seem to be interested in shroud-waving and cutting front-line services.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

Liverpool city council will have seen a real-terms Government grant cut of 56% between 2010 and 2017. That £329 million reduction means that come 2017 we will have a shortfall of £17 million for mandatory services. Why are the most deprived areas being hit the hardest?

[Mr Pickles]

We are funding hard-hit areas to a greater extent. Something like the amount of money paid per household in Liverpool will be well above the amount that is paid in more prosperous parts of the country. I do not recall the hon. Lady saying that kind of thing when we put together the multi-million-pound city deal for Liverpool.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of the availability of local authority recycling sites.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

We do not hold that information centrally, but I was pleased that the recent ICM poll for the BBC, which the Secretary of State has mentioned, showed that resident satisfaction with both recycling and refuse collection has risen while council tax has been kept down.

[Valerie Vaz]

The main recycling facility at a supermarket in my town centre has been removed by the council, so my constituents have to drive to Aldridge or Bloxwich to recycle paper, cardboard and bottles. What steps can the Minister take to support the council to return the facility to the town centre?

[Brandon Lewis]

As the hon. Lady knows, we are very keen on weekly waste collection. I was pleased to see the satisfaction with recycling go up. I am sure that, with her efforts, a good local consensus will be found. I am delighted that she is singing from the same hymn sheet as the Secretary of State.

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

May I commend Hambleton and Richmondshire district councils for their responsible recycling? What conversations has my hon. Friend had with Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on reducing the amount of packaging? Seldom do I find myself agreeing with Jeremy Clarkson, but on this occasion he may be right.

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. My colleagues at DEFRA are very focused on that issue. Somebody once made the fair point that recycling should be a last resort, because we should deal with packaging as a first resort.

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

11. What assessment he has made of the current dispute in the fire and rescue service; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

I welcome the fact that Saturday’s industrial action was called off, as I am sure do Members across the House. That was a direct result of my Department’s facilitating constructive discussions between the employers and the Fire Brigades Union. I hope that that will provide the basis of a lasting agreement which ensures that hard-working firefighters have one of the most generous pension schemes in the public sector, while being fair to taxpayers.

[Mrs Glindon]

Like the Minister, I welcome the fact that the firefighters’ strike that was planned for last Saturday was called off. I hope that the decision to conduct further talks will result in fruitful negotiations and sound guarantees for the firefighters. Will he tell the House why industrial action had to be called before he would agree to talks through ACAS?

[Brandon Lewis]

If I may correct the hon. Lady, it was my suggestion to involve ACAS. I cannot say why the Fire Brigades Union called the strike action in the first place. We said that it was unnecessary and we still believe that it is unnecessary. We hope that the Fire Brigades Union and the employers implement the principles that they agreed with our facilitation to ensure that nobody is left without a job or a pension at the age of 55.

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

I congratulate the Minister and his officials on the sensitive way in which they have carried out the difficult negotiations. Will he confirm that, subject to the sensible resolution of details between the employers and employees, the cost envelope and principles that have been agreed will not only protect firefighters in cases of genuine ill-health retirement, but allow them in cases of full service to retire on one of the most generous pension schemes in the public sector?

[Brandon Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind comments. As he will know from the excellent work that he did in negotiating with the Fire Brigades Union for the first two years of this Government, the issue of fitness and capability is for the employers to resolve, not the Government. I am pleased that we were able to facilitate the parties in coming together and I hope that they will come to a conclusion that ensures that firefighters have one of the best pension schemes in the public sector.

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

The Minister responsible for the fire service has not been doing his job. First, he wanted to privatise the fire and rescue service; then he imposed reckless cuts on it. Now he is suggesting that the fitness standard should be lowered so that front-line firefighters can be forced to work until the age of 60. Does that not display contempt for these courageous public servants who risk their lives to keep us safe? Does he not agree with me that it would be more appropriate if he did his job? If he had done it properly in the first place, the dispute could have been avoided.

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman does himself a huge disservice in the way that he puts the question, for a couple of reasons. Putting aside the fact that the retirement age of 60 came in under the Labour Government in 2005, the issue about fitness and capability is, as I have said, for the employers and the Fire Brigades Union to resolve. I am delighted that we have brought them together.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Everyone appreciates the work that is done by the fire and rescue service. However, is there any reason why firefighters should have a public pension that is more generous than those for the armed forces and for police officers?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend is quite right. He reminds me that the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) also made a point about privatisation. As has been made clear a number of times from the Dispatch Box, that is a fallacy that he made up. I know that he continues to perpetuate it, but it is a complete fallacy and is not what this Government are doing.

My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) is right that firefighters will end up with one of the best schemes in the public sector and that the age is being brought into line with the police and the armed forces.

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

13. What estimate he has made of the average cost of adapting properties for disabled people who move home because of the under-occupancy penalty.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

We have provided local authorities with £25 million of discretionary housing payments this year to assist under-occupying disabled people who live in significantly adapted accommodation and who are affected by the removal of the spare room subsidy to remain in their homes.

[Cathy Jamieson]

Does the Minister agree that it makes absolutely no sense to move people who have had their homes adapted to other homes where they are in danger of having to incur further costs on the public purse? I have heard from people who received a discretionary housing payment in the first round, and they are now being told that they will not get one. Will the Minister assure my constituents, and those across the country, that they will not be forced out of their homes when they have a disability?

[Stephen Williams]

The fund is discretionary so it is up to local authorities—including those in Scotland—to decide how to spend the money. We would obviously expect them to take into account the public money spent on that property previously, and consider what is in the best interests of the tenant.

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Minister to his new responsibilities.

More than half of those hit by the bedroom tax are disabled, and nine out of 10 disabled people who are not receiving discretionary housing benefit are cutting back on food or bills and having to choose between heating or eating. Does the Minister advise them to put on another jumper, skip a meal, or move to a non-adapted property that then has to be adapted at huge cost to the taxpayer?

[Stephen Williams]

I, too, welcome the hon. Lady to her post.

I would not presume to advise an individual at all; each individual must make up their own mind about how they will adapt to a change in circumstances. I advise local authorities, housing associations and local advice bureaux to work holistically with each tenant affected by the policy, and to consider what advice and support can be given so that they can transition to the new arrangements.

[Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)]

14. What assessment he has made of the availability of smaller properties for people affected by the under-occupancy penalty.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

18. What assessment he has made of the availability of smaller properties for people affected by the under-occupancy penalty.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

The Department and the Homes and Communities Agency publish information annually on the number of social rented properties by size, and during the year the number of properties available for letting will vary.

[Pamela Nash]

I welcome the Minister to his new position, but I must say that that answer was rather vague. It has been reported that there are enough one and two-bedroom social housing properties for only 4% of those affected by the bedroom tax. Does the Minister expect the other 96% of those affected to go into private lets? If so, will that not send housing benefit payments shooting upwards, rather than cutting them?

[Stephen Williams]

Clearly, the implementation of this policy will take a while, and each tenant must weigh up their own circumstances and consider how they adapt. As I said previously, I expect local authorities to work with all housing providers in an area, including the private sector—in my constituency more people rent in the private sector than in the public sector—and consider the best use of stock and what assistance is most appropriate for the individual.

[Meg Hillier]

In Hackney, 3,581 households are affected by the bedroom tax, and since April only 70 have been helped into smaller accommodation. The scale of the problem is such that to meet demand we need just under 2,000 one-bedroom properties, and just over 1,200 two- bedroom properties. The Minister may say that we should look at other solutions, but what solutions does he suggest for a borough such as Hackney?

[Stephen Williams]

I do not have information for the hon. Lady’s constituency, but across London 78% of people on housing benefit are unaffected by these changes, and many of the balance will be affected only by one bedroom. As I said, I expect local authorities, including Hackney, to look across all housing providers in the area and consider best use of the stock. The hon. Lady’s constituency and mine are not utterly dissimilar, and there may be people living in overcrowded accommodation in the private sector who could move into houses that are freed up in the social sector. Then everyone would be better off.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that the Government will save money with their bedroom tax only if families who are hit are unable to move? Will he be clear: will the bedroom tax be a success if people move, or if they cannot?

[Stephen Williams]

Each circumstance is different. As I said to the hon. Lady’s London colleague, the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier)—I am sure this is also true in West Ham—there may be people living in overcrowded conditions in the private sector who desperately want bigger accommodation that is available only in the public sector. That is the housing casework that has come to me over the past eight and a half years of representing an inner-city constituency. We are spending huge amounts supporting people in overcrowded conditions, and across the private and public sectors we are not making best use of the housing stock available.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

19. If he will make it his policy that planning authorities ensure that section 106 agreements produce adequate funds to finance the building of schools forming part of the planning approval when granting consents for major residential developments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Nick Boles)]

The national planning policy framework is clear that development should be sustainable, and that local authorities have a responsibility to make plans to provide the necessary infrastructure to meet the needs generated by new development.

[Sir Bob Russell]

I am most grateful to the Minister; he could not have been more clear. With that in mind, will he agree to meet me and representatives of the Essex education committee so that we can avert a monumental planning blunder? Consent is about to be granted, or could be granted, for 1,600 homes when the section 106 agreement is seriously deficient.

[Nick Boles]

I know that my hon. Friend has already met the Secretary of State about this issue and has also asked for the application to be called in by the Department. That means that one of us has to be able to decide the issue. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend will understand if I do not take up the offer of a meeting, for fear that no Minister will be left to decide.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) will be pleased to have exhausted the ministerial team.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

20. What representations he has received on the effectiveness of independent assessments of the performance of local authorities.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

My hon. Friend may well know that we have reduced burdensome top-down assessments of the performance of local authorities. We have abolished the unnecessary and invasive comprehensive area assessment, and strengthened local accountability through transparency measures, making councils accountable to the local people who elect them. The recent BBC ICM poll suggests that residents are currently happy with council services.

[Mark Pawsey]

Councils across the country have reason to be grateful to the Secretary of State for getting rid of the costly and bureaucratic comprehensive area assessments, and for replacing them with an optional system of councils inviting local government leaders to conduct a review. In that regard, has the Minister seen the very positive outcome for Conservative-controlled Rugby borough council? Its report was overwhelmingly positive and the leader was described as providing a

“strong and progressive focal point”.

[Brandon Lewis]

Getting rid of comprehensive area assessments has saved the public purse around £28 million a year. On top of that, work going on now means that there is a constructive, involved approach from the sector—opening up and looking more sensibly at what works—rather than a tick-box culture. I am delighted that such a good Conservative authority is showing so highly in the process.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware that the Local Government Association has independently assessed that Tory-led West Somerset council will not be financially viable in future. How many more local authorities does he believe will not be financially viable in future as a result of his Government’s cut to local services?

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman gives a good example of where the sector and the LGA are working closely with the council to help it to work its way through shared management, particularly shared senior management, and shared services, which will bring the kind of savings needed—it is a small district council serving just 35,000 residents—and take things forward in a prudent and sensible way. That is the sector helping itself rather than the old tick-box culture that cost everybody so much.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

22. What steps he is taking to promote the take-up of the community rights introduced by the Localism Act 2011.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave to our colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), in Question 5.

[Graham Evans]

Will the Minister explain how his Department is providing information, guidance and funding to help community groups in my constituency to exercise their rights?

[Stephen Williams]

Yes. The Department has so far made £60 million available to communities to support them in taking up their community rights. I advise the hon. Gentleman to advise his constituents to look at the booklet we have published, “You’ve got the power”, and—more likely—at the website, mycommunityrights. org.uk.

[Mr David Crausby (Bolton North East) (Lab)]

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

[The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)]

I welcome the hon. Ladies and hon. Gentlemen on the Opposition Front Bench to their new responsibilities. I hope they will be very happy.

In the past week, we have announced a series of measures to help families in housing. Local people and armed forces rather than foreign nationals will be given priority in council house waiting lists; fraudsters who illegally rent out their social homes for profit will face new criminal sanctions; private tenants will be better protected from the small minority of rogue landlords and letting agencies; and family-friendly tenancies will be supported as part of the move to expand the provision of quality rented houses. The Government are on the side of hard-working people, backing those who do the right thing.

[Mr David Crausby (Bolton North East) (Lab)]

Everyone in Bolton is working hard, despite difficult circumstances, to revitalise our town centre, but one of our biggest problems is expensive car parking. While the council is doing its bit to help, what can the Secretary of State do to encourage local authorities to deliver free car parking schemes, so that town centres can compete with out-of-town shopping?

[Mr Pickles]

What an excellent question. I agree entirely that local authorities have a responsibility. When my own local authority introduced half an hour free parking throughout the borough, it made an enormous difference. Expensive parking is cutting off the nose to spite the face. The more people come into a town centre, the more profitable it becomes and the better it is and the more people feel it is like home.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

T2. My constituency is home to a great many members of the armed forces. As is well known, levels of home ownership are below average among this group, not least because credit is difficult to obtain for a whole slew of reasons particular to the profession. Will the Minister update the House on the progress made in addressing this problem?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)]

As a former soldier, I thank my hon. Friend for asking that question and applaud him for his interest. Every day, a military family is taking up home ownership as a consequence of the Government’s intervention. To date, 780 families have taken advantage of First Buy and our home loan equity plan.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

In April, the Secretary of State imposed a council tax increase on more than 2 million people on low incomes, because of his changes to council tax benefit. In response to a survey from my office, 112 councils revealed that 156,000 people, including the disabled, carers, veterans and war widows, have already received court summonses. Citizens Advice is seeing people who are having to choose, as it puts it, between staying on the right side of the law and feeding themselves. Since the right hon. Gentleman is responsible for the position they now find themselves in, what advice would he give them about what they should do?

[Mr Pickles]

My advice is, “Don’t use bogus statistics and bogus surveys.” The official statistics show clearly that the numbers of summonses and collections are in a much better position than they were under Labour. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that there were 3 million summonses a year under Labour. Collection is up and defaulting is down.

[Hilary Benn]

Once again, the Secretary of State does not want to take responsibility for the change he introduced. He should be very careful before he accuses local authorities of producing bogus statistics. I have here the reply from Brentwood council, which has issued 250 summonses; I have here the reply from Epping Forest council, which has issued 337 summonses; and, as the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) is sitting there looking at the floor, I will tell him that South Kesteven has issued 585 summonses. Is it not the truth that the Secretary of State is in denial about the facts and the hardships that his tax rise is causing to people who, remember, are on the lowest incomes, which is why they receive council tax benefit?

[Mr Pickles]

The right hon. Gentleman should be careful. I was not accusing councils; I was accusing him. He talks about Brentwood council: its statistics show that there is virtually no change from the previous year. He is trying to make bricks out of straws. He had a campaign and it was not very successful. A lot of local authorities are doing well and are protecting the poor and the vulnerable. By and large, it is Labour authorities that are letting the side down.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

T4. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his initiatives to ease the cost of parking on our high streets. Does he agree that one of the simplest ways for local authorities to operate is to offer 30 minutes of free parking on roads outside shops, as that will revitalise our neighbourhood centres?

[Mr Pickles]

My hon. Friend will recall that under the previous Government, councils were urged to put up car parking charges and to make it difficult for people to bring cars into town centres. As I said earlier, I know from personal experience that the policy he suggests makes a difference. If we are to protect our town centres, particularly our smaller shops, this is exactly the kind of measure that needs to be introduced, and those councils that do not do so are failing in their duty.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

T3. The Secretary of State’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) was just not good enough. When more than one in 10 small businesses now say that they spend the same or more on business rates as on rent, why will he not do more to help struggling small businesses on our high streets by implementing a cut and then a freeze worth up to £450 to the average business, as the Opposition would do?

[Mr Pickles]

The small business discount has trebled under this Government. Also—this is a new thing we have introduced—local authorities now have total discretion over what discount to offer, and we will come up with half the money, so frankly the hon. Gentleman’s council needs to sort itself out.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I’ve got two.

[Mr Pickles]

Get them both sorted out then.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

T6. I welcome the £190,000 transitional funding to Swindon borough council last week, which recognised, yet again, the innovative ways in which Conservatives are transforming public services. Does the Minister welcome the innovative steps under way in Swindon to ensure that parking facilities and charges are delivering that much-needed town centre regeneration?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

It was a pleasure to visit Swindon recently to see the great partnership work it has got going across the public sector. It was a good example of how to move forward in a new and modern way, reducing costs and getting better results for residents. To hear that it is also looking at sensible schemes to make it easy and affordable for people to park and get back into their town centre reconfirms how good a Conservative council Swindon now is.

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

T5. According to Government figures, my council, North Tyneside, one of the poorest areas of the country, is facing a 2% cut in spending power this year, while the Prime Minister’s council, West Oxfordshire, one of the richest parts of the country, will have an increased spending power of 3%. Will the Secretary of State explain to people in North Tyneside how this is fair?

[Mr Pickles]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on having the dexterity to put her own council’s name into the handout, but before she arrived, that question had already been answered.

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

T8. Following analysis by SPARSE Rural, it has come to light that Cheshire West and Chester council received £273 core Government funding per head; that neighbouring Liverpool council received £635; and that Manchester city council received £584. Will the Minister commit to investigating whether Cheshire West and Chester council is getting the support it needs to provide the services it is bound to deliver?

[Brandon Lewis]

I admire my hon. Friend’s work in championing his area, and I am pleased he highlighted how Liverpool council has among the highest spending powers per head in the country. I am happy to meet him and representatives from his council, but I would point out, as we said in a debate a couple of weeks ago, that an independent report in the House of Commons Library this year showed that the funding settlement was fair not just to north and south, but to rural and urban areas.

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

T7. The Secretary of State likes to talk the talk when it comes to parking charges, so will he explain why three of the highest-charging councils are Tory controlled?

[Mr Pickles]

By which I think the hon. Gentleman means the amount of money they receive. I suspect that under any system, no matter who ran it, Westminster might get rather a lot of car parking.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

T9. What recent consideration have Ministers given to allowing authorities such as Poole, Bournemouth and Dorset to share transit sites for Travellers, given the lack of space in the conurbation and the great need for the police to be able to invoke section 62 powers when, for example, play areas become unavailable for use by local children during the school holidays?

[Mr Pickles]

The hon. Lady was kind enough to raise this matter with me a few weeks ago. There was some suggestion that there was a prohibition on adjoining local authorities’ sharing facilities. Having checked with the planners in my Department, I am happy to report that there is no restriction. We would very much welcome the idea of local authorities working together on this important and sensitive issue.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the impact on the quality and management of private sector tenancies of his decision to abandon the national register of landlords?

[Mr Pickles]

One of the things we were concerned about was that we might repeat some of the mistake’s that Labour made over rent controls and the placing of a lot of burdens on landlords. The last thing we wanted was to see a great plunge in the availability of properties for tenants. So, by and large, I think that this has been a very good thing.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

The Planning Minister told us earlier that local councils getting their local plans adopted was the best thing for them to do, but is that sufficient to enable them to defend those policies against the increasingly confident threats from developers to overturn them on appeal on the ground of a lack of a five-year housing supply?

[Nick Boles]

I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that it certainly is sufficient. One of the decisions that I have most enjoyed taking in this job has been to support the decision of a local authority, which had well in excess of a five-year land supply, to refuse an application for speculative development in an area where it did not want development.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

The National Audit Office has warned that 12% of councils are unlikely to be able to balance their books in the future. Do Ministers agree with that figure and, if not, what is their estimate of the number?

[Brandon Lewis]

In talking to local authorities, we have found that satisfaction with them is up and that they have coped extremely well with the changes that have come through to deal with the awful deficit left by the last Labour Government.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

The Leeds core strategy is currently being examined, with the council proposing what it admits is a hugely ambitious target of more than 70,000 houses and with the developers pushing for even more. Such huge targets would see up to 80% of new homes in my constituency being built on greenfield or green-belt sites. What appeal mechanisms exist for my constituents, should the inspector approve such unrealistic targets?

[Nick Boles]

Local authorities have to assess their housing need objectively. They can sometimes exaggerate or underplay it unrealistically, but any local plan has to go through an intense process of local consultation before it can be adopted. That will give my hon. Friend’s constituents every opportunity to say what they think of those assessments.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that the Williams review made it clear that it is possible for firefighters to serve in front-line roles until the age of 60, but only on the basis of a much-reduced level of fitness. Does he agree with that assessment?

[Brandon Lewis]

The Williams report made it clear that if firefighters keep up their fitness throughout their careers, as they have a duty to do—alongside the fire service’s duty to have a proper programme in place—they will be more than capable of maintaining full fitness until the age of 60. I was pleased by the principles agreed between the Fire Brigades Union and the employers to have a process by which firefighters can maintain their fitness in a proper way, and we will keep an eye on the progress of those negotiations.

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

The Secretary of State has rightly introduced discretion for councils to reduce rates where possible, particularly for hard-pressed retailers. Will he please put his considerable weight behind our campaign to persuade Enfield council to make the right choices and give relief to our hard-pressed retailers by using that discretion?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, as he did last week in our debate. He is right to suggest that councils seeking to develop their town centres, their businesses and their local economy should look into the discretion we have given them that allows them to discount local business rates in whatever manner they see fit.

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

May I draw the House’s attention to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests? Will the Secretary of State tell the House what his Department’s latest assessment is of the expected level of house price inflation over the coming year?

[Mr Pickles]

The Department relies on the Office for Budget Responsibility for those figures.

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

Surveys show that members of our fire and rescue service are among the most highly regarded of our public servants. Does my hon. Friend agree that the best way for them to maintain that enviable public perception is to continue to take part in negotiations and to continue to reject strike action?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend is quite right. The best thing would be to have no more strike action, and for the employers and the Fire Brigades Union to deal with the issues they are discussing so that we can reach a point at which we can deliver one of the most beneficial pension schemes in the public sector.

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Rochdale council’s leadership has only postponed its decision to increase some chief officers’ pay by over 30% and intends to bring it back. Does the Secretary of State share my view that such an inflated increase in pay is not acceptable at this time?

[Mr Pickles]

I am embarrassed that my Chief Whip is present when I want to compliment the hon. Gentleman and say that he is almost a lone voice for sanity on this matter. These clearly considerable sums of money, notwithstanding the increased responsibility, are entirely wrong and I would expect the decision to be taken to a full council for a recorded vote. Let the people decide who is most sensible in running their council.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

As the Secretary of State will know, Britain’s common bird population is in decline. Will he agree to meet Britain’s new home builders to try to get them to build provisions for wildlife into future designs, thereby restoring Britain’s bird population?

[Mr Pickles]

I have had a number of meetings, as recently as last week, with various wildlife groups to discuss how to build into development an understanding of the needs of wildlife. My hon. Friend makes a very reasonable point about the bird population, which, outside my day job, I enthusiastically follow.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Tenants in Nottingham who have been forced to downsize from a two-bed social home to a one-bed private sector home can expect to pay an extra £24.83 a week in rent. The Secretary of State’s bedroom tax is a costly mess; why does he not scrap it?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

We do not scrap it because we need to save money right across government. One of the major problems of implementing this policy is the lack of house building—[Interruption.] I know that the hon. Lady is from the 2010 intake and that Labour Members of that intake like to think that 2010 is year zero, but during the 13 years when some of her colleagues were in power, not enough affordable housing was built. That is the problem.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

More green belt and green space is under threat in my constituency than ever before, and local people marched in protest yet again at the weekend. Will Ministers tell them why local councillors are being told to pay absolute attention to econometric models and unelected inspectors and not to local people?

[Nick Boles]

My hon. Friend knows that local authorities have to assess their housing needs and then work out how they are going to meet them. It is for local authorities to decide whether they can protect the green belt while nevertheless releasing some small portion of it to meet that housing need, but only after full consultation with local people.

UK Nuclear Energy Programme

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

15:32

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)]

I would like to make a statement on the UK’s nuclear energy programme. I am pleased to inform the House that the Government and EDF have reached broad commercial agreement on the key terms of a proposed investment contract for a new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. This paves the way for the construction of Hinkley Point C—the first nuclear power station in the UK for a generation.

Nuclear power has been part of Britain’s energy mix since the 1950s, responsible at points for as much as a quarter of our electricity, but since Sizewell B connected to the grid in 1995, no new nuclear power stations have been commissioned. Eight of the nine operational nuclear power stations in the UK will reach the end of their planned life in the next decade. So the agreement today is a demonstration of the Government’s commitment to a new fleet of nuclear power stations to replace those due to close and to protect Britain’s future energy security.

A contract for Hinkley Point C under the key terms set out today would provide significant benefits for the UK, including up to 25,000 jobs for skilled workers over the course of construction and 900 long-term jobs during the 60-year lifespan of the plant; and a £16 billion injection into the economy, with the potential for British firms to get the majority of the work, and over £4.5 billion paid in corporation tax. EDF estimates that £100 million will go into the local economy every year during peak construction.

Hinkley Point C would supply a stable source of low-carbon, climate-friendly power to nearly 6 million homes—nearly twice the number of homes in London—and would supply 7% of the United Kingdom’s electricity by 2025. It would reduce emissions by the equivalent of about 5% of the UK’s annual carbon dioxide emissions from energy supply compared with unabated gas-fired generation. It would increase energy security and resilience from a safe, reliable, home-grown source of electricity, reducing electricity bills by about 10% compared with a non-nuclear future. With clean-up costs included from the outset, we would be avoiding the mistakes of the past. This is good news for jobs, good news for the economy, good news for bill-payers, good news for energy security, and good news for the environment.

This announcement also represents a significant vote of confidence in the Government’s reforms to the electricity market. We are creating one of the most attractive electricity investment markets in the world, driving an increase in low-carbon technology, and delivering the modernised infrastructure that will provide energy security and cut carbon emissions in the years to come.

Before I go into the details of the terms of the agreement, I want to put on record my gratitude to all who have worked so hard to bring us to this point, in EDF and in the Government, including those in my Department. I specifically thank Lord Deighton and his team for the strong contribution that they have made supporting the DECC negotiating team. I believe that, working together, we have agreed the basis of an arrangement that would provide a good deal for UK consumers. It would meet the requirement for value for money, accord with our “no public subsidy” policy, and provide an attractive proposition for EDF and its investors, offering a reasonable rate of return for the risks that they are taking.

Let me set out the key terms on which broad commercial agreement has been reached. Hinkley Point C would be the first nuclear power station to be built under the new system of contracts for difference that is being introduced by the Energy Bill. CfDs provide low-carbon energy suppliers with predictable future revenues, making it easier and cheaper to secure development investment and finance while protecting consumers should prices rise. The duration of the payments under the CfD for Hinkley Point C would be 35 years, which is about 60% of the 60-year operating life of the plant. That is proportionally similar to the length of the CfDs that are being offered to most renewable technologies.

Under CfDs, low-carbon generators receive a stable price for the electricity that they sell, which is known as the strike price. We have agreed a strike price of £89.50 per megawatt-hour, fully indexed to the consumer prices index. Hinkley Point C will be the first of the new European pressurised reactors in the United Kingdom. This strike price benefits from an upfront reduction of £3 per megawatt-hour, on the basis that EDF’s subsidiary NNB Generation Company Ltd would share the “first of kind” costs of the European pressurised reactors on the Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C sites. If a final investment decision on Sizewell C were not made, the strike price for Hinkley would be £92.50.

An agreement on those terms meets the Government’s value for money requirement. Hinkley Point C would compete with other low-carbon technologies, including onshore wind—the cheapest large-scale renewable—and with new unabated gas plant, including carbon costs, that commission in the same time frame.

Other terms on which broad commercial agreement has been reached provide a series of protections for both sides that together represent an appropriate allocation of risks, including gain share arrangements whereby, if the developer achieves savings during construction or through refinancing or equity sales, the strike price will be reduced; operational cost review arrangements, including reviews after 15 and 25 years to reassess operating costs and adjust the strike price in either direction if necessary; “change in law” arrangements whereby the strike price would be adjusted to reflect cost changes arising from certain changes in law; and compensation arrangements in the event of Hinkley Point C’s being shut down as a result of a political decision, rather than a decision on, for instance, safety grounds.

Separately, and for the first time ever, to deal with the clean-up costs of new nuclear, developers will be required to put money aside in a protected clean-up fund to pay for eventual decommissioning and a share of the waste management costs. This is anticipated to account for around £2 of the strike price. The Funded Decommissioning Programme would need to be approved by the Secretary of State before construction starts. All the terms are subject to contract and form the basis for further negotiation. EDF and Her Majesty’s Treasury will continue discussion regarding the terms of a potential UK guarantee. Ultimately, an investment contract would only be offered to NNBG if we consider the contract to be value for money and in line with our no public subsidy policy. Any investment contract would also be conditional on any required state aid clearance being obtained, and on Royal Assent of the Energy Bill. If agreed, the contract would be laid before Parliament in accordance with the Bill.

EDF has announced today the intent of two Chinese companies, CGN and CNNC, to invest in Hinkley Point C as minority shareholders. This follows the signing last week of a memorandum of understanding on civil nuclear co-operation between the UK and Chinese Governments. The UK and China have a long-standing bilateral agreement to co-operate on the peaceful uses of nuclear power. Chinese companies have an established track record in delivering safe nuclear power over the past 30 years. Any company getting involved in the UK’s nuclear power industry does so in accordance with the most stringent regulations in the world and, on this basis, we welcome companies that can demonstrate the capability to contribute to safe nuclear power generation in the UK.

In conclusion, I respect those who have long been opposed to nuclear technology on principle. As the record shows, I personally have had my concerns in the past, and so has my party, but I am satisfied—and I am sure Opposition Members who have had their concerns in the past are satisfied—that the safety and legacy issues relating to the new nuclear power programme are manageable, particularly with the protected clean-up fund.

With regards to the issue of cost, I am clear: this is not a deal at any price. This is a deal at the right price. Consumers will not have to pay over the odds for new nuclear. The price agreed for the electricity is competitive with the projected costs for other plants commissioning in the 2020s, not just with other low-carbon alternatives, but with unabated gas. As set out to Parliament in October 2010 and again in February this year, new nuclear will receive no support unless similar support is also made available more widely to other technologies. Nuclear will get no special favours

We have a huge challenge ahead of us. With many old and dirty power stations closing down over the next decade, the capital investment required to replace that electricity generating capacity is around £110 billion between now and 2020, the largest infrastructure programme in Government. This agreement is a vote of confidence in the measures this Government are putting in place to attract investment into the system, to make the market work, and to ensure we keep the lights on. We need to decarbonise our electricity sector to meet our emissions targets and our responsibilities to the next generation, and we need a revolution in home-grown energy generation to protect bill-payers from price rises caused by volatile world gas markets.

Nuclear power is a key part of the Government’s energy security strategy. This announcement is another step on the path to realising a safe and dependable source of clean power for millions of homes, jobs for thousands of skilled workers, a boost to the economy and reductions in electricity bills over the long-term. I commend this statement to the House.

15:45

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

As the Secretary of State is aware, there have been severe disruptions on the railway line today between Doncaster and London, owing to a power failure, which have prevented my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) from being here—she sends her apologies to the House, Mr Speaker.

I thank the Secretary of State for giving me early notice of his statement and congratulate him on making it back from Hinkley this morning looking slightly less damp and dishevelled than he did earlier. At the outset, let me make it clear that we support new nuclear power in Britain as part of a balanced, diverse and lower-carbon energy mix. Of course, we will look in detail at the agreement, and those aspects of the agreement yet to be concluded, but in principle we believe that nuclear power is safe, and that it contributes to our energy security, reduces our carbon emissions and makes us less vulnerable to the vagaries of wholesale gas prices.

Today, I want to ask the Secretary of State about three aspects of his statement, the first of which is the very important one of value for money. He has announced a strike price of £92.50, of which £3 will be shared as “first-of-a-kind” costs with Sizewell C, should that development go ahead. Can he explain how that figure was arrived at, and why he believes it represents good value for money for consumers? Will he also confirm that any change to an investment contract will be published, and that any change which results in an increase in cost to consumers in the view of the panel of independent experts will be classed as a “varied investment contract” and therefore laid before Parliament for debate? EDF has also said that its £16 billion budget included a contingency fund. If that fund is not used, or if costs underrun, what mechanism will there be to ensure that compensation goes to consumers, rather than to the general Treasury pot?

Secondly, let me turn to the impact of the announcement on our environment, on the local community and for the economy. The Secretary of State will be aware that the Energy Act 2008, passed by the last Labour Government, means that before consents for new nuclear power stations are granted, the Government have to be satisfied that effective arrangements exist, or will exist, to manage and dispose of the waste they will produce. In January, although Copeland and Allerdale borough councils were in favour, Cumbria county council voted to withdraw from the process to find a host community for an underground radioactive waste disposal facility. I understand that his Department has started a new consultation exercise to find a host site, so is he satisfied that the arrangements to manage and dispose of the waste produced at Hinkley Point C are in place?

There is also agreement across the House that communities that host nationally significant infrastructure should be compensated. In July, the Government announced a package of community benefits, but those come into force only when the plant is operational and not during the construction phase, when disruption is likely to be greatest. What consideration has the Secretary of State given to the Select Committee’s recommendation, which I know is shared by Sedgemoor district council, to extend community benefit to the construction period?

The Secretary of State also mentioned the wider economic benefits of the investment. We share his desire that today’s announcement will help to create a strong British supply chain and secure highly skilled engineering, construction and operating jobs. Last week, the Government signed a memorandum of understanding allowing Chinese companies to take a minority stake in nuclear developments in Britain. Given the nuclear expertise that exists in this country, can the Secretary of State tell the House what provisions were made to allow British firms to advise on and be involved in nuclear build in China?

Thirdly, we hope that today’s announcement is the first in a series of new nuclear projects in Britain, so let me finish on the lessons of these negotiations and today’s agreement. Today’s announcement is subject to EU state aid approval, so will the Secretary of State tell the House whether he has received any indication from the Commission about whether approval is likely to be granted and in what time scale? What are the Government doing to ensure that other potential nuclear sites are developed? Does he also accept that today’s agreement shows that long-term certainty is what really matters to unlock the investment we need, not allowing overcharging to continue now? The Government say that they cannot freeze electricity prices for 20 months, but he has just set them for 35 years for companies producing nuclear power. So does he therefore further accept that when on 24 September he said that our 20-month price freeze proposal would put “investment in doubt”, today’s announcement shows him to have been completely wrong?

Finally, as this comes on the same day as npower became the third big energy company to announce another price rise, and in light of the potential costs of this agreement, does the Secretary of State now accept that it is all the more crucial that we reform the retail energy market so that it is clear, fair and transparent, and so that consumers can have confidence that prices as well as investments provide value for what is, after all, their money?

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his response and, of course, we understand that the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) has been detained through no fault of her own. I think the power failure shows that we need this investment in our economy.

I welcome the support of the hon. Gentleman and of the Labour party. Let me go through his questions. He asked first about value for money and how the figure was arrived at. We have had a huge amount of negotiations. The hon. Gentleman will have noticed that many people thought that we would end up with £100, £97 or £95 per megawatt-hour. We have done a lot better than that—we have got the figure under £90, and I do not think that anyone thought that we would do that. We have got a good figure through hard, tough negotiations.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s question about value for money tests, he will know that as we have said on the record we have compared what we have achieved with the price of low-carbon generation and gas plus the carbon price. We believe that we will be able to show, both now and when we sign the final investment contract, that we have met that test. He asked whether any changes in the future would be published and I am sure that that will happen. It is very important that Parliament is kept abreast of those big changes.

The hon. Gentleman asked what would happen if the construction costs, including the contingency fund, were not used. If EDF and NNBG make savings on the construction plan, as projected, the good news is that we have negotiated a gain-share for the consumer. The consumer will have no pain-share: if the construction costs go higher, that risk is taken by the developer, by EDF, but if the construction costs are lower, the consumer will benefit. That has not happened before, and it is a welcome protection for the consumer.

The hon. Gentleman rightly asked about waste. I can tell him and the House that I am satisfied that arrangements are in place to deal with the nuclear waste, both in the interim and in the long term. He mentioned the consultation and that is part of that process.

The hon. Gentleman asked about community benefits and he is right that the package we announced last July comes into play only when the power station is operational. We have heard the Select Committee’s recommendation and, although I cannot prejudge our response to it, we will listen to it carefully. I will only say that EDF is already benefiting the community, investing in skills and young people in the area, and economic benefits will flow during the construction phase. EDF has already said that during the peak construction £100 million will go into the local economy every year. The local community will benefit even before the community benefit package is in place.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the memorandum of understanding and how it relates to UK companies going to China. He is absolutely right: the purpose was to ensure that UK nuclear companies, and there are many, get some benefits from exports and from working in China and other markets. That is important.

The hon. Gentleman made an important point about state aid. Of course, we were in touch with the Commission before the notification. Now we have formally notified, we will continue that contact. The Commission does not tell a member state ahead of notification whether it will grant approval—of course it does not—and it will not commit itself to a time scale. I am pleased that Commissioner Almunia has told us that a team will be in place in a timely fashion and will treat the issue with the priority it deserves.

The hon. Gentleman went on to ask how other nuclear sites are doing. I could go into a lot of detail, but let me simply give him one example. He will know that Hitachi bought the Horizon site and its nuclear reactor design is in the generic design assessment phase with the Office for Nuclear Regulation. Hitachi wants to proceed with its investments and, in due course, will enter negotiations.

The hon. Gentleman wanted to relate today’s deal with Labour’s price fix con. He was trying to argue that Labour’s price fix con must be possible if we can offer a fixed price for nuclear for 35 years. Once again, the Labour party shows its economic illiteracy. Given that the Leader of the Opposition did my job, he ought to know that even if a part of the electricity generation mix has a fixed price, the majority of generating costs remain variable and will be for some time. The fact that generating costs and wholesale costs are variable, often unpredictably so, means that prices sometimes have to change to avoid firms going bust. The fact that the Opposition’s energy price fix con cannot address this is bad news for consumers, bad news for competition and bad news for investment. It is genuinely worrying that the Opposition cannot see that.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman referred to npower’s decision today, which is extremely disappointing. I would say to npower’s customers, as I have said to British Gas customers: thanks to this Government there is a choice. Under the previous Government, who created the big six, there was not a choice of independent suppliers. There are now 15 independent suppliers taking on the big six. There is a real choice now—real competition—and that is a new development. It was not the case under Labour. So we are reforming the market in the Energy Bill, creating competition and getting a much better deal for the consumer. This is a good deal for the consumer. The only thing that would not be are the Labour party’s policies.

[Mr Ian Liddell-Grainger (Bridgwater and West Somerset) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister for coming this morning to see exactly what is going to happen at Hinkley C. This is very good, not only for my constituents, but for the United Kingdom. I have with me the prospectus for Sedgemoor district council, which the Opposition spokesman mentioned. We are open for business and this decision is important for upping skills, upping engineering and upping inward investment, not just for Bridgwater and West Somerset, but for the United Kingdom. Does the Secretary of State agree that today is a very good day for the British economy and for nuclear power in Britain?

[Mr Davey]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has championed this investment over a number of years. I saw on my rather wet visit this morning to Hinkley Point C that he is well known on the plant. The fact that he is focusing on the skills agenda, and that the Prime Minister and I met a lot of young apprentices who are looking forward to working at Hinkley Point C for many years, shows the potential for this development—what it means for the community that my hon. Friend represents, the wider economy and the British economy. It is indeed a good day for the British economy.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Even accepting the case for Hinkley, why is the Secretary of State not giving in-principle support to the Severn barrage, which would deliver clean green energy at half the price, at a similar strike price, over three to four times the lifespan of Hinkley and with three times the number of jobs? I just do not understand it.

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s persistence in this issue. He knows that I have met him and looked at the figures that have been produced by those who want to see a Severn barrage created. It would not be at half the price; it would probably be at double the price; it is extremely expensive. No one would be more delighted than I if we could see tidal power in the Severn. I believe it will come, but the price will have to come down because we must protect the consumer.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this news has been very long awaited and is therefore all the more welcome for that? Does he also agree that the prospect of Chinese investment in the nuclear industry in this country is extremely welcome, not least because China entirely shares Britain’s objectives of trying to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels for electricity generation, and also because China recognises that the safety and inspection regime of the nuclear industry in this country is the most stringent in the world?

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support in this matter. He is right to make it clear that Chinese investment into Britain, and in this case into our electricity supply system, is very welcome. We already have it. There are billions of pounds of Chinese money invested in the UK’s electricity industry and in our wider industry. I talked to EDF today, which has been working in China for more than 30 years. EDF has been partnering Chinese nuclear firms for a long time, so this partnership ought to be welcomed in the UK.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome this announcement, but the departmental press release said that up to 50% of the work would be available for employment in this country. Can the Secretary of State clarify whether 43% will not be available? Given the rundown in capacity in the construction industry and the shortage of our engineers, can he say what is being done to maximise the employment potential?

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome. He is right that we have negotiated a deal so that 57% of the value will go to UK firms, ensuring that they can get the benefit and develop their skills and that UK employees can be a big part of the project. We would have liked the figure to be higher, but unfortunately not a lot has happened in the nuclear industry for many years. I wonder whether Opposition Members might like to explain why that is. This Government have looked forward to ensure that there will be a better future for British nuclear firms, not only as a result of this deal, but because earlier this year my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and I published an industrial strategy for the UK’s nuclear industry, looking at all aspects, so that British firms and British people can benefit as we develop clean, low-carbon nuclear power in this country.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

I welcome the statement and, in particular, the fact that there will be a degree of protection for the environment because the nuclear industry will be responsible for the clean-up. Will the Minister give a little more detail on how much will be taken in the protection fund and whether there will be Government oversight of its administration?

[Mr Davey]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. One aspect of the arrangements that I believe will be particularly welcomed by consumers and taxpayers is that the operator will have to start meeting the clean-up costs from day one of generation, which has not been the case in the past. Two thirds of my Department’s budget is spent meeting the decommissioning costs of past nuclear power stations that have long finished generating electricity. That was a scandal and past Governments failed. This Government have learnt the lessons and ensured that the decommissioning costs are up front. There will be oversight of how the fund is operated to ensure that we protect future generations and taxpayers.

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

A 35-year contract that locks UK consumers into paying around double the market price for power does not sound like a good deal to me. If the Minister genuinely thinks that it is fair, will he agree to full examination of the terms by the National Audit Office? He talked about the developers being required to share waste management costs, so can he tell us how big the share will be that the public will have to pay for and what the expected cost of that additional subsidy will be? Finally, since there is a cap on the costs that EDF would have to pay for managing the radioactive waste, can he confirm that if those costs increase above the cap, the British taxpayer will have to pay for any top-up costs, however high they escalate?

[Mr Davey]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. She might have missed it, but the NAO put out a press release earlier today stating that it will be looking at the details of our commercial agreements, which we welcome, because we are very happy for our proposals to be scrutinised. We have encouraged transparency because we believe that we can make our case. Unlike in previous generations, when the costs were not transparent, we are prepared to be transparent. She might be surprised, because she probably did not realise that the NAO would be looking at this so early. She asks about the public share of waste management. The truth is that the public will have to shoulder a large amount of the cost of nuclear waste, because a vast amount of nuclear waste that has to be dealt with is from the past, from the first two generations of nuclear power stations and from the military’s nuclear programme. That was paid for by the taxpayer and no provision was made for cleaning it up. That is why this deal is different and so good for the taxpayer.

[Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)]

As one Liberal Democrat who supports nuclear power and always has, and who understands the need for mixed energy provision, may I ask my right hon. Friend to advise me on whether this will secure our electricity supply in future? Also, does he agree that this should have been done 10 years ago, because we have been pushed to the brink by the previous Government?

[Mr Davey]

I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. I will make two points in response to his comments. First, 7% of Britain’s electricity needs will be secured when the two reactors are working at capacity, which is expected in 2025. That is a huge bonus for our long-term plans for energy security in this country, and something that was not happening before the coalition Government came to power. Secondly, on his point about the Liberal Democrats, our party changed its policy at our recent conference in Glasgow, and I will explain to the House why we did that. The reasons are similar to those that led me to change my view. Climate change is a huge challenge for our country and for the world. Some people believe that we can combat it simply by using renewables and energy efficiency, but I do not believe that we can. I believe that it is such a serious threat to our world that all forms of low-carbon electricity need to be used. I urge environmentalists in the House to reflect on that.

[Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)]

The strike price of £89 per megawatt-hour is twice the current market rate and more than twice what the Department of Energy and Climate Change was confidently predicting just five years ago. If that were inflation proofed over the whole 35-year period, as the Secretary of State has said, will that not end up costing taxpayers more than £200 per megawatt-hour by the end of the period? What proportion of the loan guarantee for the debt to build two £14 billion reactors is also going to be backstopped by the British taxpayer? Will not the project end up as a colossal financial disaster for the UK taxpayer?

[Mr Davey]

I think the right hon. Gentleman has been saying that for a number of years. He was predicting a much higher strike price, but we have a very good strike price. Let us be clear to the House, because the issue is important. EDF and its co-investors will not receive a single pound, and consumers’ bills will not be touched, until the power stations start generating. The earliest expected time for that will be in 2023—10 years’ time. I have to say to the Labour party that the world will be very different in 10 years’ time, and future electricity and energy prices will be very different. I am pleased that Labour party Front Benchers have welcomed the proposal. Clearly, they support what we have done on prices, and people will have noticed.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Approximately 45 Members are seeking to catch my eye on this extremely important matter. I am keen to accommodate as many of them as possible, but if I am to do so, brevity will be of the essence. That can now be exemplified by a man of great experience and long service in the House of Commons: the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley).

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker.

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the reason we are dependent on foreign companies to build these nuclear power plants is that the last Labour Government sold off Westinghouse to the Japanese and then sold British Energy to the French when the current Leader of the Opposition was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change?

Given that the one area in which we retain nuclear expertise is in building small nuclear generators, will my right hon. Friend look closely at the proposals put forward by the noble Lord Ridley for building small nuclear reactors in future, to provide electricity and possibly an export market as well?

[Mr Davey]

My right hon. Friend makes some pertinent and relevant points. I am not aware of the noble Lord Ridley’s proposal, but I am aware that Rolls-Royce has been doing a lot of research and development into small modular nuclear plants, and clearly that is extremely interesting. It shows that there are British nuclear firms with skills and expertise, and they are welcoming our proposals today.

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

On the issue of the supply chain and its capacity to do the maximum amount of work under today’s announcement, does the Secretary of State regret undermining the UK nuclear supply chain by withdrawing the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters? That limited this country’s capacity to do nuclear work domestically and for export. In the light of today’s announcement, does that not look like a stupid, short-sighted decision?

[Mr Davey]

The right hon. Gentleman is out of date. The Government have been giving support to Sheffield Forgemasters.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I welcome the decision to have more power capacity, which we greatly need. However, given the generous financial terms to the investors, did the Secretary of State consider the possibility of reserving some part of the financial investment and provision of capital for British interests? I am sure that many of them would like those sorts of returns.

[Mr Davey]

First, 57% of the value of this project will go to UK firms, and I hope that the right hon. Gentleman welcomes that. I do not believe that these terms are generous at all. We have had hard negotiations to get them down, and EDF realises that. Some of the benefits of the deal we have negotiated need to be held up in the headlights. There is the construction gain share, so that if the construction costs are lower, the consumer gains. If there is a refinancing by the investors in 10 years’ time from which they make a lot of money, the consumer will gain from that refinancing. That never happened with private finance initiative deals when Labour was in power; rather, the taxpayer lost out. We have the refinancing gain share for the consumer, and I doubt that would have happened if that lot had been in power.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

How much of the £16 billion of construction costs will the developers of Hinkley Point C be able to offset in tax reliefs and capital allowances? Does the Secretary of State consider it ironic that EDF has insisted on an insurance clause against his own party’s future policy by stipulating that the strike price will rise to reflect any future tax on or shutdown of the industry? While he is at it, will he explain why the strike price for the Flamanville sister plant in France is only £64—some 30% of the £92.50 he has negotiated?

[Mr Speaker]

I think that the hon. Gentleman should seek an Adjournment debate on the matter; in fact, on reflection, I think he has already had it.

[Mr Davey]

I said in my statement that the UK taxpayer can expect to gain £4.5 billion in corporation tax as a result of this, paid for by the investors, but it is even better than that; I have some very good news for the hon. Gentleman. Because we wanted to make sure that these companies could not rearrange their tax affairs after the deal and somehow reduce the tax funds that we were expecting to come to Her Majesty’s Treasury, we undertook a very unusual clause in our deal to make sure that, should they do exotic tax deals to shelter their tax liabilities, the strike price will reflect that and be adjusted downwards. That is how far we have gone to make sure that the taxpayer and the consumer are protected.

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

I am sure that my constituents and other people in Cornwall will welcome this because it will stop us having to have another 6,000 wind turbines to generate the same amount of energy. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this will benefit the countryside?

[Mr Davey]

I was agreeing with a lot of what my hon. Friend said. I say to her and to all right hon. and hon. Members that we need a diverse energy mix. If we go for one form of electricity generation, that is far too risky. We need nuclear; we need renewables in all their shapes, forms and sizes; we need carbon capture and storage; and we need energy efficiency. The electricity security challenge is massive, and we need every aspect. The low-carbon challenge is massive, and we need everything to be low-carbon. Onshore wind has a role to play along with nuclear.

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

Given that the Government have stated that the two really important conditions are value for money and no public subsidy, will the Secretary of State set out how all the details of the negotiations will now be made available to the National Audit Office so that Parliament can scrutinise them? If there is an overrun in construction or time delays, how will the £10 billion loan guarantee work? Will it be a taxpayer grant or a grant for Chinese and other companies?

[Mr Davey]

I have already made it clear to the House that this is going to be the most transparent deal ever. When my ministerial colleagues discussed the issue with Labour Front Benchers during the proceedings on the Energy Bill, we did not undertake to do what we are doing today. We are being more transparent than we promised. We have said that when the final investment contract is signed, we will publish it, and we have committed to that in the Bill. There will be very evident transparency not only on value for money and no public subsidy but an awful lot more. Of course, because we have not concluded the commercial negotiation, there are one or two commercial issues that we will not be publishing at this point, but there will be an awful lot more to see when we come to signing the final investment contract. As for cost overruns, I have made it clear to the House that by negotiating a tough deal, we have ensured that the consumer is protected from those. That did not happen in the past. We have seen cost overruns in nuclear projects time and again, and I was determined that that would not happen this time.

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

As the former secretary to the Conservative party Back-Bench energy committee of 1983, may I welcome this long-awaited announcement of a welcome increase in the United Kingdom’s energy mix and security? Will my right hon. Friend say in particular how he intends to use this boost to the United Kingdom’s nuclear expertise abroad to add to our reputation, which is much enhanced by our skill in this particular area? Also, although he is welcome to his views on onshore wind, does he agree that some areas, such as north Bedfordshire, have done their bit and there need not be any new decisions made to add to our wind-power capacity?

[Mr Davey]

My hon. Friend needs to address his last point to his local planning authority, because he knows that I do not take those decisions.

The nuclear opportunity for UK companies is, indeed, very big. Many of our companies are already partnering with nuclear companies from other countries to bid for nuclear deals in, for example, the Czech Republic and Turkey. Companies such as Rolls-Royce, Babcock and AMEC are very active in the international sphere, and I think that this project and our ambitions for the nuclear industry supply chain will only further their ambitions.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State said that there would be no public subsidy, but this project will be eligible for consumer-funded payments —subsidies by any other name—of up to £1 billion year, and not for the 15 years offered to renewables, but for 35 years, which is a scandal. Will he confirm that the total cost of this project—£43 billion—is comparable to the entire energy technology budget between now and 2021, and that this single project risks squeezing out domestic energy technologies in favour of imported and expensive nuclear technology?

[Mr Davey]

I am afraid the hon. Gentleman could not be more wrong. Not only do I not recognise his figures, but I am surprised that he is so confident as to be able to suggest them. I admire those in and outside the House who are able to estimate how much this is going to cost, because they clearly know more than me, my officials and the industry. They are clairvoyants, because they know what energy prices will be in 30 or 40 years’ time. I am in awe of the hon. Gentleman. This is a good deal for the consumer and for the economy, and, given that it also delivers on our low-carbon agenda, he ought to welcome it.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s damascene conversion, which is growing by the minute, and this bold, long-term decision, which stands in stark contrast to 13 years of indecision by the Labour party that put security of supply in this country seriously in jeopardy.

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s remarks, but I say to him gently that I hope everyone on the Conservative Benches will also understand why I have changed my mind: it is because of the threat of climate change. I hope that all Conservative Members will look at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report—its fifth annual assessment—and accept the scientific consensus of 269 experts from 39 countries. The evidence that climate change is happening and that man is responsible for it is overwhelming and we need to take action on climate change. If I am prepared to change my views on nuclear, I hope that some on the Conservative Benches are prepared to accept that climate change is something we have to face up to.

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

Does the Secretary of State intend to present to the House the arrangements he has arrived at in the form of the varied investment contract, as set out in the Energy Bill? If so, will he set out the terms under which the strike price can be varied upwards under the varied investment contract, as well as the terms of the forfeiture of such a contract should the subject to it not deliver within the window set out by the contract when it is signed?

[Mr Davey]

I think I followed that question. The hon. Gentleman is an expert in this area and his points are important. I said in my statement that there will be operation expenses reopeners at 15 years and 25 years, but they will be symmetrical, so if operation costs have reduced, the strike price will come down, and if they have increased and that can be proven, the strike price will go up. That is the only way to manage such a contract over such a long period; otherwise the initial strike price would have to be much higher in order for the investors to undertake those risks. We will be transparent, so over the coming weeks and months the hon. Gentleman and the Select Committee will be able to look in detail at many of the issues he has raised.

[Mr Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury) (Con)]

As a former industrialist who has long argued for the renewal of our fleet of nuclear power stations, I warmly welcome this agreement between the parties. It will provide constant base load electricity generation, which is necessary for competitiveness. I hope that many other areas will shortly follow suit, not least the north-west. Bearing in mind the reasons for his “conversion”, as he put it, will the Secretary of State try to persuade our European partners that this low-carbon method of producing energy should count towards our renewables obligations?

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s comments. Britain is working with a significant number of like-minded member states that wish to develop their nuclear programmes. I believe that nuclear needs to be seen as a low-carbon technology in the European debate, because it will be critical to meeting our climate change objectives in the UK, Europe and the world. I recommend to him and to other right hon. and hon. Members the book by the chief scientist in my Department, “Sustainable Energy—Without the Hot Air”, which is this House would benefit from.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Towards the end of the statement, the Secretary of State said that

“we need a revolution in home-grown energy generation”.

Given that the station is being built by the French and the Chinese, that was an interesting comment. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that British companies can build power stations?

[Mr Davey]

Earlier this year, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and I published an industrial strategy for the nuclear industry in the UK to do just that. On the home-grown point, the danger is that if we do not produce energy in this country, whether through nuclear or renewables, we will be increasingly dependent on imports of gas from the other side of the world. That would leave our economy vulnerable to the supply of that gas and to vulnerable wholesale gas prices, which could hit consumers badly. That is why we need more home-grown, low-carbon energy.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that at £89.50, the strike price for Hinkley will be lower than the strike prices for offshore and onshore wind?

[Mr Davey]

My hon. Friend is right about the comparison with offshore wind. We hope to reduce the costs of offshore wind over the next few years. I hope that in the 2020s, as it grows to be a significant low-carbon generating sector, offshore wind will be much more cost-competitive. We are having to subsidise it as a new immature technology. The costs of onshore wind have come down significantly. Although the nuclear deal is competitive, onshore wind is a very cost-competitive, low-carbon generator in comparison with nuclear. People often think that onshore wind is not cost-competitive, but when one considers the carbon costs, it is becoming very cost-competitive.

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

It has taken many people many years to get the policy to this point. I warmly welcome the announcement that has been made by the Secretary of State. Will he join me in acknowledging the contribution of people such as the late Malcolm Wicks, a former Member of this House, in getting the policy to this point? Does he also share my view that we need urgently to develop the other sites that have been identified for nuclear development in this country? Will he consider publishing a critical path development strategy to establish how and when those other sites will be developed?

[Mr Davey]

It is right that the hon. Gentleman mentions the late Member of this House, Malcolm Wicks. He was respected on both sides of the House. I believe that he was an Energy Minister twice. He was respected by officials in the Department who worked with him. He played a role in this policy and it is right to mention him.

The hon. Gentleman also asked whether I would publish a new plan. We already have a lot of plans involving a lot of nuclear power stations. I do not want to anticipate what will come next quite yet, but we are on the way.

[Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)]

May I join other Members in welcoming the Government’s determination to make up for a decade of neglect by the Labour party and to ensure that we can keep the lights on? Will the Secretary of State confirm that there is a lot of international interest in Britain’s nuclear energy programme? However, will he also confirm that no matter which country takes an interest, it is the National Grid that will have the ultimate responsibility for any new nuclear reactor?

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question, and he is right to say there is a lot of international interest, as I saw on recent trips to Korea, Japan and China. Right hon. and hon. Members will also know about interest not only from France, but from north America, including Canada, and Russia. I am not sure, however, that that international interest all depends on National Grid because I think a lot of the work depends on my Department and the Government. National Grid has a critical role, but the negotiations were done by my Department.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Earlier, the Secretary of State reflected on why there has been a delay in building new nuclear. When I was shadowing his position, I was approached by nuclear companies who asked about political commitment in this country. I gave resounding support from the Labour party, so I think the dithering came from his side. While he talks about a 35-year plan and a power station that will open in more than a decade, does he still advise my constituents to put a jumper on when they cannot pay the bills?

[Mr Davey]

The hon. Lady demeans herself because she knows I did not say that on “Newsnight” recently. More importantly, she is not taking responsibility and neither is the Labour party. She may not know this, but this is the first time the Liberal Democrat party, or its predecessor, has been in power in peacetime for about 90 years, so blaming my party for not delivering on nuclear power takes some cheek.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

I welcome today’s statement and hope this is the start of a series of investments in new nuclear power stations. Does the Secretary of State agree that we should keep an open mind on breakthroughs in new technology, and particularly smaller reactor types that might suit sites such as Dungeness in my constituency?

[Mr Davey]

The hon. Gentleman is a doughty champion of Dungeness, and it may have a role to play in the future. I cannot see beyond current plans, but perhaps some of the new technology we have heard about could be part of such a role, although he knows I cannot commit to that today.

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

What the Secretary of State has announced is for the future, but his energy policy for today is a shambles. He is recommending that people either wear pullovers or shop around, but if they shop around they find energy prices rising by about 10%. What will he do about those cartels? He should not blame the previous Labour Government because he is responsible now.

[Mr Davey]

We are responsible, and we are sorting out the cartels that we inherited from the previous Government. The big six were created by the Labour party’s failed reforms of the electricity market, but because we have been deregulating and improving competition, the hon. Gentleman’s constituents have more choice. He does his constituents a disservice if he does not explain that they no longer have to stick slavishly to the big six, and that there are 15 independent suppliers. I thought he would want to help his constituents by recommending that they shop around.

[Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend and his colleagues and officials on this historic and incredibly important achievement. Taken together with the more than doubling of renewable electricity generation in this country since 2010 and the huge interest in developing carbon capture and storage, does this nuclear renaissance not show that the market reforms he has championed have been exactly what investors have required to invest in the plant that our long-term energy security requires?

[Mr Davey]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the market reforms that the coalition Government have championed are already bearing fruit. He points to the fact that renewable energy has doubled under this Government, and that we are seeing a push forward on carbon capture and storage and now nuclear. I must say, however, that he played an important role in all of that.

[Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Is it clear from today’s announcement that the British energy industry is broken and that we need a change? Why is all the risk being taken by the public and the Government, and none by EDF?

[Mr Davey]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong on every count. We are fixing the broken market we inherited because we have a lot more competitors, not just in supply and retail, but in wholesale. A lot more independent generators have been coming in, which he should welcome. The idea that all change has stopped—we are the Government changing the electricity market—[Interruption.] He asks about risk, but the risks have been transferred to EDF, not the consumer.

[Mr Watts]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Davey]

It is absurd for the hon. Gentleman to shake his head. This is the first deal, I think probably in the world, in which we have managed to prevent the consumer from taking on any construction risk. He ought to welcome that.

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

I have grave concerns about today’s announcement. The cost of clean-up for existing nuclear is more than £100 billion. Will my right hon. Friend assure me and the House that such costs will not be borne by future generations? What contingency plans will be in place should EDF not exist in 35 years’ time?

[Mr Davey]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The cost of decommissioning is one reason I was concerned about nuclear power in the past. As I have told the House, two thirds of my Department’s budget is spent on decommissioning past nuclear power stations. It was a scandal that we had to clean up the mess of previous Governments who failed to tackle decommissioning costs. That is why this deal is so different from what has gone before. The decommissioning costs are included in the strike price we announced. EDF and its partners must provide, from day one of generation, for a funded decommissioning plan, which will be independently overseen. I can therefore tell my hon. Friend that we have made a big step forward in dealing with decommissioning.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Without the deal, EDF faces bankruptcy, with £38 billion of debt and only two contracts: the first, at Flamanville, is three years late and more than three times over budget, rising from £3 billion to £8 billion; and the other, in Finland, is twice over budget and seven years late. How does the Secretary of State expect EDF to do at Hinkley what it has never done before, namely deliver on price and on budget?

[Mr Davey]

The hon. Gentleman is not as well informed as he might be on EDF contracts. For example, it has a contract in China, where, with the Chinese, it is building a nuclear power plant at Taishan. That is on budget and on time. I tell him gently that EDF has a huge amount of experience and is a good partner for the UK. Unlike the deals he mentions, we have ensured that the consumer is protected from construction cost overruns. He ought to welcome that.

[Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)]

I am a nuclear enthusiast and broadly welcome the details of the plan, but I harbour national security concerns in respect of foreign state involvement. In the light of that, will the Secretary of State say whether a UK public sector pension fund would be able to invest in a Chinese nuclear reactor? If not, why does he believe that the Chinese Government would not be interested in receiving such an investment in their critical energy infrastructure?

[Mr Davey]

My hon. Friend is aware that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese Government to ensure that we can work together more in the area of civil nuclear power. That means Chinese companies investing in the UK and British investors and companies investing in China. I will not say that the markets will open overnight—that would be unrealistic—but we are moving into a new era in which we can work with the Chinese and other foreign states.

One odd thing about the debate is that a Hong Kong Chinese company owns UK Power Networks, which owns three of our district network operating companies, including London. So the electricity supplies to London—the cables and the networks—are owned by a Chinese company. I have not heard questions on that at Department of Energy and Climate Change oral questions. Perhaps I will in future, but the evidence—the lights have stayed on—suggests that people should not worry.

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

The Secretary of State says that the deal is not a deal at any price. How can he anticipate that the decommissioning, clean-up and waste disposal costs will be around £2—that is what he said in his statement—when there is no identifiable or accepted disposal site in this country, and when the project is on a scale this country has never seen before?

[Mr Davey]

There is already a lot of decommissioning expertise in this country because we are spending so much money on it. We have a lot of technology in that area. If we build those costs into the strike price early on—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman listens, I will answer his question. We can do it for £2 early on, from day one of generation, because we are putting money aside over a 60-year period of generating. I believe the funded decommissioning plan lasts for 40 years—[Interruption.] I am getting nods, so I must be right. However, the plant is expected to generate electricity for 60 years. It is rather like a pension fund. If we make sensible provision early on, the costs can be kept very low.

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that it is the Government’s ambition that this should be the first of a series of investments in new nuclear generation? What are the Government doing to attract other potential investors who may be persuaded to look at designated sites, such as Bradwell-on-Sea in my constituency, which is already a model of successful decommissioning?

[Mr Davey]

Yes, we envisage a series of new nuclear power stations being built. I and other members of the Government have, on various trips, engaged in commercial diplomacy, meeting potential investors and nuclear companies in other countries, and there is huge interest in the nuclear market. When German companies RWE and E.ON put the Horizon consortium on the market everyone said, “This is a disaster. It shows that nuclear policy isn’t working.” Far from it. We had huge interest from around the world. Hitachi ended up paying nearly £700 million for the privilege of having the consortium, even before it had got its reactor design through the generic design assessment. That is the level of interest and the vote of confidence in our policy.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

Should energy transmission infrastructure developments, which accompany such energy generating developments as this, be constructed underground?

[Mr Davey]

The detail of transmission infrastructure is sorted out by National Grid under legislation passed some time ago. In many areas, particularly in areas of rural beauty, people want more undergrounding of cables. The hon. Gentleman will know that that can be expensive. There are a number of inquiries at the moment, not least in Wales, and it would be inappropriate for me to comment on them.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Will my right hon. Friend share with the House complete details of the compensation agreement he mentioned, which, on the face of it, might be interpreted as an attempt to bind this Parliament’s successors, financially if not politically, and prevent a future democratic decision to abandon nuclear?

[Mr Davey]

We will of course be publishing a lot of these details, but I have to say to my hon. Friend that, given the experience in Japan and Germany, it is not unreasonable for a company wanting to invest in nuclear to have some protection against a future Government changing the policy completely. I think that if he was a shareholder of a company wanting to invest in UK nuclear, he would be looking for that sort of protection too. In many ways, I regret that we have had to give that protection, but it was a reasonable request and I think it would have been a show-stopper if we had not been able to meet it.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

I listened carefully to the Secretary of State on where future savings could be made, but if the reference price comes in below the strike price, EDF will make even more than its 35-year guaranteed return. The Government rejected Labour’s proposals to ensure that any difference between the reference price and strike price would be passed back to consumers. How will the Government ensure that hard-pressed bill payers get the best deal for their energy?

[Mr Davey]

We have started that process by our announcement today. I am not sure what strike price the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) mentioned in the Bill Committee proceedings, but few people thought we would achieve the strike price we did. What she fails to mention is that because we have gone through the investment contract—the contract for difference—we have protected the consumer yet again. If the wholesale price is above the strike price, the generators have to pay back to the consumer—yet another protection for the consumer.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

May I congratulate the Secretary of State on reaching this point, because I know it has been a long and difficult road? He will know that a lot of our nuclear capability lies in north Wales, with Wylfa and the decommissioning of Trawsfynydd. I am particularly concerned that the future of Wylfa is secured. Does he agree that this deal paves the way for a deal on Wylfa? Will he assure me that he will do everything he can to speed up the route for a successful new build at Wylfa?

[Mr Davey]

I can reassure my right hon. Friend, who championed the case for Wylfa when she was Secretary of State for Wales, that we are on the case. I know that Hitachi, is keen to make progress on that, and it and others will be cheered by today’s announcement. They know that the Government are leading the way, taking the tough decisions and developing the most attractive market in the world for new nuclear.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I heard the Secretary of State announce this development on BBC radio this morning, but his estimate of the number of jobs to be created seemed to vary with each question asked. What exactly does “up to 25,000 jobs” mean and how many will be likely to go to UK residents?

[Mr Davey]

That is a fair question. I mentioned three figures on jobs: over the lifetime of construction, we expect 25,000 jobs to be created; at peak, on site, there will be 5,600; and when the plant is finished and starts generating at full capacity, we expect there to be 900 full-time permanent jobs. They are different figures, but they are also very impressive figures.

I am afraid we have not done the analysis on how many of those jobs will be done by UK passport holders, but we expect a lot of them to be British. One reason EDF is investing in the local college is to bring on apprentices and young people in the area so that they can be the trained nuclear engineers of the future, working at Hinkley Point C and beyond.

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

My right hon. Friend rightly stated that energy security relied on diversity of supply, so does he agree that consumers and the industry will be relieved that, thanks to his decision, new nuclear will form a large and reliable proportion of that supply?

[Mr Davey]

My hon. Friend is right that diversity is critical if we are to keep prices down. I am obsessed with ensuring that we get a good deal for the consumer and British industry, and part of that strategy is to ensure we have diversity, so that technologies and companies are competing and we are also applying downward pressure on prices.

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

Does this announcement prove that the Government do not mind British taxpayers paying for and subsidising Government-owned utilities, but only as long as they are foreign-owned Government utilities?

[Mr Davey]

The taxpayer is not subsidising this, so the hon. Lady’s question is not relevant.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)]

Many converts become zealots to the cause. May I encourage the Secretary of State to be turbo-charged in his zealotry for nuclear energy in the future so that we can have more announcements like today’s? Anything that makes us less reliant on imported energy, particularly French nuclear energy, has got to be a good thing, and anything that protects England’s green and pleasant land from the invasion of yet more wind turbines has got to be a good thing.

[Mr Davey]

The hon. Gentleman was doing so well. I have to tell him that there are zealots on all sides of this argument, as I have found, which is why I take, I think, a more balanced, pragmatic approach in favour of a mixed, diversified electricity supply focused on low carbon. I am a zealot not about nuclear, onshore or any particular renewable technology; I am a zealot about climate change. That is what every Member needs to be a zealot about. Climate change is one of the big challenges for this political generation, and we have to face up to it, so I plead guilty to being a zealot about tackling climate change.

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

I have long been a mild supporter of nuclear energy, but I am concerned and nervous about today’s statement, because I have not got the competence—I do not think most people in the Chamber have the competence—to judge whether this is really a good deal. But let me say this: owing to the botched privatisations of the ’80s and ’90s, we have not got the capacity in the energy sector to do this deal ourselves; it will be led by French technology and manufacturing and backed by Chinese finance. What sort of humiliation is this for Britain?

[Mr Davey]

It is not a humiliation, but a big triumph, actually, that many other countries want to put their money into the UK market to build nuclear. I hope the hon. Gentleman is moving from mild to enthusiastic support and that my earlier point to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas)—that the National Audit Office will look at this—reassures him that the details will be properly scrutinised both in this House and by the NAO.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) on the excellent, careful deal that they have struck with EDF. The Secretary of State will know that many people in Suffolk are keen to see a similar deal for Sizewell, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey). What progress has his Department made towards making that a reality?

[Mr Davey]

I know that EDF wants to pursue that matter, but my hon. Friend will not be surprised to learn that it has been focusing on Hinkley Point C. We are now entering the final stages of the negotiations and we hope to secure the final investment contract next year, at which point I think EDF will turn more towards the question of the Sizewell C opportunity. He will know that, because the European pressurised reactor has gone through the generic design assessment process for Hinkley Point C, it will not have to do so again for Sizewell C. That should shorten the period involved. EDF is hoping to be in a position, after obtaining consents from us, regulatory approvals and so on, to make a final investment decision on Sizewell C towards the end of this decade. It is obviously not going to commit to that yet, but it is now focusing on that matter more than it was before.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. If we are to mitigate the pressure on time, there must now be a particular premium on brevity in the remaining questions and, of course, in the Secretary of State’s answers.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State uses his fight against climate change and the need to reduce emissions to justify charging twice the market rate for energy, but this country has one of the largest carbon footprints in the world and it is increasing because of emissions input. Why does he not talk about that failure of his policy? Will he tell us what he is going to do about it?

[Mr Davey]

I think the hon. Gentleman is talking about the fact that a lot of the products we import come from countries with high carbon intensity production processes. It might be a little harsh to describe this as a failure of my policy, but I know that the Select Committee and the Committee on Climate Change are interested in looking at that issue, and they should do so. In fact, this simply shows that we need a global treaty on climate change. One country cannot tackle it alone. We live in an interdependent world that has an interdependent economy and an interdependent climate. That is the answer for the hon. Gentleman: he needs to get behind the push for a global treaty on climate change.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a matter of regret that this announcement has come as late as this. The decades of missed investment in nuclear mean that we do not have a UK generator that is capable of delivering a project of this scale. The Secretary of State has mentioned his industrial strategy for nuclear, and what it can do for the supply chain. Can he assure me that, in 10 years’ time when another Secretary of State might be announcing further nuclear investment opportunities, there will be UK companies that are able to compete for them?

[Mr Davey]

I very much share that vision. It was certainly the vision that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills and I published in our industrial strategy. We want to ensure that British companies and British people get the benefit as we move towards more low-carbon technologies. That is why we have also published an industrial strategy for offshore wind.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on putting 6,000 wind turbines under one roof. Given that there are 60 nuclear power stations under construction around the world, and about 150 planned for construction, is he confident that the international supply chain for reactors and turbines—which Labour did nothing about—is sufficiently robust to allow this important project to remain on track?

[Mr Davey]

I believe it is, and the investors certainly do as well. One of the things that gives me confidence about today’s decision is the high degree of planning that has gone into the project. We will benefit from the fact that the reactor design has already gone through a long period of generic design assessment in the Office for Nuclear Regulation, and that EDF has learned lessons from Finland, France and China. My hon. Friend should therefore not worry that the supply chain will not be capable of meeting the demands. This is all in EDF’s plan.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

The Chinese have developed a whole division concerned with cyber-security. The Chinese already own three electricity transmission grids in this country and they will now substantially own Hinkley. Will my right hon. Friend assure us that as much safety as possible has been put into this plan? We are in a benign environment at the moment, but if that changed, I would be concerned about running risks with our infrastructure.

[Mr Davey]

Of course the Government have considered the national security implications; we looked at them in some detail. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and, indeed, others have looked at cyber-security as a whole to make sure that this country is protected, not just from potential investors in the UK but more broadly. I believe that this Government have put in place the sort of protections that I think my hon. Friend is seeking.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

If all goes well and the plant is built to time, it will generate its first electricity in 10 years’ time, in 2023. If we have a blocking high-weather pressure system with no winds and freezing temperatures this winter, the plant margin could be as low as 5%. What is the risk of the lights going out some time over the next 10 years due to the lack of investment in our generating capacity by the previous Government?

[Mr Davey]

I do not believe there is a risk, but that is no credit to the Labour party. It has happened because this Government have got their act together on energy security in the short term, the medium term and the long term. Today’s announcement will help energy security in the long term, but we had two announcements in July—one from Ofgem and the National Grid to look at the short term and make sure that we have the balancing extra reserves ready to come on line at the peak; and then my Department’s announcement on next year’s capacity market, which was about ensuring capacity in the medium term. If we put the short-term, medium-term and long-term strategy together, I can reassure my hon. Friend that the lights will stay on.

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

By and large, I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement. Does he agree that there is no national security risk in this case, that the National Grid Company will have oversight of this plant when it is built and that the Chinese will not have control?

[Mr Davey]

I agree.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I welcome today’s announcement, and I am delighted that this Government take seriously the role of nuclear in safeguarding our energy supply for decades to come. Given the opportunity presented by Hinkley Point, will my right hon. Friend tell us what steps are being taken, working with our partners in this project, to improve the UK skills base so that we have skills in this vital sector for decades to come?

[Mr Davey]

A huge amount is being done. EDF is investing in the local college to make sure that some local people get to benefit from Hinkley Point C. We also have the national skills academy for nuclear, which is taking forward skills for the wider industry. Many of our universities are more engaged in research and development, too. If my hon. Friend looks at the industrial strategy that we launched, to which I have referred several times, he will see that there is a big role in it for developing skills.

Points of Order

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

16:53

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. You will have heard me raise on the Floor of the House the fact that the Government are going to launch a hybrid Bill on High Speed 2 before the end of the year. It is going to contain an environmental statement that is rumoured to have some 50,000 pages. It is such a large document that the Government have made special provision to provide this electronically. You will also have heard rumours, Mr Speaker, that the period of consultation for the general public on this 50,000-page document is one of only eight weeks over the Christmas period. I seek your advice on whether having such a period for consultation reflects well on this House and its engagement with the public, and on whether it gives my Back-Bench colleagues sufficient time to digest the document, to establish whether they have an interest and what that interest might be and to respond to the consultation. Could you help me with anything on that front?

[Mr Speaker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her point of order. I understand that at this stage these are, in her words, only rumours. Such a decision is a matter for the Government, and if people receive it ill, that should of course reflect on those who are responsible for it rather than on the House as a whole. I can only say to the right hon. Lady that—as I think is evidenced by my approach to proceedings in the House—I am always in favour of a greater opportunity and a longer period for people to make their views known, rather than what might be considered to be an artificial and rather arbitrary truncation of people’s chances to contribute.

I hope very much that the right hon. Lady’s fears can be allayed. The Secretary of State is a very experienced and wily man. There is always a danger that if a consultation is too short for the amount of material on which to consult, or else takes place over the festive season—or another holiday period—a decision by the Government to run it in that way will be regarded as cynical and ill-judged. I know the right hon. Member for Derbyshire Dales (Mr McLoughlin) very well, and I know that he would not be regarded as either cynical or a maker of ill-judged decisions: perish the thought! We will leave it there for today.

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

On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Last Thursday, during questions following the response to the urgent question, I gave you cause to call my question out of order. I apologise for that. However, you went on to state that it was the 21st occasion on which you had had to do so since 2010. The House of Commons Library informs me that it was, in fact, the second occasion since 2010 on which I had officially had a question called out of order. I know, Mr. Speaker, that on five other occasions you have had to give me the benefit of your advice and experience with regard to my questioning in the Chamber, and I thank you for that, but even if those five occasions are included, the total comes to only seven rather than 21, and represents about one in every 200 of my contributions in the Chamber. Mr. Speaker, may I please put the record straight?

[Mr Speaker]

There is quite an old piece of advice which is usually regarded as sagacious: when in a hole, stop digging.

I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point of order, and for his courtesy in giving me notice of what I know he judges to be its import. Although I am not sure that it was strictly a point of order, I am very happy to help the hon. Gentleman in his effort to protect his reputation. I acknowledge that in my anxiety to help him last Thursday, I lured myself into multiplying by three the number of times when I had had occasion to adjust his line of questioning. As he rightly says, the number was not 21; it just felt like it. [Laughter.]

I am happy not only to allow the correction to lie upon the record, but to assure the hon. Gentleman of my hope, and confidence, that his score will never reach double figures. I thank him for the good humour that he has shown in this matter.

We will now proceed to the debate on the future of the BBC, which is very heavily subscribed.

Backbench Business

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

Future of the BBC

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

16:58

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

Thank you for calling me to open the debate, Mr. Speaker. I also thank the Backbench Business Committee for agreeing to the debate in the first instance.

As you have indicated, Mr. Speaker, support for the debate came from a range of quarters: from those who are no doubt ardent champions of the broadcaster, and from those who feel that it is long past its sell-by date. I am sure that an array of views will be expressed, and, given the BBC’s recent history, I think it important for Parliament to be encouraged to comment on what has happened. I pay tribute to the way in which the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and the Public Accounts Committee have pursued many of the issues, and I am pleased that a debate in the main Chamber will allow more Members to participate, comment and air their concerns.

It is important to consider not just the issues themselves, but the way in which the BBC has responded to them, both internally and externally. The way in which the organisation reacts reflects its culture, which is something with which we all need to be happy and content. I see myself as a critical friend of the BBC. I do not want to offer a post-mortem on each issue that has made the BBC the subject of news reporting over recent years, but I do want to question the way the broadcaster has reacted to many of those issues, which, I suggest, is defensively rather than in an open, positive and transparent way. I want the debate to be about how the BBC needs to adapt, change and reform to become a more open and transparent organisation that welcomes criticism to better inform its own internal operations. Likewise, any criticism that follows should be constructive.

This debate builds on my ten-minute rule Bill of last November calling on the BBC to publish all invoices in excess of £500, as local authorities in England do, and asking it to give unfettered access to the Comptroller and Auditor General. I was very disappointed by its response to that call at the time, which was basically an unequivocal rejection. However, I received a letter last Friday evening advising me it was looking into ways in which it could be more open and transparent, which I naturally welcome.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that the BBC is anti-competitive, undemocratic and unaccountable and one way to reform that would be to democratise the licence fee and give licence fee payers a vote on the BBC’s board, chairman and annual reports?

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising those points, and I hope the BBC will actively look at such innovations as it moves forward. It needs to be more responsive and adaptable, and that model may well carry favour.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Does he agree with the leader of his party in the National Assembly who believes the BBC in Wales should be accountable to the National Assembly? Public opinion in Wales, too, is overwhelmingly in favour of broadcasting being devolved to the National Assembly for Wales, and that is also advocated by the Silk commission.

[Alun Cairns]

I certainly do not agree that broadcasting should be devolved—I do not agree with that pick-and-mix approach—but I do think all contributions on the question of how to make the BBC more transparent and accountable are helpful.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that the BBC is a national—a UK- national—resource and that it is important that the BBC as a whole is scrutinised from this House, not by other Administrations in other parts of the United Kingdom who are trying to lay claim to it?

[Alun Cairns]

I strongly agree with my right hon. Friend. She is a strong champion of Wales, but I absolutely agree that the BBC is a UK organisation—indeed, a worldwide international organisation—and it is right that scrutiny is by the licence fee payer, but this place needs to help develop a way in which the licence fee payers’ thoughts, views and concerns can be expressed.

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

I hope the hon. Gentleman will touch on the way in which the BBC divvies out its resources to the regions, and why it is that London gets between two and three times more than other regions. Secondly, will he say something about the high salaries and redundancy payments, and, thirdly, is the reason why we cannot get to know the salaries of some BBC staff because they are self-employed?

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making those points, and the move to Salford may be one example that we could highlight. No doubt there are significant benefits, but there have also been serious questions about the cost and the employment of staff in that move, and I would welcome contributions on the subject.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Alun Cairns]

I want to make a little progress before taking any more interventions.

I recognise that the BBC holds a unique place in British society. That should be welcomed. It produces and broadcasts world-class programmes and excellent news and current affairs outputs, and it would take me too long to list them all. All this success does not automatically make it special and certainly does not put it above scrutiny, however. The BBC rightly plays an important part in scrutinising public and independent organisations. Some of its journalists are among the best in the country and possibly the world. Its investigative reports have exposed wrongdoing and failure by many individuals, organisations and private and public bodies, yet it seems that none of these skills are encouraged when it comes to scrutinising in-house matters. The BBC does not interrogate its own internal affairs with the same rigour as it does so well of outside bodies. How many investigations of scandals or examples of wrongdoing involving the BBC have been made or prompted by the BBC? Some may argue that that is not the BBC’s job, but I would disagree. It receives £3 billion a year in public money from the licence fee payer—the fee is probably the UK’s most regressive tax.

I do not blame the individuals within the BBC for not pursuing these matters, because this is about the culture within the organisation. The “officer class” of executives, as they were described by Lord Hall, need to engage and communicate better with those working at the sharp end, who are the ones usually left to manage the fallout and who are often frustrated and angry at the changes they see that simply will not work. Because of the BBC’s resources and its unique place, BBC executives should encourage its programmes to act where it feels there is wrongdoing, wherever that may be. I recognise that the BBC reports issues when they have come into the public domain, but that usually happens as a result of other press activity and, I suggest, when there is little alternative because of the prominence of the story.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my worry that the BBC puts out an enormous internet and web offering for free, thus undercutting other news and cultural providers who might otherwise be able to do a better job?

[Alun Cairns]

I certainly do agree, and I will discuss the scale of the BBC and how it squeezes out competition and innovation from other independent quarters.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Ind)]

When I served on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, I talked to Sir Michael Lyons, the then chairman of the trust, about transparency and how much the top talent earn. It was only because there was a leak that we got to find out how much Jonathan Ross was earning—it was £6 million a year. When I confronted Sir Michael about that he said, “He is worth every penny” and that to have transparency would force salaries up, not bring them down. We now find that quite the reverse is true. Does my hon. Friend share my belief that we should have far more transparency about the salaries being paid to top talent in the BBC?

[Alun Cairns]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I will wish to comment on that issue a little later. The use of public money to drive up salaries against competitors needs to be considered within the debate about the BBC.

We need to speak positively when there are good practices; there are some isolated examples of the BBC interrogating itself. The best example was the “Today” programme interview that John Humphrys did which led to the departure of the last director-general. That, however, is the exception rather than the rule. A number of daily and Sunday newspapers and journalists regularly pursue the BBC, and the organisation persistently defends itself, whatever the issue and whatever the rights and wrongs.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

How much does my hon. Friend feel that the BBC stepped back from carrying out in-depth investigations after the behaviour at the time of the 45-minute dossier?

[Alun Cairns]

That is an interesting point, and I hope that my hon. Friend will have an opportunity to catch the Deputy Speaker’s eye and expand on it. I know the strength of feeling that my hon. Friend has on that issue.

I am describing the issues that the BBC should be actively examining from a management or journalism point of view, as that would be not only good management practice, but in the interests of the licence fee payer. I hope the House will allow me to demonstrate the point a little further. Recently, the BBC has not been seen in a positive light on a range of matters. The Jimmy Savile scandal was the ultimate demonstration of that, but I could mention so many examples. Why was £100 million wasted on a now-abandoned digital media initiative? Has anyone lost their job as a result? How do executives pay millions of pounds in severance payments to themselves? Why are staff allowed to leave the BBC on significant pay-offs only to return in a freelance capacity? Why, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) mentioned, are BBC talent salaries not published? What about the extent of BBC talent—is it used as a way of preventing the publication of salaries of other senior appointments, because BBC talent is not simply restricted to broadcasters? How can presenters interview organisations that pay them handsomely to speak at conferences in a private capacity outside their employment with the BBC? Is that not a conflict of interest?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, as he is being most generous with his time. Does he find it deeply ironic that when the BBC was found guilty of mishandling premium charge calls for competitions the result was that it was fined, once again hitting the taxpayer?

[Alun Cairns]

That is part of the difficulty and is another demonstration of how and why the BBC needs to look internally. I am conscious, Mr Deputy Speaker—[Laughter.]

I would suggest that had there been similar questions about conflicts of interest and other bodies, the BBC would rightly demand answers and transparency.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

While we are asking questions, I have one. Why has the focus at the core of the BBC been moved north—for political reasons, or for economic reasons?

[Alun Cairns]

In view of the signals I am getting from you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I should perhaps let that one hang. It is a well-made point.

The BBC has played an important role in exposing so much wrongdoing, including the payment of civil servants through personal service firms—yet that was also taking place at the BBC. I can remember a public body being criticised for the increase in employers’ contributions to its pension scheme when only weeks earlier the employers’ contribution to the BBC pension scheme had increased even further, which was not mentioned as part of the package or the report.

It could be argued that the Pollard review, which considered the reasons why the “Newsnight” Savile programme was pulled, is doing just what I am asking for. I am worried, however, that questions remain. It cost nearly £3 million and took seven months to be published, but the results should have been presented on a rolling basis. Most worryingly—I hope that this is not significant—there are even suggestions that some of the evidence from Mark Thompson was excluded from that report. I now suspect that it will be down to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport to pursue the question, should any more evidence come to light.

There have been other reports that we need to welcome, including the Dinah Rose report on the respect at work review and Dame Janet Smith’s report on the culture and practices of the BBC.

I am conscious of the time, Mr Deputy Speaker, and would certainly echo much of what has been said about the competition, about how the BBC squeezes out innovation and about the extent of its internet coverage, which squeezes out fresh thinking and opportunities for smaller companies to make their way in news reporting, sports reporting and cultural activities. My final point, however, is about some of the things the BBC does very well.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. He is making a powerful speech, making the sort of criticisms of the BBC with which I think we would all agree. Does he acknowledge, however, some of the work carried out by the BBC, particularly in Wales, where the production facilities are tremendous, including the work done with S4C and the work of Elan Closs Stephens, who heads up the BBC Wales audience council? Does he agree that perhaps considering extending the remit of the audience councils might be a way of improving and bringing better scrutiny to the work of the BBC?

[Alun Cairns]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. She names Elan Closs Stephens and I would certainly underline her contribution. The BBC’s commitment to S4C and its funding as a channel is extremely important. My right hon. Friend also suggests one of the ways in which more effective scrutiny could be brought about.

The BBC has in the past covered some sensitive areas of public and private life extremely successfully. Domestic violence, rape, racism and other issues have been part of its education programmes. That education has been done through dramas, news reports and other means. The most notable was the education and information campaign on HIV. Before the BBC took an active role in informing viewers, the public’s understanding of contracting HIV was confused, to say the least. Factual programmes combined with drama, such as Mark Fowler on “EastEnders”, played a significant part. With its unique status the BBC can play an important part in helping frame a decent society.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

On that unique position, does my hon. Friend recognise that when BBC local radio was threatened a couple of years ago in one of the BBC’s many reviews, the response from Members across the House and across the country showed how much they respect, trust and value BBC local radio, which plays a very important role in what the corporation does for our constituents? Here is one suggestion—

[Alun Cairns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for championing the cause of local journalists and local broadcasters. Very often, when decisions are taken by that officer class of executive, local broadcasters and local journalists are the ones who pay the price.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alun Cairns]

I am conscious of the time, but I will give way briefly.

[Ian Lucas]

Does not the hon. Gentleman deeply regret, with me, that we have no BBC local radio in Wales? Unfortunately, my area of Wales suffers profoundly from not having the type of support and investigative journalism that is available, for example, from BBC Radio Shropshire?

[Alun Cairns]

I agree, and I underline the point.

I hope the BBC can pursue—

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Alun Cairns]

I should like to make progress for a moment, if I can. I have been trying to make a suggestion for a few moments. I will come back to the right hon. Gentleman, with the permission of the Deputy Speaker, a little later.

I hope the BBC can pursue the protection of children online. It is ideally placed to help families protect children online. Few organisations are better placed to educate and inform on a mass scale. A number of newspapers have led the campaign to protect children online, to which the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister have responded admirably and have led the way in policy change. However, many children understand technology and the range of filter settings better than their parents. Many parents do not even understand the risks.

The BBC’s mission statement and stated public purposes fit perfectly for it to become the trusted source of advice on how to protect children online. The BBC has a responsibility to educate, to inform and to use new technology for the benefit of the licence fee payer. What better way to do that than to commit part of its vast resources to help parents understand the risks that their children face online and show them how to act to protect them? The BBC has an even more direct reason to do that: BBC iPlayer allows watershed programmes to be downloaded and viewed at any time of the day. I recognise that the system raises a warning, but it merely asks for the OK button to be pressed. Combining the need to improve filtering options and to educate parents about them could therefore easily kill two birds with one stone.

Parents must have the ultimate choice, but the BBC can play a significant part in communicating the risks and how to act to reduce those risks, should a parent want to—be it grooming on a social media site, protecting children against legal adult content, or simply explaining how SafeSearch can be switched to filter outcomes. Encryption, virtual private networks—VPNs—or peer-to-peer networks are ways around the filter and there need to be innovative ways of explaining these to parents and explaining how to protect children against them. There are several benefits to this approach. I am conscious of the time, but I hope that is one example where the BBC can use the licence fee money in a constructive way, recognising the changing needs and demands of the licence fee payer.

17:18

[Dame Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I apologise to the House for not being able to stay for the whole debate. I hope, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you will accept my regrets.

I welcome the debate and the sponsorship of it. I welcome the opportunity for this House to reflect on the present state of the BBC and the future ambitions that have been so clearly set out by Lord Hall, the new director-general. I also welcome the opportunity to contribute to the debate—sometimes a rather confused one, I think—on BBC governance, which I must say is not at the top of the list of issues that preoccupy licence fee payers. The BBC, despite the publicity surrounding the recent torrid and terrible revelations, has shown itself to be a remarkably resilient institution. It is important that we recognise and respect the reasons for that resilience. First, there is the high level of public support and trust, which I must say this institution and politics would be very satisfied with, even after the fallout from the terrible revelations following the Jimmy Savile inquiry and the degree of public distaste about the level of pay-offs for senior managers.

Perhaps one of the most important reasons for that high level of resilience is the public’s devotion to the BBC’s high-quality content, which is almost taken for granted. I think that it is fair to think of the more than £3 billion of licence fee payers’ money as the venture capital for the nation’s creativity.

[Mr Tom Clarke]

My right hon. Friend has done a great job on this issue, as on many others. Will she allow me to introduce a Scottish issue just for a moment? The biggest decision that Scotland will have to take will be in the referendum next September. Does she agree that BBC Scotland, despite its qualities, might focus on greater impartiality on that issue than many people would consider it has done so far?

[Dame Tessa Jowell]

Sadly, I am not as regular a viewer of BBC Scotland as my right hon. Friend. One of the BBC’s founding codes of trust with the public is its responsibility for accuracy and impartiality, and I think that extends to every outlet for which it is responsible. I hope that BBC Scotland will also reflect on the fact that we are better together. I thank him for that point.

[Mr Redwood]

I am interested in the right hon. Lady’s point about the very high pay-offs going to managers. What does she think should be done about the very high salaries and pay-offs going to managers and talent when it is paid for by a poll tax that, among other things, is levied on a large number of people who have very little income at all?

[Dame Tessa Jowell]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I think that transparency is absolutely of the essence in that regard. The BBC, as an independent entity, must be able to account to licence fee payers for the decisions taken about remuneration. I certainly think that increased transparency would be one of the ways of rebuilding trust.

[Robert Halfon]

Given what the right hon. Lady has just said, does she not agree that the best way to improve transparency would be by giving licence fee payers a vote on the board, on the running of the BBC and on major decisions, such as whether or not it should spend money on local radio, BBC 3, Formula 1 or whatever else?

[Dame Tessa Jowell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution; I hope that he will find some common cause with the point that I am about to develop.

The licence fee income that comes to the BBC is the public’s money and not public expenditure in the normal sense, so I argue that it should be dealt with differently. This is an opportunity to rehearse some of the often cited arguments, so I should also say that of course the BBC distorts the broadcasting market. However, it exists, by consent of the public, as a deliberate market intervention. When I was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, I realised the importance, at a time of rapid innovation, of ensuring that the power of the BBC was not chilling in its effect on other areas of investment and innovation. We need constantly to keep a close eye on that issue.

I want to say a couple of things about the recent revelations. They are historical, but disturbing none the less. There was much in Lord Hall’s speech on strategy to be optimistic and enthusiastic about, but the BBC as an organisation has to be concerned about culture, as that will always trump strategy and undermine the ability to deliver a strategy aligned to the licence fee payer. There has to be a sense that the Augean stables have been cleaned out. Transparency and shining a bright light on such practices is one of the ways of doing that.

I turn briefly to the BBC Trust. There has been a profound misunderstanding about its role. The BBC Trust is the cheerleader not for the BBC, but for the licence fee payer. That places a different set of expectations and responsibilities on it. I want to set out some ways in which it might cheerlead in that way more effectively. As we move to charter review, which the Secretary of State will be thinking closely about, one of the big threats to the independence of the BBC is interference by Government—any Government. That is why the BBC must be structurally reinforced against the temptation of Governments to intervene and unduly influence it.

The public and licence fee payers should be in the driving seat. The argument is that the BBC should indeed be owned by its licence fee payers and should become the country’s biggest mutual. I do not want to take too much of the House’s time going through the detail of how that would work, although I have given a lot of thought to that. I offer the House this idea at a time of charter review to raise public confidence and create a firewall between the public interest and the Government of the day.

[Mrs Gillan]

The right hon. Lady has done considerable work on this subject. Does she therefore agree that it is highly dangerous even to consider giving devolved Administrations—another set of politicians—any role over the BBC? Has she had an opportunity to look at my earlier suggestion to my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) that we could extend the roles of the audience councils, particularly to something like Audience Council Wales, which represents the people who are speaking on behalf of the licence fee payers?

[Dame Tessa Jowell]

I will study the right hon. Lady’s proposals. Certainly audience councils are widely seen to be successful, but we have to recognise that their impact on the direction of the BBC executive has been minimal.

There is public concern about Government involvement compromising the independence of the BBC. I believe that there is public support for the kind of proposal that I am making, which would strengthen the Trust’s hand in relation to the executive and make it absolutely clear that the Trust is the cheerleader for the licence fee payer. There would have to be further public consultation. However, in the public consultation that I oversaw in the run-up to the current charter, it was absolutely clear that the public wanted a break from the BBC being run by the usual suspects from the establishment or governing classes, and we should respect and respond to that.

The second argument for mutualisation is that while members of the Trust continue to be appointed via DCMS, the question of independence from Government will remain. It is clear that the public greatly value the BBC’s reputation and its charter responsibility for accuracy and impartiality. Respondents to the 2005 pre-charter consultation welcomed the lack of advertising in BBC sport and drama and the fact that the BBC set the standards for other news programmes. Therefore, a stronger Trust, backed by licence fee payers’ support, could provide a greater bulwark against those who seek to put undue political influence on the BBC or cut corners under pressure from the rest of the broadcasting market.

The third reason—this addresses the point made by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood)—is that it would give the public more of a say over programmes and direction. It is a simple principle that if we pay for the BBC, the institution should be more accountable to us. It is undoubtedly the case that following the Jimmy Savile scandal public trust in the BBC has dropped significantly. As Onora O’Neill remarked in the BBC Reith lecture on trust in 2002:

“Reasonably placed trust requires not only information about the proposals or undertaking that others put forward, but also information about those who put them forward.”

Again, that makes the case for building public confidence and public ownership through greater transparency.

I hope that this is a debate whose time has come. The BBC, along with most of our national institutions, is under scrutiny at the moment. What better opportunity and better time to think innovatively about how it can change, not just in response to crises such as Savile but in reflecting the shifting relationship between the citizen and the public service, with a stronger voice for those who pay and ultimately own their public broadcaster? Reith said that the role of the BBC was to “inform, educate and entertain”. I believe that only radical public ownership by the people of this country themselves will continue to ensure that those values are firmly embedded at the heart of the BBC and safeguard the BBC as a truly public institution for years to come.

17:34

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on his success in obtaining this debate, which comes at a time when some serious questions need to be addressed. I do not want to detain the House for too long, because the Culture, Media and Sport Committee will take evidence tomorrow morning from the chairman of the BBC Trust and the director-general, so we will cover a lot of the issues in detail. We have also announced that we intend to hold a full inquiry into the future of the BBC, and that is likely to commence in the new year. That will provide an opportunity to examine these matters and I do not want to prejudge the inquiry. It is, however, worth spending a little time on the subject, because there have been some very difficult issues raised, and some very clear failures by, the BBC over the past year.

It is important not just to focus on criticisms, but to recognise that the BBC remains one of the finest broadcasters in the world and that, at its best, it is unequalled. That is not to say that one should just point at the successes. It is important that we look at the failures and see how they can be prevented from happening again.

[Mr Nigel Evans]

There was once a time when people said that only the BBC could do the arts and that it could not be done commercially. Does my hon. Friend agree that Sky Arts is now doing a tremendous job in providing arts to the masses, and that Classic FM on the radio provides classical music to a group of people who perhaps would never previously have listened to Radio 3? The onus is therefore on the BBC to keep raising the game. It does not have to chase the ratings, but it needs to ensure that it keeps providing high-quality programmes.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I am not in the least surprised to find that I agree completely with my hon. Friend, who was an excellent member of the Committee for a time. I will come on to this issue, but he is absolutely right that there has been a change in terms of the amount and diversity of content available. The advent of Classic FM, which is hugely successful, means that Radio 3 should no longer need to occupy the same space, but concentrate, as it does most of the time, on a little more challenging and difficult classical music than the more commercial Classic FM output. That applies equally in other areas.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has described this as having been an annus horribilis for the BBC, and she is certainly correct. Reference has been made to the Jimmy Savile exposure. We have seen the Pollard report and my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan is right that, given that a lot of money has been spent and a great deal of evidence taken, it is worrying that questions remain, particularly about the evidence submitted to Pollard by Helen Boaden and its apparent conflict with that supplied by Mark Thompson. Pollard did not really address that and I know that others may wish to pursue it.

Of course, the bigger question was not about the Pollard review, which examined why “Newsnight” came not to be broadcast, but about how Jimmy Savile was able to operate in the way that he did for so long. We await the findings of Dame Janet Smith’s review of the culture of the time. That may prove to be rather more shocking and it may have greater lessons of which we will need to take account.

The next failure, which was certainly as shocking, was the Lord McAlpine programme. It would have been the most catastrophic failure of editorial judgment at any time, but it defied belief that it happened such a short time after the failure to broadcast the Savile programme. Obviously, that led to the resignation of the then director-general, but there was a failure in editorial standards right across the news and current affairs division, and it is still not clear to me that everybody responsible has been identified or that sufficient action has been taken.

Another issue is the so-called respect at work inquiry into the bullying practices that apparently took place over a long period and the failure of management to take any action when presented with worrying findings about the way in which some employees at the BBC were treated. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) said that those were historical episodes. There is evidence that the bullying is not an historical, but a recent practice. The Select Committee will pursue that matter with the management of the BBC.

A lot of attention has been given to the level of the pay-offs and salaries. Those are serious matters. A culture appeared to exist whereby a small group of people at the top of the BBC awarded each other pay-offs when they came to leave. Those severance payments far exceeded any contractual liabilities.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

My hon. Friend hits on an important point about the costs that people at the BBC brought forward. Will he comment on the problem that the BBC’s behaviour, for example in the Jimmy Savile case, leaves it open to being sued by the relatives, which would create a multi-million pound compensation deal? The trouble is that that bill would, once again, be paid by the taxpayer. The BBC has a commercial arm. Does my hon. Friend have any thoughts on how the confidence of the public, who pay a tax to the BBC, is affected by these matters? It is not just the salaries that outrage them, but the fact that every time the BBC does something wrong, it is the taxpayer who pays the bill.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not follow him in talking about the legal liabilities that may flow from the various cases. He made the point earlier that the BBC has been fined for breaches of the broadcasting code. If a publicly funded organisation such as the BBC is required to pay a fine, it of course comes out of the licence fee. It may be that we have to consider other measures. A fine is not necessarily the best way or even a sufficient way to punish failures by the corporation.

Although the severance payments are a serious issue, the amounts of money involved were relatively small. By far the worst financial failure of the BBC is the digital media initiative, which has cost the licence fee payer £100 million, to no benefit whatsoever. It angers people in the BBC, as much as people outside, that they have been required to deliver savings in front-line programming, when they see huge amounts going on senior management salaries and pay-offs, and the huge waste of money in the digital media initiative. It worries me that, in making efficiency savings, the BBC has made cuts in some of the areas that it is most important for it to invest in, such as news and current affairs and local radio. It is no wonder that there is serious anger throughout the BBC when its employees have been told that investment in certain types of programming cannot be afforded, but they then find that £100 million has essentially been thrown away on the digital media initiative. That reflects a failure of governance.

I listened carefully to what the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood said. She recognised that the existing model is flawed and that there needs to be change. That is clear to me. There is a conflict between the two roles of the trust, even though I hear what she says about the trust being the cheerleader for the licence fee payer. I was interested in her idea about a mutual status. Perhaps she would like to expand on that further when the Select Committee considers the future of the BBC in the new year. It is certainly something that we would consider.

My view has always been that the BBC needs to be properly regulated from outside. It already is in some areas by Ofcom. I have always found the argument that Ofcom is well equipped to carry out the regulatory functions persuasive. Perhaps the BBC should have a more traditional model of corporate governance. Those are issues that we need to consider. What is clear is that the existing model is not working.

I welcome the announcement by the Secretary of State that the National Audit Office will have full access to the BBC. That has been called for by successive Chairmen of the Public Accounts Committee over the past 20 years. The BBC has said repeatedly that that would be a dangerous intervention and that it might interfere with editorial independence. That is absolute nonsense. There is no reason why the NAO should not examine the accounts of the BBC—that does not represent editorial interference. In my view, what has come out over the past year, particularly with the DMI, makes it plain that the NAO needs that full access. I therefore very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement.

[Dame Tessa Jowell]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the NAO and think that arguments against that view are insubstantial. I take issue with him, however, about his assertion that the present model is flawed. It is not the present model of governance that is flawed, but the failure of individuals within that to make the right decisions and intervene sufficiently early. For example, the trust could have conducted an investigation into levels of pay-off, but it did not do so quickly enough. Many lessons have been learned, but it is a mistake to conclude from that that the model itself is flawed.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I certainly agree that there have been failures by individuals, both in BBC senior management and in the trust. Whether we can draw from that a more fundamental problem with the model of governance is open for debate. I was opposed to that model of governance when the right hon. Lady created it some time ago, so I can at least claim consistency. It is clearly something we will need to consider and debate in the run-up to charter renewal.

I hope that this discussion and the Select Committee inquiry will begin a debate about the role of the BBC today. The BBC is good at displaying all it does. It has a huge range of TV channels and radio stations, and it is expanding online and launching more services on the iPlayer. However, the world has changed—and is changing—so much in the media. There has been an explosion in the past few years in the number of different content outlets, and that is continuing. We now have a successful ITV commissioning really good content.

[Steve Brine]

I know my hon. Friend is a great thinker on this issue, so let me run a point by him. Is the sheer scale and size of the BBC some of its problem? My constituents pay for highly commercial ventures such as “Strictly Come Dancing” and Radio 2, which could survive well in a commercial environment. The BBC also does great investigative journalism, and things such as “BBC introducing”, which Radio 1 does so well. If the BBC got out of some of the ratings chasing and competing with the “X Factor” on Saturday night, it could do so many more good things such as local radio and the other things I have mentioned.

[Mr Whittingdale]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and the point I was coming to is that that issue should be part of the debate about what the BBC should be doing—and, indeed, what it should no longer be doing—in this new environment. I have referred to ITV’s success, and we now have Sky investing a huge amount in original content and British programming—my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) mentioned Sky Arts. Perhaps even more excitingly, BT is entering the content provision market, and possibly in due course Liberty Global, which has just acquired Virgin Media, will go into content. We do not know, but that seems possible.

A rapid change is taking place, and we therefore need to look at how the BBC fits into the new media world. As my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) was saying, there are areas where the BBC appears to replicate content that is already available in a number of different commercial places, and it is not clear to me why the licence fee payer should pay for programming that the market already supplies. We need to address that important part of the debate.

The other part of the debate concerns whether the licence fee is still the most appropriate way to finance the BBC. I have always been critical of the licence fee, which is highly regressive, inefficient and evaded by a large number of people. The BBC director-general is now announcing that some programmes will be made available on the iPlayer before they are broadcast. That raises questions because the traditional licence fee model means that someone needs a licence if they own a television set in their corner. More and more people are now accessing content through iPlayer on catch-up, which is outside the original definition of what the licence fee should be for. Whether the licence fee is sustainable is cast into question in that different world. There is no easy answer to the question of what we put in its place—perhaps straight Exchequer subsidy is a better solution than a flat-rate poll tax, which is what the licence fee essentially is—but it should be an important part of the debate we need to have as charter renewal approaches.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, fundamentally, the question is this: what should a public service broadcaster do?

[Mr Whittingdale]

That is the question. The debate on what public service broadcasting is has occupied my Committee and all commentators on media matters for a long period. The answer is that public service broadcasting is changing. A lot of material that could, at one time, be found only on the BBC is now available in a large number of other places and meets the definition of public service broadcasting.

These are exciting times in broadcasting because there is a huge range of programming and choice that did not previously exist, but we need to examine where the BBC fits in with that. I remain a strong supporter of a publicly owned, publicly funded public service broadcaster. I am not sure that it needs to be as big as it currently is or that it needs to be funded in the same way as it is. I am also not sure whether it needs to do all the things it currently does. I hope we address those questions as charter renewal approaches.

17:51

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

It is a great delight to congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing the debate. I wish I could congratulate him on his speech, but, unfortunately, I disagreed with every word of it. The most exciting moment was when he declared that he was conscious. I am not sure what Hansard will make of that.

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman on fundamental principles. First, I believe that, nearly always, broadcasting tends towards monopoly. It is in the nature of the business because it costs an awful lot to make one hour of programming. It costs a lot to broadcast it to five people, but it does not cost that much more to broadcast it to 10, 10,000, 5 million or 20 million more people. That is why the state must intervene in the market, which is why I support the licence fee.

Secondly, risk-taking in the broadcasting industry—it is expensive to make one hour of broadcasting—is very expensive, especially in two notable genres, drama and comedy. Making drama is expensive. If people get it wrong, they might end up making 10 or 13 weeks of a programme that nobody wants to watch. Everybody will chuck mud at them for weeks. Comedy is even worse. For every “Fawlty Towers”, there is a “Miranda”—[Interruption.] I do not like “Miranda”, although some Government Members obviously do. It could be the other way around for people who do not like “Fawlty Towers”—for every “Miranda”, there is a “Fawlty Towers”. My point is simply that, in matters of taste, it is difficult to jiggle all the nation’s funny bones at the same time. State intervention is therefore important, because the market would not otherwise provide.

Australia abolished the licence fee, and what happened? The first thing that disappeared from the market in Australia was the one thing Australians loved watching—mystery drama set in Australia. It does not exist any more. It can be seen nowhere in the world because there is no licence fee in Australia to invest in it.

Thirdly, we need enough diversity in the whole of the market to be able to entertain the whole of the country, and to represent democratically the whole nation. A diversity of voices is therefore important. S4C in Wales is under the BBC and paid for from the licence fee, and I worry that there is not enough diversity of voices within Welsh broadcasting.

When I was first elected, but not because I was elected, the Rhondda Leader was phenomenally popular. Currently, remarkably few people buy it. All hon. Members know that local newspapers are dying in constituencies up and down the land. That is not because of BBC online, but because people are not buying newspapers, and because, in some cases, local newspapers have failed to seize the imagination. However, I worry that local government is virtually unscrutinised. That is why a diversity of voices in the market is important.

I am delighted that ITV in Wales decided, in the end, that it would be a mistake to move away from local news and current affairs. Otherwise, it would have lost its sense of being and its importance to the nation. However, I worry about the future because, all too often, there is only one broadcast voice outside London and the south-east. Let us face it: if the BBC excels in one thing more than anything, it is local radio. Nobody else produces the same quality of local radio—it is produced and resourced locally and brings local stories to light. Can Sky broadcast units be made to go outside the M25? Occasionally they do, such as if there are multiple murders—[Interruption.] They will visit the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) because he is Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee and a very important panjandrum, but, all too often, if it were not for the BBC, the television news would be a version of events from London and the south-east.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

Of course I will give way, but the hon. Gentleman has made an awful lot of interventions already.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being generous with his time. This is a fascinating debate. I am a supporter of public service broadcasting, but is it the role of a public service broadcaster to chase ratings? That is the key question.

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman walks straight into my trap. Public service broadcasting is not about making programmes that nobody wants to watch or listen to, which is in effect his argument. I do not believe that Radio 3 prevented Classic FM from coming into existence. If anything, Radio 3 enabled Classic FM to come into existence. There was competition at the start, but Classic FM found a different way of presenting classical music. It relied on an audience that was already out there—an audience created largely by Radio 3—and on players, singers and concert halls that, effectively, were subsidised by the BBC. There is a double benefit from the BBC. The licence fee paid by my constituents in the Rhondda pays for the hon. Gentleman to watch all the highbrow, intellectual stuff he watches, and to listen to the wonderfully intelligent and academic stuff he appears on and contributes to. My constituents are interested in watching “EastEnders” and, on Saturday evening, “Strictly Come Dancing”. They are also interested in watching sports programmes such as Wimbledon, which get very large audiences.

[Alun Cairns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman would not give way to me, so he can wait a moment.

I do not want to rely on the market failure argument that has been advanced by a couple of hon. Members.

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

Before I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, I ought to give way to the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan.

[Alun Cairns]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that, when the BBC competes actively for sport, it drives up the prices for other broadcasters? He has mentioned Wimbledon, but no other broadcaster is allowed to broadcast it.

[Chris Bryant]

That is not true. Other broadcasters are allowed to broadcast it—[Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman quietens down, he will be able to hear the answer and learn something. The truth of the matter is that, under the television without frontiers directive, to which all countries agreed, the European Commission allowed individual countries to list certain events—they must be agreed by the Commission so they are not too anti-competitive. Wimbledon is on the list of events that must be available on free-to-air television, but others can compete for it, just as they have competed for other sports that must to be available on free-to-air television.

[Damian Collins]

I agree with the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s earlier comments—if everyone pays the licence fee, there should be something in it for everyone, not just for people who want to watch highbrow programmes—but does he agree that there is a legitimate debate to be had on the commissioning of programmes such as “The Voice”, because, in commissioning that, the BBC was breaking into and chasing a market that someone else had established?

[Chris Bryant]

There is a balancing act. I agree with the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan that the BBC should not pursue every sports rights battle. In the end, that cannot be in anybody’s interest. I worry, however, that when one broadcaster in the land is much bigger than the BBC in terms of financial value and has deeper pockets, namely Sky—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) seems to be disagreeing. The BBC has £3.7 billion a year, with which it produces TV, radio and online content. Sky has nearly double that—£7.2 billion—yet produces far less. In those circumstances, there is a danger if the BBC merely ends up in a competition for further sports rights.

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

I know my hon. Friend will not go on about sport, which is not my strength, for too long. What he has not mentioned—he is making such a good speech that I am sure he will come to it—is how the BBC invests in talent right across the piece, from technology and technicians to new artists and comedians. Companies such as Sky do not invest in new talent in the same way.

[Chris Bryant]

It is an utter delight to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. In whatever small way I contributed to your election, or at least did not prevent you from being elected by supporting you, I am delighted that you are there.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In many cases, the only training programmes in the industry are run by the BBC. For example, its contribution to the high arts, by funding orchestras and choirs, is one of the things that manages to keep many of our concert halls and classical concerts going. Broadcasting is one of the things we can rightly say, without any sense of British arrogance that often applies to many other things, we do better than any other country in the world. I am conscious that that is not just about the BBC. I once worked for the BBC in Brussels. I got into a taxi and the driver asked me who I worked for. I told him I worked for the BBC and he said, “I love the BBC. I love ‘Midsomer Murders’, ‘Inspector Morse’ and ‘Brideshead Revisited’.” I did not point out to him that they had been made by ITV. We get a double benefit from the BBC, because it creates a competition for quality. It is not anti-competitive—quite the reverse. It is profoundly competitive, because it creates a competition for quality.

Contrary to the grand sweeping statements by hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan about how the BBC never investigates itself, I have heard every director-general, and most directors of programmes, quizzed on BBC radio and television programmes with an aggression equal to that shown to any politician. I do not recall, not even throughout the phone hacking scandal at the News of the World, Rupert Murdoch ever being interviewed by Sky. That is not to say that I do not think Sky is a good broadcaster; I think it is a great news broadcaster—it adopts a different attitude and that is great. I would just point out that, if anything, the BBC racks itself with guilt almost too much on occasion. It did not do a good job with regard to Savile or Lord McAlpine. It did not cover itself with glory in its approach to the National Audit Office, as the hon. Member for Maldon said, and to which I have referred to many times before.

[Alun Cairns]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again, because I have already made a long speech and I am sure that Members do not want me to go on for ever. I have at least united the House on that point.

There are other critiques I would make of the BBC. The Chair of the Select Committee said that the chairman of the BBC Trust and the director-general are appearing before his Committee tomorrow. I hope they are not appearing together. [Interruption.] He is saying that they are. I think that is entirely wrong as they have completely different jobs to do. They should never, ever appear on a panel together. They should not do joint press conferences or appear before a Select Committee together—perhaps they could appear one after another. This is where the BBC has gone disastrously wrong in the past few years. The chairman of the BBC Trust seems to think that his job is always to defend the director-general and vice versa. I disagree with that. The two bodies should be far more independent, as was argued in a report brought out in 1948.

[Mr Whittingdale]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, one that the Committee has thought about. I agree that sometimes the two roles are not as distinct as they should be and there is a risk that bringing those people in together contributes to that. However, the risk we run by adopting the other strategy is that the chair appears and says, “That is entirely a matter for the director-general, so I’m not willing to answer it,” and half an hour later the director-general says, “I am not going to answer that, because it is a matter for the trust.” By having them together, we do not allow them the opportunity to shift responsibility on to the other.

[Chris Bryant]

It may be that the hon. Gentleman has a point and that the Committee needs to think about how it can interrogate people with consistency, and perhaps it should be done on the same day so that they cannot pass the buck in that way, but in the past two years we have far too often seen Lord Patten appear beside the director-general in press conferences. That conflates the two roles and confuses the public. It means that the criticism rightly made by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan on the transparency of arrangements of the governance of the BBC is lost. We could do far better. I would make other criticisms.

[Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend alluded to me earlier when he referred to the position of the BBC in relation to other broadcasters. He mentioned the person who thought that “Midsomer Murders” and “Brideshead Revisited” were made by the BBC. Does that not demonstrate that the BBC is rightly or wrongly—in most cases wrongly—held to be the gold standard of British broadcasting? We should defend that, but the BBC has to understand that it is the only organisation in Britain with a legally enforceable income without it producing anything. It has to demonstrate that it is worthy of the licence fee.

[Chris Bryant]

Of course I agree with that. I was merely trying to make the point that many people think and say that the BBC is a vast leviathan in the British broadcasting market, whereas actually the leviathan is Sky. Sky hoovers up rights, has control of the platform, and is profoundly anti-competitive. If we did not have the BBC, we would have a denuded broadcasting market in the UK.

I would make many other criticisms of the BBC. BBC Wales sometimes seems to believe that its job is to create a Welsh national identity, which is far too close to nationalism for my liking. It often portrays my constituency as a drug den or as the murder capital of Wales, because those are the only times it ever comes to the Rhondda to report a story, and the truth is very different. The BBC is often far too right-wing in the way it presents news. For example, it barely seems to have noticed that the national health service in England is being privatised, and two of its most senior broadcast journalists were formally Conservatives, not members of the Labour party.

My fundamental point, and the Chair of the Select Committee gave away the line, is that we all know there are regressive elements to the licence fee, but it is a bit like what Churchill said about democracy: there is nothing better. What else are we going to do, other than have the licence fee, to invest in broadcast talent and the arts, and to ensure that there is something for everybody that comes out of a licence fee which is paid for by all?

18:08

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair for the first time since you were elected, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I find myself saying, for the first time in my eight and a half years in Parliament, that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I agreed with almost everything he said, which is a fairly uncommon occurrence.

I am delighted to speak in this important debate about the future of the BBC. It is particularly timely, given that the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee is soon to begin a major inquiry into its future. No doubt, this debate will help to set the scene for our inquiry and to show the wide range of views of politicians on both sides of the House on what the BBC should look like in the future. I make no apology for expressing my full support for the BBC and for being committed to supporting the long-term future of its top-quality public service broadcasting, but as my predecessor as Lib Dem spokesperson for Culture, Media and Sport, the now Comptroller of Her Majesty's Household, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr Foster), so rightly said, because it is funded by everyone, it is in the unenviable position of having to please everyone, which is impossible.

Unfortunately, it has become increasingly fashionable to attack the BBC, particularly in the light of recent revelations about pay-offs to senior executives, allegations of bullying and question marks over the handling of the Jimmy Savile affair. The BBC cannot be immune to criticism and its detractors are right that it is not perfect and sometimes gets it wrong. For instance, spending £25 million on severance payments for 150 senior managers—an average payout of £164,000—simply cannot be justified, and people were rightly mystified to hear of a £500,000 payment to the former director-general, George Entwistle, given that he had apparently resigned and that this exceeded his terms and conditions.

Having said that, however, under the leadership of Tony Hall, the new director-general, there are clear signs that the BBC is rising to the challenge and addressing these shortcomings. For instance, the £150,000 or 12-month salary cap on redundancy payments is very welcome, as is the commitment to removing so-called gagging clauses from BBC contracts and compromise agreements. The BBC needs to draw a line under these damaging revelations and concentrate on what it does best: providing top-quality programming and completing its efficiency savings without damaging its position as the best public service broadcaster.

Nobody can doubt that the six-year freeze created a massive challenge for the BBC—a real-terms 20% budget cut over the period—while it had to take on responsibility for £340 million of spending, including the World Service, S4C, local television and the roll-out of superfast broadband, but at the same time, the BBC was guaranteed its funding over that six-year period, which provided much-needed certainty. As we move forward, it is vital that that certainty is retained and that the BBC is in a position to plan for its future well into the next decade.

The cuts have certainly not been easy: good-quality local programming has been lost in the regions, including in Manchester with Radio Manchester, while more than 2,000 jobs have been lost, on top of the thousands that went under the value-for-money, cost-cutting exercise. The number of senior management posts has been reduced by 30% since 2009, while the National Union of Journalists has raised serious concerns about the loss of investigative journalists and the potential impact on the quality of programming; and that is before recognition from management that further savings still need to be made.

By 2017, the BBC will look radically different from the one that began this process of cost cutting, but despite the significant cuts, the BBC has maintained its popularity: 96% of the UK population access BBC content in an average week; audiences spend on average almost 19 hours with the BBC each week across all its services; when asked which media provider they most trusted, 58% of people said the BBC, which was well ahead of its nearest rival, which was ITV on 14%; 78% of the public are glad that the BBC exists, up from 71% in 2008; and 76% of the public think the BBC maintains high standards of quality, up from 66% in 2008. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) beat me to it when she said that those are the sort of polling figures that politicians can only dream of.

Despite its challenges and the resistance from some, the move to Media City has also been a great success and was achieved under budget. It has been a massive bonus for the north-west economy and an engine for further economic regeneration for that part of Greater Manchester. Investment in Cardiff and Glasgow has brought about similar success in Wales and Scotland.

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

Although it is good that we can point to investment in Glasgow, Cardiff and Manchester, are other parts of the country not entitled to a similar return, and have Birmingham and the midlands not done badly out of the distribution of spend so far?

[Mr Leech]

I recognise that Birmingham has done badly out of the move to the regions, but the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, as a Manchester MP, for welcoming investment in Greater Manchester. Nevertheless, I accept his point.

If the BBC is to continue to succeed and maintain its position and reputation, the Government must commit to its long-term future. It is unrealistic for the BBC to expect a real-terms increase in its funding after 2017, but at the same time it is unrealistic for the Government to expect that further real-term cuts can be sustained without damaging the BBC and compromising the quality of programming.

[Steve Brine]

Although it might be unrealistic to expect those things, further to the point I made to the Chairman of the Select Committee, does the hon. Gentleman accept that it might be realistic for the BBC to stop doing some things, in certain creative spaces, and focus on doing what it is good at and what a “public broadcaster” should be doing?

[Mr Leech]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman, because there is strong evidence to suggest that the BBC producing such content actually drives quality in the commercial market. There is little doubt in my mind that further funding cuts would be seriously damaging to the future quality of programming.

[Alun Cairns]

I find it strange that the hon. Gentleman thinks that further cuts would damage the BBC’s output. Have several examples not been aired already during this debate of significant waste? The digital media initiative cost £100 million, while the pay-offs to BBC executives also cost significant sums—£329 million to 7,500 members of staff. Those are examples of money that has not gone into broadcasting, which is the purpose of the BBC.

[Mr Leech]

Certainly, there are examples of money not going into broadcasting, but I think the new director-general has got a grip of what has gone on in the past, and I would expect it not to happen in the future. One good example is the restriction of pay-offs for senior executives to a year’s salary or £150,000, which is line with senior civil servants. My biggest concern is that future cuts to BBC funding would be most severely felt in local and regional broadcasting.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Leech]

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to make a little progress, I will give way.

The cuts have already seriously stretched resources in local and regional broadcasting, and no doubt further cuts would have a severe impact, which is why we must ensure that there are no further cuts to the BBC after the six-year licence fee freeze comes to an end.

[Gareth Johnson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his patience. Does that not effectively mean saying to doctors, nurses, police officers and firemen, “You can’t have any more salary”, but to the BBC, “Here you are BBC, here’s an increase”?

[Mr Leech]

That is not what I am saying. Had the hon. Gentleman let me continue for two more seconds, he would have heard me say that we should commit to inflation-linked rises in the licence fee after 2017, with a similar commitment to maintaining inflation-linked rises for at least the next five to six years. I realise that that would not be popular with some hon. Members, who believe that the licence fee should be scrapped altogether or reduced, but the current £145.50 fee works out at about 40p a day to watch the BBC, compared with around four times that amount for Sky. Furthermore, about a quarter of Sky viewing involves BBC programming that people have already paid for. The BBC is good value for money.

Good quality public service broadcasting sets the bar high and ensures good quality commercial broadcasting, because the commercial quality needs to be good to compete. Where public service broadcasting is poor, the commercial sector does not need to provide high-quality programming to gain market share. The BBC sets the bar high, and needs to continue to do so. Recent research shows that public service broadcasting raises audience expectations and forces the commercial sector to raise its game too. Enhanced quality in the commercial sector then challenges public service broadcasters to achieve ever-higher levels of quality and investment to sustain public service broadcasting’s distinctiveness. Some hon. Members have questioned whether the BBC needs to continue to create certain programmes when commercial broadcasters such as Sky are now producing good-quality content. I would argue strongly that Sky is now doing that precisely in order to compete with the BBC, rather than the other way round.

Owing to time constraints, I have concentrated my brief comments on the future funding of the BBC. I make no apology for doing so, because that funding is vital to its long-term future. If I had had more time, I would have liked to cover many more of the BBC’s opportunities and challenges. I shall briefly mention four of them. One opportunity relates to the success of BBC Worldwide and the need to encourage it to do even more. It generated more than £1 billion in revenue in 2011-12, and there is plenty of scope for improving on that figure. Secondly, I would have liked to talk about the BBC’s role in sport, and particularly its role in enhancing and showcasing women in sport. Thirdly, we need to end the anomaly whereby the BBC pays Sky to have its programmes on Sky’s platform. That is a ludicrous situation and it needs to come to an end. It should be the other way round, because Sky benefits from having BBC programmes on its platform. At the very least, the arrangement needs to be cost neutral; the BBC should not be paying.

Finally, there is a need to protect public service broadcasting through guaranteed positioning on the electronic programming guide. That is a bit of a geeky issue, but I hope that the Select Committee will look into it as part of our BBC inquiry. The electronic programming guide could become even more important as television changes in the coming decades, and we need to set it in stone that public service broadcasting will have the prominence that it deserves on the electronic programming guide.

18:23

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

I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also fully concur with some of the ideas that the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) put forward at the end of his speech. I was about to say that this debate is extremely timely because the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), is here, but he is just leaving the Chamber. Not to worry; I am sure that he will read Hansard in the morning. The debate is also timely as the Select Committee will have the BBC director-general and the chair of the BBC Trust before it tomorrow.

I want to concentrate on the subject of BBC news. I am the secretary of the National Union of Journalists parliamentary group, which is a cross-party group that works closely with the NUJ and naturally has concerns about the role of journalists within the BBC. It is worth reminding ourselves that the BBC still has a 74% share of national and international news consumption and a 31% share of all television news. It is the largest single investor in TV news production and it spends £120 million on radio news, compared with the £27 million spent in the commercial sector.

I was around at the time of the licence fee settlement three years ago. I was there on that dark autumn weekend when the deal was stitched up—largely influenced, I think, by Murdoch—in which the BBC took on the freeze over the next six years, the 20% cuts and, as the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington said, the additional £340 million of expenditure on other services. That deal has resulted in 2,000 job lay-offs. It has also had a dramatic effect on the BBC news service. Last year, 140 jobs were lost in BBC news, and that was the eighth consecutive year of cuts in that area. That has hit investigative journalism and political coverage.

The National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee have criticised the BBC for implementing the cuts to the news service without making any assessment of their impact on quality. Last month, a further 75 job cuts were announced in BBC news and current affairs. The impact of these cuts is to degrade the BBC’s unique selling point, which is the quality of its journalism and news provision.

There are also real worries about an element of creeping commercialisation in the BBC news service. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of BBC Worldwide. The £1.09 billion income that it brought in during 2011-12 has made a significant contribution to the BBC. However, we are beginning to see the incursion of a profit motive within the BBC Worldwide’s service delivery. Peter Horrocks, the director of BBC Global News, which includes the BBC World Service. reportedly told news journalists that they would be required to come up with ideas

“to strengthen our commercial focus and grow income”

as part of their job appraisal process.

That came hard on the heels of the scandal in which the BBC was forced to issue an apology for accepting £17 million from the Malaysian Government—for “global strategic communications”—after running documentaries about Malaysia. The BBC has also broadcast material on Egypt made by FBC Media (UK) Ltd, a public relations firm that was working for the Mubarak regime at the time. There is therefore a real concern that BBC Worldwide’s search for income is affecting its editorial and journalistic decision making.

I agree that it is galling for journalists to see their jobs being cut and the service being reduced while expenditure is going into other areas, particularly into pay-offs for senior managers and others. I welcome Lord Hall’s introduction of some form of cap on redundancy payments. He has a real job on his hands, however, in tackling the BBC management style. The Chair of the Select Committee raised the issue of bullying at the BBC, and I shall go into that matter in more detail.

The investigation by Dinah Rose QC, known as the Respect at Work review, was launched more than a year ago. It revealed

“a culture where inappropriate behaviour has gone unchallenged and become normalised”.

It found that staff were often too afraid to use the complaints service. The NUJ provided the BBC management and the inquiry with a dossier containing eye-witness accounts of bullying at the corporation, some of which were leaked to the media. It is worth putting on record some of the experiences that the staff endured.

The NUJ dossier, which was seen by senior executives at the BBC, claims that a female journalist was offered a job promotion if she had sex with her boss in his country cottage, that a senior manager was given a pay-off despite allegations that he had sent sexual messages to two female graduates, that women working in the World Service’s Afghan department in the BBC's London headquarters were criticised for wearing western clothes and expressing opinions, and that a black radio presenter was told by his manager that his voice was “not black enough”. That is what went on at the BBC. Those are some of the complaints in the dossier that was submitted to the management.

Michelle Stanistreet, the NUJ general secretary, has said:

“It is quite clear that bullying has become an institutionalised problem at the BBC, one that has taken hold over many years. The report’s findings underline the fear factor that exists, particularly for those staff on freelance and short-term contracts, who know that speaking out could damage their career prospects. Many see how bullies have been allowed to get away with shocking behaviour right under the noses of senior management, so have no faith that complaining will bring any redress. Our submission was eye-watering stuff: people have been bullied because of their sexuality, or their race; women have been subjected to the most awful sexism; journalists have been openly reviled because of their age; and there are many others whose lives have been made unbearable for no discernible reason. People have been picked off simply because their face doesn’t seem to fit.”

What also came out of this dossier was that a former human resources manager turned whistleblower alleged that the BBC adopted underhand tactics during the 2010 pensions dispute with the NUJ. He claimed that, during those negotiations, the management were putting active union members under pressure, monitoring union ballots and e-mails. That was from the dossier submitted to management. Individual cases are now being taken up and formal complaints are being investigated. However, many of the formal complaints lodged nine months ago have still not come to any conclusion. That is a long period of time in which to investigate a case and then not come to a decision.

I thus believe that Lord Hall has a job to do in sorting out this atmosphere of bullying and intimidation within the BBC, and I doubt whether BBC management will be able to focus properly on the organisation’s future unless it restores morale, which is at an all-time low as a result of some elements of mismanagement that have gone on. When the Select Committee meets tomorrow and interviews the director-general of the BBC and the BBC Trust chairman, it must first of all get a grip on those matters of executive pay and excessive pay-offs, and it must then challenge the bullying culture revealed by the Rose review. It is important to recognise that the BBC lost the confidence of the work force because it was distant from the work force—not listening to the trade union representations made to it about a number of these issues and not understanding that the workers within the organisation wanted to make a contribution. I would welcome it ensuring that, whatever structure is established, if things continue with a board as at present, staff representation must be part of that board so that the workers can be involved in the future direction of the BBC.

I fear for BBC news in particular. I fear that if these cuts go on, they will undermine the very product for which the BBC has become famous. That is why, in the build-up to the renegotiations of the licence fee, I agree that we cannot have a continuing freeze. There should at least be inflation proofing and we need a proper discussion about the levels of investment needed for the future of journalism within the BBC. It is too good a service to lose and too good a service to undermine in the long term by the year-on cuts that have been endured over the last eight years.

18:32

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as well as to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing this debate.

The whole issue of the BBC has come to light over the last couple of years, and we have noticed that there is a tendency among some to join in with what has become known as “BBC bashing”, which seems to have become almost a national pastime. Speaking as the chairman of the all-party BBC group, I certainly do not claim that all is perfect in the BBC—far from it. It does get things wrong, but it also gets a lot of things right.

The BBC has probably had the worst couple of years since its creation. It has never been criticised to such an extent before. Usually, with broadcasting organisations, it is the quality of the output that is criticised. The accusations tend to be that the programming is poor and not current or relevant enough. That, however, is rarely the accusation thrown at the BBC. I have not heard such an accusation during this debate. Indeed, if there is some agreement, it seems to be that the quality of programme production by the BBC is pretty much second to none.

[Chris Bryant]

One other point is that people rely on the BBC for accuracy in its news reporting. It may sometimes be that the BBC is not the fastest to report a story because it always waits until it has at least two people to confirm one. This afternoon, on the other hand, Wales Online, which belongs to Trinity Mirror, announced that the Prime Minister had resigned. Next to that item the website referred to “other stories” that people might like. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State looks frightened, but the Prime Minister has not resigned; he is still here. That is not the kind of mistake that the BBC would make.

[Gareth Johnson]

It would be damaging to my career to agree with the hon. Gentleman, but he makes a very pertinent point. With news announcements from other broadcasters, we might think “That could well be true,” but when we see a story from the BBC, we view it as confirmation because the accuracy is there and the report is right and honest. The BBC is not always first when it comes to breaking news, but it is often the most accurate.

[Alun Cairns]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his role as chairman of the all-party group and for his contribution. Bearing in mind Lord McAlpine’s difficult time, however, I am not sure that this is the right time to highlight the accuracy of the BBC.

[Gareth Johnson]

There is no doubt that there have been failings at the BBC, and I am not trying to claim otherwise. What I am claiming is that there is a vein running through the BBC that prides itself on being accurate, impartial, fair and right above everything else. We should give credit to the BBC for that. We have heard a lot about the BBC’s failures—I shall make some criticisms myself—but I believe that we should give credit to the BBC where it is due.

As I say, the BBC has its failings, but the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) made the point that we politicians could only dream of having the approval ratings that the BBC experiences today—notwithstanding the two difficult years to which I have alluded. As I said to the hon. Member for Rhondda, when the BBC makes a statement, there is an extra burden on it to be accurate, fair and unbiased. It is right to scrutinise the work of the BBC to make sure that that very high standard is upheld. I do not claim to be one of the most travelled Members, but when I watch television in various different countries around the world, the coverage can often be dreadful and unashamedly partisan. When foreign nationals come here, however, they often compliment the BBC. In other words, our reputation as a nation is enhanced by the BBC.

BBC World is watched by billions and trusted by billions. This trust can easily be translated into trade and commerce with those countries in a way that can never accurately be quantified, but it can be relied upon to ensure that there is often a positive response to the UK from abroad. Such a response is frequently generated by the BBC through the work it does. As an opinion poll recently highlighted, it is seen as second only to our armed forces when it comes to serving our national interests positively around the world. The BBC should be commended for that.

As chairman of the all-party group, I had the pleasure of travelling to Caversham, where the BBC monitors publicly available websites and broadcasts. This sees the BBC at its best. This gathering of information by experts in the regions it follows has proven to be an extremely valuable asset for businesses and Government investing in those areas—so much so that a large proportion of its costs are now met by the private sector. The private sector wants to invest in it and to know what the BBC is finding out about markets, and it wants to help the licence fee payer to provide that service.

Here in the UK, we also benefit from the regional coverage provided by the BBC, which has already been mentioned. Its local radio networks and regional television coverage ensure that issues of huge local importance are covered which would otherwise never get an airing and commercial networks could not always cover. Today, for example, I gave interviews to Radio Kent on the Dartford crossing—an incredibly important issue locally, but one that struggles for coverage beyond BBC local broadcasting. In that sense, the BBC provides a vital service in ensuring that people are informed of local issues that affect them directly. Let me add that I never feel that I am given an easy ride when I am interviewed by the BBC, but I do feel that I am given a fair crack of the whip.

The BBC has been criticised over the last two years over the link between it and the Jimmy Savile revelations. It was right for people to make such a link, to point the finger at the BBC, and to ask what more it could have done to protect children from that man. There is no doubt that mistakes were made, and that this monster of a man was able to take advantage of his stardom. However, the same could be said of the national health service, given that Savile may have committed more offences in NHS properties than in television and radio studios—although we cannot be certain of that, because we cannot enumerate all the victims of his appalling crimes. Let us not forget that this was a man who, it has been said, groomed a nation. He pulled the wool over the eyes of not only the BBC but the NHS, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police. Moreover, an early-day motion was tabled in this House complimenting him on his work. So the link between the BBC and Savile is just one of numerous failings.

The BBC has shown that it can adapt to new challenges, and also to new failings. Its personnel contracts for senior managers have been amended, and rightly so. It is right that we have criticised the way in which those contracts were originally drafted, and it is right that changes have been made. The BBC has also shown that it can respond to the economic challenges of today. We said that there needed to be cuts in its expenditure, and that the licence fee would be frozen for a number of years. We thought it right for the BBC to respond to a challenge to which we expected the public sector to respond, and, in fact, it was able to meet that challenge in a way that put some utility companies to shame.

The future of the BBC now looks far healthier than it looked a year ago. Changes in management structures and pay have helped it enormously. It is taking on 170 apprentices, including at least one in every local radio station, and it has also embraced the technological revolution. Such innovations will play a key role in the corporation.

Has the BBC made mistakes over management contracts? Definitely. Has it made mistakes in general that it needs to clear up? Certainly. Can it improve? Yes. Nevertheless, I believe that the BBC is respected both in the United Kingdom and in other countries throughout the world for the quality and honesty of its work, and I believe that therein lies its future.

18:43

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Let me say what a pleasure it is to be speaking for the first time with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I want to refer to BBC radio broadcasting in two very different parts of the world. First, I want to say something about BBC Radio Cheshire—or, rather, the absence of it.

In July 2012, I had what I thought at the time was a constructive meeting in the House with David Houldsworth, the BBC’s English regions controller, and Mary Picken, head of communications for BBC English regions, about the absence of local BBC radio in Cheshire. Most of my constituency is effectively not covered by local radio at all, because there is no distinctly local independent radio broadcasting. The three of us had what I felt was a very fruitful and fair discussion. I explained that Cheshire was becoming an increasingly well-defined region with three strong unitary authorities working together to develop its economic potential—although it has been recognised not only for that economic potential but for the quality of life there, not least by the numerous BBC executives who have relocated to the county following the BBC’s move north. We all agreed that Cheshire was very distinct from the two city regions of Liverpool and Manchester, and that the current BBC local radio provision for Manchester, Merseyside and Stoke did not serve Cheshire appropriately.

I accepted from David at the time that, given the current economic climate and the fact that there was no spare transmitter capacity in the region, setting up and broadcasting from a new BBC Radio Cheshire might present a challenge. That, however, was nearly a year and a half ago, and I want to revisit the issue now. More important, I want to revisit the fact that at that meeting, on behalf of the BBC, David Houldsworth acknowledged the need for a clear and identifiable source of information about Cheshire and its news and views, and said that he would take what he described as active steps to bring about the creation of a BBC Cheshire news index on the BBC news website, which would enable all the news and wide-ranging events across Cheshire to be gathered in one place for people to view. There are similar forums on the BBC website for other areas in the north-west, such as Lancashire, Merseyside, Cumbria and Greater Manchester, all of which have their own dedicated pages.

Shortly after the meeting, Helen Boaden, who was then director of BBC News and is now director of BBC Radio, confirmed that the BBC

“is actively looking at the idea of an online Cheshire index and is hoping that any regulatory issues can be resolved as soon as possible. If that is the case it should be possible to launch an index within six months.”

As I said earlier, that meeting took place in July 2012. Since then—I hope that the House will forgive the pun—there has been radio silence. My office has heard nothing about the setting up of a BBC Cheshire news index. I should very much like to know from the BBC when that will happen.

The second geographical area that I want to discuss is a world away. I must don the hat that I wear as vice-chair of the North Korea all-party parliamentary group to speak about BBC World Service broadcasting into that country-—or rather, again, the lack of it. I think that we would all accept the importance of the BBC’s role as a key instrument of soft power in promoting universal values—human rights, the rule of law and democracy—and would accept that, at its best, the BBC World Service is a beacon of hope and a voice of freedom for the oppressed throughout the world. Broadcasting into North Korea would enable the people there who are victims of the most egregious and repressive regime in the world to know that they are not forgotten.

I hope that Members will forgive me if I remind them for a moment of the atrocities that occur in North Korea, and of why it is so important for us to shatter the wall of communication isolation that has afflicted the North Korean people for well over three generations. There are beginning to be cracks in that wall, largely owing to the advancement of technology. I think it important for the BBC to be at the forefront of that, rather than lagging behind.

Only last week our media reported that humans were being used as guinea pigs in North Korea, and that whole families were being placed in what were effectively glass boxes so that chemical weapons could be tested. That is cruelty beyond imagination, but it is just one example of what is happening in that country. People are being steamrollered to death, children are being starved to death, and thousands more are wandering the streets without parents. The children of prisoners are being treated as prisoners from birth. Hundreds of thousands are being held in gulags, many simply because of their beliefs or for making a cursory statement against the regime. Many are literally worked to death in prison factories, sleeping at their machines. A vast number of people are starving. Aid is being misappropriated at borders, never reaching those for whom it is intended. Those who succeed in escaping—which is rare—may lose their lives in the process, and three generations of their families may be threatened with imprisonment, perhaps for life. In short, they are the most persecuted people on earth.

Surely we should use our soft power through the BBC World Service to uphold human rights, democracy and the rule of law, and to develop this nation into one that we would see as habitable for human beings, not the nation we know of today. The cost of that would be a fraction of the £100 million lost from the BBC through the digital media initiative, not to mention the high celebrity salaries and executive pay-offs.

The all-party group held a meeting some months ago with Peter Horrocks, director of global news, including the World Service, and he kindly agreed to look into this suggestion. I contacted the Foreign and Commonwealth Office some time later and received a letter in response in March 2013 from the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire). He confirmed that Mr Horrocks had

“agreed to look into the suggestions that the group made in more detail. I understand that this work is ongoing. The BBC has committed to updating the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the APPG once this work has been completed. I do not want to prejudice that update and look forward to hearing more from Mr Horrocks on this in due course.”

I should be grateful if the Minister present today updated the all-party group on that.

My right hon. Friend the Minister of State also indicated that Mr Horrocks had said

“that the BBC Worldwide are currently exploring the possibility of offering BBC cultural television programmes to the North Korean state broadcaster.”

I should be grateful for an update on that, too.

We know how effective the British Council has been in North Korea in its teaching of English over very many years. I believe it has now taught English to almost 4,000 North Koreans. It has had access into North Korea, which has made a huge difference. I have spoken to several escapees and refugees who learned some of their English as a result of the work of the British Council. That and the BBC World Service are excellent examples of the use of soft power, which the UK is so good at.

We should remember that the Foreign Secretary retains his role in setting the strategic objectives of the BBC World Service. He still has oversight, and post-2014, will retain his current role of agreeing objectives, priorities and targets. I hope he will look favourably on the extension of broadcasting into North Korea and I ask the Minister to refer that point to him for a response.

I close by reminding the House of the respect in which the BBC World Service is held across the globe for the quality of its reporting. I share that respect; it is a service that I listen to frequently when I sometimes find I am unable to access the kind of slumber I would wish after a long day in this House. The quality of the BBC World Service never fails to impress me, and the public agree. The Chatham House-YouGov 2012 survey on British attitudes towards the UK’s international priorities asked people the following question:

“Which of the following do you think do most to serve Britain’s national interests around the world?”

They ranked the BBC World Service radio and TV broadcasting second only to the armed forces, with an overwhelming 68% of opinion-formers believing the BBC World Service is the UK’s most important foreign policy asset.

Let us use that asset to promote a safer world and address some of the most egregious human rights atrocities on earth today. That would be in the interests of not only North Koreans, but us all.

18:53

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

First, may I say what a personal privilege it is to be making this speech under your chairmanship, Madam Deputy Speaker, so soon after your election, and may I add that I hope you have a very long career in the post?

I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing this debate on the very important topic of the future of the BBC. We must focus on that subject, but, with that in mind, we must first get out of the way what many believe to be the elephant in the room: the subject of BBC bias.

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said he found the BBC to be quite right-wing. I was monitoring the twitter feed after he said that and I do not think many members of the public agree with him. However, I sometimes think it is wrong to say the BBC is too left-wing. That very much depends on the individuals who are presenting the show, not the corporation as a whole. There is no doubt that the BBC attracts liberal-minded people to work for it. Anyone who has done BBC interviews, especially at regional level, cannot fail to notice that the newspapers available to read while waiting to go into the studio are usually The Guardian, The Mirror or The Independent—The Guardian has almost become the in-house newspaper of the BBC. Setting that aside, however, this question very much depends on the show and the interviewers.

I think that one of the most politically neutral shows on the BBC is the “Today” programme. Some people will gasp at that comment and say, “It’s outrageous: John Humphrys sits there berating the Tories but never gives Labour such a rough ride.” However, when Labour was in power that was exactly what it said, and I think that when both sides of the House believe there is favouritism for the other side, the balance is probably just about right.

Where the BBC does tend to have its issues are in areas such as the Radio 5 morning phone-in show. Some of the comments the presenter of that show has let slip leaves us in no doubt about where said-presenter’s political loyalties lie. That does the BBC a disservice, because, by revealing the political hand in the comments made, the idea of neutrality goes out of the window.

[Damian Collins]

I do not want to interrupt my hon. Friend’s attempt to be invited on to the “Today” programme tomorrow morning to talk about this debate, but does he agree that the issue is not so much about balance or the number of questions asked or the people invited on to shows, but about what the BBC wonderfully calls “internal plurality”, which is, in effect, making sure that a breadth of different types of opinion is involved in making decisions on what news is and what is important?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

We know that there was a serious editorial and management change of direction for the “Today” programme in 1987, when it was decided that the show should shape the coming day’s agenda rather than report what happened the previous day. From that moment on, it became a more controversial show among politicians. I feel there is less bias in it than people on the right of politics think. However, it is clear that there are presenters who have deeply held left-wing political views. For example, we all remember the Jim Naughtie comment on the “Today” programme: he said “we” while interviewing a representative of the Labour party, rather than “you”. Such slips do get made.

We do not want to see programmes being dumbed down, however. That is where “Question Time” lets the BBC down very badly, because it is dominated by left-wing opinion. I was at a public meeting last night and the question at the end was, “Who would you most like to share a panel with, and who would you least like to share a panel with?” Somebody said they would like to share a panel with Peter Ustinov, which was interesting, and somebody else said they would not like to share a panel with Nick Griffin. My answer was different. I said I only want to share a panel with people who have been put there because they have been elected by and are accountable to the public. I want “Question Time” to have elected, and therefore accountable, politicians from across the political spectrum so that the public get to hear how the issues of the day are addressed by those representing the range of political opinions in this country. I get sick to the back teeth of opinionated comedians et al going on and spouting forth when they are not in any way accountable to the public. That is where the BBC lets itself down—through what I call a dumbing-down.

In the early-1990s “Harry Enfield’s Television Programme” probably did more damage to Radio 1 than anything else when it introduced the DJs Smashie and Nicey and completely undermined and caricatured such figures. Interestingly, I wonder whether Harry Enfield had the same impact when he caricatured “Question Time” six or seven months ago. Anybody who watched that caricature of “Question Time” will have found very little they could disagree with. It showed the BBC was in danger of losing an important part of its audience. We should consider the difference between “Question Time” and “Any Questions”, which is a very different type of show.

That point leads on to what I want to talk about: the future of the BBC, and how the various radio and TV stations feed into the whole organisation, and how it serves the public. The hon. Member for Rhondda made an important and interesting point when he said that public service broadcasting should be there for the highbrow programmes—and I certainly do enjoy them and the education I get from them—but then asked why people who pay that tax and do not want to enjoy those programmes should have them taken away. The idea that it is the role of a public sector broadcaster to entertain and to be informative is laid out in the charter, but I believe that it is surely the role of a public sector broadcaster to enrich the people it serves.

We then get into the argument about what lets such a broadcaster enrich the people it serves, and, thus, whether it is wrong to say that any of the BBC’s programmes or content should be commercialised. The BBC may have led to Sky Arts being formed and having a high-level arts output, but I would argue that BBC News followed Sky News. On stations that should be changed and either commercialised or kept in the public sector—I will deal with that point in a moment—BBC News 24 could seize the opportunity to split its content each hour between the half-hour rolling news that it does on the hour and having the next half hour become, in effect, the televised version of the World Service. This is an important point for the BBC, because it should not be competing with Sky News and its like. We hear the argument all the time that “We need to feed the 24-hour rolling news.” The BBC is a very important brand, which people feel does deliver knowledge in a way that they appreciate. It therefore has a prime opportunity to enrich people’s knowledge of what is going on politically in the world by making half of that broadcast output on BBC News 24 a televised version of the World Service.

Which areas would I commercialise? I often feel that BBC 1, Radio 1 and Radio 2 could easily exist in a commercial environment. Why do I say that? I say it not in order to cut the TV licence, but to bring in more money for investment in the things that will enrich our lives. Let us examine some of the most successful television comedies, such as “Little Britain”. It made a journey from Radio 4 to BBC 2 to BBC 1, whereupon it was hugely successful in its sales of DVDs, books, CDs and so on, as many BBC programmes have been. I would like the BBC to focus its resources much more strategically, rather than taking a scatter-gun approach across many a television station. I feel that BBC 3 and BBC 4 are excessive and are not actually needed. BBC 2 used to have the content that BBC 4 and BBC 3 show, and it was often seen as the feeder channel into BBC 1, along with its having the highbrow content. A lot of the stuff on BBC 1 can survive in a commercial environment because it has the ratings, but that is not to say that we should bring in commercialisation to cut the television licence; the BBC should be able to gain as much revenue as it can in order to invest that back and carry on investing in British comedy, British drama and news. Although the BBC has cut its funding to news, it did not need to do that and should not have done it. I hope the Secretary of State has heard what I have said about the television side of things.

What I am saying is far more important for the radio side of the BBC. I have said that Radio 1 and Radio 2 should be commercialised, and I hear people gasp and say, “Hang on a minute. Radio 1 does put on show some new talent and brings those sorts of things forward.” It does, but it often puts those things on early in the morning or late at night, and we also have Radio 6, Radio 1Xtra and so on. Other radio stations are involved in bringing in new talent, and some of the things on Radio 2 would probably be commercially viable.

[Damian Collins]

Does my hon. Friend accept that although it may be possible to turn Radio 1 and Radio 2 into commercial broadcasters, there would be a massive knock-on implication for other commercial radio broadcasters if those stations became fully commercialised, attracting advertising revenue and so on? We have to consider the impact on the whole market, not just whether or not an individual BBC property could survive in the private sector.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that important point. The question that will need to be assessed by the Secretary of State and her Department is whether the BBC has that effect now on the commercial radio sector. For example, I am a great fan of Absolute Radio, which attracts only 1.9 million listeners. It has diversified over the years; it does things decade by decade, and plays rock and different genres. Given that it has 1.9 million listeners, one must question how it is viable. It must be viable through the commercial airtime that is available. We know that commercial revenue has reduced in the year, which is why ITV now has four minutes of adverts compared with the two minutes there were some 20 years ago, as it needs to meet the costs along the way. However, a fear of allowing something into the market should not change our approach; we should allow the commercial operators to say, “If that is there, we have to compete.” That might raise their game.

The big “but” is that it comes down to this: do we want a public service broadcaster to enrich our lives? I believe we do, as that is very important. I believe there will always be a role for Radio 3, Radio 4 and the World Service, and, of course, for Radio 5 and local radio stations. When the cutbacks were coming to local radio stations, the point had to be made that there is no better broadcaster in this country during a time of crisis, whatever that may be—nine times out of 10 it is weather-related—than BBC local radio to inform its listeners of what is happening in the area. That service must be protected, as must the content on Radio 5 and Radio 5 live sports extra. We have had the discussion about sport, and over the years televised sport has gone from terrestrial television to the pay-per-view satellite broadcasters, but the same has not happened to radio sport; we get a wide range of programmes on the radio. That is one of the key reasons why Radio 5 should always remain on medium wave, because it has a greater reach than FM.

That reach is also why the BBC, this Government or any future Government must not allow the FM or analogue broadcasting frequencies to be switched off in favour of digital. We had this argument in 1992, when the BBC was talking about turning Radio 4 long wave into a 24-hour news channel, and we heard about the areas that Radio 4 FM cannot reach whereas long wave can. The analogue stations may be crackly and hissy every now and again, but we do get something. I drive down the M1 every week to this place and I very much enjoy listening to Radio 5, the World Service and Absolute Radio on my in-car digital radio, but there are plenty of places along the way where the signal is completely lost. We may get hisses, cracks and bangs with an analogue signal, but with digital we either get all or nothing. So when we talk about the future of the BBC, it is very important that the BBC makes sure that, above all, it is there for everybody and there to enrich life. I hope that I have given the Secretary of State many a point to consider.

19:08

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

As I am the last but one speaker, it is almost inevitable that everything I say will be repetitious, so I will not speak for too long. This debate was expected to focus on three main issues: the budget and the licence fee freeze; the failed digital media initiative; and the Savile and three associated inquiries. I will comment on those briefly before moving on to the specific point that I wish to make.

The BBC is a bit of a curate’s egg: it is remarkably good in parts, so in fairness I shall pay tribute first to its many successes. The quality of BBC drama, its wildlife, sport, history and comedy programmes and so much else is acknowledged internationally, and rightly so. That is something of which the BBC can be proud.

The BBC has a budget of about £3.5 billion and of course, like all public services, it thinks it needs more money but, like all other public services, it has to make decisions to reduce its running costs and protect the licence fee. At £145.50, the licence fee is already difficult for many people to afford, even in instalments. Recent accounts of embarrassingly high senior management salaries, severance packages and relocation to Salford payments would make any increase in the licence fee absolutely unjustifiable in the eyes of the public. There were 91 exceptions to the rules involving relocation payments of more than £600,000, with a very dilatory approach to recording them. The BBC review of that is still awaited.

The digital media initiative involved a catastrophic loss of nearly £100 million. Nobody knew it was going to be unsuccessful, but it was and that underlines the need for the BBC to find savings from within its budget.

The Savile inquiry and the need for the subsequent Pollard, Smith, MacQuarrie and Respect at Work reviews have left the BBC with a damaged reputation. There are still unanswered questions about who knew what, who colluded in the cover-up and who turned a blind eye to Jimmy Savile’s extensive activities. Public confidence will have to be regained gradually over time through the BBC’s future performance.

I want to make a specific point about news broadcasting. There is an aspect of BBC culture that I find worrying and that I believe requires the attention of the BBC Trust and possibly the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), the Committee Chairman, mention that there will be an investigation into the future of the BBC in the new year. I hope that my comments might find their way into the Committee’s deliberations.

As a publicly funded broadcasting company, the BBC has a duty to provide balanced information and not political opinion, which it gives routinely. Mass communication through radio and television gives the BBC immense power from the ability to influence its audiences and form public opinion. Television news bulletins, in particular, are a main source of information for a large number of people and the content is assumed to be non-selective and factual. I know that from the contact I have from my constituents who complain to me about what they have heard and seen.

The personal political views of news presenters are often transparent when they conduct interviews. Interviewees with whom they do not agree are talked over and interrupted, and another question is asked before the first has been answered in an aggressive style that contrasts noticeably with the respectful, unchallenging approach shown to favoured interviewees.

[Chris Bryant]

I have often been interrupted by many a journalist on the BBC, although never more frequently than by Adam Boulton on Sky. The hon. Lady seems to be making an allegation of bias at the BBC. Can she give a specific example of a broadcaster whom she thinks has been biased or an occasion on which that has happened?

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which was utterly predictable. I am not going to name any individual, but I have seen countless examples of that difference in style between the treatment of one politician and another because of their political party.

Unrepresentative individuals are often invited to demonstrate an adverse effect of a new government policy with glaring omissions in the presentation. That would be perfectly acceptable if another person were also invited who would demonstrate the benefit of that policy, but they are not. Both sides of the argument should be presented and it is not a legitimate role of a publicly funded broadcasting company to show political bias.

The BBC informs, educates and entertains, but what it should not do is misinform by omission. The BBC Trust has 12 trustees, independent from the BBC executive board. The Trust and governing body make decisions in the best interests of licence fee payers and protect the independence of the BBC. The Trust reviews performance of all services, so that must include news, and establishes protocols, policies and guidance that govern performance. Let me quote from the BBC website:

“The Trust must act in the public interest. We seek evidence to inform our discussions and reach our decisions through a mix of factual analysis and judgement. Governing a creative organisation on behalf of the public whose BBC it is allows for no other approach.”

News presentation should be exempt from creativity, and factual analysis and judgment should find their basis in political neutrality. I believe that the BBC long ago gave up any pretence of neutrality. In the run-up to the local and European elections next year and the general election in 2015, the style of the BBC’s news service needs to be reviewed to ensure even-handed and fair treatment of all political parties and to introduce a party politically neutral culture in its future news broadcasting. That is in the public interest.

19:16

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

We have had a wide-ranging debate on the BBC. I want to concentrate on the charter renewal and the new licence fee agreements from 2016 and to give some thoughts on the future of the BBC in that regard.

I am a fan of what the BBC does. It does some incredible work; I was at a launch event last week at Broadcasting House for the coverage that the BBC is preparing to mark the first world war centenaries that start next year, with 130 commissioned new programmes that will produce 2,500 hours of programming. That is a pretty impressive commitment to the four-year centenary period. It is difficult to think of any other broadcaster in the world that would have prepared in that way for something that will be of huge national significance over that period.

The BBC has a role in setting high bars for creativity and programming and doing the things that a public sector broadcaster can invest in on a scale that might not be possible for a fully commercial broadcaster. As some people have reflected during the debate, that does not mean that only the BBC can deliver high-quality programming in drama, factual programming and children’s programming. They are done to exceptionally high standards across the broadcasting world and we should appreciate that. We are fortunate to have such a rich diversity of creativity and talent working in broadcasting and programming across the country.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), the Chairman of the Select Committee, is back in his place, let me say that I think that the key point in the debate about the future of the BBC and about the licence fee is how people consume television. Gone are the days when people watched television by turning on a box in a room. I noticed that in his recent speech on the future of the BBC, Tony Hall commented on the fact that on transfer deadline day there were 9 million hits on the BBC Sport website from people looking for news, that 40% of iPlayer use is through mobile devices rather than desktop computers and, on the question of TV on demand and previewing television online, that there were 1.5 million requests to the BBC for its programme “Bad Education” before it had even been broadcast. Whether one is a fan of “Bad Education” or not, that is certainly an impressive number.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend feel that the advent of 4G, which will give so much more bandwidth and allow television to come through, could kill off the television licence overnight?

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I shall come on to that and he is welcome to pick me up on it when I have made a little more progress if he feels that I have not done justice to his point. Undoubtedly, 4G will only accelerate the process of TV being watched on demand and on the go where people want to watch it.

We should not underestimate the massive public appetite that remains for live television and radio, particularly when it comes to major national events, soap operas and dramas. The country comes together in its millions to watch something live and the appetite for that has not diminished. The evidence for it can be found in the incredibly robust performance of the commercial television advertising market, which has not been diminished by the internet at all and has recovered from the recession. When I first joined the Select Committee, I remember that the chief executive of Channel 4 said that we would never again see TV commercial revenues back at peak. Now they are not only back at peak, but in many cases exceed their previous level. That shows the demand for live TV, as well as for TV on demand.

Through the incredible initiative of Netflix in commissioning Kevin Spacey’s remake of “House of Cards” and broadcasting that so that people could watch the entire series as they might watch a boxed set at home, without having to wait for the next instalment, a commercial broadcaster has demonstrated that it is possible to pay for very high-quality content through a subscription service. We must acknowledge the fact that television is changing, and therefore the role of the BBC and the nature of the licence fee will inevitably change with that.

The director-general has set out a number of initiatives for the BBC to improve the breadth of the iPlayer, the period of time during which people can continue to watch programmes for free, and the ability to preview programmes through the iPlayer. Another interesting initiative is the creation of what he called BBC Store, whereby people can access programmes in the BBC back catalogue digitally through the iPlayer and pay a fee to do that. In the same way as they might pay to buy a DVD of programming that they were particularly interested in, they will be able to pay a subscription to watch it through BBC Store instead. This creates very interesting and exciting commercial opportunities for the BBC and raises some fair questions. If the BBC is allowed to develop more commercial properties and allowed to make more money from its back catalogue, how is this money used in the organisation? Can this be offset against future demands for a freeze or reduction of the licence fee if it is decided that that is the best way to go forward?

The BBC is also developing for music and radio an interesting platform called Playlister, which will help people to find music played on BBC radio stations and in BBC programming, identify it and add it to their playlist through Spotify, Deezer or whichever platform they use. This creates an interesting way for people to interact with BBC broadcast content and continue to consume it through whichever channel they choose.

This opens up an interesting debate about the way people consume the BBC outside the live environment. If people increasingly use the BBC through these online platforms, they create their own bundles of programming and content that they want to see. They prioritise the things that they want to consume. They effectively become their own director-general. They are their own editor-in-chief of BBC content. They will see that there is a great deal of content that they are happy to use and a great deal that they will not use. This may provoke a debate about the future of the licence fee.

Should there be a licence fee that covers a core service—core programming and the sort of channels that we would expect to see in a free channel bundle? There may be other programming and services that should be accessed through a subscription, so there would be a core BBC, plus extra services that people choose to opt into through extra channels. That should be part of the debate as we move towards the charter renewal process in 2016 and consider the future licence fee.

We know that people are changing the way that they consume media. We know that they want it on demand on mobile devices. A licence fee linked to a physical television set in a room is clearly no longer suitable, so how do we decide how the BBC should be funded? Should that be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale) suggested, through general taxation? I am uneasy about that, because the BBC would tend to become even more like a Government Department than it is already. The idea of some sort of fee collected through the way in which people consume BBC output, perhaps linked to what they consume, is an interesting idea and should be part of the discussions.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Does my hon. Friend believe that if the licence fee were replaced by a grant through central Government, the BBC would be under any more influence from Government than it was in 2003 in the case of the 45-minute dossier, when a Government who were not happy with reports from the BBC, which turned out to be accurate, tried to impose and did indeed impose their will on the BBC?

[Damian Collins]

I do not believe that that pressure would exist then any more than it does now. The BBC will come to negotiate the licence fee settlement. If it is like the last few settlements, there will be downward pressure on that or an idea that the BBC should take on other services that it should pay for, as it did when taking on the World Service through the most recent licence fee negotiations. That will be part of the debate, and there will be a robust debate between the Government and the BBC.

The BBC must be independent of Government, but it must accept that it effectively receives public money so there deserves to be some scrutiny of it. Criticisms that have been made of the scrutiny of the way the BBC uses public money have not been robust enough and are valid. Additional scrutiny through the National Audit Office may well be the best way to go. Throughout the debate legitimate questions have been asked about the BBC Trust. While I was a member of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee I thought that was particularly evident during the Savile affair and the session that the Committee held with George Entwistle.

The relationship between the director-general and the chairman of the Trust is more akin to the relationship between the chief executive of a company and the chairman of the company, but the chairman of the Trust behaved, certainly through the Savile crisis and its aftermath, like the chairman of the board of the BBC, a member of the organisation. I do not criticise Chris Patten for that. I think he did what anyone would have had to do in that situation—a senior figure who could speak for the organisation had to take charge at that difficult time, and he did that. But that is not the same as being the chairman of the body that exists to scrutinise the BBC—to be chairman of its own regulator. It raises questions about whether the current chairman of the Trust should be seen more as the chairman of a board of governors and whether there should be a new body that is more independent and that has more of an independent voice, whose members are perhaps selected with broader consent from the public, but is clearly a separate regulatory body.

If it is not possible to achieve that, the debate will surely come as to whether the BBC should be regulated by Ofcom as all other broadcasters are, and treated as any other broadcaster, with the current chairman of the Trust being the chairman of the board of governors, representing the viewers’ voice within the organisation. That must be a legitimate part of the debate on the future of the BBC.

If we had a blank piece of paper and if we could recreate the entire broadcast landscape of this country, we might not create the BBC as it is now, but we must recognise that it is a global media brand of enormous importance, it is an ambassador for this country around the world, it produces some iconic programming, it is chosen repeatedly by the nation as its preferred viewing platform for major national events, both state events and sporting events, and it is something that we should celebrate. However, there are genuine questions about the way in which it raises its finance, linked to how people consume its services and to the way it is governed, and those should form part of the debate as we come closer to charter renewal.

19:26

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

The BBC is an important national institution and I congratulate the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) on securing this debate which has, as other hon. Members have said, come at a timely moment. Obviously, the BBC has special funding arrangements. The licence fee is unavoidable for anybody who wants to watch television. As a consequence, or perhaps in recognition of its very high status, 96% of the public use the BBC in an average week.

However, as other hon. Members have said, a series of scandals have rocked the BBC in the past few years. The most serious was clearly the Savile scandal. It looks now as if perhaps 500 people were victims of this man, and the initial horrors have been followed by wrong editorial decisions. Then there were serious financial problems—£100 million squandered on the digital initiative, and massive executive pay-offs. It was not just the sums of money, but the mismanagement of the agreement to these pay-offs that was criticised. Those massive pay-offs were partly caused by the fact that there was excessive pay at the top of the management of the organisation.

We on the Labour Benches believe that the BBC must get a grip. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) has said that

“it is odd that though the BBC rightly sees itself as different from commercial broadcasters—in terms of how it is regulated and treated in terms of market share . . . they argue that it’s the market pure and simple which should dictate their pay.”

She went on to say that

“they cannot have it both ways.”

The consensus across the House today is that the BBC cannot have it both ways. Hon. Members also referred to the editorial errors in the case of the “Newsnight” descriptions of Lord McAlpine, and the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) spoke about North Korea. I thought she was going to talk about the questionable practices in the documentary about North Korea, which also raised concerns among many people.

All those episodes seem to me to show that the BBC’s management needs to be improved. They also show that its governance has failed, because the Trust did not fulfil its role of defending the licence fee payer. In this situation, we are presented with the question, “What is to be done?” Some hon. Members believe that the model has failed and the licence fee should be abandoned. The Secretary of State has said that she believes that the National Audit Office should have further powers and rights to go through the BBC’s accounts. I hope that she will say a little more about that when she responds to the debate. In particular, I hope that she will explain how she would achieve that while avoiding either the reality or the perception that politicians are interfering with the BBC.

The Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), made it clear that he believes that the BBC should be considerably smaller and that there is a question mark over whether it can continue to be financed through the licence fee. My right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) proposed a new model for a mutual BBC, whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and the hon. Members for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) and for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) all seemed far more supportive of the status quo and the current model—

[Chris Bryant]

No.

[Helen Goodman]

I will give way, if my hon. Friend would like to intervene.

[Chris Bryant]

I am sorry, but I am not all that supportive of the current model. I think that the role of the chairman of the Trust and that of the director-general have to be very clearly delineated and separated, which I do not think they are at present.

[Helen Goodman]

I beg my hon. Friend’s pardon, although I must say that is a rather detailed point, compared with the radical proposals coming from the Government side of the House.

When we consider the future of the BBC, it is interesting to look at what the director-general said last week in a major speech. He said that he wanted to see public service at the heart of the BBC and promised leaner management and further cuts of £100 million. It is true that some of the recent mistakes have been phenomenally costly, so a “right first time” culture would be incredibly helpful. He spoke at length about the possibilities for the BBC of technical innovations, including improvements to iPlayer, a BBC store and iPlayer radio.

The director-general also spoke about the significant contribution the BBC not only makes now, but can make in future, to the creative industries generally in this country. I think that is something we would all applaud. The fact that we put a 25% quota on the BBC to commission externally has turned out to be an extremely useful way of promoting and supporting other creative industries, and indeed exports, in this country. His proposals for a partnership with the British Library and a digital space with other institutions were extremely positive, as were his proposals for increasing the number of apprenticeships and the amount of education for young people in new technology. He mentioned something that I think we have all agreed with over the course of today’s debate: the importance of seeing more investigative news reporting. He also wants to strengthen the BBC’s global news presence, which will be facilitated through the incorporation of the World Service.

Although the director-general made a number of important statements about the BBC’s content and the possibilities for technology, he said less about the management. That has been a major concern in this debate and I think that it would be helpful if the BBC paid significantly more attention to it. In addition to the issue of top pay, we will obviously look at governance in the process of royal charter renewal. Rather than leaping to some new model, I think that it would be more helpful to have a proper royal charter process that includes consulting the public. As my right hon. Friend said, the fact that the governance arrangements did not work in the Savile episode, for example, does not prove that the model is broken; it demonstrates that the individuals did not fulfil their roles as well as they could have done. I urge caution before we tear up the current model and move into a whole new world—I am pleased to see the Secretary of State nodding in agreement.

It is also worth considering the future of the BBC in relation to the other large media organisations and the importance of maintaining media plurality in this country. The position of Her Majesty’s Opposition is that we should of course include the BBC in the overall understanding of the shares when measuring media markets, but that does not mean that we should apply the same remedies to the BBC as to other media organisations, and that is because of the different governance arrangements. I am not saying that those arrangements or transparency—the point made by the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan—cannot be improved, because I am sure that they can, but I think that all Members of the House must acknowledge that the BBC has a very different place from the private commercial operators.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I think that the hon. Lady is right up to a point, but surely we should also be looking forward when it comes to governance issues. Many of our local newspapers across the country are dying because they cannot monetise their online provision. In the United States, however, many local newspapers are thriving because they can monetise their online provision, and that is because they do not have a very big BBC online presence providing that content. I think that we need to look very carefully at that when we talk about media plurality.

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is a long-standing concern that the BBC should not use its privileged position to compete unfairly with other market operators. Local newspapers have claimed that stories are taken from them and that they are not paid for them properly, which obviously is something we need to address if we are to have plurality at both local and national level.

When we are looking at transparency and public accountability, I think that it is worth thinking about ways in which the public can be involved in commissioning. The best job in television must be that of commissioning editor. I think that a more open approach to the public on commissioning would be extremely welcome. The director-general says that he wants the public to feel that they are the owners of the BBC and that it is theirs, and we say amen to that, but we do not want it to be a piece of rhetoric; we want it to be a piece of reality.

Hon. Members also spoke about the management and culture of the organisation. Clearly, the need to be more conscious of value-for-money issues is still essential. Only last month senior executives gave evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, and it was clear on that occasion that there is still some way to go. We would also like to see more women in the BBC, both behind the scenes and on air. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) spoke about the serious cases of bullying that the National Union of Journalists has highlighted to us. One of the things that the NUJ has said—it is a good and reasonable point—is that the BBC should have an independent, external process for handling bullying or harassment cases. Doing everything in-house does not give members of staff the confidence that they need in the system.

I want to raise an important point about standards. There is a clear watershed on television; the content is suitable for children earlier in the evening and suitable for adults later. My impression is that the BBC does not operate radio to the same standards and that, from time to time on Radio 1 and Radio 2, there are songs, lyrics and language that are really not suitable for children. We cannot expect families always to put children into a silo of separate channels—that is not how people lead their lives, and the BBC must take that into account.

I felt that the criticisms made about BBC bias by some hon. Members, in particular the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson), were a little unfair. We can all think of occasions when we have been enraged by what we have heard on the BBC, but feeling extreme irritation sometimes does not mean that there is bias overall.

We want to tackle the issue of top pay and strengthen accountability, but we must acknowledge that three quarters of the population believe that the BBC maintains high standards. The most important guarantee of that is continued editorial independence. Although I completely understand that the BBC must evolve with changes in technology, in the end what we look for from it are values and commitment to truth and independence.

I end on a personal note. My mother is Danish. During the Nazi occupation of Denmark in world war two, the Danish relied completely on the BBC to get the truth. Those high standards of editorial independence and truthfulness are as relevant today, and will be as relevant in 10 years’ time, as 70 years ago. Those standards are what we want from the BBC.

19:42

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Maria Miller)]

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns), for Winchester (Steve Brine) and for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) for securing this debate. It is difficult to do justice to the wide range of issues that have been raised.

What I will not do is prematurely sound the starting gun for the next charter renewal, which will deal with many of the strategic issues raised today; people would not expect me to prejudge those issues. However, I will join my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), who struck the right tone in paying tribute to the majority of BBC staff, who produce world-class content. I particularly thank staff at the Salford offices, whom I met recently at our party conference. We should not confuse the poor judgment of some of the management —the failure of the few—with the world-class programming produced by the many. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who referred so movingly to the World Service.

What is clear is that the BBC asks for special treatment, and it gets that—a £3 billion a year levy. It is an extremely important institution nationally and across the globe, as we have heard in today’s extremely good debate. The BBC is synonymous with Britain, which is perhaps why it is so damaging for it to have been plagued by one scandal after another.

Many issues have contributed to making the past 12 months an annus horribilis for the BBC—from Savile to McAlpine and the failed digital media initiative to exorbitant severance payments. To say that as a nation we have been disappointed is an understatement. What we all want and expect from the BBC, now and in future, is relatively uncontroversial: a BBC focused on producing programming of the highest quality, setting the highest standards of behaviour and respect throughout its organisation and having an independence beyond question. However, we also expect it to be accountable to the public, who pay for it, for how it spends licence fee money. It is absolutely to be expected that both the public and this House should react when those standards are not met and that the BBC Trust and management should not only act effectively to address the issues of real public concern that have arisen, but be seen to do so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr Leech) said that it was difficult to please everyone—that is something, coming from a Liberal Democrat. He also said, absolutely rightly, that the BBC should concentrate on what it does best, which is high-quality programming. I totally agree.

I had a little less sympathy for the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).

[Chris Bryant]

You always do.

[Maria Miller]

The hon. Gentleman is probably right. Perhaps I will get right what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) got wrong, or perhaps neither of us can understand what the hon. Gentleman said, but I think he said that only the BBC could do cutting-edge comedy. I would like to see him argue that while watching episodes of “Peep Show” or “8 Out of 10 Cats” on Channel 4. I do not think he has got that right.

[Chris Bryant]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Maria Miller]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I really want to move on.

The Pollard review and the MacQuarrie report both concluded that a lack of clarity and accountability in editorial decision making created an environment of uncertainty in which such errors could be made. Dame Janet Smith’s inquiry has yet to report, but I expect the BBC to act swiftly in response to its findings. As the Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee said absolutely rightly, with a sagacity that I always expect from him in debates such as this, the culture that pervades is critical. Importantly, the BBC has already instituted some changes to reform its management culture—for example, through its Respect at Work review and changes to its own whistleblowing policies.

However, it is crystal clear that more has to be done. The events surrounding the Savile report on “Newsnight”, the failed digital media initiative and the remuneration of senior executives all seem to share a common theme: confusion around where the roles and responsibilities of the executive stop and those of the BBC Trust start. That is where I part company from the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell), who is not in her place. She seemed to focus on the people rather than the processes. There are issues around the ambiguity over the chain of command within the BBC, whether editorially or financially. That has had serious consequences for the corporation itself, and more importantly for licence fee payers, whom all of us in the Chamber represent.

The issue must be addressed, and it is no good waiting until a new charter in 2017 to act. The right hon. Lady floated the idea of mutualisation. It is right that she should have such ideas; as she reminded us, she was one of the architects of the current situation. Perhaps it is attractive to think in the abstract about changing structures, but I believe that here and now we have to make what we have got work. It is important that we get in place the right management who have the right judgment but also have the right governance structures to ensure that we can be proud of what the BBC is doing and are not concerned about how it is being run.

It was right that following the catalogue of failures that we have all talked about the BBC Trust and the BBC’s executive announced a comprehensive review of the BBC’s internal governance system and structures and the culture surrounding them. They are re-examining the relationship between the Trust and the executive with the aim of simplifying it and providing better, clearer oversight of the way our licence fee is spent. The review will build on the work that has already been done by the BBC’s new executive team to simplify the organisation, reducing not only the head count of senior management but the number of boards and committees to help get to a position of more transparency over the lines of accountability. As every Member of this House would expect, I will continue to keep the BBC’s structures and effectiveness under close review to make sure that it has effectively addressed these very serious and unacceptable problems.

Importantly, the BBC has already agreed in principle to changes to its relationship with the National Audit Office. I want this relationship to be strong and open while clearly protecting the BBC’s editorial independence. I note that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland has concerns about this. She will know from what I have said and what has been agreed in principle that there are no proposed changes to the role of Government and Ministers in what has been put forward. However, this requires the Public Accounts Committee to act responsibly in what it does. I am sure that she will be able to discuss any concerns about this with the Chairman of the Committee, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge). The hon. Lady is right that the PAC has to act responsibly in how it looks at the BBC, as it does, I believe, in all its business. Concerns have been raised about whether such changes could threaten the independence of the BBC, editorially and managerially, but the existing management agreement is absolutely clear, that while the NAO is entitled to review any BBC decision, it is not entitled to

“question the merits of any editorial or creative judgment which is made by or on behalf of the BBC”.

That is a direct quote from the agreement that is in place. Nothing that I have suggested would change that, and I am clear that this important safeguard will be maintained.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I serve on the Public Accounts Committee. In terms of how the NAO and the PAC dealt with executive pay, I like to think that that issue would not have come to light had the NAO not had the access that it now has under the agreement that we struck, which has proved to be of great public benefit.

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend is right. I am referring to some of the issues to do with the ability to intervene on things in a timely manner. I think particularly of the Entwistle payment, where we had to wait, I think, three months before it was able to be investigated. Those sorts of things do not help when we are trying to rebuild trust in the BBC.

So yes, lessons have to be learned from the last 12 months—some of the most turbulent times in the organisation’s existence—but we must also look to the future. We need to consider a whole host of issues that have been raised, such as convergence, which my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) raised, and the importance of the BBC’s independence in the future. I could go into a whole range of things, but I would like particularly to focus on the BBC’s vital role in our creative industries, which are a growing part of our economy. At a time when we are all focused on growing the economy and prosperity for the future, the BBC’s figures demonstrating that for every £1 spent on it through the licence fee there is £2 of value added in the economy is a good story to be telling for jobs, expenditure in the economy and economic opportunities. This represents the BBC generating some £8 billion of economic value for the UK.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford explained extremely eloquently, the impact of the BBC goes far beyond the economic. My hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan mentioned the BBC’s role in public health and the part that it played, extremely effectively, in raising awareness of AIDS. He asked whether the BBC could do further work on child safety online. That is an extremely interesting area. The BBC has already announced—I think in February—Share Take Care, which is an initial piece of work in that area; perhaps more will be done.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton for her contribution, in which she spoke incredibly powerfully about the BBC’s role in taking concepts of democracy and human rights around the world. I would like to touch on the impact that the BBC can have on the international stage in representing us and playing a key role in how we are perceived as a nation. As well as stimulating the interests of businesses and tourists alike, through the work of the BBC we are spreading Britain’s reach and enhancing our reputation as a nation. In a recent survey of about 900 business leaders in the United States, India and Australia, nearly two thirds of respondents said that the BBC was the main way in which they found out about the UK, and over half said that they were more likely to do business with the UK because of what they knew about the BBC. That is extremely powerful, and important to understand. Therefore, when the BBC fails to adhere to the standards we expect, and does so repeatedly, the potential for damage is great and goes well beyond our shores. That is perhaps another reason why this debate has been so heated at times. As a brand and as a business, the BBC has an important and powerful role in helping us to preserve what is great about our nation and taking to a wider audience what Britain stands for today.

The BBC also has an important role to play in helping to preserve the culture and languages of our nations. In Cardiff, the BBC has built a drama production village in Roath that is now the BBC’s biggest drama centre in the UK, home to “Doctor Who” and “Casualty”. BBC Scotland’s presence on the banks of the Clyde has an equally positive impact. In terms of Welsh language broadcasting, in which my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan has a keen interest and about which we have many conversations, the BBC became S4C’s major funder in April this year. The BBC has an existing statutory obligation to provide at least 10 hours of programming a week, at a cost of roughly £20 million per year, and BBC Cymru content is regularly at the top of S4C’s viewing figures. This can be in the form of “Pobol y Cwm” or rugby coverage, the latter of which draws over 100,000 viewers, possibly confirming a stereotype about rugby being such a part of Welsh DNA—something that I can certainly agree with. I was extremely pleased with the recent spending review settlement in which the Government were able to confirm our support for minority-language broadcasting, maintaining S4C’s Exchequer funding at its current level and investing a further £1 million in MG Alba, north of the border. It is important that we are doing this given its significance to our minority languages in this country.

A number of right hon. and hon. Members raised the issue of local radio. My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell (Alec Shelbrooke) and I agree on many things, but on this we may have to disagree slightly. I will read Hansard to make sure that I clearly understood what he said. As regards digital radio, we have to be consumer-led, and that is the approach we have taken. It is important that we respond to consumer demand in that field. I am sure that he and I will continue to discuss the issue.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

To clarify, digital radio is an important platform, but a public service broadcaster must make sure that it can reach everybody, so if people cannot get digital radio we must make sure they can receive it on analogue.

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that this is about responding to the consumer. We are on common ground. Decisions have to be made at some point and we need to make sure that we take the consumer with us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton addressed the role of local radio, particularly in Cheshire. She has campaigned hard and I do not have much to add at this stage. I hope she gets the answers she needs and that BBC Radio Manchester and BBC Radio Stoke pay heed to and focus on her powerful arguments.

The BBC has been and continues to be a creative and cultural powerhouse. It is totally unacceptable that recent scandals have overshadowed that. We need the BBC to learn from its mistakes, pick itself up, dust itself off and restore public confidence. The BBC Trust and executive must look to learn from the past and to build a BBC for the future that sets the highest possible standards in absolutely everything it does. We would expect nothing less.

20:01

[Alun Cairns]

In the limited time available to respond to the debate, I pay tribute to every Member who has spoken. I do not have time to go through them all, but I pay particular tribute to the Secretary of State and the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who stayed throughout the whole debate, as well as to my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), whose interventions and speech were extremely helpful. I hope that this debate will be significant for the Culture, Media and Sport Committee report, which we look forward to with great interest.

A whole range of issues have been raised and I will try to bring them together. Many focused on structure, transparency and the licence fee, and we have also focused on public service broadcasting and what comes from it. On transparency, I pay tribute to the Secretary of State, who has achieved an agreement with the BBC and the National Audit Office. We have been calling for that greater transparency for some time. It was resisted for a considerable period and featured in my 10-minute rule Bill last November. It seems that significant progress is being made and we look forward to the NAO’s reports. The director-general’s response to me last Friday suggests that it is happy to consider grater transparency, which may well mean the publication of invoices.

The structure is an important issue and I disagreed with much of what the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, other than one point, namely that all too often the BBC Trust and executive management appear to be one and the same and there needs to be a distinct separation. The BBC Trust needs to be the champion of the licence fee payer rather than the defender of the status quo against any criticism of it.

This is a useful time to start asking what we want from the future of public service broadcasting. Do we want the BBC to chase viewing figures and potentially compete with what the market can deliver, or do we want it to broadcast unique programmes that can appeal to wider audiences for whom the market will struggle to provide through the income it generates?

In conclusion, I ask the Secretary of State to take up my suggestion for the BBC to play a significant part in communicating with, and educating and informing, parents and children on online protection. That fits perfectly with the BBC’s unique status as well as its mission statements, and I hope that that is one positive that will come from this debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the future of the BBC.

Natural Capital (England and Wales)

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

20:04

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House welcomes the Natural Capital Committee’s first annual State of Natural Capital report; and urges the Government to adopt the report’s recommendations and to take concerted action to embed the value of natural capital in the national accounts and policy-making processes as early as possible.

I declare my interest as chairman of the GLOBE International board and refer the House to my declaration of interests.

May I start by congratulating the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) on his appointment, which gives hope to the independent-minded everywhere? I also thank the Backbench Business Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), for granting this debate. Thanks are also due to the sponsors of the motion, representing all three main parties, including the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman). I pay tribute to her and my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) for the role they played in steering the White Paper through Government.

I am pleased to see that the shadow Minister with responsibility for the natural environment, the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), will be responding on behalf of the Opposition. Only a few weeks ago, it was he who persuaded the Backbench Business Committee to grant this debate, so it is gratifying to see that his efforts have been rewarded with such a swift promotion.

Today’s debate was inspired by the first report by the natural capital committee, chaired by Professor Dieter Helm. The report provides a framework—and a call to arms—for the Government to place a value on natural capital. Natural capital is the stock of resources derived from the environment in addition to geological resources such as fossil fuels and mineral deposits. These goods and services include material and non-material benefits such as crops, timber, water, climate regulation, natural hazard protection, soil function, mental health benefits from contact with nature, and biodiversity.

Without an economic price, too often natural capital has been treated as if it is of no value, yet it is a fundamental component of every country’s portfolio of wealth. For example, the UK has treated North sea oil purely as an income flow, with no allowance made for the fact that its use today depletes a national asset that cannot be replaced. By using it, we are, in effect, eating into our capital reserves, and it is right that we should acknowledge that when compiling our national accounts.

A private company is judged by both its income and its balance sheet, but most countries compile only an income statement showing their GDP and know very little about their national balance sheet on which it all depends. Even the income measure itself—GDP—fails properly to represent natural capital. Forestry provides a good example of this. Timber resources are counted in national accounts, but the other services forests provide, such as carbon retention and air filtration, are simply ignored. This all matters deeply.

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

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. Oscar Wilde famously spoke of those who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. If valuing nature in the way suggested will halt the current decline of our precious wildlife and habitats, it is to be welcomed, but does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need very strong safeguards, including in the planning system, to ensure that by putting a pound sign on priceless ecosystems such as ancient woodlands we do not inadvertently open the door to their destruction?

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and she is right to sound a warning note. This whole area is embryonic and it needs to be treated very carefully to make sure that we do not end up with the exact opposite outcomes to those we seek by introducing such thinking in the first place.

In setting up the NCC, the Government said that their ambition was that this should be the first generation to leave behind a superior natural environment to the one it inherited. During the 20th century we placed unprecedented demands on global ecosystems. World population grew by a factor of four. Carbon and sulphur dioxide emissions increased by a factor of 10. Fish catch escalated by a multiple of 35. This has had serious consequences.

In 2011, the first UK national ecosystem assessment found that one third of the UK’s ecosystem services were declining. It showed that if the UK’s ecosystems were protected and enhanced, they could add at least an extra £30 billion to the UK economy. By contrast, neglect and loss of ecosystem services may cost as much as £20 billion a year to the economy. As the NCC report says:

“The risk is that rather than underpinning future growth and prosperity, degraded natural capital assets will act as a break on progress and development.”

The situation is worse in many places overseas. The World Bank estimates that in 2008, the costs of natural capital loss could have been as high as 5% of national income in Brazil, 8% in India and 9% in China. It found that the UK’s natural capital losses stood at just over 2% of national income, although that number is almost certainly incomplete.

The NCC report concludes:

“Until this is addressed, our national accounts will continue to provide erroneous signals about future economic prospects.”

To that end, the NCC recommends that the work being undertaken by the Office for National Statistics to embed natural capital in the UK’s environmental accounts should be given the “greatest possible support” right across Government.

The NCC’s report also recommends that the Government should initiate a programme to provide high-quality evidence on the economic value of changes in natural capital to inform cost-benefit analyses. Let us consider land use change. That may involve alterations in agricultural outputs, which have market prices, but it may also lead to changes in other factors which do not, including outdoor recreation, carbon storage and water quality. The best way to compare changes in such vastly different goods and services is to compare them in common, monetary terms. Developing a system that can achieve that reliably will not be straightforward.

There has been recent progress in this area. The Government’s 2011 natural environment White Paper made a welcome commitment fully to include natural capital in the UK environment accounts, with the first changes coming into effect this year. On the international stage, the adoption by the UN Statistical Commission of the system for environmental economic accounts has been a major step forward.

The prize is considerable. Measuring and accounting for changes in natural capital assets, and improving the valuation of those changes, would help to support better economic decision making. It would improve the delivery of major public policy goals, such as food and energy security, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and public health and well-being. In saying that, it is crucial that natural capital accounting is explained as a way of providing detailed information for better management of the economy. That needs to be done in a way that is coherent internationally but that resonates at home with a public who are concerned about seeing the more immediate benefits of economic growth.

This is not some doom-laden call for us to trade off economic growth for environmental protection. Pre-Victorian England was a low-carbon economy, but it did not deliver too much by way of prosperity. Rather, this is about demonstrating that better policy can result from integrating the value of natural capital into decision making, especially in a world whose population is rising inexorably.

That applies to Government and the world of business. The NCC report calls on the Government to work with leading companies, accounting bodies, landowners and managers to develop and test guidance on best practice in corporate natural capital accounting. As the chief financial officer of Unilever, Jean-Marc Huët, has said:

“The current financial reporting model only tells half the story about a business’s true performance and potential. The numbers say little of its reliance and impact on natural capital, factors that will increasingly influence competitiveness in a resource-scarce world.”

The NCC report is therefore an important document at all levels of policy making: national, local and commercial.

It was particularly welcome that the publication of the NCC report coincided with the launch earlier this year of the GLOBE International natural capital initiative. That is an international policy process driven by national parliamentarians, with the aim of incorporating the valuation of natural capital into policy and economic decision making.

In June this year, legislators from 20 countries participated in the first GLOBE natural capital legislation summit in the Bundestag. The summit considered the international context of the forthcoming UN post-2015 sustainable development goals, and how natural capital accounting should be addressed as a specific goal as well as a cross-cutting theme that affects the delivery of all development goals. For those who are living on less than $2 a day, half of all GDP comes from the environment and its biodiversity. It was therefore encouraging that goal 9 of the recent report of the high-level panel of eminent persons on the post-2015 development agenda, which was co-chaired by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, emphasised the importance of the sustainable management of natural resource assets to poverty eradication.

The GLOBE summit in June called on Governments everywhere fully to incorporate the value of natural capital into national accounting frameworks by 2020. It saw the publication of the first GLOBE natural capital legislation study, which reviewed the measures that eight countries, including the UK, are taking to integrate natural capital into policy and economic decision making. Unquestionably, there is a long way to go before natural capital is incorporated in national and corporate accounting across the world. However, the GLOBE study shows that the direction of travel is clear and that the eight countries covered, including the UK, are leading the way.

Embedding the concept of natural capital could mark a milestone on the road towards a more nuanced and complete understanding of our nation’s resources and the impact of our management of them. I congratulate the Government on the letter sent by the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the former Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) in response to the report. I welcome its statement that

“The measurement, valuation and good management of our natural capital is crucial if we are to achieve sustainable economic growth and enhanced wellbeing in future.”

However, is that to be the only response from the Government, other than in this debate? My Select Committee insists on a formal Government response to each recommendation that is made in each of its reports. Surely these annual reports deserve just as serious and thorough a response.

Do the Government agree that there is a need for a framework with which to define and measure natural capital? If so, do they think that progress is being made quickly enough? Will they set up a risk register for natural capital, as is recommended in the NCC report, and if so, when? Will they give the Office for National Statistics the “greatest possible support” in its efforts to incorporate natural capital into the nation’s accounts, as recommended by the NCC?

The valuation of natural capital goes to the heart of the biggest question facing humanity: can we adjust our behaviour so as to live within the constraints of living on one planet? Can we live in balance with the natural world, or will we insist on testing its limits?

20:16

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) on securing the debate and on his opening remarks. I also pay tribute to the work of the natural capital committee.

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate on the state of natural capital in England and Wales. I am always delighted to discuss the natural capital and resources of my country. On the face of it, the NCC report makes sensible recommendations, with which I am sure the new Welsh natural resources body, Natural Resources Wales, and the people of Wales would agree. My party would certainly agree with

“Genuinely embedding the value of natural capital into the fabric of economic decision-making”.

I question the sincerity of the UK Government’s welcome for the recommendations, given their fascination with marketising, monetising and privatising everything in their path. It is bizarre that they have seemingly been converted to the value of natural capital to the economy and human well-being. Only last year, they tried to sell the English forests and they are currently aiming to stimulate the market for water resources and embarking on a potentially unsafe and destructive dash for shale gas.

Any discussion of the natural resources and natural capital in Wales must concentrate on the fact that the powers over this important area are still hoarded at Westminster in the centralist grip of the British state. Wales should be able sustainably to exploit its natural and mineral resources for the greatest possible environmental, social and economic gain. However, the National Assembly for Wales has limited powers over natural resources and energy generation. The people of my country are thus unable fully to benefit financially from the exploitation, extraction or transfer of natural resources. Such financial benefits could be used to create a stronger Wales that is more economically self-sufficient. Responsibility for the planning, licensing and oversight of all resource extraction, exploitation and transfer in Wales should therefore be devolved. Some aspects of environment and natural resource policy are devolved to Wales, but the crucial ones are not. Today, the Westminster Government are threatening a grab for Welsh natural resources in the form of shale gas exploitation, water extraction and energy production, all without Wales being in control or her people fairly compensated.

Water is a highly emotive issue in Wales, and the flooding of the Tryweryn valley to provide a reservoir for Liverpool Corporation casts a long shadow over the modern history and politics of Wales. Many still see that as the catalyst for Welsh political self-realisation, and it spurred on a generation to secure an element of home rule, convincing them that Westminster would never truly work for Wales. That culminated in the struggle for a national assembly at the end of the last century, and the process carries on today. It is safe to assume that I would not be here today representing Plaid Cymru were it not for the episodes in Tryweryn. Only last night on S4C, there was a terrific programme about the fight against the potential flooding of the Gwendraeth valley in my constituency, and the battle of Llangyndeyrn, in which the local community heroically fought against Swansea Corporation’s attempt to flood prime agricultural land to provide water for Swansea.

Wales is currently not in full control of its resources. The Crown Estate and energy planning above 50 MW remain the preserve of the British state, meaning that we are unable truly to have ownership in any sense or fully to benefit from our natural capital. That is why Plaid Cymru has been making the case for those areas to be devolved as part of the cross-party UK Government Commission on Devolution in Wales. Polling carried out by the commission—the most detailed ever undertaken in Wales since devolution—revealed that an overwhelming 70% of the people of Wales want full devolution on energy policy. Any political party that ignores that does so at its peril.

Surely the people of Wales, at the bottom of the economic table for the nations and regions of the UK, should be fairly compensated for the natural capital that our land holds. All around us we see Welsh natural resources plundered without economic gain for its people. Current plans for fracking, and more recent attempts at “stimulating” the market in water, present a real threat to the natural capital of Wales. The water of Wales may not match Scotland’s oil in terms of wealth, but it is a resource with value and the people of Wales should receive a fair return. Although the upcoming Water Bill intends to leave Dwr Cymru—or Welsh Water—intact, Severn Trent Water cuts a swathe into Welsh territory, and could mean that the water of Wales is extracted for vast profit in future. With Gulf state sovereign wealth funds looking to buy Severn Trent Water and clearly seeing it as an investment opportunity for the future, Wales and its people should not be left at a disadvantage.

Full territorial integrity should be recognised, and it should be for the people of Wales to decide what happens to the water of Wales through our democratic institution, the National Assembly for Wales. It is therefore crucial that full control of water is devolved to Wales. It is a continuing disgrace that the Labour Government cynically blocked full devolution of water policy in the Government of Wales Act 2006, leaving the power of veto with London Ministers. Full control over water would finally end the grossly unfair system enshrined in the Water Act 1973, and perpetuated by the 2006 Act, in which water was lent to Severn Trent Water at a scandalously low rate of 5p a year for 999 years and the Secretary of State for Wales was empowered to overrule the National Assembly for Wales on matters of Welsh water supplies to England.

Plaid Cymru has put forward the case for the devolution of the Crown Estate to Wales so that our natural resources are secured for the benefit of the people of Wales. Last year the Crown Estate in Wales more than doubled its surplus from £2.5 million to £6.5 million. The Crown Estate is also set for a multi-million pound windfall from the development of wind farms on Crown land and on the sea bed around Wales. That should be going to the Welsh Government to help fund Welsh public services and invest in Welsh infrastructure.

The Westminster parties are concerned with helping those who seek to extract maximum profit from natural capital and resource, in spite of recommendations contained in reports such as that featured in today’s motion. Only Plaid Cymru puts Wales first and fights to ensure that the people of Wales control and benefit from their own natural resources.

20:23

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I was lucky enough to be at the helm at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs when the Government published the first natural environment White Paper for 20 years. We had the lofty ambition—cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart)—of being the first generation to leave the natural environment in a better state than we inherited. The significance of that challenge is not to be underestimated because it comes against the backdrop of an accelerating loss of species, with natural capital being lost at an ever-faster rate. The United Nations Environment Programme has calculated that for the UK, although overall wealth increased up to 2008, during the same period natural capital decreased by 30%. I invite Members to consider whether we want to go down in history as the generation that knowingly squandered the inheritance of future generations. I do not think so.

The Government had to decide what structures to bring in that would bring about change—that was the genesis of the natural capital committee under the inspired chairmanship of Professor Dieter Helm. That architecture in government is significant because the committee reports to the economic affairs committee, which is chaired by the Chancellor. That is important because it means that the natural capital debate is being hardwired into economic decision making.

It is stating the obvious to say that decisions will be better if the true value of what nature provides for free is factored in. I have always loved the example that if bees decided not to go to work for 12 months, it would cost our economy more than £400 million a year. That is not fanciful thinking, but based on real experience of what happened in China where, as a result of pesticide use, the pollinators died and fruit trees had to be hand pollinated by Chinese labourers. I invite Members to consider what the bill would be by comparison in this country. It is, however, a sombre fact that that has happened.

We are failing to conserve our natural capital assets, which is in stark contrast to the way we approach physical and financial assets. Such inconsistency comes at a high economic cost. Some of the natural capital that we have already lost is irreplaceable, but other parts can be regenerated. There are great opportunities for better management and stewardship of those natural assets, but that must be hardwired into the normal way we do business. Water companies have understood that rather than pouring chemicals into water to make it drinkable, simply paying farmers to keep the upland catchment clean can save money and the environment. Several water companies, including Yorkshire Water, South West Water and United Utilities, pursue the practice of paying for ecosystem services, and I expect other water companies to adopt the same practice.

Recognising the potential of business opportunities through better management of ecosystem services led to the establishment of an ecosystems markets taskforce, chaired by Ian Cheshire, chief executive of Kingfisher, which sets out to practise what it preaches in the marketplace. The taskforce identified important economic opportunities in bioenergy, local wood fuel, water cycle management, soft flood defences, better use of waste, and using nature to enhance resilience—all at their heart showing a better understanding of the importance of natural capital.

We all understand the importance of economic recovery in these austere times, but it is important that the return to growth is on a sustainable footing. A better understanding of how we use natural capital is essential to achieve that, so I agree with the natural capital committee that we need to develop a framework with which to define and measure natural capital. As the GLOBE initiative shows, that approach should be considered around the world as far as possible. I am not saying that every country should approach the matter in the same way, but legislators around the globe should recognise the importance of accounting for natural capital. It is salutary to recognise that some of the best practice does not come from the largest countries. Costa Rica is considering legislating on natural capital, and Peru has embedded natural capital in law. The work of GLOBE in showing legislators the approaches taken by other legislators is important.

By a happy coincidence, when we launched the natural environment White Paper, a new tool—the national ecosystem assessment—was developed with the help of no fewer than 200 scientists from around the globe. The assessment allows us to measure natural capital. In other words, as a result of that excellent scientific work, we can put a financial figure on what we previously thought was free. I would go so far as to say that, were such an assessment applied to the use of land in Europe, the common agricultural policy could be made far more efficient. There is certainly scope for that. We currently pay farmers for stewardship schemes at entry and higher level. If funds were directed to payments for ecosystem services, there would be a tangible benefit to the farmer, other ecosystem users, the taxpayer and nature. What a shame, therefore, that the 2013 CAP reform missed the opportunity to achieve that while claiming to promote greening.

Another major European policy—the water framework directive—could give a clear indication of the quality of the freshwater natural capital and its capacity to deliver ecosystems services, and not just as a part of those services. It is therefore in our interest to draw up that register of our natural capital assets and important that we understand which ones are most at risk, so we can prioritise our efforts to protect them. The committee’s report lists the wide range of those natural assets, from soil, water, air, carbon, energy and minerals, through to wild species habitats and landscapes. I therefore urge the Government to get on with overlaying those assets with a risk assessment and give us a time scale for achieving that.

Ash dieback is an example of a significant loss of natural capital through natural causes. However, in order to estimate the loss, we need to map the distribution of ash trees, their age, profile and susceptibility to the disease, and then calculate the negative value of the loss. That could include the loss of timber and of the amenity for recreation, as well as loss of carbon storage and the impact on other species. The second part of the exercise would be to calculate what it would cost to restore ash tree capital. Those are practical examples of what embedding natural capital in policy making could achieve.

That brings me to the important concept of offsetting for loss. The national planning policy framework says that the planning system should contribute to conserving and enhancing the natural environment by

“minimising impacts on biodiversity and providing net gains in biodiversity where possible, contributing to the Government’s commitment to halt the overall decline in biodiversity”.

One approach to compensation would involve the offsetting of losses, recognising the irreplaceability of some wild species and habitats. There is a significant opportunity to demonstrate that with the proposed high-speed railway. As there is an inevitable loss of green space to build the new line, it should be possible to create a significant offset for the loss of that natural capital. Not everything can be replaced. Ancient woodlands along the line of route will be lost for ever—more’s the pity—but new woodlands could be planted to buffer those at risk of being eroded and address the fragmentation of woodlands, which makes it difficult for species to migrate and sustain themselves. There could be a significant restoration of damaged natural capital. For example, we could restore the Tame valley, a polluted river valley on the east side of Birmingham that follows the spur of the new line into Birmingham city centre. Plans to deliver such natural capital regeneration have been drawn up by Arup, the engineers, and a professor of geography from Birmingham university—I commend them to my hon. Friend the Minister. Offsetting is a tool that could do a great deal to bring that vision about.

In conclusion, I strongly support the recommendations of the natural capital committee, in partnership with my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness; the framework within which to define natural capital; the risk register we need; and embedding natural capital fully in the UK’s national accounts. In addition, I wonder whether we can reach across from the public to the private sector and develop guidance on best practice in natural capital accounting and improve the treatment of natural capital in cost-benefit analyses. We should also take up a recommendation of the ecosystem markets taskforce and explore how natural capital accounting could be included in guidance on strategic directors reporting under the Companies Act 2006. I hope the Government urgently explore offsetting and other forms of compensation to restore and replenish lost natural capital. Together, we need to nail the myth that preserving and enhancing natural capital is somehow incompatible with economic growth.

20:34

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

It is absolutely right for Parliament to be debating the first annual state of natural capital report, and for the chair of the all-party group for GLOBE UK, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), to be leading the debate in Parliament. GLOBE has shown true leadership, both in the UK and internationally, in getting natural capital on to the agenda, and it is vital that the Government now take a lead. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this welcome debate. Given the way parliamentarians work, it is important that our constituents have an opportunity to have their voice, on how they protect nature, represented here in Parliament. For all those reasons, I value this debate.

As the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) pointed out, there is a conundrum. The natural capital committee’s work is a centrepiece of the natural environment White Paper. The extent to which the NCC informs policy is a key test of the White Paper’s ability to truly achieve the step change in how we value nature as a society. As Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, a key issue for me is whether the Treasury is central to that process. I believe that it should be. The right hon. Lady set out how the NCC was established in May 2012 as an independent advisory body to Government, reporting to the economic affairs committee of the Cabinet Office, which is chaired by the Chancellor. In an ideal world, a Treasury Minister would be sitting side by side with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minister to answer the debate, because this is a cross-cutting issue. We are intent on drawing to the Government’s attention that it is no good DEFRA having ownership of the agenda; it has to be reflected in each and every Department of Government. This is one challenge that Parliament faces.

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree with the direction in which the hon. Lady is going, but does she agree that one of the NCC’s crucial recommendations is the need for changes to the Treasury’s perhaps ironically named green book to allow decisions to take into account natural capital, even where robust valuations are not likely to be available? Does she agree that that is crucial? Unless the green book is amended in that way, with exactly the kind of integration she is talking about, economic and environmental concerns simply will not happen.

[Joan Walley]

As always, the hon. Lady anticipates what I am about to say. This has been a long-standing matter of concern both to myself and to the Environmental Audit Committee, which I chair. It is vital that the mechanism for integrating natural capital values into policy in the UK is reflected in the green book. I understand, as far as the green book is concerned, that a review is currently in progress.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to mention the lack of representation on the Treasury Bench by a Minister from the Treasury. My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) identified correctly the importance of having the Chancellor at the head of this process, so it is essential that we have a Treasury Minister on the Front Bench, too.

[Joan Walley]

There is agreement on this on all sides of the House. If policy decisions from the Treasury lock us in to investment for many years to come, we will be prevented from including the true value of natural capital in how those decisions are reached. Parliament has to find a way of having shared responsibility reflected in the Chamber. I hope the commitment, which I am sure we will hear from the Minister when he comes to reply, will be reflected in the Treasury, and that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs understands that the debate is about the economy not just in rural areas, but in each and every part of regeneration policy.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I am a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, of which the hon. Lady is the Chair. Does she agree on the importance of incorporating this discussion in the debate on green finance, on which we will be doing a report shortly? Does she also agree that it is pivotal that we link up with the Treasury, DEFRA and all other Departments, because this needs to be a joined-up process?

[Joan Walley]

I absolutely agree. Certainly on green finance, this needs to be embedded at the heart of not just the Treasury, but the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. When the right hon. Member for Meriden, who was instrumental in setting up the NCC, gave evidence before our Committee, she absolutely understood the importance of the Treasury and Cabinet Office taking on this agenda. I do not know how closely she is watching how the Government are following through on her work, but it is vital that the Minister picks up those responsibilities, which were put on the drawing board when the NCC was established, and follows up on all of this.

The green book, which is under review, provides a good starting point for the cost-benefit analysis, but it does not include natural capital within its cost-benefit guidance, and it is important that capital stocks, including natural capital, be included in the review as potential constraints alongside the social cost-benefit analysis. What discussions has the Minister had with the Treasury on that? I know that the Woodland Trust, in particular, shares our view.

The NCC contains many recommendations. As GLOBE said, one of the key questions is: what should the Government be doing? I would like them to commit to incorporating the value of natural capital in international accounting and policy-making processes by 2020 at the very latest. Will the Minister comment? In that regard, the work of the Office for National Statistics is critical, and certainly my Select Committee will be taking evidence on that and looking to see what progress is being made.

It is not just about what we do nationally, however; it is about what happens internationally, as we heard just now. The Government need to take up the NCC’s report at the international level. I think of the work on the sustainable development goals, which, as we heard from the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness, followed the Rio+20 conference in Brazil last summer. Securing appropriate recognition of natural capital accounting within the United Nations is important. As we have heard, so far the post-2015 high-level panel has emphasised the importance of the sustainable management of natural resource assets with regard to poverty eradication. It is important, however, that the Government go one step further. As the Government take the sustainable development goals further, will the Minister ensure that all capital accounting, including of the natural environment, is addressed as a specific goal?

Progress at the UN can be made only if we make corresponding progress nationally, and here I wish to flag up the role of business, because this is not just about what the Government do; as many Members have said, it is about what business does as well, and many businesses accept that the global economy is entering a new era.

The Prince’s Charities “Accounting for Sustainability” report was prepared in the run-up to the Rio conference and made a positive impact on the discussions that took place there the summer before last. In it, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales said:

“There was a time when we could say that there was either a complete lack of knowledge, or at least room for doubt, about the consequences for our planet of our actions. That time has gone. We now know all too clearly what we are actually doing and that we need to do something about it urgently. Better accounting must be part of that process.”

In that report, and in the report that we are debating this evening, the business case is made for the integration of environmental and social information. Chief finance officers across industry are recognising that ethical breaches can collapse a company in no time. Work already under way by leading companies is reinforcing the natural capital committee’s recommendation for more work with leading companies’ accounting bodies, landowners and managers to develop and test guidance on best practice in corporate natural accounting. Will the Minister tell us how the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is dealing with those issues?

From the perspective of the Environmental Audit Committee, given our current inquiry into fossil fuel subsidies, it is pertinent that the Government should pay particular attention to the NCC’s recommendation for a review of the extent to which natural capital is being effectively priced and, in particular, for an examination of the scope for reducing perverse subsidies. What dialogue is the Minister having with the Department of Energy and Climate Change on that issue?

The ways in which the Government take up the initial recommendations will depend entirely on the pressure that exists at local level. Whatever the Government do will go further if there is support for their actions locally. I commend a recent report from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds that was launched here in Parliament last week. It sought to find out how connected to nature the children of the UK were, in an innovative three-year research project to establish a clear definition of connection to nature and, more importantly, a method for measuring it. The research highlights a wide range of benefits for children, society and the environment.

We all accept that nature is in trouble. Indeed, we had a debate in Westminster Hall last week on wildlife crime. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) pointed out that the more we understand about wildlife, the better we can value and protect it. So it matters a great deal if we, as a nation, do not understand how much trouble nature is in. With 60% of our species in decline, the protection of wildlife must begin at home, in our childhood. The research study examined a representative sample of young people. In it, the desirable score relating to being in touch with nature was 1.5, but that score was achieved by only 21% of children. There were big differences between boys and girls, between different parts of the country and, in particular, between urban and rural areas.

I happen to think that this matter needs to be addressed by the Government. We urgently need to amend our education legislation to make the teaching of sustainable development a duty. Many people agree with me on that, including educationists and practitioners who run field centres. The national curriculum can no longer overlook an understanding of the natural world. If the Government were to take on board that sentiment, it would chime with the direction of travel of the natural capital committee’s recommendations, and I ask the Minister to consider this possibility and to take up the matter with Ministers in the Department for Education.

Finally, there is a need for a long-term policy framework that supports and incentivises organisations, including financial institutions, to value and report on natural capital. Arguably, however, the committee’s report is a statement of intent rather than a clearly defined route map. At this stage, it is much more about generalities and intentions than about clear recommendations. As the committee moves on from its first report, it needs to be much more direct and much more forward, and it needs to build on its clear set of principles by making specific recommendations—advice on offsetting, for example.

When the Government come to review the natural capital committee in 2014, I hope that they will take some of those issues on board. The natural environment White Paper sets out an ambitious vision for nature and our natural capital assets. Genuinely embedding the value of natural capital into the fabric of economic decision-making is crucial to achieving that vision. The Government must now build on the work of the natural capital committee.

20:50

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

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) on securing this evening’s debate. I thank the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) for speaking so knowledgeably about this issue; she was responsible for seeing much of what we are discussing tonight come to fruition.

The coalition agreement stated:

“The Government believes that we need to protect the environment for future generations, make our economy more environmentally sustainable, and improve our quality of life and well-being.”

Following on from that, the Government published the White Paper, “The Natural Choice: securing the value of nature”, a recommendation from which led to the setting up of the natural capital committee to provide independent advice to the Government on these important matters.

It was done against the background of a previous century in which the world population had increased by 50%; there was a fortyfold increase in industrial output; and an increase of 16 times in the amount of energy used, greatly increasing emissions from sulphur and carbon. The natural capital was obviously put at risk by such a great increase in activity, and no policies were in place to ensure that it could be sustained and maintained.

Let me draw a comparison between us getting to grips with the concept of natural capital now and what happened at the first Rio conference when the issue of sustainability was first put forward. It was difficult at that time to get people to understand what was really meant by that concept, and I think we are still wrestling a little with it at the moment. Sometimes the interpretation of sustainability is used to promote a particular argument or project that we might wish to advance.

I was in a little chapel in Bryn Pont in Pontfaen in my constituency last night, where the Breconshire young farmers were having their harvest festival. They took the service themselves, being wonderfully able people. As I listened, I was thinking that, because of their role in land management and land ownership, they will be the people on whom much of this responsibility will fall. I wondered how they would grasp this concept of natural capital.

I am sure that the people in the committee who wrote the report are very able and that they followed fully the academic rigour and, indeed, the financial accuracy necessary for such reports. However, I think that the committee has a little way to go when it comes to explaining the subject to other people. It will be advising the Government on policy, but unless people understand and can align themselves with that policy, it will be extraordinarily difficult for them to deal with it. For example, the report offers the following:

“Definition of natural capital asset: Define the component of natural capital under consideration, the temporal and spatial scales being considered and the relationship between the natural capital asset and the services it provides, directly or in conjunction with other assets”.

I am not sure how that can be translated into user-friendly language. What I am sure of is that a great deal of work will be required to enable people to associate themselves with the project.

We have been given an example of the way in which natural capital can be used to assess the effect of a particular development, and then to offset it by replicating an environment or ecosystem that may have been damaged by that development. I think that the concept has a great deal to offer. I know that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is particularly interested in using offsetting to allow economic development to take place in areas where it has been problematic in the past, and I attended a debate in Westminster Hall during which the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles)—who is responsible for planning—spoke about developments in national parks and how they could be facilitated. However, I think that we must approach the process with considerable caution, because it is sometimes almost impossible to replicate ecosystems that have been damaged by development. It may work in some instances, but in others the environment will be so pristine that it will be impossible to replicate it elsewhere.

Mention has been made of the value of children and young people who have experience of the countryside and take part in activities there. On Saturday night I attended the first showing in Wales of a film called “Project Wild Thing”, which explained how we could encourage young people and give them opportunities to make the most of their experience in the countryside. There is also a National Trust programme entitled “50 things to do before you are 11¾”. I shall be sending a copy to my grandson, who has already undertaken one or two of the recommended activities. If we ensure that our natural capital can be maintained, it will greatly benefit the development and health of our children.

[Joan Walley]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important for all Members to do their utmost to arrange screenings of “Project Wild Thing”, which was launched by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the House of Commons last week?

[Roger Williams]

I certainly do. It is a very inspiring film. People will interpret it in many different ways, but I am sure that every way in which it is interpreted, and implemented, will enable children to benefit from it.

I think that the development of the concept of natural capital will be of considerable use to the Government when they are setting policy. However, one Member said that while it was some use if implemented nationally, it would be of greater use if implemented internationally.

Some 12 of the 13 recommendations in the Committee’s first report are process recommendations—they are about the way this should be approached—but the 13th recommendation is about agriculture. It recommends that the common agricultural policy should be radically reformed and that as much of the pillar 1 money as possible should be moved to pillar 2. I think that many of us would agree with that, but it depends on what the pillar 2 projects are. Also, it would be entirely inappropriate for policies to be implemented in this country while we have a single market that would put our farmers at a disadvantage to those on the continent.

There is a graph in the report showing the wheat yields in this country. They have increased from about 1 tonne an acre to about 3 tonnes or more. Sadly, however— and chillingly in some respects—there have been reductions in wheat yields in this country in the last two years. For those two years we will be net importers of wheat, whereas we have been a wheat exporter in the past.

We talk about farmers delivering public services. I think the greatest service the farming community can deliver is a sustainable supply of food at an affordable price. There is therefore a balance to be struck between food being produced by farming and the protection of the environment.

This concept will be very useful and very informative for the Government in delivering their policies, but we need to show that the public understand the concept as well, and are able to engage with it.

21:02

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

I thank the Backbench Business Committee for finding time for a debate on this very important issue, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) on having secured these valuable couple of hours. It is a real pleasure to follow the speakers who have already contributed, and I agreed with so much of what was said that I have been radically cutting back on the points I wish to make in order to avoid boring the House to death. I will, however, make a few general remarks.

The conservationist John Aspinall died a few years ago. Before he died, he wrote a letter in which he said:

“Nature is the bank upon which all cheques are drawn.”

It is a simple and utterly unarguable observation. Everything we have is ultimately provided by the natural world— by ecosystems—but in modern society, with all its extraordinary cleverness and genius, we have never bothered developing the tools for valuing the very thing on which we all depend.

We are nothing without the natural world, yet concern for nature is seen, at a stretch, as a luxury add-on. That thinking permeates across the board. How many times have we heard our Chancellors caution that the economy must always be prioritised above the environment, as if somehow the two can be separated—as if we can flourish economically without that annoying thing called the environment? It is an extraordinary flaw in modern thinking.

That flaw is, perhaps, understandable for our recent ancestors. They may have seen the world as simply too big to pollute—they may have thought the oceans were so deep that it did not matter how much we threw in them, and that there was so much forest that it did not matter how much of it we cut down. There is an explanation for the madness of previous generations, therefore, but not of today’s. With 15 of the world’s biggest fisheries collapsed or on the brink of collapse, with the world forest map visibly shrinking every year, with fresh water shortages affecting well over 100 countries, and with human trash clogging up our oceans—visible now even from satellite—it is obvious even to a child that we are going to hit a wall.

Reconciling the market with the environment is a prerequisite for our survival as a species. It is our defining challenge. This slightly nerdy debate we are having about valuing natural capital is a central part of that.

In practical terms, valuing natural capital is about putting a value on the free services provided by the environment, and not just valuing nature after it has been cashed in. My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) gave an excellent speech on the value of pollinators to British agriculture, in which she said that the cost would be £400 million a year were they to stop doing their valuable work. The benefits that wetlands provide to water quality are estimated at about £1.5 billion per year. Other examples of natural capital include the value of natural flood plains in terms of flood defences. The UK national ecosystem assessment in 2011 calculated that if the UK’s ecosystems were properly protected and enhanced, they could add an extra £30 billion to the UK economy. The assessment also warned that:

“Neglect and the loss of ecosystem services may cost as much as £20 billion to the economy per year”.

Even now, at this early stage, we can see practical examples of what happens when natural systems are valued. We have heard about some examples, but I wish to give a couple more. Old flood defences on the Humber estuary have been re-engineered to allow controlled flooding in order to prevent further flooding of towns and land downstream. The scheme has created 440 hectares of valuable new wetland habitat and provides about £400,000 each year in flood protection benefits. That is a straightforward example of what valuing natural capital means. In Cornwall, South West Water has found that paying farmers to reduce the amount of pollutants from their land entering rivers provides benefits that, I am told, are 65 times more than the initial cost. So the farmers benefit, the environment benefits and the water companies benefit—this really is win, win, win.

I wish to mention one other example from slightly further afield—since we are talking about the world and not just this country, I am sure that I will be allowed to do so. Vietnam has had a policy on payment for forest services since 2008, through which hydro plants, water companies and tourism companies must pay for the use of forest services. So, for example, more than $2 million is paid each year for the protection of the 276,000 hectares of forest in the Quang Nam province, of which 85% goes directly to local residents. The hydro companies protect their capital investments, because the trees prevent siltation and erosion, which ultimately shortens the life of their investment; the water companies have steady supplies of clean water; tourism flourishes; and local people have jobs and security. Again, everyone wins; the policy is a beautiful example of what this slightly abstract thing we are discussing means on the ground.

I want to acknowledge the work of Dieter Helm and the independent natural capital committee, and of my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden, who showed real, direct commitment in her time in office and has, without doubt, moved this issue on profoundly. However, this thinking needs to become much more mainstream in government and much more embedded in the decision-making process. We can all agree that we have a long way to go on that. To see that, we need only consider the Government’s impact assessment for the first 31 marine conservation zones, which calculated the costs to industry—about £1,000 per year—but failed to quantify the wider benefits of improving the health of the ecosystems. It did not look at how the zones added to the value of tourism and the fact that a healthy marine environment creates seafood. Those things were left out of the calculations.

Unless the work of the NCC begins to have a real impact on decisions made across government, it can only ever be an abstract or academic exercise. I am not yet convinced that the key Departments have properly bought in to this. Only a few weeks ago, a number of senior civil servants from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee. I asked them at the end of our session, while things were still being collected and recorded, whether any of them had met up with anyone from the NCC. Not only had they not done so, but I think we can safely assume from the response we got that they did not even know what the NCC was. Would it not be wonderful if next time we debated this issue—I mean this as no disrespect to the great Minister we have on the Front Bench today—the Benches were packed and we were talking directly to the Chancellor? That would be a whole new ball game.

On paper, I think that the UK is providing real leadership —that is not in doubt—and I know that other countries are watching our progress. My one request to the Minister is to persuade us, and anyone watching this debate, that the Government as a whole really are ready for the challenge and really have incorporated this thinking across all the Departments.

21:10

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

I want to make just a few brief comments. I add my congratulations to the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) on all the work she did as Secretary of State in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. As I was a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government at the same time, I particularly commend her initiative in setting up a regular breakfast meeting of green Ministers across Government, which gave an opportunity for some of the cross-fertilisation of ideas that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) requested. I hope that the Minister can assure us that those cross-governmental ministerial links are being maintained. That is an important part of ensuring that the intention is translated into reality.

I also commend the natural capital committee for its work and the focus it is bringing to this matter. I want, however, to pick up the point about how the governance will be managed. It is good that the committee is reporting to the economic affairs committee of the Cabinet, one of the most senior in the Government and one that is chaired by the Chancellor. As the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) said, however, the meaning and context of that do not necessarily penetrate far into the civil service machine.

If there had not been a request from hon. Members to the Backbench Business Committee, the subject would not have come before Parliament to be debated and discussed at all. Will the Minister give us some idea of how he believes the Government will manage the governance of the process? Will they ensure that when recommendations are made those involved are given serious professional support by the civil service in making presentations to the economic affairs committee and that the recommendations do not come in as item 13 on a busy day but get some serious consideration with proper ministerial input?

There is no doubt that to do what has been asserted in the natural environment White Paper and subsequently by the natural capital committee does not require merely that an existing Government process should carry on while just being slightly better. Doing that needs a fundamental and complete shift in Government thinking, and that is not likely to be delivered by an external committee reporting to a Cabinet committee. It requires clear ministerial direction and, as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North said, that is needed across Departments of every type and shape.

I hope that the Minister can give us those assurances. I know for a fact that the Government’s intentions are excellent. We have laid some good foundations, but if we want some good outcomes I believe that getting the governance right will prove to be the key to success.

21:12

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

I refer Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I would normally congratulate the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) on securing the debate, but of course he spilled the beans and said that I was the one, when I was on the Back Benches, who went before the Backbench Business Committee. I congratulate him instead on his excellent speech. I also want to take this opportunity, which is the first I have had, to welcome the Minister to his new role and to pay tribute to his predecessor, the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who was not only unfailingly courteous but totally committed to this agenda.

Every society is defined by two things: what it creates and what it refuses to destroy. The only thing that sets us apart from our natural environment is our ability to reflect on our own place within it, but for all our cleverness we remain dependent on the extraordinary bounty that nature provides. The food and water that sustain us, the air that we breathe, the raw materials that we use as fuel and clothing or to construct our homes are only the most obvious of nature’s benefits. Equally important are the processes and services that purify our water, break down our waste, pollinate our crops and provide us with recreation and aesthetic or spiritual fulfilment. We have the right to use and enjoy the benefits of that natural capital, but that right gives us no licence to prevent our children from exercising a similar and equal use and enjoyment in the future.

It is one of the imperative responsibilities of Government to be good stewards of the present and even better guardians of the future, yet the facts show how far we are from being good stewards. In the UK our native flora and fauna have been in decline for over 50 years. Agricultural intensification in the 1970s is often pointed to as a key turning point, but the truth is that for more than 200 years, as we chopped down our forests and used coal to drive the world’s first industrial revolution, we moved from a pastoral agrarian society to an advanced city-based economy that has failed to value biodiversity. In that time hundreds of species of plant and animal have been lost from our country. We need a radically different approach not just to halt, but to reverse that decline.

One of the great advances in these two centuries is the progress we have made in classical economics. When Adam Smith wrote “The Wealth of Nations” or even when Karl Marx wrote “Das Kapital”, they understood capital to mean simply plant, machinery and money. But we have come to understand that there is such a thing as human, social and intellectual capital. We have come to realise that a well-functioning judicial system or an excellent education system are just as much a part of the wealth of a nation as its roads, its ports or its factories. The irony is that economists and economies have not yet caught up with the most important capital of all—natural capital. Virtually every other form of capital is derived in some way from natural capital and we can define it as the benefits that accrue to human society from the different species of life that inhabit the natural world.

The right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), to whom I pay tribute, spoke about pollination services. I remember that in 2006, when I was Minister with responsibility for biodiversity, I put £6 million into the Department’s budget submission for research into diseases in honey bees. When it came to agreeing DEFRA’s budget, the Treasury was not impressed. It insisted that times were hard and that with my £6 million it could create a new community hospital for people’s diseases, rather than worrying about bee diseases. I of course told the Treasury officials that I would be happy to cut the £6 million, but I asked them if they were aware that it would cost them £194 million a year. I explained that a recent National Audit Office report had pointed out that diseases in the honey bee population had reduced the pollination services that bees were able to carry out. This had reduced the yield from our arable crops, which in turn had reduced the revenue paid to the Exchequer by £200 million a year. The Treasury gave us the £6 million.

The thing about Treasury officials is that they are simple beasts. They do not want to know about the environment or ecosystem services, but show them a way to save money and they become entirely reasonable. Classical economics values things in a very simple way. Take forests, for example. Classical economics simply adds the sale price of the timber that can be harvested and the alternative use to which the land may be put and says that this is the value of the forest. What utter nonsense. The true value of a forest lies in far more than that. Forests stop soil erosion. They prevent flooding by absorbing moisture and they control climate, often regulating local as well as global weather patterns. They are a source of medicines and food and they have recreational and aesthetic value, and all that is before we even begin to consider sequestration.

In the millennium ecosystem assessment, 1,360 of the world’s top scientists showed that classical economics captured only one third of the actual value of the services that forests provide. The same is true for rivers, reefs, salt marshes, mangroves and all other natural ecosystems. We fail to factor their actual economic value into our policies and decision making, but because most of the other services that they provide are not bought or sold in markets, they are not normally taken into account, so the forests, reefs and rivers are lost or degraded.

Another important consideration is that those wider benefits, although immensely valuable, do not accrue to an individual property owner. The benefits are experienced by the community at large. They are regarded as free goods by the wider community and the wider economy. In classical economics such free goods are called externalities, and because they are not directly captured by the landowner they do not feature directly in the landowner’s decision of how and whether to dispose of them.

We use nature because it is valuable, but we abuse it because it is free. A nation’s GDP certainly increases every time money changes hands, but a growing GDP does not always create wealth. Many economic activities actually deplete wealth. The irony is that nations count that depletion as income, whereas they should see it as liquidation of capital. In fact, the TEEB—The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity—report, edited by Pavan Sukhdev, has already shown that at current rates of decline the cumulative loss of ecosystem services from 2000 until 2050 will be equivalent to losing 7% of global GDP. Here is the challenge: how do we explain to those focused on GDP growth that they would make better economic decisions if they properly accounted for the very real value of natural capital?

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

I bow to the considerable knowledge of the hon. Gentleman, who has just left the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. This Government have been very clear, as indeed were his Government, about wanting to put natural capital at the heart of their economic thinking. With regard to climate change that is very obvious, but in some Departments it is less so, so how do we value the natural capital input?

[Barry Gardiner]

The hon. Lady, whose chairmanship of the Select Committee is redoubtable, is absolutely right that that is clear in certain Departments but not in others. The way we value the input, as a number of Members have already indicated, is precisely the way contained in the natural capital committee’s first report to Parliament. The first thing we have to do—I will move on to this in more detail a little later—is to get each Department to create an inventory stating what capital it owns, what capital it affects and what capital it influences. Once we get Departments to look at it in that way, they can feed that into the Treasury so that better cost-benefit analysis is done and better economic decisions and policies are made.

Some of our political colleagues act as if they are still living in the 19th century. They believe that economic prosperity and environmental protection are destined to be in conflict with each other, but in fact the opposite is true. In 2011 the green economy made up just 6% of the economy, but it accounted for 30% of all growth.

Those on the economic right fall into the trap of thinking that the environment is the enemy of growth, but it is not. Their conclusion is that we must sacrifice the environment in order to achieve growth. But for those of us on the economic left there is an equivalent trap. Some on the left actually seem to agree with the economic right. Their claim is simply put the other way around: that economic growth is the enemy of the environment. Their conclusion is that we must sacrifice growth to achieve environmental protection. Both are wrong, of course, and they are wrong because they are locked into the same language of economic growth and environmental protection. They have failed to move into the new paradigm of economic wealth and environmental sustainability. There is a reason for that: the new paradigm requires a proper understanding of the value of natural capital, and not just an understanding of it, but a proper accounting of it.

What competent business would fail to carry out a proper inventory of its assets? Yet that is precisely what we as a country have done. We have not looked at the stocks and flows of natural capital and properly assessed them. In the UK we are beginning to introduce a fundamental change in environmental policy. Instead of focusing on individual species or habitats, we are pioneering an approach based on whole ecosystems. We commissioned the UK’s national ecosystem assessment, which has established that 30% of the UK’s ecosystems are in decline and that many others are only just holding their own against an increasingly hostile background of rising population, consumption and pollution. However, the Government have not yet taken the important step of instructing all Departments to create an inventory of the natural capital assets they own, utilise and affect. The Minister should speak to his colleagues in Government to ensure that that happens.

Quantifying the problem is the beginning of a solution. In the national ecosystem assessment, we have begun to put a value on the contribution of ecosystem goods and services to human well-being. The market has long known how to exploit the benefits of nature, whether by dumping waste at sea or chopping down rainforests with no thought for the wider damage that it was doing. But now, the most progressive businesses are beginning to understand the importance of sustainable supply chains. They are beginning to see the business imperative to reduce their own corporate risk profile and are now seeing genuine advantage in being net positive for the environment.

The establishment of the natural capital committee in response to the United Nations convention to combat desertification conference of the parties in Nagoya in 2010 is a significant and positive move on the part of the Government. I welcome it. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Meriden for how she steered the issue through Government. She also established that the committee should report to the economic sub-committee of the Cabinet. Her officials had put to her that it should report to her as Secretary of State, but she decided that it should report elsewhere, knowing full well that a Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was perhaps less powerful than the Chancellor of the Exchequer. She played a significant role in ensuring that the natural capital committee had the prospect of real success and traction. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) was entirely right to say that we should also have had a Treasury Minister on the Front Bench this evening.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman no doubt anticipates what I am about to say. He agrees that there should have been a Treasury Minister on the Front Bench tonight. It would also have been extremely helpful if Her Majesty’s Opposition had managed to get a shadow Treasury Minister, who are a great deal less busy than actual Treasury Ministers, to join us.

[Barry Gardiner]

I heartily endorse that. I will ensure that all these remarks are conveyed to my colleagues on the shadow Treasury Front Bench. I give the hon. Gentleman the commitment that they will get copies of my speech.

Having a Treasury Minister here would have truly shown that the Government were not just paying lip service to the idea of natural capital but were listening to the recommendations of the natural capital committee— namely, that the Government should establish a framework to measure and account better for changes in natural capital assets, and to improve the valuation of those changes and how they are fed into policy decisions.

The natural capital committee points out that the Government need to establish a risk register for natural capital assets that will clearly identify potential resource constraints or tipping points that may arise from the further degradation of our biodiversity. It insists that the implications for business supply chains from the loss of key natural resources must become a fundamental part of national economic planning. It recommends that the Office for National Statistics should include natural capital fully in the UK’s environmental accounts and that we should be working with business to develop guidance on corporate natural capital accounting.

I pay particular tribute to the work conducted by the Prince of Wales’s accounting for sustainability project. A4S has worked with strategic corporate partners to identify $72 trillion of resources and environmental services that classically have been omitted from corporate balance sheets around the globe, to enable those businesses better to understand the risks to their own supply chains and ultimately their future sustainability unless they change their business model for one that respects and properly values natural capital.

The Government should follow the prince’s initiative in involving business in accounting for natural capital. Will the Minister say whether he agrees with the suggestion of asking companies to prepare annual corporate sustainability reports for shareholders as part of their reporting cycle, in line with the business-led corporate sustainability reporting coalition’s recommendations?

Let me say this loud and clear: some things are beyond price. Some values cannot be monetised. It is not just that the aesthetic and spiritual values of a mountain are difficult to quantify; we should not even try. We must recognise that those values should not be traded in any market. They are not directly comparable and we must not attempt to compare them on a like-for-like basis in any cost-benefit analysis. However, to recognise that is not to accede to the demands of the fundamentalists of both right and left that we should not sensibly ascribe a value to the mountain for the tourism benefits that it generates or the watershed services that it provides. These are real economic values and we conduct our policy decision making in wilful and deliberate ignorance if we ignore them. This is not to commoditise nature; it is to ensure that the true value of nature is not ignored and treated as a free good by those who for decades have peddled a false theory of value that has allowed them to trash the environment with impunity.

The proper valuation of our natural capital is a means to its better protection, not a tariff sheet of charges for its destruction. The Secretary of State recently made several remarks that are deeply worrying because they have implied precisely the opposite. In his speech to the Association of National Park Authorities last month, he suggested that the protection of our finest countryside could be traded away to the highest bidder. This is quite simply a disgrace, and an ignorant one at that. Anyone with the slightest understanding of biodiversity offsetting knows that there is a hierarchy of principles that it must follow, foremost among which is that offsetting cannot downgrade or amend the existing levels of protection for biodiversity. The Secretary of State, by his ignorant, unscientific and dogma-driven approach, has shown himself to be incapable of leading the Government’s important work on natural capital and has probably done more to undermine the undoubted benefits that could flow from a proper system of biodiversity offsetting than any of the open-toed-sandal anti-development campaigners whom he so clearly despises .

I am delighted that the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness mentioned the work of the UN Statistical Commission on the system of environmental economic accounting. The UN has adopted SEEA as a new international accounting standard. It is important for the Minister to indicate to the House the Government’s commitment to develop the SEEA proposals and incorporate natural capital fully into their accounting framework by 2020.

I am also delighted that the hon. Gentleman mentioned the work of GLOBE International and its excellent natural capital initiative. I had the honour of chairing the national capital legislation summit that he mentioned which took place in the Bundestag this summer. I agree with the importance that he placed on incorporating natural capital into the first 2015 sustainable development goals. I should like to put on record my thanks and appreciation for the support of the German Government, who have consistently, and with great vision, understood the importance of this work in tackling global poverty as well as in addressing issues of climate change and biodiversity.

It has long been a fundamental principle that the polluter should pay. All too often, though, the polluter has got away with it because nobody has been able to answer the question, “How much?” In the UK we have set up the natural capital committee to ensure that the market and the non-market values of the public goods that nature provides are taken into account in all policy decision making. Our goal must be to incorporate these values into the standard Treasury method of cost-benefit analysis, our purpose being to stop those who seek to exploit the goods and services that nature provides by diminishing her continued ability to provide the essential ecosystem services and public goods that the rest of society needs.

The state of natural capital in the UK is at a critical point. Thirty per cent. of it is in decline, and action now is essential. The natural capital committee has produced an important report, but the Government must listen to what it says and implement its recommendations.

21:33

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

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) for bringing this motion to the House. He has consistently championed the cause of the environment, and he made a number of incredibly important points in his speech. Like many others, I acknowledge the work done by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman). It is important to recognise that a lot of the work we are doing now stemmed from the natural environment White Paper. After having been elected, one of the first things I did early in this Parliament was to attend the launch of that document at Kew. I remember it well. It was a very important piece of work, and she is to be commended for it.

To prove that there can be some cross-party consensus on this issue, I acknowledge the work that the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has done through his chairmanship of the all-party group on biodiversity and his consistent interest in its potential. However, I must take a little issue with his strong criticism of the Secretary of State. I can vouch for the fact that my right hon. Friend believes passionately in these issues, of which he is a real champion. He regularly speaks to Dieter Helm, the chairman of the natural capital committee. I therefore do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s criticism on that front, but perhaps we can come back to that later.

As every Member who has spoken has said, the state of natural capital is a crucial issue and the scale of the problem is great. Recent studies, such as the national ecosystem assessment and the “State of Nature” report prepared by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and others, drew on the excellent work of experts and volunteers across the country. They have reinforced the Government’s view about the worrying trends in the state of our natural assets.

We are constantly learning more about the complex mutual dependencies that underpin our vital ecosystems, but we are also finding evidence that shows that these intricate systems are, indeed, under threat. As many Members have said, 30% of the UK’s ecosystems are in decline. The numbers of specialist farmland birds, for example, have plummeted.

Although the overall condition of the natural environment is a cause for concern, we should also acknowledge that there have been some significant success stories that demonstrate what can be achieved when there is a will to do so. For example, environmental legislation has helped to transform many of our watercourses, and rivers that were once notoriously polluted now sustain a variety of wildlife. Of course, although these successes are heartening, important aspects of our natural environment are still in decline. The status quo is therefore not acceptable and a concerted effort on the part of Government and society is necessary to turn things around.

As part of their efforts to halt and reverse degradation of our natural environment, this Government have pledged to improve their understanding and measurement of England’s natural capital. It is, therefore, extremely encouraging to hear that the Government’s commitment to advancing the natural capital agenda is shared by Members from across the political spectrum.

A number of Members, including the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), have said that a Treasury Minister should be present instead of me. All I can say is that I am passionate about this issue and I am here to represent the Government. It is usually only one Minister who responds to this type of debate. Members have said that they would have preferred a Treasury Minister to be present and I will not take that personally, but I am afraid that tonight you’ve got me. It is important to note that the Treasury is heavily involved in this issue. The response to the NCC’s first report was co-signed by the Secretary of State and the then Economic Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid).

A number of Members have asked what we are doing to get the principles into the green book. I have three points to make in response to that important question. First, following the publication of the natural environment White Paper in June 2011, the Treasury and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published in 2012 supplementary green book guidance on accounting, so consideration has already been given to including environmental impacts in cost-benefit analyses by Government Departments.

Secondly, I reassure Members that the NCC is currently in discussions with the Treasury and DEFRA about developing the green book so that we can take further steps. Thirdly, DEFRA has commissioned a baseline evaluation study to review how well recent impact assessments across government take into account environmental impacts. We are, therefore, taking a number of steps.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I wonder whether the Minister took note of my point about the Government response—the letter. He has just laid out how the Government are responding in a serious way, but will he undertake that when the next state of natural capital report is published in nearly a year, it will receive as full a response as that which we would expect for a Select Committee report?

[George Eustice]

I hope my hon. Friend will find that the remainder of my speech will pick up on a lot of the themes of the 13 recommendations made by the NCC report.

[Mr Stuart]

I recognise that my hon. Friend is new to his post and that he is in a difficult position, but it really would be helpful if he could commit on the record to provide a full response to next year’s report. This debate was called not by the Government, but by the Backbench Business Committee, and we cannot rely on a debate such as this to ensure that the Government are held to account on something so important.

[George Eustice]

I take on board my hon. Friend’s point. Lord de Mauley leads on this element of the Department’s portfolio and I speak on it in the House of Commons. I will discuss the point that my hon. Friend has made with him.

It is not surprising that there is a consensus that natural capital matters. It underpins fundamental aspects of all our lives. We rely on natural capital for the air that we breathe, the food that we eat and the water that we drink. It is also a crucial source of energy and well-being. It will play a central role in mitigating the potential impacts of climate change. It may even provide the key to scientific and technological innovations. It is the foundation on which our economy is built. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) gave a fabulous quotation from John Aspinall:

“Nature is the bank upon which all cheques are drawn.”

That is very true.

Despite its importance, we have taken natural capital for granted. For too long, the value of our natural capital has been disregarded and, as a consequence, degraded. In the past 50 years, in spite of growing environmental awareness, many of the pressures on the natural environment have accelerated. Short-term, short-sighted economic gains have been prioritised. Too often, that has come at the expense of the natural environment. It is clear that if the habit of eroding our natural capital assets is allowed to continue, it will ultimately, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden said, be at the expense of future generations and their economic well-being. If economic growth is not sustainable, frankly, it will not be sustained. If we do not actively attempt to understand the true value of natural capital, we will continue to set its value, wrongly, at zero.

Many people in the UK already place a value on nature. Members may well have heard enough about the BBC for one day, but the growth in popularity of programmes such as the BBC’s “Countryfile” demonstrates that we are a nation that cares passionately about the natural environment. The widespread appreciation of nature’s intrinsic value, the importance of which many Members have highlighted, is demonstrated by the large memberships of groups such as the RSPB and the wildlife trusts. To those who say that unless we put a monetary value on something, it is not valued, I say that that is not the way that the public see it. They see a great intrinsic value in our natural environment.

Valuing our natural assets in terms of their worth to the economy in pounds and pence is a challenging exercise. We will have to involve the dedicated efforts of world experts to come up with the right calculations. However, it is important that we do not see valuing nature as just a dry, academic exercise that is performed by accountants. The natural capital agenda must, and will, have a practical application that will lead to real outcomes in our natural environment. If we want to protect nature, we need to make better decisions about how we use it. Those decisions will be better informed when we have properly measured and valued our natural capital.

That is why the Government set up the natural capital committee in 2012. In doing so, we were acting as a global leader. We now lead the way by having an independent group of experts that reports on where our natural assets are being used unsustainably. Ultimately, the committee will advise the Government on how we can prioritise action to address the most pressing risks to our natural capital. That advice will better enable the Government to fulfil their vision, first set out in the natural environment White Paper of 2011, of being

“the first generation to leave the natural environment in a better state than it inherited.”

With that vision in mind, I read with interest the committee’s first state of natural capital report, which was published in April this year. It set out a framework for how the committee would deliver its ambitious work programme. The report highlighted just how high the stakes are for the environment and the economy in work that the committee is doing. The committee argued powerfully that the environment and the economy are not rival priorities that have to be traded off against each other, but that environmental and economic interests can and must be aligned. The report set out how that beneficial alignment can be realised.

Although we have enough data to be confident that our natural assets, for the main part, are being degraded, we do not measure directly changes in their extent or quality on a widespread basis and we do not account for them in national or business accounts. It is therefore not currently possible to identify systematically which natural capital assets are being used unsustainably, but the work of the committee aims to get a better handle on that.

The committee’s first report not only set out the need for a framework to measure and value our natural assets, but contained a number of recommendations to help get that framework in place. When the report was published, the committee promised to follow up in its second and third reports—due in early 2014 and 2015 respectively—with more specific advice about where assets are at risk of not being used sustainably, and what needs to be done about it.

The Government support the analysis set out in the NCC’s first state of natural capital report, as detailed in the joint letter that my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness referred to from the Environment Secretary and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury. The letter stated:

“We welcome the report’s conclusions and we look forward to working with the Committee as they and others advance this agenda.”

I can report that good progress has been made on the recommendations contained in the report, by both the Government and the NCC. For example, in order to determine whether we are on a sustainable path, the NCC has commenced two pieces of work to help understand which assets are in decline—and to what extent—as well as which are most at risk. The NCC will report on its initial findings in its next report. We are interested to see how that might inform other Government policies, such as biodiversity offsetting, which a number of hon. Members—including my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden—have mentioned.

On national and corporate accounting, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Brent North, good progress is being made. On national natural capital accounting, the NCC is working closely with the ONS and DEFRA to implement the road map to 2020 that the ONS published in December 2012, setting out its timetable for producing natural capital accounts. On the corporate side, the NCC is engaging with a series of major businesses and landowners. It is about to undertake a series of pilot projects with a selection of those businesses in order to trial natural capital accounting in a real-world context and see whether it is an effective tool for encouraging businesses to operate on a more sustainable basis.

Let me touch on some of the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness raised at the end of his contribution. He asked for a response to each of the 13 recommendations, and as I have said, I will take his comments back to my noble Friend Lord de Mauley. A lot of those recommendations are being taken forward by the NCC, and many others are addressed in the good “Accounting for the value of nature in the UK” report by the ONS.

A number of Members asked whether we believe that the framework should be developed, and the Government agree that it should be. That is a task for the NCC, which is working further on that. Importantly, the committee is not doing just a single one-off report that is then placed in the Government’s hands; it is continuing to work on many of these elements. Many hon. Members raised the importance of developing a risk register, and I confirm that the second report from the committee will look further at a risk register and at highlighting those areas where we use our natural environment in an unsustainable way. The next report will contain the first steps in that direction.

In conclusion, we are very much looking forward to the NCC’s second report, due to be published in spring 2014, and to the more specific recommendations we expect it to contain. We are particularly interested in what it might have to say about a proposal for a long-term strategic plan to ensure the preservation and recovery of natural capital in this country.

[Mr Speaker]

For a brief wind-up of the debate, I call Mr Graham Stuart.

21:49

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Thank you, as ever, for your strictures, Mr Speaker.

It has been a great pleasure to take part in the debate. We have heard high-quality speeches from hon. Members on both sides of the House. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) followed my speech and showed a strong understanding of the key issues. My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), in so many ways the architect of the current situation, spoke of offsetting and of the economic importance of humble bees and pollinators. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) mentioned the green book—the Minister did not mention that, but perhaps we will hear more from him about it in due course—and the role of natural capital in the sustainable development goals. She also referred to other Departments and asked whether the Minister is in touch with them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) put his finger on one of the most important challenges that we face. For the most part, we are a group of the usual suspects, talking about natural capital late at night. In the Tea Room earlier, a colleague said, “In eight years in this place, I have never looked at the title of the debate and not known what it was about—until now. Well done, Graham, you’ve got a debate I don’t understand.” My hon. Friend correctly identified the importance not only of the Breconshire young farmers, but of communicating properly with them so they understand what on earth we are talking about. If we do not achieve that, in a few years, the same group of usual suspects will be discussing the topic without wider resonance.

[Joan Walley]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is one reason why there should be a measure to include the subject in education legislation?

[Mr Stuart]

I feared the hon. Lady would try to nail me personally on that—I spend my time chairing the Select Committee on Education resisting the forcible addition of financial education and a plethora of other subjects into the national curriculum—but I will bear her remarks in mind and see whether I can reconsider my almost-ideological response.

My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) made a powerful speech. He said that reconciling the market with the environment is essential to our survival—one of a few memorable quotes from the debate. He also asked whether the Government as a whole are ready for the challenge, which neatly summed up a question included in many speeches.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell), using his experience of Government machinery, focused laser-like on questioning whether the machinery is in place to ensure that natural capital debates are not a minority sport that take place late at night in the Chamber, and that they begin to influence Government policy in all Departments.

Because of my history with the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), it hurts me to say that he made a barnstorming and powerful speech. He spoke of not only halting but reversing environmental loss. He spoke with both passion and knowledge and managed to convey them succinctly and effectively. He said that people in the Treasury could be reasonable as long as we speak to them in their language. He gave us two quotes. First, he said that we use nature because it is valuable, but abuse it because it is free, which goes to the heart of the debate. Secondly, in defence of that approach, he said that promoting the concept of natural capital was not to commoditise nature, but to ensure its protection.

We heard an excellent speech from the Minister, who, as he said, has been interested in natural capital for a long time—he was at the launch of the White Paper a few years ago. He and the other Ministers in his Department have a great challenge, but there is a wider challenge across the Government. That is the central issue. My hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park made the point that, in future, we need Treasury Ministers and colleagues who do not habitually focus on this policy on the Treasury Bench in such debates. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), who is the Minister for civil society there as he, too, has long taken an interest in natural capital.

With that, I draw the debate to a close.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House welcomes the Natural Capital Committee’s first annual State of Natural Capital report; and urges the Government to adopt the report’s recommendations and to take concerted action to embed the value of natural capital in the national accounts and policy-making processes as early as possible.

Stroke (Emotional and Psychological Consequences)

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr Gyimah.)

21:54

[Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)]

As the chair of the all-party group on stroke, I am pleased to have secured the debate.

When I was in my early twenties, my father had a stroke. He was sent home from hospital, an extra rail was put on the stairs, he was given a walking stick and consigned to the care of my mother. He received very little help and support, and we did not know what to expect or how best to help him. I watched him struggle desperately hard to get better, but we did not know how best to support him.

My father had a second stroke and died. Nowadays, his chances of a physical recovery would be very much better. The previous Labour Government’s investment in stroke networks and specialist stroke units have improved the outcome for stroke patients hugely. More people are now admitted to a specialist stroke unit, more people who can benefit from clot-busting drugs get them, and two thirds of people get a brain scan within 24 hours. There is a lot more to do, but there is no doubt that great progress has been made. However, our investment and progress in the psychological and emotional support of stroke survivors has not kept pace with physical care, despite the fact that stroke is the biggest single cause of severe disability in adults.

One cannot prepare for a stroke, because it is a sudden and catastrophic event. If the part of the brain that deals with emotions is affected, many people find themselves thinking, feeling and behaving in an entirely different way. Many suffer feelings of anger and frustration because they can no longer work, care for their families or do even simple tasks. It is not surprising, therefore, that anxiety and depression often result. Families, too, can find themselves in a difficult position, sometimes in the worst cases grieving for the person they have lost while still taking care of that person.

The emotional and psychological effect of stroke was set out by the Stroke Association last year in its report, “Feeling Overwhelmed”. I am grateful to it for its research, and to the people who came to the parliamentary reception we held and were kind enough to share their experiences with me. The effects can be seen in all age groups, but are particularly severe in the 30 to 59 age group, where 76% of people who responded to the Stroke Association’s survey reported feeling severe anxiety and 69% suffered from depression. People find that they lose control of their emotions after a stroke, and it is estimated that two thirds suffer from post-traumatic stress. Despite that, we do not have the services in place to support them. In response to the survey, 42% felt abandoned when they left hospital, and two thirds said that their psychological care did not match the physical care that they received.

If we are going to change that, we have to see psychological and emotional support following a stroke as just as important as physical rehabilitation, and we have to accept that it can be needed for a long time. One person, for example, told the Stroke Association:

“Many of the emotional issues arise, not at the time of the stroke when all you are doing is trying to get well again physically, but it’s months later when the reality hits you that you will never be the person you once were.”

It is not surprising that many people experience feelings of anger and lose confidence. Their greatest fear is often, understandably, of having another stroke. Some people suffer from aphasia, which is a common side-effect of stroke, yet they seldom get the care that they need. For example, one person said to the Stroke Association:

“Because I looked and still look physically well, I had hardly any help in dealing with inability to read, write and understand speech, lack of confidence or emotional problems.”

That person was given just three sessions of speech therapy—totally inadequate.

Another man told how, despite his inability to speak, write or comprehend letters, he was discharged to the care of his children, aged 16 and 14 at the time. This lack of care cannot be justified.

22:00

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr Gyimah.)

[Helen Jones]

These stories are not uncommon, and we have to begin to take them seriously. We would not accept such lack of care for us or any of our families, which means it is not suitable for anyone else either.

Carers, too, can suffer an awful lot of emotional distress. When the Stroke Association surveyed carers, it found that distress increased the longer someone had been caring: 48% of those who had been caring for three years or less suffered from stress; that figure rocketed to 69% among people who had been caring for seven years or more; 79% suffered from heightened anxiety and 56% from depression. Not tackling that is simply not good enough. These people take on a burden willingly that most of us could not cope with and save this country millions of pounds. We cannot, and should not, leave them unsupported.

I hope we all recognise the moral argument for doing these things, but there is also an economic argument. Research by the stroke improvement programme in England—sadly, no longer in existence—showed that an investment of £69,000 in psychological support using a properly led, multidisciplinary team could save £108,000 in NHS social care costs in two years. When the King’s Fund researched the link between long-term conditions and depression, it found that care costs for those who suffered from depression and a long-term condition were about 45% higher, typically, than for those who did not suffer from depression. Moreover, depression can increase the risk of another cardiovascular incident—in other words, of a stroke. A person is one and a half times more likely to have another stroke if they suffer from depression.

We should be taking seriously the need for psychological and emotional support after a stroke. We ought to be doing three things in particular. First, we need to see psychological support as an essential part of the care pathway for stroke survivors. At the moment, only half of stroke units have access to psychological support. That needs to change, and I should like to hear from the Minister what she plans to do about recruiting more clinical psychologists and putting in place those multidisciplinary teams to support stroke survivors. We ought to recognise, too, that the need for support is not a one-off; it might occur throughout life. That is particularly true, for instance, for children or young people who have suffered a stroke. We do not think of stroke as a disease of the young, but it can be, and young people often need support at particular moments in their lives—when they start school or dating or when they move away from home, for example.

Secondly, we must ensure that people get timely and accurate information about the services available to them, whether in the voluntary sector or in health and social care. At the moment, trusts differ enormously in the information they provide to people. We must also ensure that those who suffer from aphasia are talked through the information and helped to understand what is available to them. The voluntary sector has an important role to play in this. Many people find stroke clubs extremely helpful, for example. People who have suffered a stroke often feel alone, and mixing with others who have been through the same thing, learning from their experience and going out and socialising with them can be of enormous benefit.

Thirdly, I should like the Minister to pay attention to the need for all stroke survivors to get a proper assessment of their health and social care needs, and a written care plan. Although that should happen at the moment, people are telling the Stroke Association that they do not always get that assessment. In fact, one survey discovered that only 39% of respondents had had such an assessment, and that of those, only 60% got a written care plan. Good practice means that people should get an assessment six weeks after leaving hospital, then at six months, and annually thereafter. In fact, 47% of the people who said that they had had an assessment only ever had one. That needs to change. It is also vital that we support carers, and that they know the services that are available to them. At the moment, two thirds of carers say that they have received no support, help or advice on dealing with their emotional problems, and only a quarter say that they feel supported after the person they are caring for has left hospital.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on stroke, it has been my privilege to meet some remarkable people. I have met young people who are setting out on life with enthusiasm despite what has happened to them, determined to make a life for themselves, to work and to be part of the community. I have met people who have struggled with severe disabilities but still gone on to help others. I have met people who are determined to put something back into the community by setting up stroke clubs or using art to help others, and who see that as their way of paying back for the care that they have received. It has been an enormous privilege to meet people like that, but at the moment, we as a society are failing them by not giving them the help and support that they need to make a life for themselves after stroke.

I hope that the Minister will see the importance of bringing about change in this area by improving psychological services for stroke survivors in the same way that we have improved their physical care in the past. I look forward to hearing from her how the Government propose to take that forward.

22:07

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) on securing this debate on an important issue that affects so many of our constituents. She spoke with great knowledge and passion about the subject. I am also aware of the great work that she does as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on stroke.

Stroke is one of England’s biggest killers. It is the single largest cause of adult disability. Its effects can be devastating, both for those who have a stroke and for their families and loved ones. It is worth reiterating the great progress that has been made in tackling stroke, particularly the physical aspects, in recent years. Many thousands of people have benefited from that. Fewer people now die from stroke; mortality rates dropped by 37% between 2001 and 2010.

Treatment for stroke has improved in a number of areas, as the hon. Lady mentioned. Stroke patients do better when they are treated on a stroke unit, and over 83% of stroke patients now spend the majority of their hospital stay on a stroke unit. Access to immediate brain scanning is vital, and has improved considerably, as has access to clot-busting drugs, which give people a better chance of regaining their independence following a stroke. We all want that progress to continue, and that is why stroke remains a priority for the Government and the NHS. We also know, however, that we need to do more to improve support for people after stroke, which is the subject of tonight’s debate.

When it comes to national incentives to improve outcomes, stroke is covered in two parts of the NHS outcomes framework and the mandate to NHS England. Through the mandate we are monitoring how the NHS performs both in reducing mortality from cardiovascular disease, including stroke, and in improving recovery from stroke. Some stroke survivors are unfortunately left with long-term disabilities, as was said, so how we support people with long-term conditions will be important to them. Through the mandate, we are monitoring how the NHS is performing in supporting people to look after themselves; whether a person is able to live as normal a life as possible; and how successfully the NHS manages long-term conditions by looking at unnecessary hospital admissions and excessive length of stay in hospital.

[Helen Jones]

The Minister refers to the outcomes framework, but will she ensure that it focuses not just on physical rehabilitation, but on psychological support, because both are essential if people are to go on and build a life for themselves after stroke?

[Jane Ellison]

Quite. As the focus of the framework is about recovery from the stroke, it includes exactly what the hon. Lady says—not just physical recovery, but psychological and emotional recovery, too. Much of what we are trying to do is to set about getting people on that full pathway towards recovery, not focusing only on acute symptoms and the immediate aftermath of the stroke.

The clinical commissioning group outcome indicator set mirrors the areas we are monitoring for stroke and for long-term conditions. This is the indicator set that will be used to hold CCGs to account and to provide information for the public on the quality of services and the health outcomes achieved through that local commissioning. The CCG indicator set also contains measures to ensure stroke survivors are discharged from hospital with a joint health and care plan, and receive follow-up assessments within about six months. I have heard what the hon. Lady said—that this is not happening. I have taken note of it, and it will be discussed with NHS England and all those responsible. It is our clear objective to do that. I appreciate the information the hon. Lady has given us about the Stroke Association’s work in monitoring whether it is really happening. It is obviously a priority. The new Sentinel stroke national audit programme will also monitor the outcomes of stroke care in all patients six months after stroke.

When patients leave hospital, it is important that the NHS and social services work together to get the right services in place to ensure they have the support they need to make the best possible recovery. The measures and indicators I have talked about, alongside a shared measure in the adult social care outcomes framework on the success of re-ablement and rehabilitation services, provide an incentive for the NHS and social services to work together to ensure that happens.

The adult social care outcomes framework is helping us to gauge the progress made by local services and to promote improvement in standards across the country. A key area of the framework is to reduce the need for care and support—exactly as the hon. Lady said—and delay any dependency. Those measures will support the sector to maximise people’s level of independence and minimise their need for ongoing support. Under the framework, local authorities will be able to compare their performance with that of other authorities around the country—we obviously want everyone to match up to the standards of the best—and to make improvements based on what has been proven to work elsewhere. Through that common focus for improvement, the NHS, public health and adult social care outcomes promote joined-up, integrated care, driven by the needs of the individual. For stroke survivors, this means providing access to the support they need to get that better quality of life.

I shall now deal more specifically with the issue of emotional and psychological support for people who have had a stroke. The cardiovascular disease outcomes strategy, published earlier this year, recognises that stroke services that incorporate psychological care deliver the best outcomes for people who have had a stroke. There are also national stroke strategy recommendations and evidence-based national guidance that patients should be routinely screened for mood and cognition after their stroke. These recommendations are included in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence quality standard on stroke. That answers the question the hon. Lady posed about whether these were at the heart of what we saw as best care—very much so.

It is, of course, the responsibility of NHS England and CCGs to ensure that stroke patients receive the psychological and emotional support they need. NHS England recognises that this area of stroke care is of great importance for many patients. Improvement in community services with greater access to early supported discharge teams and longer-term rehabilitation is also high on NHS England’s agenda.

NHS England is also exploring ways of improving the use of existing resources. The hon. Lady will be aware of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, an NHS programme that is rolling out services across England that offer interventions for people with depression and anxiety disorders. Many areas now have IAPT, which benefits people including those who are suffering from symptoms following a stroke. I understand that there have been discussions about how the IAPT teams might increase the proportion of the time that they spend with people whose psychological problems are secondary to physical disease, but are none the less important and—as the hon. Lady said—sometimes become more important as time goes on.

Some IAPT services have developed psychological support skills through enhancing the training of nurses and therapists, and some have employed the services of counsellors to support people who have had strokes in the community. I know that some of the good local examples of support for stroke survivors and their families are in the hon. Lady’s constituency. She will be well acquainted with initiatives such as the family support service, which helps stroke survivors and their families to adjust to life after a stroke, and the communication support service, which helps people with aphasia and other communication problems to cope. Stroke sufferers and their families can also receive emotional and psychological support via the local IAPT service.

It is for NHS England to consider how to spread best practice from services such as those in Warrington, using some of the frameworks that I have described. However, I am glad that the hon. Lady has taken this opportunity to bring the issue to Parliament, because I feel strongly that Parliament has an important role to play in highlighting great practice and spreading the word about good local initiatives such as those to which I have referred.

We recognise that, while supporting those who have had strokes, we must also support those who care for them. We set out our priority areas for action on carers in our paper “Recognised, Valued and Supported: next steps for the carers strategy”, which was published in November 2010. We have also made available to the NHS additional funding of £400 million between 2011 and 2015 so that carers can be given much-needed breaks to sustain them in their caring role. Carers are central to the Government’s proposals for care and support, and, as the hon. Lady will know, the Care Bill offers significant improvements in that regard. I am sure that we shall hear far more on the subject as the Bill progresses through Parliament.

Once again, I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate and raising the profile of this very important issue. I shall consider the specific issues that she raised with which I have not been able to deal tonight. I shall also be happy to engage in a continuing dialogue with her and with the Stroke Association. I have read the association’s 10 key indicators and familiarised myself with them. However, the issue is so important to so many people that there must clearly be an ongoing debate about how we can ensure that the very best care is provided throughout the country, because we need the consistency to which the hon. Lady referred.

Let me end by paying tribute not just to all those who work in the NHS, but to those in the voluntary sector who care for stroke patients and their families.

Question put and agreed to.

22:18

House adjourned.

Ministerial Correction

Monday 21st October 2013 Ministerial Corrections

Monday 21 October 2013

Defence

Monday 21st October 2013 Ministerial Corrections

Reserve Forces: West Sussex

[Nicholas Soames]

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what reserve force facilities there are for each service in West Sussex; how many reservists attend each such base regularly; and if he will make a statement.

[Official Report, 13 September 2013, Vol. 567, c. 888-9W.]

Letter of correction from Andrew Murrison:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) on 13 September 2013.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Dr Murrison]

[holding answer 10 September 2013]: Detailed in the following table are the names of each reserve force base in West Sussex, the total number of reservists recorded against this group of bases and the number which attend regularly. Regular attendance figures have been determined by the number of reserve personnel who were eligible to receive their bounty within the 12 months previous to 1 July 2013.

[Dr Murrison]

[holding answer 10 September 2013]: Detailed in the following table are the names of each reserve force base in West Sussex, the total number of reservists recorded against this group of bases and the number which attend regularly. Regular attendance figures have been determined by the number of reserve personnel who were eligible to receive their bounty within the 12 months previous to 1 July 2013.

Written Statements

Monday 21st October 2013 Written Statements

Monday 21 October 2013

Balance of Competences (Review)

Monday 21st October 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

I wish to inform both Houses that following my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs’ oral statement launching the review of the balance of competences in July 2012 and written statements on the progress of the review in October 2012, and May 2013, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is publishing the following calls for evidence today.

The single market: free movement of services review is being led by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). The review will consider the balance of competences with respect to the freedom to provide services across the European Union, and will cover public and defence procurement; company law; and issues relating to the mutual recognition of professional qualifications (MRPQ). The review will also consider the services that are covered by specific sectoral EU legislation (e.g. telecommunications, broadcasting, audiovisual), as well as those dealt with by the services directive (e.g. IT, construction, food and drink, hospitality and retail).

The competition and consumer policy review will cover UK competition and consumer policy including state aids. The competition policy elements of the review will consider the rules governing competition between suppliers, while the consumer policy areas will examine the protections given to consumers when purchasing a product or a service. Rules on state aid—which are a subset of competition rules to prevent market distortions as a result of Government support—will also be covered.

The cohesion review will focus on aspects of EU activity that support economic development. It will consider the EU’s regional policy, for which the main financial instruments are the European regional development fund and the cohesion fund, as well as the European social fund. It will look at how the EU funds infrastructure projects through trans-European networks and the connecting Europe facility and finally it will examine competence in the area of industry policy under article 173 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union.

The call for evidence period will run from 21 October 2013 until 13 January 2014 and officials will draw together the evidence and policy analysis into draft reports, which will subsequently go through a process of scrutiny before publication in summer 2014.

BIS will take a rigorous approach to the collection and analysis of evidence. Each call for evidence sets out the scope of the report and includes a series of broad questions on which contributors are asked to focus. Interested parties are invited to provide evidence with regard to political, economic, social and technological factors. The evidence received (subject to the provision of the Data Protection Act) will be published alongside the final reports in summer 2014 and will be available on the Government website: https://www.gov.uk/review-of-the-balance-of-competences#semester-3.

The Departments will pursue an active engagement process, consulting widely across Parliament and its Committees, businesses, the devolved Administrations and civil society in order to obtain evidence to contribute to our analysis of the issues. Our EU partners and the EU institutions will also be invited to contribute evidence to the reviews. As the reviews are to be objective and evidence-based, we are encouraging a wide range of interested parties and individuals to contribute.

The results of the reports will be a comprehensive, thorough and detailed analysis. It will aid our understanding of the nature of our EU membership and it will provide a constructive and serious contribution to the wider European debate about modernising, reforming and improving the EU. The reports will not produce specific policy recommendations.

The call for evidence documents are being placed in the Libraries of both Houses. They are also published and available on the Government website: https://www.gov.uk/review-of-the-balance-of-competences.

Balance of Competences (Review)

Monday 21st October 2013 Written Statements

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Nicky Morgan)]

HM Treasury has today published two calls for evidence as part of the Government’s review of the balance of competences, which is looking at what the EU does and how it affects the UK.

The first call for evidence looks at the balance of competence between the EU and the UK on the EU budget. The second looks at the balance of competence between the EU and the UK on financial services and the free movement of capital.

Both documents explain the historical development and legal background to the EU’s competence and ask a number of questions about how the EU’s competence works in practice.

HM Treasury is seeking evidence from a range of stakeholders who have an interest or experience in these areas, including individuals, groups, Parliament and its Committees, think-tanks, businesses and institutions.

The public call for evidence for both reports will run from 21 October 2013 until 17 January 2014. The final reports on the current balance of competence and what this means for the national interest will be published by the summer of 2014.

Copies of the documents have been deposited in the Libraries of both Houses and are available on the gov.uk website at: www.gov.uk/government/consultations /balance-of-competences-review-eu-budget

and

www.gov.uk/government/consultations/balance-of-competences-review-single-market-financial-services-and-the-free-movement-of-capital.

Children and Families Bill

Monday 21st October 2013 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

I am proposing an amendment to the Children and Families Bill that will place a clear requirement on all types of state schools to make arrangements for supporting pupils at the school who have medical conditions. This will not apply to early years provision as there is already sufficient coverage of this issue in the statutory early years foundation stage. In meeting the new requirement, schools must have regard to statutory guidance. This amendment will be considered during the House of Lords Committee stage of the Children and Families Bill.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, there has been much debate about the needs of children with long-term medical conditions, such as diabetes and epilepsy. There is cross-party support to ensure that children and young people have their health needs met in schools. My Department has also met with various health organisations and charities and parents and children (with long-term medical conditions) to listen and discuss this issue. While a vast majority of schools take these issues seriously, it is clear some families have had poor experiences. This new duty, underpinned by statutory guidance, will help schools to ensure that they are taking reasonable action to support children with medical conditions, where necessary. It will also give parents of such children confidence that support should be in place while they are at school.

It is our intention to work with health organisations, parents and the school work force on the drafting of the statutory guidance (building on existing good practice) which will also be subject to a public consultation in the new year.

Through this amendment to the Children and Families Bill we believe we will achieve the following: better educational outcomes for children with long-term health conditions; greater reassurance to parents that their children will receive the support they deserve in the school setting; and clearer guidance on what we expect of our schools.

Balance of Competences (Review)

Monday 21st October 2013 Written Statements

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

I wish to inform the House that, further to the Foreign Secretary’s oral statement launching the review of the balance of competences on 12 July 2012 and the written ministerial statements on the progress of the review on 23 October 2012 and 14 May 2013, I have today published the calls for evidence for the agriculture and fisheries reports. The agriculture and fisheries reports will be completed by summer 2014.

The agriculture report will consider the European Union common agricultural policy, plant health, plant reproductive materials and international trade in agricultural commodities.

The fisheries report will focus on the European Union common fisheries policy, and competence for the management of fisheries and aquaculture. Competence issues relating to the wider marine environment, beyond fisheries management, are considered under the environment and climate change report.

The call for evidence period will last 12 weeks. DEFRA will draw together the evidence and analysis into first drafts which will subsequently go through processes of scrutiny before publication in summer 2014.

DEFRA will take a rigorous approach to the collection and analysis of evidence. The calls for evidence set out the scope of the reports and include a series of broad questions on which contributors are asked to focus. Interested parties are invited to provide evidence with regard to political, economic, social and technological factors. The evidence received (subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act) will be published alongside the final report in summer 2014 and will be available on the Government website: www.gov.uk.

DEFRA will consult widely across Parliament and its Committees, businesses, the devolved Administrations and civil society in order to obtain evidence to contribute to our analysis of the issues. Our EU partners and the EU institutions will also be invited to contribute evidence to the review. As the review is to be objective and evidence-based, encouraging a wide range of interested parties to contribute will ensure a high yield of valuable information.

The resulting reports are intended to be comprehensive, thorough and detailed analyses of the functioning of EU competence in the areas of agriculture and fisheries and what this means for the UK national interest. They will aid our understanding of the nature of our EU membership and they will provide a constructive and serious contribution to the wider European debate about modernising, reforming and improving the EU. The reports will not produce specific policy recommendations.

I am arranging for the calls for evidence to be placed in the Libraries of both Houses. They will also be accessible through the balance of competences review pages on the Government’s website at: www.gov.uk/review-of-the-balance-of-competences.

PACE (Codes of Practice Revision)

Monday 21st October 2013 Written Statements

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

My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has today laid an order under section 67(7A) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (‘PACE’) which brings into operation amended versions of six of the PACE codes. The Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Revision of Codes A, B, C, E, F and H) Order 2013 will bring these revisions into operation on 27 October.

The codes which have been revised are A (stop and search), B (search of premises and seizure of property), C (detention of suspects), E (audio recording of interviews), F (visual recording of interviews) and H (detention of terrorism suspects). The revised codes have been laid before the House today and have all been subject to statutory consultation as required under section 67(4) of PACE. I will place a copy of the Government response to consultation in the Library of the House. Copies of the revised codes are available from the Vote Office.

The main changes to code A are the removal of references to stop and search powers under the Terrorism Act 2000 as a consequence of the introduction of amended terrorism stop and search powers in the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 and an associated statutory code of practice. Powers under the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 (‘TPIMS Act’) which are outside the scope of the terrorism stop and search code but which are subject to sections 2 and 3 of PACE have been added. Annex F (on gender and searching) has been deleted and superseded by annex L in code C.

Code B has been amended to include the powers under schedule 5 to the TPIMS Act to enter and search premises. We are also clarifying the default period within which a search warrant issued under PACE must be executed.

Both codes A and B are being amended in line with section 48 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 which reduced the threshold for searching individuals on school premises for weapons from having a reasonable belief to having a reasonable suspicion.

Revisions to codes C and H follow from two legal obligations. The first is to transpose the legal obligations in the European Union directive 2010/64/EU on the right to interpretation and translation in criminal proceedings into UK domestic legislation. The amendments clarify and make explicit the requirement to ensure that suspects who need help to communicate with officers, and to understand the reasons for their detention in custody and the charges laid against them, are given access to an interpreter and written translations of documents as necessary. These revisions do not affect Welsh language schemes. The transposition date for the directive is 27 October 2013.

The second change to codes C and H is to comply with the High Court ruling in the judicial review HC v. (1) Secretary of State for the Home Department and (2) Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis. In compliance with the ruling, we are extending to 17-year-olds the current requirement that 10 to l6-year-olds detained in police custody are provided with an appropriate adult to assist them, and that a person responsible for their welfare (usually a parent or guardian) is informed.

Codes E and F are being amended to include new provisions for the conduct and recording of voluntary interviews of suspects who are not under arrest. These provide for a sergeant to be responsible for such interviews and for giving the authority for them not to be audio recorded. They also correct a number of cross-references to the code of practice for the video recording of interviews of terrorist detainees, and make amendments concerning the security of master interview recordings, in order to ensure consistency between codes E and F and the new terrorism code.

The amendments to the codes are required in order to achieve consistency and to comply with domestic and EU legislation as well as the High Court ruling. As such, I consider these revisions to be straightforward and consequential rather than controversial.

We have sought and secured the agreement of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), as Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, that these straightforward and consequential revisions to the codes might be brought into force, as per section 67(7A) of PACE, without the approval of a resolution by each House and there will, therefore, be no debate on the floor of the House.

This overall package of revision to the codes will strengthen, clarify and embed the safeguards available to the public where the police exercise their powers.

Balance of Competences (Review)

Monday 21st October 2013 Written Statements

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

I wish to inform the House that, further to the Foreign Secretary’s oral statement launching the review of the balance of competences in July 2012 and the written statements on the progress of the review in October 2012 and May 2013, the Ministry of Justice has published its call for evidence in the area of fundamental rights.

The report will be completed by summer 2014 and will cover the overall application and effect of EU instruments and action in the area of fundamental rights.

The call for evidence period will last 12 weeks. The Ministry of Justice will draw together the evidence and policy analysis into a first draft, which will go through a process of scrutiny before publication in summer 2014.

The report will focus on the European Union’s action on fundamental rights, but not on the European Union’s actions on each specific right: these are being covered by other, subject-specific reviews. The report will cover the EU’s fundamental rights framework including the treaties, case law and the charter of fundamental rights, as well the work of the Fundamental Rights Agency and the funding programmes on fundamental rights. It will also cover the European Union’s accession to the European convention on human rights, although the foreign policy review published in July 2013 has already referred to this.

The Ministry of Justice will take a rigorous approach to the collection and analysis of evidence. The call for evidence sets out the scope of the report and includes a series of broad questions on which contributors are asked to focus. Interested parties are invited to provide evidence in relation to the impact or effect of the competence in their area of expertise. The evidence received (subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act) will be published alongside the final report in summer 2014 and will be available through the balance of competences review web pages on gov.uk.

The Department will pursue an active engagement process, consulting widely across Parliament and its relevant Committees, business, civil society, the devolved Administrations and legal practitioners. Our EU partners and the EU institutions will also be invited to contribute evidence to the review. As the review is to be objective and evidence-based, we will encourage the broadest possible range of interested parties to contribute.

The report will be a comprehensive, thorough and detailed analysis of EU action in this area that will aid our understanding of the nature of our EU membership; it will provide a constructive and serious contribution to the wider European debate about modernising, reforming and improving the EU. The report will not, however, produce specific policy recommendations.

I am placing the call for evidence in the Libraries of both Houses. The call for evidence will also be available through the balance of competences review pages on gov.uk.

Personal Independence Payment

Monday 21st October 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)]

Later today the Government’s response to the consultation on the moving around activity within the assessment for personal independence payment (PIP) will be published on the gov.uk website. I will place a copy of the Government’s response in the House Libraries.

The consultation received over 1,100 responses, from both individuals and organisations. We listened carefully to all the feedback received.

The Government believe that the criteria are the best way of identifying those whose physical mobility is most limited. We think it is justified to focus support in this way on those with the greatest need and will not be making any changes to the criteria.

We recognise that the reliability criteria in the assessment are a key protection for claimants. Respondents to the consultation welcomed their inclusion but were concerned about how they will be applied. In response, we will look to strengthen the criteria by introducing a requirement for health professionals to confirm they have considered the reliability criteria when formulating their advice.

Later today I also intend to lay before Parliament amending regulations, which will introduce a phased start for PIP natural reassessments from 28 October 2013.

Introducing natural reassessment gradually enables us to test the claimant reassessment journey, using an approach similar to the one we took with new claims in the controlled start area in April.

This is in line with the way we have been introducing all our other programmes of change and we have made it clear that we would take a controlled approach to introducing PIP, learning lessons from live running. Later this week I will publish a note on the gov.uk website providing further detail.

As originally announced, most existing disability living allowance (DLA) claimants will not be reassessed until 2015 or later, after DWP has considered the findings of the first independent review in 2014.

Grand Committee

Monday 21st October 2013 Grand Committee

Monday, 21 October 2013.

15:30

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn) (Con)]

My Lords, the usual warning: if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, the Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.

Children and Families Bill

Monday 21st October 2013 Grand Committee

Committee (4th Day)

Relevant document: 7th and 9th Report from the Delegated Powers Committee 3rd Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights.

Amendment 56

Moved by

[Lord Northbourne]

56: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—

“Children’s welfare: duties of parents

For the purposes of section 3(1) of the Children Act 1989, the duties of the parent to their child are—

(a) to safeguard and promote the child’s health, development and welfare;

(b) to provide in a manner appropriate to the age and development of the child—

(i) direction; and

(ii) guidance,

to the child;

(c) if the child is not living with the parent, to maintain personal relations and contact with the child on a regular basis,

but only in so far as compliance with this section if practicable and in the best interest of the child.”

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, having been swept away at the end of the previous session, I now have the opening say-so. Both my amendments to this important Bill are about the problems of dysfunctional families and disadvantaged children. Although this Bill suggests many important ways in which current practice could be improved—and I support many of the changes in the Bill—it does not address the possibility of reducing the number of dysfunctional families and disadvantaged children in our society. It fails to address prevention. Prevention could and, in my view, should be an important part of this Bill. My Amendments 56 and 57 explore just two of the many possible ways in which we could reduce the number of dysfunctional families and disadvantaged children in our society in the future.

Amendment 56 is about defining the duties of a parent. We all know, alas, that too many young people become parents without thinking about what their child will need of them or what parenting will involve for their own future life and lifestyle. We all know that in good schools PSHE and SRE teachers do their best to teach young people these things but they need more help than we are giving them. The relevant law on this is the Children Act 1989. As your Lordships will know, it says in Section 3(1):

“In this Act ‘parental responsibility’ means all the rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and his property”.

That definition may be helpful for lawyers who understand and have access to the relevant case law. It gives no clear guidance to a child or a teacher.

We need a much clearer and more understandable statement of the law, setting out the sort of role that we expect parents to play. Such a statement should not be based on outdated moral values but on the needs of the child. Of course, those needs include not only food, warmth, shelter and consistent care but being able to feel safe and loved—the secure attachment to one or two specific adults which gives a child a sense of being valued and which builds their self-confidence for life.

They have such a statement in Finland, in France and, oddly enough, in Scotland. I have used a Scottish form of words in this amendment to define the duties of a parent. This is a probing amendment and I would welcome comments on whether the wording I have suggested is helpful. For example, it may be that the duty of fathers and of mothers should be considered separately; I am not at all sure about that.

It is important to remember that the duties referred to in the Children Act are only part of the responsibilities of a parent, which is what that Act defines. Only if we as a society can agree a reasonable statement of the duties of a parent will it be possible for us to pass on to our children the obligations that parenthood will bring for them. I beg to move.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for tabling this amendment. I, of course, agree that parents should support and guide their children: it is the key relationship. Mothers and fathers have joint responsibility. Like the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, I agree that prevention is absolutely key to tackling dysfunction. His amendment takes note of supporting the child’s “health, development and welfare”. Like him, I suspect, I think that people are often not prepared for the responsibilities of parenthood and that we as a society have not taken this seriously, believing that parenthood comes naturally.

I am a great supporter of parenthood teaching in schools, clinics or wherever. Most young people become parents and often do not know much about the importance of child development, talking to children, setting boundaries and so on. Many parenthood classes are available for parents only once the child gets into trouble. Frankly, that is too late. Early intervention should start with parents but they are sometimes bewildered. Perhaps the Minister or somebody else knows how many parenthood schemes exist in this country to teach parents or future parents to be better parents, not when the child gets into trouble but as an education scheme for all parents. After all, not everybody has a super nanny, as in the television programme of that name, to iron out horrendous problems once the family has dug itself into a hole. Parents are often not well supported. I worry about austerity measures which hit poor families hardest and about child poverty policies, which may plunge even more parents into difficulty. It is a challenge to bring up children in any event; it must be extremely challenging to bring up children in poverty.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 56 in the name of my noble friend Lord Northbourne, and regret that I failed to add my name to it. When I looked at the figures for the United States recently, I discovered that a third of boys, and two-thirds of black boys, were growing up without a father in the home, which is a pointer to where we might end up if we do not adopt my noble friend’s amendment. I have had the privilege of working with young people. I have worked with young people in hostels and boys have “adopted” me as their father. I have spoken with young men working in those hostels about what it was like for them to be brought up by their mothers on their own, and how guilty they felt about the burden they had put on them. The honourable Andrea Leadsom MP, who does such great work around early years provision, highlights the concern that when mothers bring children up on their own they risk feeling overwhelmed by that burden and withdraw their emotional support for their children.

I believe that this provision is already law in France and several other European countries. This is such an important issue that I hope the Minister will give a positive response. President Barack Obama grew up in a household without a father. Your Lordships may remember the speech he made as a senator in 2008.

He said:

“But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that … too many fathers … are … missing—missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled—doubled—since we were children. We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. They are more likely to have behavioural problems, or run away from home or become teenage parents themselves. And the foundations of our community are weaker because of it”.

That is the end of the quotation from his speech.

I hope that the Minister can give a very positive response to my noble friend’s amendment. Parents sticking together and sticking with their children is vital to the well-being of all our children. In my experience, children who do not have parents or carers who stick with them are unlikely to stick at friendships, at being husbands or wives or at jobs or difficult tasks themselves. I support my noble friend, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support the principle behind the noble Lord’s amendment. In Section 3(1) of the Children Act 1989, “parental responsibility” means,

“all the rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and his property”.

As has been said, one of the saddest things is that when parents separate, a substantial number of fathers walk out—very often for good reason—but in doing so they abandon their children. I regret that I have not checked the percentage but it is large, something like 60%. I believe that in the Children Act there should be something to remind the public that those rights, duties and responsibilities include that which the noble Lord has set out.

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the overall aim of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that the Bill should address the importance of engaging people in what parenting means before they become parents. When I was Minister for Social Exclusion I had the enormous privilege to have a look at some of the evidence-based programmes around parenting. I recommend that Ministers have a look at a programme called Teens and Toddlers, which I encouraged local authorities to adopt. Young people identified by their teachers as probably vulnerable to becoming young parents were put on to this programme, which lasted for about 12 weeks. The youngsters thought that the programme was quite good because they got out of school for one day a week. In the morning they would care for a particular child in an early-years setting, week in and week out, so they got to know that child and discovered that the process was not as simple and straightforward as it might have been made out to be. They found that some children were really quite difficult, even at that very early age. I met two or three groups of young people who were engaged in the programme, as well as some who had done it some years before, and they said things like, “It was very clear that no one else spent any time with this child, so the child never looked at me for weeks”. They learnt an enormous amount. They learnt that children need feeding regularly, that they make a noise, and that they are expensive. After the session with the children in the early years setting, there would be group sessions with their peers and the tutors who were running the course. They would explore what it was all about. Many of them had never been parented; they had been parented by siblings. In particular, some of the young women involved had to look after their own young siblings.

I loved, enjoyed and was fascinated by the sessions. I met some of the young people who had been on the first course to be run in this country around eight years earlier, in the London Borough of Greenwich. Of the dozen young people who had been on that course, not a single one had become a parent. They all said, “We have learnt so much from doing the course and we knew that we had choices. We made the choice to be sensible and that we would not have a child early”. I remember one young black woman saying, “I will be 24 before I have a child because I want that child to succeed and I want a life as well”. She had learnt that from this programme, and it is exactly what the Government should be encouraging. Young people should learn about the seriousness of being a parent. Yes, it can be joyful, but it is expensive, it restricts what you can do, and it takes real knowledge and understanding of what you are doing to be a good parent. When we do not take that seriously, we are colluding with the issue of children being born into dysfunctional families. We know what can be done, so it is about time that we took the steps to ensure that things are done so that fewer children are born into families where the parents are simply not ready or capable at that point of parenting.

15:47

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I am particularly glad that the debate on the probing amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Northbourne did not take place at the end of the Committee session last Wednesday. We are being allowed to take a much deeper look at this important area. Reducing the number of dysfunctional children needs a lot more attention paid to it. On prevention through early intervention, Frank Field and Graham Allen have said it all. Parental responsibilities are enormous, and children need to feel safe and loved, as my noble friend rightly emphasised.

A really good plus is that today families are beginning to share the bringing up of children. Fathers are often much more practically involved in their children’s upbringing. It used to be the case that mother would say, “You wait until your father gets home. He’ll deal with you”. Not any more. Fathers themselves gain great enjoyment from this sort of relationship, and that is very pleasing to see. Young people have to learn about what is needed to bring up today’s children. They have to know about the substantial dangers that children have to face as they grow up. There are new communications techniques and things that can be found on the internet. Also, with fellow children at school, there are things like sexting and sending pictures that no one would want to have shown around. This may be a probing amendment but, my goodness, it is important and should make us all think very carefully about how wide this subject is. I am sure that the Government are fully aware of the importance of this issue.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)]

My Lords, in a personal capacity I very much support this amendment. I have been an officer to the Parents and Families Group for a long time. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is chairman of the group. I fully agree with the remarks made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, on the importance of family relationships on how children emerge. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, it seems absurd that the only law we have in this country relates to property and not to responsibilities. In all conscience, we are keeping responsibilities on local authorities, on schools and on all kinds of people in this Bill. However, to some extent, those who have prime responsibility for bringing up children should be made to recognise that they have such responsibilities. As the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, the Scots have this law. It is a good law and there is a lot to be said for copying their example.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

I may be a lone voice here but, much as I agree—who cannot agree?—with the essence of what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has said, I do not view legislation as the answer. I am sure that the Minister will say that we have a plethora of legislation. I have worked in this field and I could list it but I will not do so because it would take all the time in the world. The important message that we should take from the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is how vital it is that we should do what the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has been saying for so long. We still are not doing well in terms of PSHE and helping young people and children to understand as early as possible what it is to be a parent, to be part of a community and all that you have to do as a citizen. Teens and Toddlers is still going and the programmes through which young people learn at first hand about bringing up children are very important.

However, I believe we live with a myth that modern young men are all the same, which we need to face if we are to deal with some of these issues. The young men I deal with, and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, deals with, who end up in prison or in serious difficulties certainly are not among those who see themselves as hands-on in childcare. They see themselves as at the football match, the pub or an alternative. Until we are able to get programmes that work directly with such young men, we will not make a difference to them while they are growing up. We should forget the myth that all young men are the same, particularly in understanding the wide range of cultures. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, mentioned young men from certain cultures. There are difficulties in many different groups and we have to be sensitive to all that.

I say to my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss that I do not think that there are many good reasons for men walking out on their families. They do it because they have not been helped to face up to those issues. However, the courts are getting tougher in ensuring that they face up to their responsibilities, which I am pleased about. I know that CAFCASS has been working for a considerable time on trying to make parents face up to what they will do to their children if they leave them.

Although my heart is with what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has said, we need to get on with the practical application and the proper support for good social work intervention that will make a difference, rather than have yet more legislation on the statute book.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

Perhaps I may say that I had no intention of saying that it was right for young men—or older men—to walk out on their families. They may be justified in walking out on their spouse or partner, but to leave the children behind, or not to look after them, is unacceptable.

[The Earl of Listowel]

May I, too, just say that while I agree that all my noble friend spoke of is vital if we are to change the culture, might not legislative change of the kind that he is proposing also be helpful? It may of minor assistance, but given that this is such a grave matter, might it not be worth pursuing?

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, both my heart and my head are with my noble friend Lord Northbourne on this. One of the attractions of his proposal that we should get this into law relates to the very people to whom my noble friend Lady Howarth referred. The proposed amendment would have a lateral benefit for people in custody. Some of them benefit from instruction in parenting, but many do not. If parents’ duties were more codified, it might enable better structure to be given to parenting instruction, which seems to be a crucial part not just of education in custody, but of education in school as well.

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment, and I want to make a case for qualified play therapists to be involved in this issue. Play therapists can play an important role with children and their parents, both in schools and in children’s centres, in breaking the cycle of continual problems within families, helping them fully to understand the importance of parenting and family bonding, and about relationships and responsibilities. Where play therapists have been allowed to carry out this type of work, there has been much success in keeping families living happily together. I know this because I am the patron of the British Association of Play Therapists, for which I declare an interest.

For many years I have spoken up about the need for parenting and relationships to be taught in schools. I have seen what this can do. I have even been into prisons, talking to men, in particular, about parenting and the importance of learning to live with their children, to love them and to bond with them. Many of them do not know how to do that and have never received the investment of time and effort in their lives that would make them understand the importance of this parenting and bonding. I hope that the Government will give this serious consideration and look favourably on the amendment.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally) (LD)]

My Lords, as I have come to expect with this Bill, the amendments are thoroughly debated and raise some fundamental problems, which I promise to take on board as the Bill progresses.

My response gives me the opportunity to explain a number of measures aimed at promoting the positive involvement of both parents in their children’s lives. In many ways, I am sympathetic to the noble Lord’s intentions in tabling this amendment. When we come to make decisions on this Bill, we will all have to consider deeply whether some of the responsibilities that have been raised in this debate are most sensibly written into this legislation, or elsewhere, or addressed by other means. However, I certainly do not doubt that there is an issue—which the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has rightly raised—about how we get the required level of parental responsibility. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, referred to the knock-on effects of the problems of single parents, particularly in families without fathers. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, emphasised the importance of early intervention, while the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, lent her support to the idea that it is sensible to set out those responsibilities in the Bill.

16:00

I was very interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, had to say about the Teens and Toddlers programme, and the assurance from the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that it is still going. It is quite some time now since I have had constituency responsibilities, but when I did, what worried me the most about teen mothers was that so often they became mothers in order to have someone to love and who in turn gave them a sense of worth. I think that that may still be a factor in this.

The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Armstrong, and other noble Lords asked what the Government are doing to support new parents. The Government are committed to ensuring that all families feel well supported and every child gets the best start in life. That is why the level of relationship support funding, £30 million over 2011 to 2015, marks a significant increase on previous funding levels. We know that support services for couples at key transition points such as moving in together, getting married and becoming parents, are vital. We are funding key voluntary and community sector organisations such as Relate, Marriage Care and Pace to deliver relationship support services at these important transition points. We are also funding One Plus One to run a series of campaigns to promote relationship support. This will target young people and new parents in particular, so that they see relationship support as a normal way of strengthening their relationship rather than just at crisis points.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, made an interesting point about the changing nature of fathers’ responsibilities. It is a long time ago, but I remember when growing up in the 1950s that fathers would not push the pram, never mind anything else. This will come as a shock to the Committee, but on Saturday I was at my local gym—not over-exerting myself—and I noticed that a babies’ swimming lesson was being held in the pool. I saw a father with his baby in the pool teaching it to swim, all without any self-consciousness. It is true that there is a sector of young men who perceive themselves as being outside of any sense of social responsibility, but there is a more positive side. I see a whole range of young men with positive attitudes towards shared parenting and responsibilities. That is quite different from what their fathers, and certainly their grandfathers, would have seen. The picture is not all dark.

We recognise the importance of high quality PSHE, and we will be dealing with that in more detail when we come to the second amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. We also want to take up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, on supporting new parents in learning about what parenthood entails. Children’s centres act as a valuable hub to help families access key services, including health visitors, early education, childcare and parenting support. Children’s centres frame their activities to identify and help those families most in need. I have also noted what the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said about play therapists, and I am sure that that is true. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, spoke in support of some kind of codification of responsibilities, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, referring to the Scottish experience.

Obviously the amendment has been a probing one. The noble Lord quoted the Children Act 1989, which sets out the meaning of “parental responsibility”. I shall just quote it again:

“‘parental responsibility’ means all the rights, duties, powers, responsibilities and authority which by law a parent of a child has in relation to the child and his property”—

that is, his or her property. This concept of parental responsibility encapsulates all the legal duties and powers concerning the child’s upbringing that exist to enable a parent to care for a child and to act on its behalf. It relates to all the obvious concerns, such as the child’s material needs and healthcare, the manner of his education, religious upbringing, legal representation and administration of property.

As the noble Lords will know, there has been much debate in this House in the context of children’s legislation about whether parental responsibility should be defined further in legislation. No evidence has been put forward, however, to suggest that the present definition causes any difficulty. Indeed, the Law Commission report on guardianship and custody, on which the Children Act 1989 was based, indicated that the meaning of “parental responsibility” would need to change according to changed circumstances. This is not in my brief, but I am well aware that that was in 1989 so we are talking about a conclusion reached nearly 30 years ago.

In addition, the new clause may cause difficulties as it may be interpreted to mean that the duties of parents are limited only to the factors set out in the recommended clause. In practice, though, a parent’s responsibility for protecting and maintaining a child is considered to be among the most important components of parental responsibility. So, too, is having contact with the child. At the moment, the Government are not persuaded that a more detailed statutory definition would serve a useful purpose, and no evidence has been put forward that demonstrates that to be the case. However, what has become clear in this debate is that early and focused intervention on specific problems works and should be supported.

The amendment was a probing one. I cannot give the noble Lord more encouragement than to say that he has initiated an extremely full and thought-provoking debate, and I will take that away with colleagues. In the end, it comes down to the balance between those who think that if you write it down in a Bill, that makes it true—I know that he does not believe that. Whether the Bill should be burdened by having some of the issues that were raised in this debate put on its shoulders is one of the matters that we will have to ponder. In the mean time, I thank him for the debate that he has stimulated; he must be very pleased with the range of well informed support that he got. For the moment, though, I ask him to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Northbourne]

Yes, I shall be delighted. I think that it was 27 years ago that I found myself trying to persuade Cross-Bench Peers to let me have a debate on parenting. As I spoke, I gradually saw their eyes glazing over. None of them had the foggiest idea what I was talking about, so we have at least done better than that today. I am intensely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken in supporting the amendment.

I have one point to make to the Minister. I am not trying to lay this thing down in law as something to punish people for. I am trying to get a clear statement that can act as a guide. For instance, suppose that the Minister were standing up in front of a class of 20 teenage boys and said to them, “One of the things you’ve got to realise is that you mustn’t have sex without a condom”. The boys would say, “Why shouldn’t I? If I have a baby, what does it matter? It’s her job, isn’t it, to make sure that she doesn’t get pregnant?”. That is about the state of many young people’s understanding of this matter, and we should do something to support the teachers who are trying to put across a rather more sensible message. If possible, I suggest a meeting with the Minister and perhaps some of the other noble Lords who have contributed to see whether there is some way in which we can move this matter forward. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 56 withdrawn.

Amendment 57

Moved by

[Lord Northbourne]

57: After Clause 11, insert the following new Clause—
“Children’s welfare: family responsibilities (schools)
(1) The governors, sponsors and headteacher of every school which teaches pupils in keystage 3 must prepare and publish each year a full and clear statement of the policy and practice of the school in relation to preparing pupils for the opportunities, duties and responsibilities which they are likely to encounter in adult life including the duties and responsibilities of family formation and of raising children.
(2) Every statement must also publish the qualifications, learning and experiences of teachers who are involved in the delivery of this programme.
(3) This statement must be brought up to date annually.
(4) The Secretary of State may, from time to time, make regulations concerning matters which must be covered by the statement which must include “extra curricular activities”.”

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, in a child’s life there are two periods of rapid brain development. The first is during the first three years of life, while the second is around the time of puberty, in the early teens. That is scientific fact. If we want to reduce the number of dysfunctional families and disadvantaged children in our society, we must do more to prepare young people in their early teens for their future task of forming and bringing up a family. Many young people will learn these skills from their own family, of course, but sadly others will not be so lucky.

Statistics suggest that only 50% of children born today will be living with both parents by the time that they are 16. The statistics show that lone-parent households are 2.5 times more likely to be in poverty than couple families, and today in the UK there are over 3 million growing up in lone-parent families. I have one more statistic: in a recent report, the Centre for Social Justice found that 89% of people agreed that if we wanted to have any hope of mending what they called our “broken society”, family and parenting was where we had to start. The role of schools in developing personal, social and emotional skills must therefore remain very important for many young people today; I think we all agree on that. A great deal of this has been said already, so I shall try to skip through it.

Preparation for family formation and parenthood is not just about knowing the facts of life; it is about recognising that having a child is a serious responsibility; about learning to be the kind of person that you want to be to your child and that your child will need; and about requiring the interpersonal and emotional skills that your child will want in order to create a secure home and for the children to develop in a healthy manner. This is an important point: young people in puberty, or around that time, are keen to find out more about what it means to be an adult, what adult life is about and what the challenges and opportunities of adult life are. It creates an opportunity for schools to help them, because they are in school at that age. In doing so, of course, schools must work with parents. Schools can and often do have a huge influence on a child’s personal and social development, particularly the soft skills, which we seem to have forgotten in our education system but which are so important, both for family formation and for the workplace, and indeed in society as a whole.

Of course the best schools are already doing a wonderful job but, alas, many schools are not doing that job well. Recent Ofsted reports make grim reading. Far too many secondary schools are still treating personal and social development as an unimportant subject, and there is a chronic lack of well trained specialist PSHE and SRE teachers. The Government’s policy today is—rightly, I suspect—to give more freedom to schools to develop their own curriculums. Outside the core curriculum, the Government will not prescribe a school’s curriculum. This puts a lot more responsibility on the schools themselves to get it right. In an area of learning as sensitive and important as PSHE, it is essential that parents, Parliament and the wider public should be able to know what each school is doing, what their policies are and whether they are actively pursuing those policies.

16:15

Some of your Lordships may say that schools already have an obligation to publish their curricula but I have seen a number of curricula and most of them give nothing like the amount of detail that would be necessary. I got the Library to make inquiries about six secondary schools around where I live in eastern Kent. We got the six sets of curriculum details. Of those six, five made virtually no mention of PSHE or the personal and social development programme. The sixth, which I am proud to say was in Deal, my town, has done an absolutely brilliant job, with six pages. So it can be done. I have brought this copy for the Minister and had some other copies printed off, which I will put on the Table in case other noble Lords might be interested. It is quite an interesting document.

A statutory statement such as the one I have proposed in this amendment would oblige all schools teaching young people in key stage 3 to, first, think about, secondly, clearly spell out and, thirdly, make an annual statement of how they are getting on with pursuing their policy. That would put a certain amount of pressure on schools without being prescriptive—not telling them what to do but saying, “You tell us what you are doing and then we can argue about whether or not it is the right thing”. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I will put the question and then we will adjourn for 10 minutes. We will return at 4.27 pm.

16:17

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

16:29

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

I think that we will make a start. I had just put the question, the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, having moved his amendment.

[Lord Northbourne]

Although perhaps I did not make it clear when I was speaking, it is in a way obvious that my two amendments have pretty much the same objective. I took them separately because they have two completely different ways of approaching the problem, the second of which I believe is more exciting.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, for tabling this exciting amendment. Amendment 231 in my name asks all schools to ensure that children are educated and protected through school policies, pastoral care, linking with outside agencies and the curriculum. It goes wider than that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, but is of a similar tone.

The reason for my amendment and, I think, for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is that pupils, teachers, parents and governors need clarity about what policy and practice is in a school. Otherwise, how can they be clear about what it is and how do they know how to operate? How do children know how to operate? For example, as regards behavioural policy in a primary school, pupils know how to behave because it is in the policy. Policy and practice should give clarity and security.

We have talked about the duties and responsibilities of raising children, and the importance of enabling young people, in an ideal situation, to learn about parenting long before they become parents, or perhaps later if they are in difficulties such as those that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, mentioned relating to the criminal justice system. I remember seeing a young man in jail being taught how to read to a four year-old with all the interaction that is necessary. It is never too late but it is preferable for that to happen earlier.

However, I take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, in two instances. First, education about social and emotional development and responsibilities should happen before and after key stage 3. For a start, it should come from parents to children but, when talking about schools, it should happen from a young age through to when the child leaves. Schools should develop a spiral of curriculum and pastoral care which matches the age and stage of a child’s development. It should not be just at a particular age, and I do not think that it is. The issue is about a child’s right to an education.

On the other issue, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, talked about the importance of teacher training. That is right but it is not always teachers who deliver personal, social and emotional education. I have seen many excellent school nurses giving sessions in the classroom to encourage pupils to think about issues around their own health. I have seen first-aiders talk about issues around helping others to be safe. I have even seen a teenage parent come into a class to talk about the experience of having a baby at a young age, which was a quite dramatic experience for the pupils concerned. Therefore, I say yes to all this about personal and social health education, and yes to policies and practice in schools being well advertised. However, I should like to look at just those two issues again with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I, too, lend my support to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and will link what I am going to say to my comments on Amendment 56. I have a grandson at a secondary school in Gloucestershire and, like the noble Lord, I was fascinated to see the material with which he and his parents were provided. Frankly, it was all about today and not about tomorrow. Although the quality is fairly good, I am quite certain that it could be improved.

Clause 70, later in this Bill, refers to the fact that education, health and care plans are allegedly to be denied to those being held in detention. Last week I had a meeting with two Ministers in the Department for Education who told me what progress has been made. What is most promising is that young offender institutions are to be classed as mainstream schools as far as the provision of the Bill is concerned. In welcoming the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, that this guidance should be provided for schools, I should mention that young offender institutions should be included, absolutely for the reasons set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. Above all, we must not exclude people in detention from learning to look after their children.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to underline the important point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and in so doing I should declare an interest as vice-president of the charity Relate. I am very supportive indeed of schools playing a full role in preparing children for all aspects of life, and those must include the importance of personal relationships, family relationships and parenting responsibilities. From my experience of running an organisation that helped to deliver relationship education in a large number of schools, as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, it is not always teachers who do the teaching in the classroom. I know of many schools that ask experts in relationship matters to come in from outside because they are trained to do this work. I recall seeing a report from Ofsted which suggested that trained relationship practitioners are more confident and better able to deal with some aspects of relationship education, particularly the more intimate and sexual issues. If teachers have not had the appropriate training, teachers can feel a little less than confident about it. I wanted just to underline that important point.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and I congratulate him on such a novel and neat proposal. I will not delay the Committee because I suspect that we will have a very full debate on PSHE and the role that schools can play in developing these aspects of children’s well-being. Indeed, the noble Lord has himself already pointed that out. However, Amendment 57 fits closely with the concerns we have on this side about better preparing children and young people for the challenges of life, and about maximising their potential academic success through extracurricular activities to develop their confidence, self-esteem, leadership skills and so on. Those are actually two sides of the same coin.

So-called “soft skills”, which in my view is a rather derogatory term because we are talking about non-cognitive development here, are very important and have been shown to be extremely valuable not only to meet challenges better, but also to maximise their potential academically. Why else would some of our best fee-paying schools have extensive programmes of such activities? They have them because they are aiming to produce rounded individuals by developing these important aspects of character and resilience. It is a great pity that the Government have taken away much of the funding that schools had been provided with for extended activities, as well as reducing the emphasis being placed by the department and the current Secretary of State on these and other extracurricular work. As the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, Ofsted has highlighted the huge variation in provision, with much of it being of very poor quality.

The reason that this amendment is so novel and neat is that it is not prescriptive. It simply asks schools to discuss and debate these issues, and to review them every year. That will involve a conversation with parents and with the pupils themselves. They should then publish what they intend to provide. It will not cost schools any money to do that, but it will put this issue on the agenda and make it more transparent for parents and pupils alike. I am therefore very happy to support the amendment.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I support this amendment. There is something close to my heart that the noble Lord also supports. Twenty years ago my production company tried to get a schools programme on parenting commissioned. I was told that could not happen because it was not part of the national curriculum. Thankfully it now is. Some schools are attempting to address this important issue. Parenting is not about sex education, but about teaching young people about life skills, relationships, respect for one another, responsibilities, basic money matters, social policies and solving domestic problems. That applies to everybody’s family life, no matter what their background is. All schools should promote parental responsibility and make it an essential part of delivering holistic education to all our children. That is why I support this amendment.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I rise very briefly to support this amendment, and to ask for it to be looked at in a broader context of social policy. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, talked of young men in prison. I want to give one example—something I heard last week—which relates to how young people can learn. I was told of a hostel for young women with their babies that was closed, probably for financial reasons. The young women and their babies were dispersed. Six of them were at university, and no consideration was given to this fact, to the support they received at the hostel or to what would happen to them in future. If we are thinking about how we can ensure that each generation gets the support they need, that story is a good example of how broader policy could make a difference.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, for the reasons already given, which I will not repeat, I, too, support this amendment.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I was intending to support Amendment 57 when we spoke earlier on Amendment 56. However, it is clearly essential that governors, sponsors, head teachers—those responsible for what goes on in the school—are alert to what is set out here. The point I make about this—others have made it too —is that there are a lot of amendments dotted all over this paper referring to different aspects of what we are discussing, so we are going to come back to this again and again. The ear-bashing and encouragement that the Minister has had will help to indicate the right way of making these important issues completely plain. It is crucial that what the school stands for is made clear to the pupils. I could not be more supportive of the importance of getting that principle across.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I again thank all contributors to this debate. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said, we will return to some of the issues in different guises during the passage of the Bill. That is partly what Committee stage is for: to look at these issues and see where we can clean up the Bill.

Since 1998, all schools have been required to provide a balanced and broadly based curriculum which prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. This includes academy schools by virtue of Section 1A of the Academies Act 2010, which is reflected in their funding agreements.

16:45

The underlying sentiment of much of this new clause is one that the Government would support. In 2012, we amended the School Information Regulations and Schedule 4 contains a list of the minimum information a school is required to publish. In addition to a statement of the school’s ethos and values, a school must publish, among other things, the content of the curriculum followed for each subject in relation to each school year and details of how additional information relating to the curriculum may be obtained.

Sex and relationship education forms part of the statutory school curriculum of secondary schools. On this basis, all secondary schools must publish information about their sex and relationship provision by academic year, as well as about any other subjects they teach that are not national curriculum subjects.

The new regulations came into force in September 2012 and so we need to give them time to bed in. However, if parents want more information on any subject to be published, including on SRE, they can complain to the school through the school’s complaints process. When teaching SRE, it is a statutory requirement for schools, including academies through their funding agreements, to have regard to the Secretary of State’s Sex and Relationship Guidance. It is worth reminding the Committee what that guidance sets out. It states:

“Secondary schools should: teach about relationships, love and care and the responsibilities of parenthood as well as sex; focus on boys as much as girls; build self-esteem; teach the taking on of responsibility and the consequences of one’s actions in relation to sexual activity and parenthood; provide young people with information about different types of contraception, safe sex and how they can access local sources of further advice and treatment; use young people as peer educators, e.g. teenage mothers and fathers; give young people a clear understanding of the arguments for delaying sexual activity and resisting pressure; link sex and relationship education with issues of peer pressure and other risk-taking behaviour, such as drugs, smoking and alcohol; and ensure young people understand how the law applies to sexual relationships”.

In many ways, that guidance issued in 2000 was very specific and very detailed. It makes clear that—

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I am sorry to interrupt but is the Minister aware that the recent Ofsted report on personal, social and health education indicates that many schools are not carrying out their duties in that regard?

[Lord McNally]

Yes, I am aware of that. Our PSHE review concluded in March 2013 and found that the existing guidance offers a sound framework for sex and relationship education in schools. Sex and relationship education is a sensitive area in which expert organisations and professionals have an essential role to play, but this does not require the Government to revise the existing guidance. However, I agree with the noble Baroness that there are problems from school to school and this is an issue that we must continue to pursue. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said in the previous debate and on other occasions, the media do not always give the most constructive and positive support for this aspect of education.

As I say, the guidance makes clear that all SRE should be age appropriate and that schools should ensure that young people,

“develop positive values and a moral framework that will guide their decisions, judgements and behaviour”.

In particular, paragraph 1.18 states that secondary schools should, among other issues, teach about,

“relationships, love and care and the responsibilities of parenthood as well as sex”,

and,

“taking on of responsibility and the consequences of one’s actions in relation to sexual activity and parenthood”.

The point that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, made is also relevant in relation to writing things into legislation. There is a gap—you can write the most careful guidance, but how it is practised and carried out at the sharp end is another task, and one that we should address.

It is vital that schools prepare young people for later life, and especially the responsibilities of parenthood. However, the Government strongly believe that teachers need flexibility to use their professional judgment to decide when and how to provide SRE in their particular local circumstances, and to do so in an appropriate manner. We believe that it would be inappropriate to introduce a requirement for pupils in key stage 3, including those as young as 11, to be taught about parenting and sexual relationships. Teachers should retain discretion about whether to do so, while having regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance. Publishing the information set out in the current school information regulations is the best way for parents to have access to information; teachers should be given more freedoms, not fewer, to decide the contents of the school curriculum and how it is taught.

I hope that I have covered most of noble Lords’ concerns in that reply. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, talked about the need for this kind of education in young offender institutions. I agree that it is absolutely essential that it should be provided there. The noble Baronesses, Lady Tyler and Lady Massey, referred to the use of outside experts. Again, schools are free to use outside experts, and some to very good effect. But the head teacher should have final responsibility for which outside experts are brought in, and that is important. The noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, made the valid point that it is about teaching wider life skills and relationships. But this is not something that schools alone should do. The media, particularly television, have a responsibility. I sometimes sit with my daughter watching very funny sitcoms, whose messages about sexual relationships are easy, to put it mildly. I often say to her, “That’s comedy—that ain’t reality”. I think that by the time they reached 40 and called it a day, all the members of “Friends” had slept with each other several times—but they all lived happily ever after. Perhaps that is one of the dangers of that kind of media.

I cannot really comment on the hostel closure mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, without knowing all the facts, but I fully endorse what she said about making sure that there is a joined-up policy.

As with the previous debate, I have been impressed by the breadth of opinion in support of what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has done.



As I said, the Government are cautious about trying to write piety into legislation rather than ensuring that what is happening on the ground is effective, but we will be taking this further as the Bill progresses. In response to what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said at the end of the previous debate, if he and a number of colleagues would like to meet me separately to discuss these issues between now and Report, I would be glad to do so. In the mean time, I hope that he will withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Northbourne]

I am most grateful to the Minister and his advisers for all that information, particularly because most of it supports my amendment. My amendment is not about dictating what schools should teach; it is simply saying, “You decide what you should teach but then you must report on what that is and allow an inspection to see whether you are actually doing it”. Whether some schools will then have to have a rap over the knuckles is a second stage; I certainly have not suggested that.

I suggest that every noble Lord here does what I did, which is to take the names of six secondary schools in their neighbourhood and get the Library to find out what they say in their curricula. I think your Lordships will find, as I did, that five out of six of them either have nothing at all or are absolute rubbish. It is no good prescribing what schools should do. We have to encourage them and make them declare what they are doing, which may be a source of embarrassment to them if they are not doing frightfully well. A great many are not doing frightfully well and Ofsted absolutely confirms that. On that note, I am certainly going to bring this amendment back in some form, but for the time being I beg leave to withdraw it.

Amendment 57 withdrawn.

Clause 12: Child arrangements orders

Amendment 58

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

58: Clause 12, page 10, leave out lines 40 to 43 and insert—
“(a) with whom a child is to—(i) live,(ii) spend time, or(iii) otherwise have contact; and(b) when, with any person, a child is to—(i) live,(ii) spend time, or(iii) otherwise have contact.”

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, on a slightly different subject, Amendments 58 and 59 deal with child arrangements orders and their potential impact internationally.

We very much welcome the basic intent of Clause 12 to move away from terminology which implies that there are winners or losers in disputes concerning children, by introducing new child arrangements orders. However, we are concerned that the move away from one parent having custody may create additional difficulty in retrieving children from other jurisdictions internationally. Noble Lords will know that this can already be a legal minefield and a source of considerable distress, which is why we have tabled the amendments.

These amendments aim to make the contents of the new child arrangements orders clearer, and set out more explicitly that the person with whom the child is to live has rights of custody for the purposes of the Hague convention and other international family law treaties. The amendments are similar to those we tabled in the Commons, and emanate from concerns expressed by, among others, the Justice Select Committee, the Family Law Bar Association and the Children’s Commissioner for England.

The key issue here is in relation to rights of custody, which are an important concept in international law, in particular the Hague convention, and apply particularly to child kidnapping. When the Justice Select Committee considered this issue, it said:

“There are also concerns amongst our witnesses that the draft clause could cause confusion and delay in cross-jurisdiction cases … It is important that CAOs do not change how international law relating to children operates. A central concept in the relevant Hague … and EU legislation … is that of ‘rights of custody’”.

It went on to say:

“There is however a risk that the change in terms … may be hard to interpret in other jurisdictions”.

This issue was raised at Second Reading and the Minister subsequently wrote to say:

“For international understanding, it is the content of the order that is important, not its name. A child arrangements order should make clear with whom a child is to live, and this will enable a state to determine whether a person has rights of custody in a child abduction case”.

I am grateful to the Minister for trying to address that point. However, his response misses the point that by changing the name and the terminology we risk inadvertently making difficult international custody battles even more fraught.

While we cannot claim that our amendments are a panacea, and it may well be that the amendments tabled by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, are clearer in law, we believe they go some way to providing further legal clarification that will help parents and overseas jurisdictions to understand our intent in the law. Since the Justice Committee and others continue to be concerned, I hope the Minister will feel able to take these amendments away and to reconsider the Government’s opposition to what is meant to be a simple and helpful set of changes.

We also support the amendment proposed by the Government which deals with some of the consequential impacts of child arrangements orders on the Children Act 1989.

17:00

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I entirely support what lies behind what the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has said. Amendments 58 and 59 may go most of the way. Amendment 60, to which I speak, was proposed by the Bar, which is why I have put it forward. It is important that the Government understand that there are difficulties. The Child Abduction and Custody Act 1985 incorporates the Hague convention of 1980. I have spent a great amount of time as a High Court judge and in the Court of Appeal on the Hague convention. Under Article 5,

“‘rights of custody’ shall include rights relating to the care of … the child and, in particular, the right to determine the child’s place of residence”.

I congratulate the Government on their bravery as regards arrangements. Having tried cases with mothers and fathers, I do not believe that the proposal will work any better than custody and access or residence and contact. It is not the words but what happens to the child who gets one or other parent, or sometimes both parents, absolutely up in arms.

The difficulty is that the decision under the Hague convention is not made in England if an English child has been abducted. There has been a particular decision, with which I will not bore the House, except to say that where the applicant’s right of custody is an issue the question should not be determined by the English court unless it is unavoidable. It is a matter for the court where the child is taken to, where the other parent goes to that court through the arrangements in this country and says that this parent has lost the child because the child, in respect of which he or she has a right of custody, has been removed from this jurisdiction. The court of the jurisdiction where the child is found makes the decision on whether the right of custody has been breached.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has said, these are complicated cases. It is very often difficult in some countries to get that country to accept that nationals of that country were resident in this country. Therefore, while they may have been in Germany, they may not particularly want to send their children back although they had been resident here. Guatemala is a country that I particularly have in mind. Under the Hague convention, they should come back but if there is some uneasiness about what is meant by “arrangements”, it is a marvellous opportunity for the foreign court to say, “We are not satisfied on rights of custody, so we will keep the child here”. That is exactly what the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my amendments are intended to deal with.

I do not mind whether the amendment drafted for me by the Bar or any other amendment is preferable. I would like to see an interpretation of the words “rights of custody”. It should be stated that arrangements made in respect of either parent equal—but put, obviously, in more legalistic language—a right of custody. I hope that the Government will accept that both the noble Baroness and I have got a really important, highly technical point that may have an adverse, practical effect on English and Welsh children being taken unlawfully out of the jurisdiction.

[Lord McNally]

If there is anything likely to chill the marrow of a non-lawyer Minister, it is the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, saying that the amendment that she is proposing is highly technical and important. I have no doubt about that and will try to deal with it with due thoroughness, well aware that the noble and learned Baroness is far more well read in the Hague convention than me.

I am advised that the Hague convention gives a wide interpretation. It is intended to predict all the ways in which custody of a child can be exercised. It is not just orders concerning residence that count; it is also rights arising from the operation of law and agreements between parents which have legal effect under our law. The child arrangements order will make it clear that other jurisdictions will consider where a child lives and has contact as evidence in determining whether an individual has rights of custody.

I welcome the support expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for the government amendment, which is purely consequential. Schedule 1 to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 includes a reference to contact and residence orders. The amendment simply updates that to refer instead to child arrangements orders.

The remaining amendments relate to the recognition of the child arrangements order at international level. I agree with noble Lords that we must ensure that the order is recognised and enforced at international level in the same way as existing contact and residence orders. I welcome the thought which has been given to this issue.

The introduction of the child arrangements order stems from a recommendation of the family justice review. It seeks to move away from language which reinforces the perception that one parent is more important than the other. In terms of content, the court will, as now, be able to set out clearly in an order the person or persons with whom a child lives, spends time or has other types of contact, and when.

While the amendments which have been tabled do not change the scope of the child arrangements order, Amendment 58 would increases the focus on its distinct elements. In doing so, it risks undermining one of the key aims of the order, which is to shift the focus away from parents’ perceived rights on to the rights and needs of the child.

Amendments 59 and 60 relate more explicitly to the recognition of the order under the 1980 Hague convention. “Rights of custody” are a key concept under the convention and include rights relating to the care of a child, in particular the right to determine a child’s place of residence.

In considering whether there has been an unlawful removal for the purposes of the convention, a court will first establish what rights the applicant had under the domestic law of the state in which the child was habitually resident. What matters is what rights are recognised by that law, not how those rights are characterised.

The specific content of relevant decisions and orders, such as child arrangements orders that specify with whom a child is to live, will provide evidence as to the rights that a person has in respect of a child. However, the question as to whether those rights are properly characterised as “rights of custody” is a matter of international law. The phrase “rights of custody” is not confined to any national meaning, and it would not be appropriate to try to dictate the meaning of an international concept such as this in our law. I assure the Committee that we will be making full use of existing international groups and channels to raise awareness of the new order and ensure that it is properly understood. For that reason, I urge noble Lords to accept the Government’s amendment.

I say again that what I say here is not plucked out of the air; it is the result of considerable thought and advice from government lawyers and is on the basis of advice from the Norgrove studies. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, suggested that we might possibly be causing confusion by what we are doing. I suggest that we meet between now and Report—I am getting a long list of engagements now, but it is important to get this right—and discuss this. If the Government’s expert lawyers persuade me that noble Lords are wrong, then on Report I shall try to persuade the House that they are wrong. However, if noble Lords convince them that there is confusion here, that is the last thing that the Government want out of this legislation. In that spirit, I hope that the noble Baroness will agree to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I do not believe that I have the right now to withdraw my amendment because it was grouped with the earlier amendment. I make one point: it is not the sophisticated countries that have signed the Hague convention about which I am concerned but the unsophisticated countries, some of which are in South America, the Far East, parts of the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. Those are countries where it may not be as easy to explain to them what “arrangements” means as it would be to France or Germany.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I have to say I was beginning to feel very disappointed in the Minister’s response until he said that maybe we could meet—and I am very happy to take up his offer—because I felt that he was not really addressing the concerns that have been raised. They are not just the concerns of non-lawyers like myself or my colleagues; they are the concerns of some fairly major players in this sector including, as I said, the Family Law Bar Association and the Children’s Commission for England, while obviously the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, is an expert in her own right. This is not a political point but a practical one: it is about what is in the best interests of children and what can best protect them in international custody disputes. As I understand it, “rights of custody” has a particular resonance and respect around the world, and I am not sure that the new phraseology that we are putting in its place does that. I still need to be persuaded of all that, but maybe we can do that in a meeting with the Minister. I will happily take up his offer to explore it further in that context. I therefore beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 59 withdrawn.

Clause 12 agreed.

Schedule 2: Child arrangements orders: amendments

Amendment 60 not moved.

17:15

Amendment 61

Moved by

[Lord McNally]

61: Schedule 2, page 141, line 43, at end insert—
“Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (c. 10)70 In paragraph 13(1)(c) of Schedule 1 to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (civil legal services: orders mentioned in section 8(1) of the Children Act 1989) for “residence, contact” substitute “child arrangements orders”.”

Amendment 61 agreed.

Schedule 2, as amended, agreed.

Clause 13: Control of expert evidence, and of assessments, in children proceedings

Debate on whether Clause 13 should stand part of the Bill.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I apologise for asking for this clause stand part debate quite late in the day, without giving noble Lords more notice, and also for delaying the proceedings of the Grand Committee. But I feel that this is a very important clause on the “Control of expert evidence, and of assessments, in children proceedings”. The matter of expert witnesses is vital to the purpose of this Bill, which is child welfare. We must have a good pool of expert witnesses to advise courts in these complicated matters.

I called for this debate because I attended a briefing by Dr Julia Brophy, from the University of Oxford, two or three months ago, in which she presented her research into expert evidence produced by independent social workers. She interviewed 32 judges on their experience of expert reports from these independent social workers and found that judges valued these reports, that the expert witnesses were well known by courts, and that the social workers were very experienced. She found that they made a positive difference to the outcomes of their decision-making.

Phil King, joint founder-director of the Confederation of Independent Social Work Agencies, emailed me today on a report from a social worker detailing how a mother and her seven month-old baby were doing extremely well in the community. The CISWA had provided a report in this case. The mother had a very poor history of parenting, with her previous children placed for adoption. The local authority planned for adoption for this particular baby; however, the judge wanted an assessment to see whether the mother’s plea that she had changed had any foundation. The assessment indicated that there had been change, and there was a good prognosis. Without the independent social worker expert report, that child would now have been adopted. One has only to speak to a mother who is restricted to seeing her 12 month-old or 14 month-old infant twice a week and to see the anguish that that mother experiences to realise that we have to be timely in our decisions but also very well informed.

Local authorities have responded to the recommendation in the 2011 Family Justice Review from David Norgrove, which identified a,

“trend towards an increasing and, we believe, unjustified use of expert witness reports, with consequent delay for children”.

In particular, according to the report, independent social workers,

“should be employed only exceptionally”.

Following this, CAFCASS chief executive, Anthony Douglas, said:

“Cafcass research shows that the family justice system is responding to the recommendations made by the Family Justice Review, even before legislation has been put in place. At a time where scarce resources must be directed to the right areas, we agree with the Family Justice Board that the use of expert witnesses should be limited to cases in which they are absolutely necessary”.

He goes on to say:

“Cafcass guardians have found the right expert can offer unique insight and value about into a child’s needs. In such cases, Cafcass guardians said that the evidence offered by expert witnesses has increased the speed of proceedings”.

Just as an aside, there is another debate about the remuneration of expert witnesses in family courts. It seems to me a particular matter of concern that the remuneration for independent social workers is only £30 an hour, which does not fit with the quality of the reporting that they do and their many years of experience. We mentioned in earlier debates the necessity of raising the status of social work, and it seems to work against that. So I hope that the Minister, in his discussions with the relevant agency—I think it is the Law Commission—about remuneration in the family courts for expert witnesses, may think to ask whether this is a realistic rate for professionals, and whether it is a way in which to retain this high-quality pool of professionals who are so necessary to those decisions.

I refer—I apologise for taking so long, I am nearly finished—to the evaluation of senior judges’ views of expert opinion from independent social workers which is entitled: Neither Fear Nor Favour, Affection or Ill Will: Modernisation of care proceedings and the use and value of independent social work expertise to senior judges, by Dr. Julia Brophy of Oxford University. She concludes that,

“to enable courts to meet timescales, therefore, guidance will need to be sufficiently flexible to recognise”—

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall)]

I beg the noble Earl’s pardon for interrupting, but the Division bell is ringing. The Committee will reconvene in 10 minutes, at 5.30 pm.

17:20

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

17:30

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, the conclusions arising from the important research of Dr Julia Brophy are:

“(a) The needs of courts for skilled and experienced practitioners able to produce analytical, evidence based, forensically driven reports which meet the court’s timescale required, and … (b) The realities of resources limitations for some local authorities … In this context, utilising the skills and expertise of independent social workers both pre and within proceedings is likely to remain necessary if courts are to meet current challenges and move forward with appropriate speed and confidence and to do so in a manner which reflects a court practice which is without fear or favour”.

I want to ask the Minister whether the regulations now meet the recommendations made by Dr Brophy and, if not, what amendments he may be considering. Perhaps I may apologise once more to the Minister and the Committee for giving short notice of this debate. If the Minister would prefer to write to me, I will quite understand.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

Since this issue has been raised, I am going to jump on the bandwagon just to say that very difficult cases are tried by designated and senior judges and family judges of the High Court where expert evidence is absolutely crucial. I have to say that I have tried cases where I have ended up with 11 expert witnesses on shaken babies with subdural haematomas and so on, asking whether it was the parents or a parent, or whether it was an accident. These are extremely difficult cases. We were greatly assisted by CAFCASS and sometimes assisted by social workers, but even in these difficult cases, the social workers came and went. In some cases there was no consistent social worker to put in a consistent, high-quality report from their point of view. Again and again, High Court and senior circuit judges have asked for an independent social worker, which the local authority has been only too grateful to agree to. That is because the authority knows that in these difficult cases it has not actually been able to do the job itself.

In an ideal world, of course, independent social workers are not needed, but we live in a far from ideal world with children at extraordinary risk of physical injury as well as sexual injury. Here it is physical injury with which I am concerned. Again, as the noble Earl has just said, we need the doctors. I am not sure what the doctors are likely to be paid, but from the point of view of a senior consultant, it is derisory. There is a limit to pro bono, particularly if a doctor has to be in court for a day or two days. Quite simply, these really difficult cases will not be properly tried if they do not have the right experts.

Norgrove was absolutely right to want to cut it down. In the majority of cases it would be quite wrong to go in for the luxury of lots and lots of experts. I am concerned only about the small minority of extremely difficult cases, where the current system is not going to be just to the child, whose welfare, ultimately, is paramount.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, it is terribly important that this debate is kept in perspective. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, has done that very well, making it clear that we are talking about a very small number of cases, involving very difficult issues, where of course an expert’s advice will be very helpful.

More broadly, I very much support the thrust of what David Norgrove said in the report of the family justice review and it is really important that we are seen to be limiting expert evidence to what is really necessary to decide, so that the judges narrow it down to the key issues where we need that expert advice and it does not add to yet more reports, with all of that adding to delay.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, quoted Anthony Douglas, the chief executive of CAFCASS. I declare an interest as chair of CAFCASS. In the intervening period I have had the opportunity to have a quick word with Anthony Douglas and the context in which he made those remarks is one in which we have done a lot of work to ensure that both local authority social workers and CAFCASS guardians are working up to the absolute limit of their professional knowledge and capacity, and that you need an expert report only in that very small number of cases which take them beyond their limits.

I have spoken recently to groups of CAFCASS practitioners who tell me that they now feel empowered and have renewed confidence because in the majority of cases their expert advice, analytical skills and the assessment that they can offer to the courts are being accepted as expert social work opinion and advice. Sometimes recently they have felt that their professionalism has been questioned, which is a danger when we have too many of these expert reports. So I hope that we can conduct this debate with a sense of perspective and balance, while understanding that we are talking about a small number of cases where we need those expert reports to deal with very specific issues.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, have put this very precisely. I was the chair of CAFCASS when the problem significantly arose and began the work to tackle the issue, together with the chief executive and the board. The real issue was the length of time that children were waiting for decisions in their cases, and every day for a child is vital. Experts were called to verify what another expert was saying or to give another opinion, and there has been a great improvement in the time taken to reach a decision in these cases since we have streamlined that.

I declare an interest as vice-president of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which prepares extremely complex expert witness reports in cases of very serious child sexual abuse. I think the Minister is well aware of its work. In those cases there have been real difficulties in getting the right expert to the right place because, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, mentioned, local authorities themselves have called the experts in to add to the decision.

All I want to say in this debate is: let us keep the focus on the child and make decisions as quickly as possible, but in complex cases let us make sure that those decisions are based on the right information.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, perhaps I should make it clear from the start to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that we will resist this stand part Motion, and I am sure that he will withdraw it at the appropriate time. We want this change in the Bill. Let me be clear: experts play a vital role in many care proceedings. Their evidence can be necessary to assist the court in resolving a case justly and in a child’s best interests. It is the Government’s intention to ensure that where the court considers that expert evidence is necessary to assist it to resolve the proceedings justly, including evidence provided by independent social workers, that evidence should be used.

The reason for the measures in Clause 13 is simple: the family justice review found that, too often, expert reports were being commissioned in care proceedings when they added little real value to the decision-making process and contributed to delays. In many cases, expert evidence was provided where the evidence could be obtained from a party already involved in the proceedings. The Government believe that most social care evidence in cases could and should be supplied by local authorities and CAFCASS guardians, and I know that that view is strongly held by the present president of the Family Division, Sir James Munby. However, where a judge considers that it is necessary to have expert evidence, including an independent social work report, to resolve the proceedings justly, then that evidence will still be permitted.

We know that improvements to social work practice will be needed to deliver these changes. That is why the Children’s Improvement Board, together with Research in Practice, delivered a series of regional family justice training seminars to local authorities to highlight good practice in this area and how it may be replicated. In addition, CIB and RiP also recently ran a series of “train the trainer” workshops aimed at those responsible for training within local authorities. The workshops focused on the practical skills that social workers need to progress cases without delay. We have also funded new research distillations to assist social workers when assessing children on the edge of care, and continue to work with the College of Social Work to ensure that social workers receive training in the specific competencies required.

With regard to legal aid fees, which the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, raised, the hourly rate for independent social workers was introduced in May 2011 following consultation. As the response to that consultation recognised, independent social workers undertake a variety of work for different organisations but the qualifications and experience of those undertaking that work, plus similarities in the work undertaken, meant that it was not considered an effective use of public money for the Legal Services Commission, as it was then, to pay higher rates than those payable by CAFCASS for similar services.

The Government have met organisations representing independent social workers on several occasions, but we have no evidence to suggest that the majority of work undertaken by this group should attract a higher rate than is paid to other social workers. However, where independent social workers provide services that are significantly different from those normally expected of other social workers, significantly higher rates are payable—for example, when acting as an expert risk assessor in cases where there is a substantiated relevant criminal allegation in the immediate background of the case, or where a finding of sexual abuse relevant to the case has been made by a court and the report is specifically required to address this risk.

As I have said, I believe that what we are doing meets the requirements that Dr Brophy set out, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked me. We understand the concerns that expert witnesses should be used when necessary, and I hope that I made it clear that that will continue to be the case. However, when the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, tells me that in one of her cases she had 11 expert witnesses, that almost makes me think that that is what we are facing, and indeed what Norgrove identified. As I said before to the noble Earl, although I take note of what he has said, this is something that I cannot offer a meeting on because we will continue to resist.

17:45

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. I am most grateful to the Minister for his reassuring response concerning the additional training for social workers to enable them to produce the right reports without additional expert support.

I seem to remember it being put to me in the past that the involvement of expert witnesses has been particularly difficult for family courts dealing with these very complex cases. There has been a sort of arms race, with one side appointing an expert witness, then another side appointing an expert witness, and the judges—those making decisions—have sometimes lacked the confidence to say, “No, we do not need so many reports”. What the Government are doing now under Lord Justice Ryder, which will also be helpful, is the bringing together of the family courts into one place, with opportunities for greater training and support for those who make these difficult decisions, and therefore less risk of this sort of arms race of expert witnesses.

As my noble friend Lady Howarth has said, it is crucial that these decisions are timely, and what is encouraging about Dr Brophy’s report is that these expert witness reports have been found to increase the speed at which decisions are made. In the past the concern has been that they have delayed decisions, but the judges are saying that they can make speedier decisions because they have the expert information that they need. Therefore I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance on these points, and I do not think I have to say anything more.

Clause 13 agreed.

Clause 14: Care, supervision and other family proceedings: time limits and timetables

Amendment 62

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

62: Clause 14, page 13, line 15, after “issued” insert “unless the court considers it necessary in order to safeguard or promote the child’s welfare to permit additional time for the disposing of the application”

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, Amendments 62 and 63 concern the issue of time limits for court proceedings. We very much welcome the Government’s aim of reducing delays in care proceedings as set out in the clause. As we have discussed in the past, there have been unjustifiable delays, which have had serious consequences for the welfare of the children involved. We are pleased that, in anticipation of the new timescales, court proceedings are already being completed over a shorter period. However, we believe that in trying to set absolute time limits the Government may be going too far and putting at risk the best possible outcome for the child. Our amendments attempt to redress that balance by reasserting a focus on the best interests of the child.

We have a major concern that as it currently stands, Clause 14 would curtail effective interventions with children and their families that last longer than 26 weeks. We need to differentiate clearly between delay caused by unacceptable process issues on the one hand and time extensions which really are in the best interests of the child on the other. Our amendments would allow longer timescales, specifically to meet the interests of the child. They would also enable the court to set out a timetable from the outset of proceedings rather than continually having to add eight-week extensions. This would give practitioners more clarity about how long they have to work with the child before a court decision is made.

We agree that delay in decision-making can have an adverse effect on children. However, there is a real danger that limiting the proceedings to 26 weeks would result in court decisions being made to meet the deadline, rather than to secure the best outcome for each child. We have to acknowledge that, in practice, some assessments and intervention programmes take longer than others; for example, where parents are seeking treatment for substance misuse. Care proceedings must enable opportunities for meaningful change in parental behaviour and those working with the family need to know that they will have the time to enable a successful intervention to take place. The NSPCC’s infant and family team model is a good example of such interventions, which can and often do require longer than 26 weeks but have shown improved outcomes for both the children and the adults involved.

We believe that there are a range of circumstances where a period longer than 26 weeks may be essential for the child’s needs to be addressed, including to allow a robust support package to be developed in special guardianship cases. This may include: support for difficult contact arrangements; preventing significant financial hardship; or where the proceedings work with the family has not been done or the situation has changed at the last minute, such that a family member needs to be considered late in the day. We are already hearing anecdotes of family members being denied an assessment once the case is in court. Parents who are consistently demonstrating to the Family Drug and Alcohol Court’s intensive support team that they are turning their life around need sufficient time to prove to the court that they can sustain such an improvement. A longer period may also be needed when potentially suitable family carers live abroad. In the case of older children, an emphasis on a fast timescale may be counterproductive, and particular care, sensitivity and dialogue will be necessary to allow the child’s long-term welfare needs to be met.

This list is not exhaustive but gives an illustration of cases where a delay could well be in the child’s interest. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for addressing these concerns in his recent letter. He explained that a number of pilots are taking place and that in due course the Family Procedure Rule Committee will consider whether to make court rules on these issues. However, we do not feel that this goes far enough. There are important issues here affecting the welfare of children at stake. The FPRC is under no obligation to make rules on time limits, and in any case we will not have had sight of the rules being made; meanwhile, we believe that a commitment to greater flexibility in the application of these rules is essential. Without taking away any of the good intent of the clause, which attempts to speed up court processes, we believe that our amendments, which would give the courts greater flexibility to extend deadlines where it is explicitly in the interest of the child, strike the right balance. We hope that noble Lords will support this position.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I have put my name down to this amendment because the NSPCC has raised huge concerns with me. It feels that the implementation of a 26-week time limit could make the operation of evidence-based interventions that take longer than the specified time limit more difficult; for example, in situations where parents are seeking treatment for substance misuse or domestic violence or when family members come forward late in care proceedings when the real risk of a child being taken into care becomes apparent. The NSPCC believes that we must ensure there is sufficient time for the appropriate assessments to take place.

The noble Baroness has already mentioned programmes such as the NSPCC’s infant and family team. That programme is significant as it informs professionals and helps courts decide whether maltreated children can be reunited with their birth family or should be placed for adoption with their foster family. It also assists parents in addressing the problems that they might have had as children. However, this important and emotional work requires between 12 and 15 months before a final recommendation is made. Although the Bill provides for eight-week extensions, continually adding these on to the six months causes a large amount of uncertainty for parents whose own early traumatic experiences are being explored to help them reflect on the origins of their present difficulties, and ultimately may have an adverse effect, not to mention increased administration pressure.

When I was told the following story of a young mother, it showed me just how important the NSPCC’s infant and family team can be to the well-being and happy outcome of a family in difficulty. Two years ago, Kesha’s eight children, aged between one and 13, were removed from her on the grounds of neglect. The children were split among different foster carers and she saw them for only an hour every other week. Kesha says:

“When I first began working with the Infant Team I had a bad attitude, but soon, I loved it. We had parenting sessions that really helped me, and I watched videos of parents and kids which helped me understand my kids’ needs more and how to meet them and build a sense of security so they know they can come to me. The Infant Team also asked me about when I was young. It felt like my mum leaving at a young age meant I couldn’t trust people. They helped me to be myself more and start trusting people, and I began to open up to my kids more, and my relationships with them got better. The Infant Team want you to get your kids back. I didn't want my children to have to grow up without their mum like I did. I love them too much. I fought hard to get them back”.

It took Kesha a year and a half to get her children back, but by working hard and with the right support, they have been successfully reunited.

The NSPCC and others agree that there are lots of cases that need to be speeded up, but that should not be done at the expense of limiting interventions that could be effective in dealing with family problems, so that children can stay at home when it has been proved to be safe for their well-being. These cases cannot be forced into a prescribed timeframe, as the NSPCC believes that this could be damaging. It is seeking commitments as to how the Government will address this potentially negative impact and ensure that cases are not shoehorned into a structure that will not be beneficial. There needs be more flexibility and I believe that this, in turn, will not undermine the policy intention. The amendment will provide greater clarity about the length of care proceedings when longer timescales are needed to meet the needs of the child. I know that that is what all noble Lords here ultimately want.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I regret to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that I do not agree with her amendment. I have discussed this with the President of the Family Division and with Lord Justice Ryder, who has been leading the modernisation of the family courts over a number of years—even when I was there, which is now eight years ago. This is one of the major planks of the Norgrove report. The president and Lord Justice Ryder, together with other judges, are extremely concerned about the idea that the 26-week limit should be breached. They see it as an opening for some judges simply to take longer. Certainly until very recently, we know that decisions have been taking 48 to 50 weeks. For a child to have to wait for a year for a decision on whether it can stay with the family or should go into care is half a year too long. This is what Norgrove wanted: dramatically to reduce the time.

The NSPCC has been lobbying me as well and I have heard the touching story, but I am afraid that I sent an e-mail saying that in this particular instance I do not agree. If one looks at Clause 14, which is the subject of this amendment, one can see that under new subsection (5) onwards, there is an opportunity for extensions of eight weeks. However, if there is an open book, there will be judges who allow it to remain open, whereas if you have to be ready to go back after each period of eight weeks, that has a marvellous effect on getting on with what needs to be done.

I also notice that under new subsection (9) the Lord Chancellor can change the 26-week period, while new subsection (10) states that the rules of court may provide for changes. I have absolutely no doubt that the rules committee and the senior judiciary, particularly the Family Division liaison judges on each of the circuits, will check on the designated family judges in the care centres. If there are cases where the decision has been too speedy, I have no doubt at all that the system will be able to see that, which provides an opportunity to decide at that stage whether there needs to be an extension. But, for the moment, I ask the Minister to stand firm on this one.

17:59

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

I understand the intention behind the amendment, particularly in terms of promoting the best interests of the child and the child’s welfare, but I also feel that the signal it would send would not be the right one at this stage. I have heard the president talking about this, and I think that at the moment his mantra is, “It can be done, it will be done, it must be done”. It is all about turning around the culture from one of delay to one of urgency, with all parties involved in this—that is, the judiciary, local authorities, CAFCASS and others—doing all that they can to ensure that these cases are dealt with as quickly as they can be and in a way that is commensurate with the best interests of the child.

I was very much reinforced in this recently. I attended the National Children and Adults Services Conference in Harrogate on Friday. It was a very good three-day event with a number of Ministers and others speaking. I went to a specialist workshop all about completing care proceedings in 26 weeks. Several academics, particularly from the University of East Anglia, presented some initial findings from the research that they have been doing into the impact of the new public law outline to try to move to a 26-week time limit, and particularly the impact of what is called the tri-borough project with Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham. I have been to visit that project myself and the results, frankly, are extremely impressive: already 50% of cases are being resolved in less than 26 weeks.

Even with the knowledge that we were going to have this clause in the Bill or at least debate it, national case duration averages were already coming down from what was something like 49 weeks to about 37 weeks, and they are on a downward trajectory. While I fully understand the case that is being made for those very exceptional cases where the extensions will be needed, there is sufficient flexibility in the Bill as drafted for that. I would be concerned about anything that diluted this very important message about trying to move away from delay in the family court system.

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not briefed by the NSPCC but I have a brief from the Magistrates’ Association, which makes it clear that it also supports the 26-week time limit but also agrees that there should be specific extensions for eight weeks where people can apply to the court. It would probably be most helpful if I raised the questions that the Magistrates’ Association has raised in the brief that it sent me. Before I do so, though, I want to make the point that the examples of exceptions that my noble friend Lady Jones gave are very far from theoretical, because two of those examples I personally dealt with in the past month. They were very real examples of something that I understood very clearly.

The first of the questions that the Magistrates’ Association raised in its brief to me is really a concern that an application for an eight-week extension should resist that extension being a contested hearing, and obviously the decision of the court should be final. If there is to be a contested hearing on an eight-week extension, though, it should be as short and focused as possible. The second point that the Magistrates’ Association made was that it is not clear, from the association’s understanding, that there is any limit to the maximum number of successive extensions. The association’s final point is to ask whether there is any right of appeal if a lower court—although perhaps “lower court” is not the right expression—decides not to grant an extension. Is there any right of appeal to a higher jurisdiction?

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for her intervention in support of these proposals—I am also grateful for my momentary promotion. It gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to the work of Lord Justice Ryder when he was with the Family Division. He did a lot of ground-clearing in this area, not least bringing in some very useful comparative statistics which allowed us to see the variety in performance of courts, which was affecting children at a vulnerable time of their lives. When this exercise started, it took more than 60 weeks in some cases to come to a decision. The tri-borough project also demonstrated in advance of this legislation that this could be done more quickly. Certainly, the robust leadership that Sir James Munby has given in implementing the Norgrove proposals has meant that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, a culture of delay has been replaced by a culture of urgency. That is much to the credit of what we are proposing.

We all agree that delays in decision-making, whether by local authorities or in courts, can be very damaging. They can add to emotional insecurity and affect children’s prospects for returning to or finding a permanent loving home. Introducing a 26-week time limit for care and supervision cases will send a clear and unambiguous statement to all parts of the family justice system about the need to reduce delay. Removing certain cases from the ambit of the 26-week time limit at the outset, as proposed by Amendment 62, would undermine this effort.

I recognise that these cases deal with important and complex issues and not all will be able to be completed within this timeframe. The court will therefore have the discretion to extend the time limit in a particular case beyond 26 weeks if that is necessary to resolve the proceedings justly. The clause carefully strikes the necessary balance between putting in place a maximum 26-week time limit to tackle delay in all cases and allowing sufficient judicial discretion to extend time where necessary to resolve the case justly, having explicit regard to the child’s welfare.

Requiring extensions to last for a maximum of eight weeks at a time will help ensure that the court is focused on resolving cases as quickly as possible. To allow the court to grant an extension without imposing any limit as to the length of the extension, as proposed by Amendment 63, would potentially allow cases to drift. This could undermine the aim that we all share, of reducing unnecessary delay. There will always be some very complex cases which it may not be possible to complete within 26 weeks. Where that is the case, the court will be able to extend time, where necessary, to resolve proceedings justly. It is important, however, that we keep a clear focus on resolving cases as quickly as possible, and specifying a maximum eight-week limit on the length of extensions will ensure that this happens. There is, however, no limit on the number of extensions that can be sought.

I recognise the concerns of the noble Baronesses and have seen how successful intervention models such as the Family Drug and Alcohol Court approach can be. That is why I am very pleased that the Government are continuing to provide funding of £150,000 in each year of 2013-14 and 2014-15 to continue the development and rollout of the FDAC. As part of our funding of FDAC, we are proposing to continue work that will enable this model to meet the 26-week time limit in most cases. Proceedings in the FDAC model currently take the same time on average as standard care proceedings, and we believe that the 26-week time limit can be applied successfully in most cases.

I think I have just answered the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked about the Family Procedure Rule Committee. On the basis of its specific expertise, the committee has been invited to consider whether to further elaborate on the matter to which the court is to have regard in order to support Clause 14, and we await its response. The court rules may set out the matters to which the court must, may or may not have regard when making the decision whether to grant an extension to the time limit. It is, rightly, the remit of the FPRC to consider whether to make court rules under the clause; it is a statutory independent non-departmental public body responsible for making these rules of the court. Before making the rules, the FPRC must consult such persons as it considers appropriate, and we will update the Committee on the FPRC’s work before Report.

I am not sure whether there were any other matters that were specific to this; the questions come thick and fast. Yes, there was one: the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Benjamin, raised the question of whether the 26-week time limit would impact on kinship care and whether it would be shoehorned into a one-size-fits-all solution. We are aware that, in spite of everyone’s best efforts, occasionally relatives are not identified until late in the proceedings. However, the 26-week time limit should not impact on kinship care. It is not for the courts to decide whether it is Granny who the child goes to; rather, it relates to the choice of the permanence plan being a relative if possible, followed by adoption or long-term foster care. After all, the court does not decide which adopters the child goes to when it agrees to a plan for adoption. We are continuing to use programmes such as family group conferences before proceedings start in order to identify family members from the onset of cases. In addition, we are working in partnership with the Children’s Improvement Board and the College of Social Work to support the continuing improvement of social work practice. Of course, the court retains the power to extend the case for longer consideration if necessary.

The public law measures in the Bill will tackle the damaging delays that exist throughout the system. These delays can deny children the chance of a permanent home and have a harmful long-term effect on a child’s development. The measures will also refocus the system so that the child’s best interests are part of the process. Our measures strike the necessary balance between tackling delay and allowing sufficient judicial discretion to resolve proceedings justly, and I hope that noble Lords will agree to withdraw these amendments.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I briefly pay tribute to the Government. In the past week I met District Judge Crichton and his team from the NHS Portman trust. District Judge Crichton set up the Family Drug and Alcohol Court five or six years ago and has had great success, with about one-third of families coming through the court keeping their children, and the best evidence so far is that those children continue to do well and thrive with those families, so the family stays off drugs and alcohol. I pay tribute to the Government for their support of FDAC from the beginning and for their continuing support. I express the hope that perhaps in future FDAC might be made even more widely available across the country, always bearing in mind the heavy burden that local authorities are continually faced with as more and more children each year come into care and the challenges that that poses to all of us. Once again, I pay tribute to the Government for their support of FDAC, if I may.

18:14

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I welcome the support of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin. I do not want anyone to be under any illusions: of course it is imperative that we tackle the court delays that have occurred in the system. We absolutely start from that point of view. We welcome all the steps that have been taken to modernise the family court system, including those to cut the time that is taken to deal with cases in the court. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that it is a cultural issue as much as anything and we need to tackle that culture.

Our amendments were never intended to be an open door for judges just to sit on their hands and delay decisions. The intention was that in very particular cases, which people could see from the outset were going to take longer than 26 weeks, they would be able to make a decision and spell out and justify that decision at the time. It was not just an opportunity for a delay for the sake of it.

I am slightly concerned about how these eight-week extensions are going to work. For example, if a family is going through an intensive period of therapy, knowing that the case is going back to be reviewed every eight weeks is fantastically stressful and disruptive to them when they feel that they are making progress. The evidence shows that a lot of court decisions were delayed because the processes were not in place, reports were not received in time or the evidence was not there at the time. If you are then going to deal with a rolling eight-week review, there are all sorts of opportunities for things to go wrong and for the evidence simply not to be before the court at the right time. I would be interested to know how these eight-week extensions work in practice. We may well need to have a review of them in the short term.

My noble friend Lord Ponsonby said that my examples were not theoretical, and I thank him for confirming that. The point is that the families that we are talking about know from the outset that it is going to take time to turn their lives around. They know they are going on quite a long journey. To feel that that there is this time pressure hanging over them will have a negative impact on the whole process.

[Lord McNally]

The noble Baroness was asking about how the extensions would work in practice. The request to extend the timetable for proceedings will be considered during the proceedings, as far as possible, and should not result in additional hearings. I should also explain to the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, that there could be further extensions. On the right of appeal, I have an explanation in my brief but I would rather write to him to make sure that I get it right. There is a limited right of appeal. I am sorry for interrupting the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I am not sure that the Minister has shed much light on things. I am now even more confused. Surely if there is going to be an eight-week extension, people have to meet every eight weeks to decide whether or not it should be further extended. You could say as a one-off, “We’ll allow a further eight weeks”, but then you will have to keep meeting every eight weeks to review that, if it is intended that there will be more than one eight-week extension. No doubt we can talk about this outside the Room and the noble Lord can clarify that further.

There is a serious point at the heart of this: what do we want to get out of the 26-week deadline? I hope that we all want children to have a chance to stay with their birth family, if possible. I feel that we will find over time that if courts are under pressure because of the 26-week timescale, the default position will be that children are taken into care because there simply will not be enough time to do the work with the birth parents. That is the real sadness behind what is being proposed here, because it is too stringent and lacking in flexibility.

Our position is that we want something that is absolutely and justifiably in the interests of the child and its welfare, and I still believe that what we are proposing would achieve that. For the time being, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 62 withdrawn.

Amendment 63 not moved.

Clause 14 agreed.

Amendment 64

Moved by

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

64: After Clause 14, insert the following new Clause—
“Care proceedings: standard of proof
(1) The Children Act 1989 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 31 (care and supervision), after subsection (2) insert—
“(2A) Subsection (2) above shall be interpreted so as to permit a court to infer that a child is likely to suffer significant harm from the sole fact that the child is, or will be, living with a person who is a possible perpetrator of significant harm to another child.
(2B) For the purposes of subsection (2A), a person (the person concerned) is to be treated as a “possible perpetrator” if—
(a) a child has suffered significant harm;(b) the court is unable to identify the actual perpetrator of the said harm but identifies a list of possible perpetrators by finding (in relation to each such person) that there is a real possibility that he caused significant harm to the child; and(c) the person concerned is one of the persons on the said list.””

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, this amendment is concerned with the standard of proof in care proceedings. I am conscious that the purpose of the amendment may not be crystal clear, so I have prepared a note setting out the background to the amendment, and it contains the wording of the section that we will be discussing. Many Members may already have a copy of that note but, if not, it is on the table.

The relevant section is Section 31 of the Children Act 1989, which provides the threshold that must be crossed before a child can be taken into care. However, it is only a threshold. If the threshold is crossed, it does not mean that the child is necessarily taken into care. That is decided at the later, welfare stage when all the matters set out in Section 1 of the 1989 Act must be taken into account. This is all well known to the Committee. Conversely, if the threshold is not crossed, the court has no power to intervene.

Section 31 provides that a child may be taken into care only if,

“the child concerned is suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm; and … the harm, or likelihood of harm, is attributable to … the care given to the child”,

falling short of what it would be reasonable to expect. Those words are simple enough and they pose two questions which, I suggest, should be capable of being answered without too much help from us lawyers. Sadly, that has not proved to be the case.

18:22

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

18:33

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, I said that the two questions posed by Section 31 should be capable of being answered without too much help from lawyers, but that has not proved to be the case. In the 27 years since 1986, the section has been considered on no fewer than eight occasions in our highest court, and on two occasions already this year. On one of those occasions it was said:

“This is unfortunate, especially in an area of the law which has to be applied on a daily basis by courts at all levels, and in which clarity is therefore of particular importance”.

I think noble Lords would say amen to that. Happily, there is one word in the section on the meaning of which everyone is agreed, and that is the word “likely” in subsection (1). It does not mean more likely than not. It means only that there is a real possibility of harm to a child or, as one judge put it, a possibility that cannot sensibly be ignored.

Perhaps I may paraphrase Section 32(1) again. It states that a child may be taken into care only if, first, it is suffering significant harm or, secondly, there is the real possibility that it will suffer significant harm. I shall not repeat all the wording. In other words, there are two separate conditions which may trigger the threshold, one relating to the present and the other relating to the future. When the case is put on the basis of present harm—for example, that the child is being physically or sexually abused by its father—it will be necessary to prove that fact on a balance of probability. Anything less than that would be unfair on the father and, indeed, on both parents. This is so also where the case is that the child has suffered serious injury and it is uncertain whether the injury was inflicted by the mother. It will be necessary to prove on a balance of probability that the child has indeed been injured and that the injury was inflicted by either the father or the mother, or both, but it will not be necessary at the threshold stage to decide which parent it was. That will be decided, if it can be decided at all, at the welfare stage on all the evidence which will then be available. The same principle of the threshold test also applies in relation to any unharmed child of the family.

So far, all is plain sailing. The difficulty arises when the parents separate. Let us suppose that the father goes off to live with another woman who already has a child of her own of the same age as the injured child. Is the threshold satisfied in relation to that child? Common sense would suggest that it is. There is a 50% chance on the proved facts that it was the father who injured the first child, who we will call child A. There must be at least a serious possibility that he will also injure child B—a possibility which, I repeat, cannot sensibly be ignored. If so, the threshold would be satisfied in relation to child B as well as to child A. However, the Supreme Court has held in a very recent case, Re J (Children), that that is not so. The Court has held that a serious possibility that it was the father who inflicted the injury is not enough. In order to satisfy the threshold in relation to child B, it will be for the local authority to prove on a balance of probability that it was the father and not the mother who injured child A. Since on the assumed facts that could not be done, child B would remain at risk.

I suggest that this cannot have been what Parliament intended when enacting Section 32(1), otherwise why did Parliament include the word “likely” as the alternative ground on which the threshold may be satisfied? The matter can be tested in this way by assuming that the mother is also now living with another man and has had a child which we shall call child C. Does child C also have to remain at risk because it cannot be proved on a balance of probability that it was the mother rather than the father who inflicted the harm on child A? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls, who gave the leading judgments in the three initial cases on Section 31 in the House of Lords, described such a result as,

“grotesque because it would mean the court would proceed on the footing that neither parent represents a risk even though one or other of them was”,

responsible for the harm in question.

How then, one may ask, has the Supreme Court in Re J arrived at a different conclusion that, as the noble and learned Lord has said, on the face of it is “grotesque”. How can two of the judges in the Supreme Court have held that the injury to child A in such a case is logically irrelevant in deciding whether child B and child C are at risk and must therefore be disregarded altogether?

The answer to how the Supreme Court can have reached that conclusion is to be found in the judgment of Lord Justice McFarlane in the same case but in the court below. Lord Justice McFarlane is one of our most experienced Family Division judges, and is the author of one of the leading textbooks in this field. It was he who gave the leading judgment in the Court of Appeal in Re J. He went through all the House of Lords and Supreme Court decisions going back to 1996, and he showed that a clear distinction is drawn in the cases between those where the question is whether any harm has been proved at all and those cases where harm has been proved but the perpetrator of the harm is uncertain. That is the very distinction drawn by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls, in the House of Lords case that I have already quoted.

Somehow though, that distinction was overlooked in later cases. Lord Justice McFarlane makes no secret of the fact that he favours the approach of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls, and would therefore have allowed the appeal in Re J if he could. However, subsequent decisions in the Supreme Court meant of course that his hands were tied. So the Court of Appeal took the unusual course of dismissing the appeal but itself giving leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, thereby, one might think, inviting the Supreme Court to have another look at this problem. Unfortunately, as I see it, the Supreme Court simply came up with the same answer again.

Lord Justice McFarlane’s judgment is long and detailed but his conclusion is clear, concise and very relevant in this context. It is contained in a single page of the Law Reports, which I have had copied, and the Committee may find it helpful to read his conclusion when considering this amendment. Copies are available on the table by the door.

I come to the decision of the Supreme Court itself in Re J. Is it open to us to take a different view? If so, is it wise for us to do so? To both those questions I would answer yes, for three reasons. First, three of the judges in the Supreme Court were themselves attracted by the argument that the approach in these cases has become much too complicated and that this is having unfortunate consequences. Secondly, the decision in the Supreme Court has been subjected to a hail of criticism in lengthy articles by Professor Mary Hayes and Stephen Gilmore, appearing in Family Law. There is not the slightest reason to doubt that, as they point out, the decision is causing real concern, if not consternation, among social workers and local authorities who have to apply Section 32 in practice. Thirdly, the decision in the Supreme Court hardly does justice to Lord Justice McFarlane’s decision in the Court of Appeal; indeed, it is scarcely even mentioned.

There is another reason for accepting this amendment. I am not seeking to amend the wording of Section 32(1) itself; the wording is fine and has stood the test of time. It is only the interpretation of that section that needs correcting, and that is what the amendment seeks to do. Its intended purpose is to clarify, and above all to simplify, the approach in cases of the kind that I have described where the harm has been proved on the balance of probabilities but the court cannot make a finding on the evidence whether it was the father or the mother who inflicted that harm. A judge of great experience in the Family Division said that that is the sort of case that occurs very often—“commonplace”, I think he said—in practice. In such cases, if the amendment were accepted, both parents would be placed in what is called a pool of possible perpetrators, thus enabling the case to proceed to the next stage, the welfare stage, where a decision could be made.

I refer to a “pool” because that is the term used by those who read these cases, or a “list”, as it is called in the amendment. Why does one have to have a pool or a list? The reason is quite simple: in one case, which has actually occurred in practice, there was a third possible perpetrator. In addition to the parents of the child in question, there was a childminder who also had a child of her own of about the same age. In such a case, it obviously makes sense that the childminder should be included in the pool of possible perpetrators, thus enabling that child to be protected should it become necessary. I hope that this has done something to clarify the purpose of the amendment and I beg to move.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the amendment as strongly as I may. The critical consideration to keep in mind here, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has explained, is that what we are concerned about today is a threshold provision. The amendment would mean simply that in a small but very important additional category of cases, the court would have the jurisdiction and the power to investigate the case in depth and to consider whether in all the circumstances it should then make a care order or supervision order for the child’s protection. The small category of additional cases—again, the noble and learned Lord has explained this—is where it is established that some other child has already suffered significant harm, perhaps has even been killed, but the local authority concerned about some other child can demonstrate only the possibility, rather than the actual probability, that the perpetrator of that harm was someone who is now caring for the child in question—the child, that is, whose safety is presently under consideration.

As it happens, I was not in any of the string of cases in which the question of the true interpretation of Section 31(2) of the Children Act 1989 has arisen in recent years. Whether in the original House of Lords case I should have agreed with the majority view or with the dissenting minority view of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Browne-Wilkinson, and indeed of my noble and learned friend Lord Lloyd, does not matter. It is unnecessary to decide now which was the better interpretation of the language that Parliament originally enacted in 1989.

What is clear, as again the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has explained, is that several judges who have had to grapple with this point, even if they felt bound by the original majority’s decision, have expressed serious misgivings about the consequences of that interpretation. In the case last year, Re J, to which again my noble and learned friend has referred, both the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, then the Lord Chief Justice and now a Member of this House, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, then Master of the Rolls and now President of the Supreme Court, agreed with Lord Justice McFarlane. His judgment expressed his trouble with the interpretation given to this section and described it,

“as a cause of concern amongst child protection agencies”.

What is certain is that the clause as originally enacted was not clear enough as to what Parliament then intended. The amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, or some comparable draft, would make it plain. It would solve the real and recurrent difficulty that this vitally important part of the law has got itself into, and it would produce a result that for my part I believe we should be striving for, which is to open the gateway to the court.

I repeat, this is only a threshold provision which would apply whenever a child is found to be at risk of being harmed, as must surely be the case when one of the caring parents is shown to have been a possible perpetrator of serious harm in the past. To anybody who is concerned that the court, following this amendment, would too readily take children away from a parent who only might have harmed some other child, I would say this is absolutely not the case. To quote subsection (2)(2A) of the proposed amendment,

“to infer that a child is likely to suffer significant harm”,

is to infer no more than that there is a risk of that child being harmed as surely there is if there is a real possibility that its carer has significantly harmed some other child. Crucially, it would then remain for the court, looking at all the facts of the case, to decide whether, under Section 1 of the 1989 Act, the child’s welfare is indeed best served by making a care or supervision order. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, as an amateur and a non-lawyer, I hope that the Government will be able to accept the noble and learned Lord’s amendment. How very fortunate we are to have people like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, with us in Parliament; how important it is that people with experience as Law Lords should be able to return and give us the benefit of their expertise. I was entranced by his exposition of the amendment because, as an amateur, it is clear to me that people who abuse children do not stop: if you have abused one child, you will undoubtedly go on to harm another.

In the kind of case that the noble and learned Lord described, where a couple split up, we do not know which one of them was harming the child—perhaps it was both. They move into a new family with other children, that harm will continue and the new child will be at risk as well. It has been made clear to us that the Court of Appeal cannot at the moment understand with clarity what it is supposed to do. This would help enormously and I hope that the Minister will be able to accept it. However, he is looking very grim, so perhaps he will not.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I want to make just a couple of remarks. First, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for the note that he has sent to us and for his very clear exposition today of a very complicated issue.

There is an issue here. In my own previous academic experience I did a considerable amount of government-funded research into child abuse, and child sexual abuse in particular. Apart from any other kinds of cases, we found a very significant although small number of men who quite deliberately target families and go round seeking one woman after another. In each case, there is harm to the child but it cannot necessarily be definitively proved which individual committed the harm. For a small number of children this is a problem.

It is quite difficult for those of us who are not lawyers and who have not followed the detail of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court and are not steeped in all this language and the issues to evaluate precisely—I cannot do so—whether there is an issue here and, if so, how the Government should act. It seems that there may be an issue here. I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether he thinks there is a problem and that it is the problem that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has identified. Is there a potential problem now where some children could be left in situations of risk when perhaps previously there might have been an intervention to protect them? If so, what is the best course of action for the Government to take?

I can perhaps understand the Government’s reluctance to intervene in or be seen to meddle with Supreme Court adjudications. None the less, if there is an issue here, clearly it is within the Government’s power to rectify or revert to the original intention of the Children Act, whether by Amendment 64 or by some other course of action. I certainly feel, as I suspect do other Members of the Committee, that it would be very helpful to have the Minister’s clarification on whether there is an issue here and, if so, what is the best remedy.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I am not a practising lawyer either but I was a social worker of long standing. I want to say very briefly that the social work organisations are extremely concerned about this situation, and we should have that on the record.

The concern is that in the past, social workers would have been able to move cases forward through the courts easily because of the previous judgments, but now they cannot move to the welfare principle quickly enough, which means that often they cannot gain access to the home where the perpetrator is living. The issue is actually being able to ensure that children can be protected by social care staff or voluntary workers, if that is where the work is, being able to gain access to a home quickly and simply through a court order such as that proposed in the amendment.

19:00

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I am extremely sad to have to disagree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd. I am also indebted to the noble and learned Lords, Lord Hope of Craighead and Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, for what they would like to have said, but they are both unable to be here today.

It is important to realise that there are two views of the judiciary, of the academics and of the lawyers, not only the view put forward by the noble and learned Lord. The first view is that of seven Supreme Court judges. Normally in the Supreme Court they sit in a five-judge court. In this case, no doubt because it was either the seventh or eighth case, they sat as a seven-judge court. I have the highest possible regard for Lord Justice McFarlane, but two of the judges of the Supreme Court were family judges of even greater experience and expertise than him. Both those judges, both of whom are family practitioners and both of whom have worked with me, were absolutely unanimous with the other five that the decision to which the Supreme Court came was the right one.

There are two issues. One concerns a situation where there has been no significant harm to the child, or in Re J, the case with which we are concerned, three children. However, there was very significant harm to one child who died. In that case, the mother and the father were the only possible perpetrators. Under the current law, it did not matter which of them had killed or injured the child. The child may have died of asphyxia from being rolled on to in the bed—the child was lying in the bed with the parents, which is a terrible habit. This child had been seriously injured before it died. Those are the facts. The mother, during the time she lived with the father, was in that pool of perpetrators and it was clearly not safe for the older child, born while the parents were engaged in the process of care, to live with them. They then parted and went to live with different people. The mother eventually went to live with a man who was the divorced father of two children who lived with him, and with him she had two further children. The pool was then a different pool, not the pool of two perpetrators, one of whom was bound to have done it, but a different pool in which nothing had happened so far. The judges in the Re J case said that there had to be some evidence from which to infer the likelihood of significant harm in the new group, and it could not be said that the mother had injured or helped to kill the child when she lived in the other group, where she and the father were the obvious suspects. In Re J, the seven Supreme Court judges, who were unanimous, said that you had to have some evidence to cross the threshold. Unfortunately in that case the only issue that the local authority presented to the Court of Appeal and to the Supreme Court was the fact that the mother was in the area pool of perpetrators; no other facts were presented at all.

The alternative view put forward by the noble and learned Lord was one he put forward in the earlier case of Re H, where he was in the minority; the majority found against him. In that case, there was a girl of 16 who the elder sister of younger children. The girl said that she had been raped by the stepfather. In the criminal proceedings, he was acquitted. In the family proceedings, the judge said he was not satisfied as to the appropriate standard that the stepfather had raped this girl, but there was a strong suspicion. In that case the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court held that they could not infer sufficient facts to say that the other children were at risk.

The noble and learned Lord referred to another judgment by that great judge, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, who gave a leading speech in a case called B, or A, which I was on in the Court of Appeal. It involved three people; namely, the mother, the father and the childminder. In that case, the noble and learned Lord said that in relation to those three in that pool where the child was injured—I think that the child died—clearly it was “grotesque” to say that because they could not prove which of the two, or possibly three including the childminder, had actually committed the injury, they should not take steps to protect the children.

However, that is not the present case. In that case, it was the pool of potential perpetrators, one of whom had done it. In this case, the mother had moved away. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, raised an interesting point. He asked whether there were any recorded cases where the only evidence was that the mother or father had moved from the pool of perpetrators into a subsequent pool where the current law meant that nothing could be done and the child had suffered. I have to say that I have not heard of such a case. I do not think that there is such a case because it would undoubtedly have been referred to in the later cases, particularly in Re J. I thought that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Phillips, made an extremely pertinent point that there was nothing to show that the current law has been to the detriment of children potentially at risk.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, pointed to the crucial fact that the mother in Re J was in a new pool. No one has suggested that the father of the other children had ever committed any offence. He was a totally respected man. In his note, the noble and learned Lord said that the fact that the mother was in the earlier pool of perpetrators was relevant, but by itself that was not sufficient. He went on to say that it could be relied on, together with any other facts or circumstances that might be relevant, to support the conclusion that the three other children in Re J were likely to suffer harm.

It is interesting that there are other important factors that neither the Court of Appeal nor the Supreme Court were allowed to deal with. The first factor was that the mother was very young when she was living with the man and the child died. Secondly, it was a new relationship with a totally respectable person. Thirdly, there were two further children and she was much more mature. There were factors against her which they did not take into account; namely, that she had colluded with the man in the first case. If they had taken that into account, they might well have crossed the threshold. Unfortunately, those facts were not taken into account.

Therefore, as I understand it, this is a sole issue that is unlikely and, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, said, it is extremely rare. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, who is one of the great family experts, and Lord Wilson, were both satisfied in this case that the threshold was properly not crossed. Lord Reed said in paragraph 98 of Family Law Week that if the current law as stated in this case was causing consternation, it would appear to be an overreaction because the one clear-cut point was not one that was likely to come up very often, if at all. I am extremely concerned that we maintain a balance between the right of children to their own family, the right of parents to family life and their own child, and the crucial importance of the protection of the child where there is danger to that child.

The very delicate balance in Section 31 has been studied and subject to the most careful judgments by the Supreme Court. I think it is a little unjust to the Supreme Court that while the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, spent a lot of time on what Lord Justice McFarlane said, he did not quote a single passage of what anyone in the Supreme Court said. They are worth reading and they have a very good point. I would say to noble Lords that we have to be careful to protect families from too ready an interference on the part of the state unless there is sufficient evidence to take the child or children away.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

It is not being suggested that the children should be taken away. The suggestion is whether we are able to move to the welfare question.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

I have to say that in my experience as a family judge, speaking perhaps as the only family judge present, although of course the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, is a family magistrate, those judges would be issuing care proceedings immediately and removing the child while they debated whether the issue could be concluded in favour of the local authority’s view at the care hearing. On the interim care proceedings I have no doubt about the protection issues. Based on this, they would remove the child.

It is also interesting to note that despite some very strong attacks by two well known and respected family academic lawyers, another well respected family academic lawyer, Andrew Bainham, a reader in family law at Cambridge, has gone exactly the wrong way and has taken the view that the Supreme Court was right.

The last point I want to make is this: are we really right to change the point at which the threshold should be crossed, something on which seven Supreme Court judges have reached a conclusion with the greatest possible care? I urge the Committee not to do so.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, at the risk of lowering the tone of this extraordinarily learned exchange, in the church we face a similar issue when trying to discern when someone poses a potential risk but nothing can be proved. It is a difficult line to establish. In the drafting of this amendment, my eye has been caught by the juxtaposition of the words “likely” and “possible”. I wonder whether there is a better way of phrasing it. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, used the word “might” at one point, but interestingly then corrected herself and said “was likely to”. There is a real difference between someone being assessed as “might” be a threat and “is likely to” be a threat. I think that I come down on the side of the noble and learned Baroness. However, it is good to know that the lawyers have only two views in these situations.

If this comes back, I hope that we will be able to look at the phraseology. To deduce that something is “likely” from a certain level of possibility seems to carry a stigma that we should not attach unless we really have to do so.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, I had the responsibility of producing Clause 31 as it was, now Section 31, of the 1989 Act. It is extremely important and, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has said, it has stood the test of time. It is important because it marks a threshold. That does not mean that it is an introduction or a preliminary, it means that it determines whether or not the court has the power to remove a child from the natural situation in which he or she is living. It is vital, on the one hand, where there is harm to the child, that the public authority, in this case the local authority, should be able to step in. However, it is equally important that the local authority should not be able to step in where the facts required for the threshold have not been demonstrated. It is that sort of position that the threshold occupies. It is not a question of having to do this in order to go on to welfare. It is that if the threshold is not satisfied, the court cannot remove the child from its natural parents.

19:19

I agree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that this was a very considered decision of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, containing at least two very experienced family lawyers. It is not the first case to determine this matter but is possibly the first in which it has been distilled to the only point in the case. The case was brought in order to settle the law on whether the mere fact—nothing more—that a parent was in a situation where a child was damaged or injured is of itself sufficient to create a risk that will satisfy the threshold test.

I am not going to go into all the detail because Members of the Committee may read the Supreme Court judgments for themselves if they wish to do so; they are clear, precise and compelling. The point that I want to make is as follows. Let us assume that there are parents who have produced harm to their child. That could be one or both of them. If actual harm is shown to have been done to the child, it does not matter which of the parents was responsible; the child can be removed.

Now, supposing that these two people—married, we will assume—with their child harmed, split up. The mother goes away for some time, and eventually sets up a relationship with another person who has no history whatever of harming any child. He has two children of his own and there is no suggestion whatever that he has harmed them. What is the source of risk to the children who are cared for by that new union? The only possible source of risk is that the mother was a party to the injury to the first child. That is exactly what the court has not been able to take as the fact. The fact is that the only thing that was known is that this mother was a member of a group in which a child was injured. It does not follow that she had any part in it whatever.

That was the only fact that the Supreme Court was allowed to take into account. The case was deliberately put together so that this point of law could be dealt with by the Supreme Court. I think that it was in the judgment of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale—noble Lords can read that for themselves if they wish—that the case was unique in the sense of being packaged in this way. In nearly every other case, it would be possible to adduce further evidence from which the court might be able to assume that it was one or the other, either the mother or the father, who had been the perpetrator. However, the unfairness of this idea is that if the mother had nothing whatever to do with harming the child, she should be marked as someone who creates a serious risk and that any child for whom she had responsibility thereafter is to be at serious risk and liable to be taken away from whatever union she has joined. When we look at it that way, as I assume we should, it is quite unfair to make that kind of inference from this sole fact. There may be many other facts in ordinary cases, and there usually are. At the stage at which this case was put, though, there was just the one fact, and that was the legal decision that seven judges reached.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

Neither the noble and learned Lord nor I were Family Division judges, but another Family Division judge said that the type of case where it is not possible to tell on the evidence whether it is the mother or the father, but it is clearly one or the other, occurs very frequently. That is the kind of case that the amendment deals with.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, made it perfectly plain that the case that was set up for the Supreme Court was a very special case that she certainly would not expect. She has vast experience of these matters, as has Lord Wilson. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, said that I was not a Family Division judge. I certainly was not, but in the Court of Session in Scotland I had family cases. That was a very long time ago but some of the experience still stays at me.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I was not going to speak to this amendment. I have followed the debate with great interest. I am probably out of my depth in this discussion. I want to look at it from a different point of view.

I have heard about “likely”, “possible” and “thresholds”. I am always concerned about the protection and well-being of the child. In recent years we have seen children who have been physically and mentally abused at home, and no one has been able to help them. They have seen the abuse but they have not been able to go and do anything about it. Recently, there was a little boy who was emaciated; he was scrabbling around for food in the gutter and was allowed to be ill treated by his parents. If this discussion means that a social worker can knock on the door, get into the house and provide welfare and, presumably, safety for the child—not necessarily taking the child away—then that must be the right thing to do. It must not always be about a legal interpretation or a legal battle between two sides. We must always focus on what is the best for an individual child. Recently society has let those children down. We have to remember the case of Baby P to see where that happened.

[Lord McNally]

My Lords, perhaps I may follow my noble friend Lord Storey because he encapsulates a lot of why this is a very difficult debate. Earlier today we heard strong appeals to ensure that local authorities did not rush to judgment and deprive a child of staying at home and being brought up by their natural family. I have colleagues in the other place who are extremely critical of what they think is a tendency by authorities in Britain to too readily take children from their natural parents and from their kinship carers and family. Yet, as my noble friend says, every so often we get these horrific cases, and not just the media but everyone asks, “How could it happen? Where were the teachers, the social workers and the neighbours? How was it allowed to happen?”. The question of that balance has kept on coming up throughout the debate—the importance of the threshold that has to be cleared before we can intervene.

Again, I am not pretending to the Committee that these things are coming from the top of my head, but I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that I am told Section 47 would allow statutory intervention in a child’s life if the child’s life warranted it. Under that section the local authority has a duty to investigate and can gain access to the child’s home if it deems the child to be at risk of significant harm, and then move for an emergency protection order. It may not be the barrier that the noble Baroness was suggesting.

I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for raising this important issue and for meeting me and my officials last week to explain his concerns in more detail. This is clearly a complicated issue, and I welcome the opportunity to hear the views of noble Lords who have such expertise and experience in these difficult matters, even if that expertise causes them to come to different conclusions.

As noble Lords will appreciate, Section 31(2) of the Children Act, which the noble and learned Lord proposes to amend, has to balance the need to protect children from harm with the need to protect the child and family from unwarranted state intrusion—the balance that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, the author of that Act, has explained to us. Any amendment to this carefully worded section, which has stood the test of time, therefore should not be taken lightly.

The amendment would allow a court to infer that the threshold for making a full care or supervision order has been met solely on the basis that someone living with a child might—but was not proven to—have significantly harmed a child previously. This is a departure from the current balance in the Act. Currently there must be a factual foundation for the state’s removal of a child. Reasonable suspicion is a sufficient basis for authorities to investigate and even take interim protective measures in order to gather evidence, but case law has outlined that it cannot be a sufficient basis for long-term intervention.

The threshold for being able to intervene under Section 31 is there not only to protect the family but to protect the child, as unjustified removal can in itself result in significant harm to the child. This is the very reason why Section 31 was included in the Children Act 1989. It is possible that such protection would be eroded if it could be inferred on the basis of unsubstantiated suspicion that there was a basis for making a final order such as a care or supervision order.

I know that the noble and learned Lord has tabled this amendment following concerns about some specific judgments. But it is important to note that in most cases the court would be unlikely to a make a decision based on the sole fact that a person might—but was not proven to—have significantly harmed a child previously, as was the case in re J. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, made the point that it was a unique case.

It is important to bear in mind what happens in the build-up to care proceedings. Where there are child protection concerns, the local authority is under a duty under Section 47 of the Children Act 1989 to make inquiries and decide whether any action must be taken to enable the local authority to safeguard the child’s welfare. A Section 47 inquiry should assess the needs of the individual child. The statutory safeguarding guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, issued in 2013, is clear that assessment is,

“a dynamic and continuous process which should build on the history of every individual case”.

A good assessment investigates,

“the child’s developmental needs … parents’ or carers’ capacity to respond to those needs; and the impact and influence of wider family and community and environmental factors”.

Research shows that taking a systematic approach,

“is the best way to deliver a comprehensive assessment for all children”.

This should mean that, when the court hears an application for a care order, the court is presented with a full range of factors and evidence for it to consider. For example, the court may consider the child’s assessed development and needs, whether drink and drugs were present in the previous household and whether they are a factor in the new relationship, along with the factors surrounding any previous incident that may have occurred.

The judgment of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, has been quoted a number of times. What she actually said is:

“There are usually many readily provable facts upon which an authority can rely to satisfy the court that a child is likely to suffer significant harm unless something is done to protect him. Cases in which the only thing upon which the authority can rely is the possibility that this parent has harmed another child in the past are very rare. As the Court of Appeal pointed out, this case has itself been artificially constructed by the decision to treat the issue as a preliminary question of law”.

A real possibility of harm having taken place in the past will not be ignored by the local authority carrying out the investigation and would form the body of evidence presented to the court as part of care proceedings. We are therefore satisfied that the court would give appropriate consideration to those matters related to the child’s history that are relevant to whether the threshold test has been met.

19:30

We have had a thorough debate. I quake when asked to pronounce between the various eminent legal names that have been—“bandied about” would be too disrespectful—used on both sides of this argument. I am an old enough parliamentarian to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that if Parliament thinks that the law needs clarified, then Parliament should do that. On the other hand, I am also an old enough separation-of-powers man to have awe and respect for our Supreme Court. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has reminded us, the Supreme Court has considered this matter in some detail. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, explained, certainly to my satisfaction, why the case that the noble and learned Lord believes needs clarification is so special, and that in other cases there would have been innumerable other facts—injuries suffered, how they occurred, whether there was delay in getting medical help or concealment of injuries—that would have been set alongside other facts, such as what the household’s circumstances were, whether drink and drugs were involved and so on.

This matter will be discussed again on Report, but the debate has certainly shown concerns. However, the concerns do not go only one way. As a layman, I certainly would be left with great reluctance to try to second-guess our Supreme Court at this stage. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment.

[Lord Lloyd of Berwick]

My Lords, the Minister has indicated that this matter will come back on Report, so I do not intend at this stage to deal with the arguments that have been advanced by those who are not in favour of the amendment. I am very grateful to those who have supported it, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, who put the point as clearly as possible that if there is a doubt or a serious possibility then the balance should come down in favour of protecting the child. That is all that I am concerned to do.

Over and again, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, referred to the case where one or other of the parents might have inflicted harm, and asked how on the basis of that it could be said that the threshold was passed. That is not the case that we are discussing. We are discussing a case where the harm is certainly inflicted by either the mother or the father. To say in those circumstances that it might only have been the mother is not enough; it is clearly a serious possibility, at the very least, that it was the mother on the one hand or the father on the other, and that serious possibility is enough to trigger the threshold on the clear wording of Section 32(1), which refers to “likely”, which in turn has been held to mean a serious possibility. That is all I will say at this stage, but I will certainly come back.

One other thing: the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, referred—I do not know with what propriety—to two people who had advised her that they were on her side. I could have quoted two others, equally eminent, who were on mine. At this stage I do not think that we should count heads; that is not the way to do it. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 64 withdrawn.

Committee adjourned at 7.34 pm.

House of Lords

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Monday, 21 October 2013.

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds.

Introduction: Lord Verjee

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

14:39

Rumi Verjee, Esquire, CBE, having been created Baron Verjee, of Portobello in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, was introduced and took the oath, supported by Lord Dholakia and Baroness Brinton, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Introduction: Baroness Suttie

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

14:45

Alison Mary Suttie, having been created Baroness Suttie, of Hawick in the Scottish Borders, was introduced and took the oath, supported by Baroness Scott of Needham Market and Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Russia: Human Rights

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Question

14:50

Asked by

[Lord Lexden]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what has been the response to the representations they have made to the government of Russia about the abuse of human rights of homosexuals in that country.

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)]

My Lords, the Prime Minister raised concerns about the protection of human rights for LGBT people with President Putin in their meeting at the G20 in September. The Russian authorities have given assurances that discrimination against sexual minorities is forbidden by their constitution, but we remain concerned about the protection of human rights for LGBT individuals and communities in Russia and about the impact of legislation banning the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations to minors on Russia’s LGBT community.

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for confirming the Government’s opposition to oppressive new laws in Russia. What assessment have the Government made of the impact of the new laws on the lives of ordinary homosexual people and on the working of the civil organisations dedicated to promoting their welfare and interest? What steps are the Government taking to discourage other countries in the region from enacting similarly oppressive laws?

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, these laws have a huge impact on individuals and communities, in the way in which these communities feel that they can exercise their right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. The NGOs on LGBT issues with which we have been working in Russia and other regions say that this has led to concerns of an increase in homophobia and homophobic attacks. It has also meant that the operating environment for NGOs that work in the LGBT field is much more difficult. We have been raising this matter for a number of years, since these laws first started to be enacted on a regional or provincial level, before it became national law. During 2013-14, we have invested £1.3 million specifically into NGOs working to protect human rights, of which LGBT is one area.

[Lord Morgan (Lab)]

My Lords, the Orthodox Church has been remarkably bigoted in dealing with this issue. Does the Minister have any particular information on protests made by churches in Russia against this cruel persecution of a minority?

[Baroness Warsi]

I am not sure how the Orthodox Church, or any faith communities, have responded on this issue. However, the noble Lord will be aware that this issue can be seen in the light of our concerns on general human rights issues in Russia. He will be aware that Russia was one of our countries of concern referred to in our human rights report, and concerns about LGBT issues formed a large part of that.

[Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that when President Putin says that there is no discrimination against homosexual people in Russia, we need to press him in discussions to enshrine in law non-discrimination regarding minors’ access to information? Moreover, what discussions are Her Majesty’s Government having with the Council of Europe on Russia’s membership, given that Russia has repeatedly been found to be the worst country for gay people to live in of the 49 countries that are members of the Council of Europe?

[Baroness Warsi]

First, I assure my noble friend that we take these matters incredibly seriously. The subject was raised by the Prime Minister at the highest level at the G20 in St Petersburg, and it was also raised at the margins. It was raised a few weeks later by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary with Foreign Minister Lavrov at the UN General Assembly in New York. We also have an annual human rights dialogue; in fact, we are one of the few countries, if not the only country in the European Union, to have that particular dialogue with Russia. We had our latest dialogue in May of this year and, in that, we raised the issue of LGBT issues. So it is a matter that we continue to press on, and one that we have raised at both a political and an official level.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, will the noble Baroness remind the House that the Russian Parliament recently passed legislation that is punitive towards gay people and that there can be no question of gay people being accorded equality in that country while this legislation remains on the statute book?

[Baroness Warsi]

It may be inappropriate for me to comment on a particular piece of legislation in a particular country but it seems fairly obvious from an initial reading of how this law has been drafted that it is in stark conflict with what the Russians say is part of their constitution.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, Amnesty International’s report, Freedom under Threat, which I am sure the noble Baroness knows well, highlights the provocation and discrimination sustained by those in Russia who are protesting against the recent legislation which has just been referred to. Does the Minister believe that the representations made by Her Majesty’s Government have had any effect whatever on the Russians, and what do the Government intend to do next about it? Is the noble Baroness aware—I am sure that she is—of the very strong feeling not just in this House but in the country which expects the Government to use every opportunity to point out to the Russian Government that their behaviour in the field of human rights generally, and on LGBT rights in particular, is completely unacceptable?

[Baroness Warsi]

As the Minister with responsibility for human rights I can assure the noble Lord that this is an area that I not only cover as part of my brief in my job but take incredibly seriously. He will also be aware of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister’s personal commitment to these issues. This is not a matter on which we just make submissions in the margins of another meeting, it is something that we put to the front and centre in our meetings, which is why the Prime Minister has raised it at the highest level. I think that noble Lords will accept that it is our job to communicate and stress the strength of feeling not only in this House but across the country, as the noble Lord said, as well as to do the project work needed to support the NGOs which are doing the very difficult work on the ground.

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, will the Government also protest in the strongest possible terms about the appalling treatment of Greenpeace protestors?

[Baroness Warsi]

Noble Lords will of course be aware of the issue of the “Arctic Sunrise”—it has been in the headlines for a number of weeks—whose 30-person crew includes six Brits. The Foreign Secretary raised the issue with Foreign Minister Lavrov at the UN General Assembly and subsequently wrote to him in October. The Foreign Secretary has also met Greenpeace’s executive director, and officials are in regular contact. I can assure the House that extensive consular assistance and support has been provided to these individuals. However, at this stage we are treating it as a consular matter as we feel that that is the best way of progressing it to a positive outcome.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister is aware that the Russians treated with acclaim the victory by Lord Nelson at Trafalgar 208 years ago today, and I wonder whether the Royal Navy could maybe come to the nation’s assistance again. The coalition has been asking people to buy HMS “Illustrious”—which is the third “Invincible” class carrier, the other two having been scrapped earlier this year. I wonder if the House authorities might like to buy it to berth alongside the Palace of Westminster and accommodate the huge number of new Peers being created.

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, I have a huge amount of time and, indeed, a soft spot for the noble Lord, but I think that that question is probably outside the remit of this particular Question.

Syria: Humanitarian Aid

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Question

14:58

Tabled by

[Baroness Quin]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what discussions they have held with other governments about increasing humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lady Quin, and at her request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in her name on the Order Paper.

[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, the Government are in regular contact with other Governments about increasing humanitarian aid for Syrian refugees and Syrians in need within Syria. The UK led a lobbying effort at the G20 and the UN General Assembly last month, which raised a further $1 billion in pledges from the international community.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and welcome the extent of the aid provided so far by the Government. There are some 2 million refugees outside Syria and some 4 million have been displaced by the conflict but there is also a need to get immediate assistance to those trapped in besieged areas and facing starvation. How can we best respond to the UN call today seeking to secure a halt to the fighting to allow desperately needed aid to get through?

[Baroness Northover]

I thank the noble Lord for his tribute to the Government for what they are doing. It is a dire situation, which noble Lords will see from the figures. A year ago there were 230,000 refugees from Syria. Now there are 2.1 million refugees—an eightfold increase. Clearly we have to work extremely hard to make sure that the pledges to which countries have committed themselves are delivered. We are pleased that the figure has reached the £1 billion mark but it is not sufficient and it is extremely important that humanitarian access is granted within Syria so that aid can get in where it is needed.

[Baroness Hollins (CB)]

Can the Minister tell the House how Her Majesty’s Government are assisting UK-based charities working in Syria—such as Hand in Hand which featured recently on “Panorama”—either financially or by supporting links with international NGOs? Hand in Hand, which includes senior NHS doctors, is providing medical aid directly into areas outside government control—areas which international NGOs are unable to access. Will the Minister meet Hand in Hand directors with me to explore possible assistance to their work?

[Baroness Northover]

I am very happy to meet representatives from Hand in Hand, and I note what David Nott said over the weekend about his experiences in Syria—the stories that he was reporting back were absolutely horrendous. The Government work very closely with a number of NGOs in this area and a range of organisations is working to try to get humanitarian aid in.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, I am sure the whole House will welcome the extra £100 million recently allocated to humanitarian aid to Syria by the Deputy Prime Minister. What additional efforts does the Minister think could be made to persuade our European Union colleagues at the Commission to match the efforts that we are already making? The UK’s £500 million contribution is by far the largest of any European Union nation. Can we not persuade our colleagues to match that?

[Baroness Northover]

Yes, the Deputy Prime Minister led the UK delegation to the UN General Assembly and I am very pleased indeed that we were able to pledge, as my noble friend has said, a further £100 million at the General Assembly, bringing us up to the level of £500 million and making us the second largest bilateral donor. The European Commission has contributed $1.2 billion since the beginning of the Syria crisis and we have been working across the EU to encourage all countries to contribute.

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

Can the noble Baroness tell the House what humanitarian aid is being given to the Christian community in Syria? In particular have the Government made representations about the disappearance of Archbishop Yohanna of Aleppo who disappeared earlier this year on 23 April?

[Baroness Northover]

There are a number of groups suffering in particular in Syria and the noble Baroness is right to highlight the particular plight of Christians. We are emphasising their particular need. I will get her an update on the situation in relation to the Archbishop but she can be assured that the UK Government are well aware of the situation affecting these groups within Syria.

[Lord Wright of Richmond (CB)]

Can the noble Baroness tell the House what steps we are taking to re-establish direct bilateral contact with the Syrian Government in Damascus, if only to enable us to help persuade President Assad’s Government to provide secure access for much needed humanitarian assistance within Syria itself?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Lord will know about the UN Security Council presidential statement issued about three weeks ago seeking better humanitarian access and putting particular responsibility upon the Syrian Government. There are a number of things which the Syrian Government could do to make sure that visas are granted more readily and that travel permits are granted so that humanitarian aid can get in. Efforts are being taken forward to try to bring forward the peace process and I am sure he will know that UN Special Envoy Brahimi is leading an intensive period of preparation to try to ensure that there is a meeting in November for the Geneva II process.

[Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with Medecins Sans Frontières, which says that the Syrian people are now presented with the absurd situation of chemical weapons inspectors freely driving through areas of desperate need while ambulances, food and drug supplies are being blocked? Is it not the case that two weeks after the Security Council agreement on access for humanitarian aid, nothing has actually changed?

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness highlights a key point. It is obviously encouraging that the chemical weapons inspectors have been able to get into the areas they wished to visit, but it has also been quite striking that humanitarian aid has not necessarily been able to get into those same places. That is one of the reasons why the international community is putting particular stress on trying to encourage the Syrian Government to grant those rights of passage for humanitarian reasons.

NHS: EU Legislation

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Question

15:06

Asked by

[Lord Kakkar]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what recent assessment they have made of the impact of European Union legislation on training and service delivery in the National Health Service.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)]

We are aware that concerns exist about the impact of EU legislation on some areas of training and service delivery within the NHS. That is why we recently announced the review of the implementation and impact of the working time directive, to be led by the Royal College of Surgeons. This follows the balance of competences review for health, which included concerns about the impact of this directive on continuity of care and doctors’ training.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as professor of surgery at University College London. In 2010, the then Secretary of State for Health and Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills were due to commence robust negotiations with our European partners on the working time regulations. Despite the welcome announcement of the current Health Secretary’s further review of the impact of those regulations, do the Government stand by their commitment to repeal this detrimental legislation as it applies to healthcare? This is now increasingly cited by coroners as having contributed to patient harm. Moreover, our trainees tell us that it is now undermining their ability to acquire the necessary skills for future independent consultant practice. Patients and doctors alike now blame these regulations for a destruction of professionalism in our health service.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, it is the impact on our health service that we want the Royal College of Surgeons to look at specifically. In the coalition agreement, we committed to limiting the application of the working time directive in the UK, including in the NHS. Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days of tired doctors, but it is important for the working time directive to have more flexibility for a health service that operates on a 24-hour basis. Increased flexibility for the NHS would allow it to take account of local needs and practices, while at the same time ensuring the health and safety of the workforce. We stand prepared to work with partners in Europe to that end. I believe there is strong support in the NHS for this.

[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for acknowledging the role that the president of the Royal College of Surgeons is playing to ensure that the European working time directive is not having an adverse impact on patient care. In the United States, the duty hours that surgeons work are limited to 80, although flexibility has been introduced into their working so that trainees nearing independent practice can work more flexibly and for more hours. As 80% of surgical trainees currently work more than 48 hours a week, is it not time that we applied some flexibility to the European working time directive?

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend speaks, as always, with great authority on these matters. The independent review is by clinicians and of clinicians, looking specifically at the issues associated with the implementation of the directive. It means that any issues that are identified and can be acted on without needing to change the law—which was one of the points underlying my noble friend’s question—could lead to swift and effective action. In addition, my noble friend might like to know that the review will be looking at how the directive interacts with the junior doctors’ contract. It is intended to provide a sensible front-line view of doctors’ working hours.

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that the idea that the working time directive is universally denigrated by all members of staff of the National Health Service is very far from the truth? Does he also accept that there is a need to protect patients and the health of doctors themselves by having something along the lines of the working time directive, and that the Royal College of Surgeons ought to accept that that is the case?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I stress that this is not a step to find a way to make doctors work longer. As I said a moment ago, it is clearly in nobody’s interest to go back to the days when doctors were constantly tired and worked excessive hours. However, when senior clinicians tell us, as they have, that the implementation of the directive is harming patient safety and doctors’ training, we have to take that seriously. That is why we want to take a closer look at how this directive is impacting on the ground.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome my noble friend’s very strong comment that the working time directive has huge benefits, as well as clearly having challenges. However, in terms of this review of surgeons’ training, will he also look at the fact that for at least two and a half days a week most of our theatres are absolutely empty, with no activity taking place? One of the big requirements is that there should be more activity in terms of elective surgery within our hospitals—which would itself help the whole training issue.

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend makes an extremely good point, which I shall ensure is not lost on the president of the Royal College of Surgeons as he conducts his review.

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, this argument has been going on for a very long time—at least a decade. Will the Minister let us know when he expects the review to report and when he thinks that some action will come about as a result of it?

[Earl Howe]

We have asked the review to report by the end of January next year. We believe that that is an achievable target from the point of view of those carrying out the review, and the Government will not be slow to react to any recommendations made.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my health interests in the register. The noble Earl will be aware that this country has introduced a strong process of revalidation of doctors and continuing professional development. Can he assure the House that doctors who come to practise in the UK from other European countries will have been subject to as strict a regime as that in the UK?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the noble Lord will know that doctors from the European Economic Area are deemed to have professional skills equivalent to those of doctors trained in this country. When doctors come from outside the European Economic Area, then, indeed, the GMC puts procedures in place to ensure that the skills of those professional people match those that we would wish to see in the National Health Service.

[Viscount Bridgeman (Con)]

Can the Minister confirm that the proposed amendment to the free movement directive now gives competent authorities the powers to test EEA nurses for English proficiency before they get clearance to practise in the UK? If that is so, is it, in the Minister’s view, adequate in the interests of patient safety?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, my department is absolutely committed to ensuring that regulated healthcare professionals are not able to work in the NHS without adequate English skills. The revision of the mutual recognition of professional qualifications directive, which impacts on registrations from within the EEA, clarifies that regulators such as the NMC can undertake proportionate language controls on professionals following registration.

Housing: Under-occupancy Charge

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Question

15:14

Asked by

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what advice they give to social landlords whose tenants have fallen into arrears as a result of the under-occupancy charge.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of a housing association and I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

My Lords, social landlords had more than a year to design, develop and deliver strategies to mitigate the effects of under-occupancy and were advised to start building responsibly to avoid driving people into arrears. Prior to implementation, the Government, working collaboratively with the Chartered Institute of Housing, produced specific guidance for landlords, Making It Fit, and continue to fund its Making Best Use of Stock team, which assists landlords to find suitably sized accommodation for tenants. Fact sheets containing advice on home swaps, money management, payment options and how to look for and find work have also been issued. To be clear, 60% of those requiring social housing are single or couples without children, but over the last decades landlords have ignored this fact, resulting in larger homes being built, even though the greatest need is for smaller properties. Finally, £190 million has been provided this year to help vulnerable claimants.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

My Lords, a recent sample shows that half of all affected tenants are in arrears and that three-bed houses are now hard to let. Do we move tenants to smaller accommodation? It cannot be done because there is none. Do we increase income with discretionary payments? For the 90% who are ineligible, it will not be done. Do we allow arrears to soar? As this could send us into the red, it should not be done. Or do we evict vulnerable families from their three-bed homes into temporary accommodation, back into an unwanted, hard-to-let, three-bed house? That can be done if we ignore the futility, misery and cost. Which of these options does the Minister favour?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, it is simply premature to come to any conclusions as to the level of arrears. We will, of course, provide that information when we have the kind of reliable information that this House requires me, as a Minister, to deliver. There have been various surveys, but the samples are just too narrow. There are 1.4 million one-bedroom properties in the social rented sector and we are looking to have those managed more efficiently. I remind noble Lords that the scare stories about what would happen to our LHA reforms were very similar to the kind of stories that are being propagated now and we have not seen any poor reaction in terms of homelessness as a result of those reforms.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, in relation to the evidence that the Minister mentions, can he give us an update on the consultation with me and others that he promised when noble Lords rejected the so-called bedroom tax repeatedly and firmly? When will that research programme be the subject of consultation with us? When is it likely to be concluded? Will he accept the evidence if it shows that what he calls the “scare stories” turn out to be true and that a good deal of disruption and hardship are caused by this measure?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as the noble Lord knows, an elaborate programme of research is going on around this measure and will take place over a two-year period. Regular reports will be provided. I believe that the first interim reports are coming out in the spring. I will, of course, be pleased to talk to the noble Lord about the research and will give a great deal of attention to what we find. If there are concerns, we will match them. As noble Lords will know, we have made changes to the discretionary housing payments system this year to reflect some of the early concerns that have developed and we have found an extra £35 million for that.

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of Housing 21, a housing association. There is evidence that local authorities are not fully using the Government’s transitional support funding for ending the subsidy for under-occupied housing. What action are the Government taking to ensure that those in need get the support that the Government have provided for them?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, my noble friend is right. Our very early soundings are that some local authorities are not spending all their DHP. Clearly, we provide that funding in order that vulnerable people are protected through this transition period and we have been monitoring that very closely.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the evidence that people who are leaving accommodation to avoid the under-occupancy charge are being rehoused in private accommodation at greater cost? What steps are being taken to monitor this?

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, as I have just pointed out, we are undertaking an elaborate set of research programmes to understand this. If a family moves into private accommodation, which is more expensive, it does not necessarily mean that there is a net cost, because it frees up larger accommodation in the social rented sector to which a family can move from the expensive private sector.

Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Amendment: Qualifying Offences) Order 2013

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:20

Moved by

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

That the draft order laid before the House on 8 July be approved.

Relevant document: 8th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 15 October.

Motion agreed.

Armed Forces and Reserve Forces (Compensation Scheme) (Consequential Provisions: Primary Legislation) (Northern Ireland) Order 2013

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:20

Moved by

[Lord Astor of Hever]

That the draft order laid before the House on 27 June be approved.

Relevant document: 7th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 15 October.

Motion agreed.

Jobseeker’s Allowance (Domestic Violence) (Amendment) Regulations 2013

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:21

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 8 July be approved.

Relevant document: 8th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 15 October.

Motion agreed.

European Union (Approvals) Bill [HL]

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Third Reading

15:21

Clause 1: Approval of draft decisions under Article 352 of TFEU

Amendment

Moved by

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

Page 1, line 11, leave out “11560/13” and insert “12557/13”

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, this amendment corrects a reference in the Bill to an EU document, the number of which has changed during the passage of the Bill. I beg to move.

Amendment agreed.

Bill passed and sent to the Commons.

Care Bill [HL]

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Order of Consideration Motion

15:22

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

That the order of the House of 8 October 2013 relating to the marshalling and order of consideration of amendments for the Report stage of the Care Bill be varied so far as is necessary to enable amendment 168A to be considered first today.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, the reason for this Motion is that the Government wish to give the House the opportunity to amend the order in which we take our Report stage debates today. Last week, I became aware of some concern that my Amendment 168A, relating to trust special administration, would have fallen for debate at a rather late hour this evening. I assure the House that this was not by design and that the Government are more than happy to facilitate an earlier debate. Clearly, the issue of trust special administration is an important one. I understand the wish of some noble Lords to debate it fully in prime time. Accordingly, the Motion in my name would allow the debate on Amendment 168A to be taken at the start of today’s proceedings on the Bill. I should also indicate to the House that in response to the request put to me last week by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, I would have no objection to relaxing the rules of debate that normally apply on Report so that this amendment can be debated in full if that, too, is the desire of the House. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, following my intervention last week. I made a similar proposition to the usual channels last Thursday, only to be told that there would be dire consequences for everything that your Lordships hold dear. I am glad that sense has none the less prevailed. I very much welcome this and support the noble Earl in his Motion.

Motion agreed.

Care Bill [HL]

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Report (4th Day)

15:25

Amendment 168A

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

168A: After Clause 109, insert the following new Clause—
“Trust special administration: powers of administrator etc.
(1) In section 65O of the National Health Service Act 2006 (Chapter 5A of Part 2: interpretation) (the existing text of which becomes subsection (1)) at the end insert—
“(2) The references in this Chapter to taking action in relation to an NHS trust include a reference to taking action, including in relation to another NHS trust or an NHS foundation trust, which is necessary for and consequential on action taken in relation to that NHS trust.
“(3) The references in this Chapter to taking action in relation to an NHS foundation trust include a reference to taking action, including in relation to another NHS foundation trust or an NHS trust, which is necessary for and consequential on action taken in relation to that NHS foundation trust.”
(2) In section 65F of that Act (administrator’s draft report), in subsection (1), for “45 working days” substitute “65 working days”.
(3) After subsection (2C) of that section insert—
“(2D) Where the administrator recommends taking action in relation to another NHS foundation trust or an NHS trust, the references in subsection (2A) to a commissioner also include a reference to a person to which the other NHS foundation trust or the NHS trust provides services under this Act that would be affected by the action.”
(4) In section 65G of that Act (consultation plan), in subsection (2), for “30 working days” substitute “40 working days”.
(5) After subsection (6) of that section insert—
“(7) Where the administrator recommends taking action in relation to another NHS foundation trust or an NHS trust, the references in subsection (4) to a commissioner also include a reference to a person to which the other NHS foundation trust or the NHS trust provides services under this Act that would be affected by the action.”
(6) In section 65N of that Act (guidance), after subsection (1) insert—
“(1A) It must, in so far as it applies to NHS trusts, include guidance about—
(a) seeking the support of commissioners for an administrator’s recommendation;(b) involving the Board in relation to finalising an administrator’s report or draft report.”(7) In section 13Q of that Act (public involvement and consultation by NHS Commissioning Board), at the end insert—
“(4) This section does not require the Board to make arrangements in relation to matters to which a trust special administrator’s report or draft report under section 65F or 65I relates before the Secretary of State makes a decision under section 65K(1), is satisfied as mentioned in section 65KB(1) or 65KD(1) or makes a decision under section 65KD(9) (as the case may be).”
(8) In section 14Z2 of that Act (public involvement and consultation by clinical commissioning groups), at the end insert—
“(7) This section does not require a clinical commissioning group to make arrangements in relation to matters to which a trust special administrator’s report or draft report under section 65F or 65I relates before the Secretary of State makes a decision under section 65K(1), is satisfied as mentioned in section 65KB(1) or 65KD(1) or makes a decision under section 65KD(9) (as the case may be).”
(9) In section 242 of that Act (public involvement and consultation by NHS trusts and foundation trusts), in subsection (6)—
(a) for “65I, 65R or 65U” substitute “or 65I”, and(b) for the words from “the decision” to the end substitute “the Secretary of State makes a decision under section 65K(1), is satisfied as mentioned in section 65KB(1) or 65KD(1) or makes a decision under section 65KD(9) (as the case may be).”(10) In Schedule 14 to the Health and Social Care Act 2012 (abolition of NHS trusts in England: consequential amendments)—
(a) after paragraph 4 insert—“4A In section 13Q(4) (public involvement and consultation by Board), omit “makes a decision under section 65K(1),”.
4B In section 14Z2 (public involvement and consultation by clinical commissioning groups), omit “makes a decision under section 65K(1),”.”,
(b) in paragraph 15, after sub-paragraph (3) insert—“(3A) In subsection (2D), omit “or an NHS trust” and “or the NHS trust.”,
(c) in paragraph 16 (the text of which becomes sub-paragraph (1)) at the end insert—“(2) In subsection (7) of that section, omit “or an NHS trust” and “or the NHS trust”.”,
(d) in paragraph 24, after sub-paragraph (2) insert—“(2A) Omit subsection (1A).”,
(e) after that paragraph insert—“24A In section 65O (interpretation)—
(a) omit subsection (2), and(b) in subsection (3), omit “or an NHS trust”.”, and(f) in paragraph 35, omit the “and” preceding paragraph (d) and after that paragraph insert “, and(e) in subsection (6), omit “makes a decision under section 65K(1),”.””

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)]

This clause would clarify and make small changes to the trust special administrator’s regime in the light of our experience following its use at South London Healthcare NHS Trust and Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust.

Your Lordships will know that the regime for trust special administration was introduced by the previous Government under the Health Act 2009. The aim of the regime has always been to provide, with a tight timescale, a sustainable future for the services provided by a failed trust. The regime is only ever used as a last resort, when all other efforts by a trust and its commissioners to develop a viable model of care have been unsuccessful. There comes a point when time has to be called on local efforts to resolve the situation. Problems should not be allowed to fester, and it is not right that taxpayer resources could be diverted away from patient care to bail out failing organisations.

The regime enables a failed trust to be put into administration. The role of the trust special administrator is to take charge of the trust while the board is legally suspended and to develop and consult on recommendations in a draft report, before making recommendations in a final report that secure a sustainable future for services. The unsustainable provider regime for NHS foundation trusts was amended in 2012 to make it compatible with the extended regulatory role given to Monitor to operate the new licensing regime. The regime is used only on an exceptional basis at the most seriously challenged NHS providers, where other solutions or interventions have failed. It is time-limited, to focus efforts on delivering a sustainable solution with statutory deadlines for each stage of the process.

Use of the regime at South London and Mid Staffordshire suggests that two stages of the administration process need to be extended. The administrator would benefit from having more time to produce its draft report, and it would be better to have a longer consultation. The clause would therefore extend the time that the administrator has to complete these two key stages by giving 65, rather than 45, working days to produce the draft report and allowing 40, rather than 30, working days to undertake consultation on that report. The existing powers to extend the various stages of an administration beyond these statutory time limits will remain, as there will always be cases where an extension is appropriate.

Secondly, the clause would put beyond doubt the Government’s existing position that the remit of a trust special administrator is to make recommendations that may apply to services beyond the confines of the trust in administration and that the Secretary of State, for NHS trusts, and Monitor, for foundation trusts, have the power to take decisions based on those wider recommendations.

Where severe and prolonged problems exist, the administrator appointed must be able to propose a viable solution. It was always the Government’s intention that the interpretation of the words “in relation to” could include wider actions where necessary and consequential on primary recommendations about the trust in administration. This clarification of the scope of the administrator does not constitute a change of policy, is not retrospective, and is intended only to remove any uncertainty for the future.

NHS trusts, foundation trusts and other providers do not exist in isolation from each other. They are part of a complex, interdependent, local healthcare economy. Issues of clinical and financial sustainability nearly always cross organisational boundaries. Parliament must surely have intended originally that the legislation would enable an administrator to fix the problems that it was appointed to fix. If the only way to do this is to look beyond the confines of the failing trust then that is what it must do.

Thirdly, the clause would strengthen requirements for a trust special administrator appointed to an NHS foundation trust to seek the support of commissioners affected by their recommendations. A trust special administrator appointed to an NHS foundation trust is already required by statute to seek support for its draft and final recommendations from all commissioners of the trust in administration. This clause would extend that requirement so that the administrator would also be required to seek the support of commissioners of services affected by the administrator’s recommendations that are provided by other trust providers, with NHS England’s support being sought in the event that all commissioners did not agree.

15:30

Fourthly, this clause would require the Secretary of State to produce guidance for trust special administrators appointed to an NHS trust about seeking commissioner support for their proposals and to involve NHS England. It is intended that the guidance would set out arrangements for a trust special administrator to seek support from NHS England for its recommendations if the trust special administrator was unable to secure the support of the commissioners affected by the recommendations.

Fifthly, this clause would clarify that the statutory obligations of commissioners to involve and consult patients and the public in planning and making service changes do not apply in respect of the trust special administration regime. It would also clarify that the disapplication provisions apply whether the trust special administrator process relates to a failing NHS foundation trust or an NHS trust.

As I have already set out, one of the principal benefits of the unsustainable provider regime is the speed with which it delivers recommendations for clinically and financially sustainable services. This accelerated process includes a specific consultation period, with no provision for referral for local authority scrutiny. We want to clarify that there is no potential conflict between the statutory obligation placed on commissioners and the requirements of the trust special administration regime.

Ultimately, NHS patients and the public suffer if we do not have a workable failure regime that can secure high-quality, financially sustainable health services that are in their best interests. In addressing a systemic crisis, a trust special administrator should not be compelled to consider only some solutions, but, rather, the best solutions in the interests of patients. Only then can we resolve the situation. I beg to move.

Amendment 168B (to Amendment 168A)

Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

168B: After Clause 109, line 14, at end insert—
“( ) Before section 65F of that Act insert—
“65ZFZF Trust special administration: measures required before powers take effect
No power under this Act for the administrator to recommend taking action in relation to another NHS foundation trust or an NHS trust, or for any such action to be taken, shall be exercised until—(a) at least 5 years have passed after the passing of the Care Act 2013;(b) the Secretary of State has reported to both Houses of Parliament on the case for the operation of such a power; and(c) an order made by statutory instrument giving effect to the recommendations of such report has been laid before and approved by a resolution of both Houses of Parliament.””

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to move my Amendment 168B as an amendment to Amendment 168A moved by the noble Earl, Lord Howe.

We have just heard the noble Earl suggest that his amendment makes small changes and is a clarification of the existing law. However, it is my contention that the amendment is nothing short of a major change in policy on the reconfiguration of NHS services. Your Lordships are being asked to agree to it even though the case, or one of the cases, on which it is based—that of Lewisham hospital—is subject to an imminent Court of Appeal hearing. If it is accepted by the House, it is my view that NHS hospitals will be at risk of having services shut down without their agreement, without extensive consultation and without agreement from commissioners.

The changes made to the special administration regime by the government amendment would also extenuate the problems caused by having a different failure regime for NHS trusts compared with NHS foundation trusts—a point that my noble friend Lord Warner has consistently made.

Finally, to be effective, the changes could be construed as meaning that, for the first time, the Secretary of State has the power to issue directions to require the boards of solvent and successful clinical commissioning groups and NHS foundation trusts to take steps that they do not wish to take.

I see this not as a clarification of the law but as a major policy change that is at odds with the approach taken by the Secretary of State in the 2012 Act, when he repeatedly put his faith in local commissioning by local doctors. I make it clear that I am not opposed to changes in services: I support the major reconfiguration of services where clinical evidence supports it. Indeed, I should like to see much faster progress. When I and my noble friend Lord Warner argued this during the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill, the Government ploughed on with their extensive and fragmentary changes. The Government have belatedly come to realise that the structure they imposed is actually a barrier to progress—hence the amendment. It is also clear that, given the dire financial straits of many NHS organisations, the special administration process is likely to be used on an increasing basis. My concern is that giving so much power to trust special administrators is the wrong way to go about it. Indeed, evidence from Lewisham and Staffordshire suggests that it will often provoke widespread opposition and slow down progress.

As the noble Earl has said, the key change that the Government want to make is to ensure that the Secretary of State can act on recommendations that affect other NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts or other providers and commissioners outwith the trust to which a special administrator has been appointed. How this would happen has been graphically illustrated in the case of Lewisham. The South London Healthcare NHS Trust was a badly performing trust with an accumulated deficit of £196 million. Consequently, a trust special administrator was appointed. In his draft report of 24 October 2012, he recommended that University Hospital Lewisham should no longer provide emergency care for critically ill patients who did not need to be admitted to hospital and that it should lose its obstetrics-led maternity unit.

The Secretary of State made some changes to those recommendations but Lewisham hospital would still have seen some significant downgrading in its services. This approach had no support locally and was blatantly unfair to the people of Lewisham. As Mr Justice Silber said when the Lewisham case came to the High Court:

“There are few issues which prompt such vociferous protest as attempts to reduce the services at a hospital which is highly regarded and which is much used by those who live in its neighbourhood”.

In the High Court, Lewisham Council and the campaign group argued that Lewisham hospital was not in the NHS trust over which the trust special administrator had been appointed and that the Secretary of State could make recommendations and decisions only in relation to the three hospitals in the South London Healthcare NHS Trust but not in relation to hospitals outside the trust area. The judge subsequently found in favour of Lewisham Council and concluded that the trust special administrator and the Secretary of State were not entitled to make recommendations and decide to reduce services at Lewisham because it was not a hospital over which the administrator had been appointed. It was situated in a totally different trust.

The appeal of the Lewisham decision by the Government will be held shortly. I find it remarkable that without hearing the outcome of the case they are seeking to amend the law in such a hasty way. The noble Earl said in his letter to us that the trust special administrator regime is,

“one way in which decisive action can be taken to deal with NHS trusts or NHS foundation trusts that are unsustainable in their current form”.

I agree, but surely not at the expense of well run trusts. Of course there need to be changes in the local health economy beyond just the trust that is failing; a trust does not fail in isolation but is part of a complex, interconnected system—change one bit and you impact on the other bits. However, the legislation was intended to deal with a simple case in which a trust had failed and was then broken up, with its assets being transferred or sold off. My contention is that this type of approach is not suited to major reconfiguration processes and should not be a back-door way to achieve unpopular changes.

I should also say that the government amendment seems to introduce a major anomaly around commissioning. A clinical commissioning group that commissions services from a failing NHS foundation trust is entitled to define and protect essential NHS services, but a clinical commissioning group that commissions services from a successful NHS trust can now see local services removed, even if that clinical commissioning group considers those services to be essential.

Further, the scheme proposed by the amendment appears to be legally ineffective. Neither a clinical commissioning group nor a foundation trust is subject to the direction-making powers of the Secretary of State—both are independent corporate bodies with boards which are responsible for making their own decisions. It is unclear to me how the boards of the clinical commissioning group and a foundation trust are supposed to be legally required to carry through any decision which is made within a special administration process relating to another body.

Nor is it clear what happens if the commissioners do not wish to commission services against the model that the special administrator has proposed. That is the case in Mid Staffordshire, where the special administrator’s proposals have not found favour with either the public or the clinical commissioning group. There appears to be no limit to how far recommendations might stretch to be “necessary” and “consequent”. It is clear that one trust could have many commissioners, and changes in services could impact upon many other trusts. The special administrator is being given a free hand to cast his net as widely as he wishes.

In conclusion, there are serious defects in the special administration process which the noble Earl’s amendment does little to resolve; indeed, it brings further anomalies and inconsistencies. However, my key concern about the amendment is that it removes the requirement to go through a properly defined and structured reconfiguration process, with extensive consultation with the local community. From all that we have learnt about successful reconfigurations, we know that they need to take a special form of open and honest leadership, a patient process of engagement and consultation, and proper consideration of the wider impact. The Government really should think again about this and my amendment gives them the opportunity to do so.

[Baroness Warnock (CB)]

My Lords, I have hesitated to speak before about the Lewisham situation, partly because I believe that some changes are needed in hospital provision over the whole country but mainly because, as a resident in the borough of Lewisham, I might be thought to be so biased that my opinions would carry no weight. However, the situation has radically changed with the introduction of the noble Earl’s amendment.

It is completely intolerable that the law should be changed and overturned in this hasty way, regardless of the fact that everybody admits that there is no fault to be found with the Lewisham hospital administration. It is an admirable hospital and its extensive and thorough accident and emergency section is particularly valued by a large number of people, for whom Lewisham is a centre to which they can get easily by various forms of transport, let alone by ambulance.

The contention that it would make little difference to the residents of Lewisham if this comprehensive A&E department were closed was risible. The tests to see how long on average it would take to get there were carried out at dead of night, and in various ways there was a great deal of false suggestion in the administrator’s conclusions. Above all, the clinical commissioners were by no means convinced and were not in agreement with the proposals.

The reason for speaking so strongly in favour of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is that things have now moved far beyond Lewisham. I am speaking not only about the Lewisham situation; the proposals are perfectly general—the powers proposed for the Secretary of State could be used anywhere in the country.

What we have now is a radical change of power and, as other noble Lords have said, all hospitals are now under threat of closure, whether or not they are successful or administered with financial prudence, as Lewisham has been. It seems to me that this is an absolutely arbitrary overturning of what was found in court. Therefore, I beg noble Lords to think of this amendment in that light and not just to be concerned with the two particular trusts but with hospital provision all over the country.

00:00

[Lord Warner (Lab)]

My Lords, although I am Lord Warner of Brockley in the London Borough of Lewisham, I do not intend to speak about the Lewisham case.

I am conscious that this is a topic which can rapidly cause eyes to glaze over as we go into some of the processes involved here. At the heart of this there is a fundamental problem which is much deeper and more serious than when the 2006 Act was passed. That was seven years ago. This procedure of trust special administrators was set up to deal with a relatively small number of cases that might come along. It was not a system set up to deal with major overhauls of acute hospitals up and down the country.

We are now in a very different financial situation from when this earlier legislation was going through Parliament. You pays your money and you takes your choice as to who you believe about the black hole that there will be in the NHS finances at the end of this decade. If you want to believe Sir David Nicholson, the outgoing chief executive of NHS England, it will be £30 billion. A number of noble Lords may be shaking their heads because they do not wish to believe him, but he says £30 billion. If you want to believe the Nuffield Trust, it will be somewhere north of £40 billion. If you want to consider the more measured estimate last week from the chief executive of Monitor, it will be £12 billion, but that assumes a level of efficiency savings which seem somewhat like fantasy football in terms of their deliverability. It is likely to be a lot more than £12 billion.

These are numbers which no one was even thinking about when the trust special administrator system was set up. I have some sympathy with the Government’s position because there is no doubt that we have a large and growing number of clinically and financially unsustainable acute trusts. The Government have a real problem that they are trying to tackle. However, I suggest that this particular way of tackling it is not the best way, because it is trying to adapt a system which was produced for a relatively small number of cases into a whole system set of arrangements. It has some curious quirks. It seems to treat clinical commissioning groups which are commissioning from foundation trusts differently from those commissioning from non-foundation trusts. I am not going to risk eyes glazing over by talking about this, but this set of proposals does not seem to treat different clinical commissioning groups in exactly the same way.

We must also start to engage the public in the scale of changes that will have to be made to the NHS in order to make it sustainable. It is not just that black hole issue; it is the clinical sustainability of some of its services. We are already finding difficulty in staffing A&E departments. There is a set of issues around whether the manpower would be sufficient to enable us to keep 24/7 acute specialist services on the same number of sites. I would suggest to the Minister as humbly as I can that you are not going to deal with the scale of the problem with this set of arrangements. For the sorts of reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, set out, even if you have this set of arrangements on the statute book, you are going to end up with many cases of Lewisham hospital writ large, dotted around the country. There is nothing in these provisions which really ensures that the wider public debate about the reshaping of these services takes place. They are a recipe for a very large number of one-off local rows on a major scale. The lawyers in this House must be rubbing their hands at the prospect of judicial review because a very likely outcome of all this is a large number of contested claims about the way the exercise has been done. There simply will not be the political cover for TSAs to be bold in their thinking.

The noble Earl said we want them to be able to give very effective consideration to the solutions that are needed. I suggest that if you are a trust special administrator and you think you will be kicked from Land’s End to the north-east because of the controversy around the proposals, that is not likely to produce whole-system changes. We now have to think about reviewing whether the TSA system is fit for purpose and meets the needs of the circumstances we now face. That is why, although I am not normally in favour of wrecking amendments, I agree with my noble friend Lord Hunt’s idea that we should have a pause and think again about the best way to reconfigure hospital services so that politicians and the public can engage with this issue and have the kinds of public debates that we badly need to have if we are to maintain the NHS in anything like the form it is today.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, in part, I support the Minister because, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, the Government have a problem. We know that for many years there have been attempts to close hospitals that need to be closed and it can take 15 years for that to happen. If the Government can come forward with a sensible, reasonable way of making those decisions, I will back it all the way. However, I find myself agreeing with the idea that a rather quick fix designed to achieve some solution to the Lewisham problem is not the way to do it. This is a national problem of considerable significance. I ask the Minister to take this away, think hard about it and come back with a good set of proposals to help this country close hospitals when they need to be closed. I would certainly be there behind him.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, although I sit in this House as Lord Kennedy of Southwark, I actually live in Lewisham, very close to the hospital. I agree with the comments made by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. This is a major change of policy being sneaked through the door by the Government. I am amazed that the Minister has brought his amendment today when we are just a few days away from the case being heard in the Court of Appeal—it will be heard next week, I believe.

I live close to the hospital and I refer noble Lords to my declaration of interest that on a voluntary basis I chair a small committee in the hospital. Whatever the problems of the South London Healthcare NHS Trust, I cannot adequately describe to noble Lords the sense of injustice, unfairness and hurt about what is being imposed by the administrator. We have a good local hospital, which is supported by the local community, delivers on its targets and objectives and is financially solvent, but the administrator came along and ripped the heart out of the hospital.

I contend that the purpose of this amendment is to try to stop the campaign that we have seen in Lewisham over the past few months. The campaign has united the community like never before. We had more than 25,000 people on our march. Streets are plastered with posters to save the hospital. Any political party would be envious of the posters up in people’s windows about this campaign. Our local campaign is chaired by a local GP and has brought together health professionals and the local community.

Will the Minister tell the House whether he has visited Lewisham hospital? I asked him that question earlier this year; I know that he had not been then and hope that he has been there since to see the amount of local support and what a good local hospital it is. More important, there is no support at all for what the Government propose today. I hope that the House will support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and reject the amendment of the noble Earl.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I find myself in a strange position, because I agree in part with the amendment moved by the noble Earl and in part with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, although that is not a solution.

I agree with the noble Earl that we need to find a way of reconfiguring NHS services. That reconfiguration cannot just be done through dealing with failing hospitals. It must include other hospitals which currently seem to be delivering good-quality services. We have to find a way out of that. The question is therefore whether the amendment allows us to move forward with reconfiguring NHS services. This is where I find myself more in tune with the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, that it may not and that more is required.

Another concern I have is that the commissioners may express views. I would like some explanation of why the commissioners of the NHS foundation trust are to be treated separately from those who commission services from other hospitals. Another issue is that, if the commissioners disagree, NHS England would make the decision. That means that, ipso facto, they will agree with a special administrator—or they will not. In that case, what happens?

Another issue is consultation. Clearly, none of the configuration can occur smoothly unless the public are consulted. At what point will the special administrator consult both the public served by the failing hospital and the public served by the hospital that is not failing but whose services may require reconfiguration?

In summary, therefore, there is a need for amendments that will allow us to move forward with the reconfiguration of services throughout England. In that respect, I am with the noble Earl, but I wonder if he needs to go a bit further. He might consider looking at this further and tabling more amendments at a later stage.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)]

My Lords, there is of course quite a long process still to be gone through on the Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said, it seems clear that there is a serious problem. It occurs to me that the special administrator’s primary emphasis will be on the trust to which he or she has been appointed. It is also obvious that changes to one trust may affect neighbouring trusts. Some solution to the problems in the special administrator’s trust may rely on something done in a neighbouring trust.

On the other hand, in that situation it is extremely important that concentration on the problems of the neighbouring trust is given considerable emphasis. Otherwise, the situation may be distorted by too great an emphasis on the special administrator’s trust at the expense of neighbouring trusts brought in to try to help. I wonder whether the wise course might be for us to accept the amendment, in so far as it goes, with an undertaking that, as the Bill proceeds in the other place, that matter would be seriously considered.

This may be an opportunity for legislation that will not quickly arise again. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, there is a serious problem and it might not be wise to put it off indefinitely. I can see the difficulties and understand the situation of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, but it is very difficult to see how to sort this out today. On the other hand, it might be unwise to lose the opportunity to take a step forward in the hope of improving the situation in later stages of this Bill.

16:00

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, during the deliberations on the Health and Social Care Bill, we spent a considerable amount of time discussing the details of the trust special administration arrangements, not least because it was the first occasion on which a legal process of that kind had been in legislation. We were aware then, and perhaps even more so now, that there has to be some power to bring these decisions to a conclusion. I find it remarkable that people have demonstrated in favour of keeping open Mid Staffordshire hospital, but they have. That is the power of emotion in respect of hospital care in particular.

However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Warner, that this amendment is not quite what is needed, although there are some things in it which are to be welcomed. The process that needs to be gone through whenever a hospital is to be closed is to reassure the public that there will be access to alternative services. That is the absolutely critical point and it was with that in mind that I was somewhat taken aback to hear the Minister say that this procedure—and I bear in mind that, as he said, this is the last procedure in a very long process—takes away from the trust special administrator the requirement to involve the public and the patients. It seems to me that that is the very last thing that you would want to do if you were trying to have a process involving political engagement. I therefore ask him how the department came to that decision.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the matters we have debated today are of great significance. Of course—and I need to make this clear—we do not want to see any NHS trust or foundation trust fail, but equally we cannot shirk the responsibility to take action if and when that happens. In our taxpayer-funded health system, every pound counts and every pound should be put to best use, providing high-quality, effective care. Failed organisations squander resources. I do not want to be derogatory about them in other ways, but they usually take for themselves an unfair proportion of resources in relation to the local health economy more widely. Failed organisations, if nothing is done, have to be propped up by government bail-outs. That cannot be right, particularly at a time when resources are as constrained as they are now. We need an effective regime for tackling these issues.

The House has agreed with this on two previous occasions, passing legislation in 2009, during the time of the previous Government, and again in 2012 to provide failure regimes for trusts and foundation trusts respectively. We thought that those regimes would be effective, but experience now shows that they need clarification. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested that this amendment represented a major change of policy and the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, characterised it as an arbitrary overturning of the decision of the court in the south London case. The Government’s policy has been consistent. It is entirely unchanged. It is self-evidently not a change of policy. Had it been so, the recommendations made by the trust special administrator in south London would have been ones that we would have questioned as legally dubious in the department. On the contrary, we believe that the administrator’s recommendations fell squarely within the wording of the 2009 Act, which, as I mentioned earlier, used the phrase, “in relation to”. That was the phrase around which the judge’s ruling revolved, and it was a different interpretation of that phrase that the judge took.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is very knowledgeable about the heath service, but I am afraid that on this matter he is wrong. His amendment would render the failure regime quite useless. Five years is too long for a failed hospital and the patients it serves to wait for an effective remedy, to say nothing of the cost to the public purse. One of the provisions that the noble Lord has tabled would require the Secretary of State to justify making the power operational after the end of the five-year period, but is that not the debate we should have now? In any event, the effect of accepting his amendment would lead to an incoherent muddle. Either the House believes that a trust special administrator must be able to take the action necessary to resolve serious and prolonged problems at a trust or it does not. A long wait and a report will make no difference to the issues of substance. I urge the House to be decisive on this rather than doing what is effectively kicking a can down the road.

I know that fears have been expressed that the clause we are inserting would enable the Government to make free with every hospital around the country. That is not so. In fact, I submit to your Lordships that that suggestion is scaremongering. The powers could have been used for a long time if it were the Government’s intention to close down every hospital or lots of hospitals. The regime was designed by the party opposite, lest we forget, to deal with the specific circumstances of a trust in failure. It enables an external expert to be appointed as administrator to take a fresh look at the situation and, working with the trust and its commissioners, to develop recommendations for the future.

One needs also—I say this particularly to the noble Lord, Lord Warner—to recognise that trust special administration is only ever invoked when the normal processes for agreeing a reconfiguration have hit the buffers. In normal circumstances commissioners and providers in a locality get together and very often agree about the way services should be reconfigured to make them clinically and financially sustainable. In the case of south London and in the case of Mid Staffordshire that process has been going on for a long time. It is only because we reached an intractable position that administrators were appointed in those instances.

We have heard today that some aspects of our amendment provoke strong feelings, particularly the clarification—and it is a clarification—that a trust special administrator can make recommendations that include other providers where those recommendations are necessary for, and consequential on, his core recommendations. I bring noble Lords’ attention to those key words. Of course I recognise those views, but I do not share them. The clarification is vital for the failure regimes to be effective. It may be possible for the solution to the problems faced by a failed organisation to be found within the boundaries of that organisation, but it may not. Indeed, it is quite likely that it will not be. The health service is formed of a complex network of interdependent providers, all influencing one another. It is plain that making changes to one has a knock-on effect elsewhere. The amendment is a reflection of that reality.

I have a degree of sympathy with those who have argued that the effect of this could be unfair on the successful provider impacted by the failure of a neighbour. Such a step would, of course, be taken reluctantly. But I argue that it must be possible to take such a step if, and when, that is the only way of resolving the problem. The amendment would not apply retrospectively. The date of the court hearing in the south London case is therefore not relevant.

The rest of my amendment makes minor changes and I hope that they will be acceptable to the House. I hope more strongly that the amendment as a whole will find favour. It could be, as some noble Lords have suggested, that additional things need to be done. We do not believe that to be the case but I have heard the arguments put by a number of noble Lords that the amendment might need additions at some time in future. Our minds are open to that. But I beg noble Lords not to lose this opportunity of passing my amendment, as it matters a very great deal, not just in local areas but in the health service as a whole, in the interests of equity and fairness, which, after all, underpin the whole NHS. I believe that noble Lords should reject the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.

These are going to be rare cases and they are always difficult. The problems by their very nature are intractable and serious. We must fix them and have mechanisms to do that in order to put services back on a sustainable footing. Otherwise, I respectfully submit, we ourselves will have failed. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and other noble Lords who have spoken in what has been an excellent debate. My feeling about the debate is that the House has conclusively come to a view that further discussion needs to take place on the matter. I will come back to that in a moment.

I agree with the noble Earl that failed organisations squander millions of pounds. He is absolutely right to say that the need for them to be propped up by others has a deleterious effect on the NHS as a whole. We know that at least 20 NHS trusts or foundation trusts are in severe financial difficulty at the moment. It is likely that that number will grow in future. That is why there is considerable doubt that the special administration provisions will apply to only a very small number of cases. There is every possibility that, over the next two or three years, it will have to be used in many cases. That is why I am concerned that the provisions that the noble Earl is asking us to agree to today will be used to lead to configuration of services in which the interests of the failing trust will be put at the heart of the process rather than interests of the health service as a whole in a given area. That is the crux of the issue and that is why Lewisham is so important. It is a very good hospital—it was minding its own business—and then, suddenly, a special administrator came along and said that to solve the problem of the trust that it was dealing with it would have to reduce Lewisham hospital services. That is the crux of the argument and why we are concerned about the provisions being put forward by the noble Earl today.

The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, suggested that we should let the Government have their amendment today and it can then be dealt with in the other place. Of course, I always admire the other place’s assiduous attention to duty when scrutinising legislation, but the fact is that the other place is simply not geared up or able to do that. The noble Earl, Lord Howe, was rather rude about my amendment which was, of course, perfectly formed and correct in every way. Will the noble Earl, having listened to this debate, agree to pause and allow us to have further discussions—even between now and Third Reading in eight days’ time—to see whether it would be possible to come back with an amendment that is more suited to the circumstances he described? Is the noble Earl prepared to do that? If he were, I would welcome it.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am more than willing to have discussions between now and Third Reading but I suggest to the House that it is necessary to pass the government amendment now and to look at whether we need to change that amendment at a future date. Our minds are open to that but, unless we pass the government amendment, we will have missed a historic opportunity to correct a vital lacuna in the law for the benefit of the NHS as a whole.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Earl. It would, however, be possible for him not to move his own amendment today, to allow for further discussions and to table a revised amendment at Third Reading. That is as far as I can go in offering the Opposition’s help in this matter.

[Earl Howe]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. However, as I indicated, this is a pressing and urgent matter. While I am always open to inter-party discussions, the time has come for the House to take a decision.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, in view of that, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

16:16

Division 1

Ayes: 176

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Labour: 153
Crossbench: 14
Independent: 5

Noes: 242

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Conservative: 138
Liberal Democrat: 63
Crossbench: 33
Independent: 4
Ulster Unionist Party: 1
Bishops: 1
UK Independence Party: 1

Amendment 168A agreed.

16:30

Amendment 141A not moved.

Amendment 142

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

142: After Clause 82, insert the following new Clause—
“Chief Inspectors
After paragraph 3 of Schedule 1 to the Health and Social Care Act 2008 insert—“Chief Inspectors3A (1) The non-executive members must—
(a) appoint an executive member to be the Chief Inspector of Hospitals,(b) appoint an executive member to be the Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care, and(c) appoint an executive member to be the Chief Inspector of General Practice.(2) Each of those executive members is to exercise such functions of the Commission on its behalf as it determines.
(3) When exercising functions under sub-paragraph (2), an executive member must have regard to the importance of safeguarding and promoting the Commission’s independence from the Secretary of State.””

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 142, I shall speak to the other government amendments in this group, Amendments 143, 145, 146, 148, 149 and 150. This group relates to the ability of the Care Quality Commission to operate free from day-to-day intervention by Ministers. The amendments that I have tabled will place the CQC on a new footing of greater operational autonomy. They also clarify some of the arrangements for the new system of ratings to be operated by the CQC. I will outline the principle guiding the Government in tabling these amendments.

Last year we passed legislation that placed a duty on the Secretary of State to promote autonomy in the way that other bodies exercise their functions in relation to the health service. The changes that we are proposing build on this. They remove nine separate powers that the Secretary of State currently has to intervene in the day-to-day operation of the CQC. Additionally, they place the new chief inspector posts on a statutory footing, ensuring their longevity, with a specific duty to operate in a way that ensures the independence of the CQC’s judgments.

We are also introducing a new system of regular assessments of registered providers, which has no requirement for ministerial approval of the methodology. Each of these changes gives the CQC greater scope to get on with the day job without interference from Ministers. Why does this matter? The CQC has the key role in providing assurance of the quality of services provided to patients and service users. It needs to be able to inspect what it wants when it wants and to be free to report its findings as it wants. The proposed amendments and new clauses that I have tabled will see the Government relinquish a range of powers that intervene in the operational decisions of the CQC.

In addition to the amendments relating to the department’s powers to intervene in the work of the CQC and to place the chief inspectors on a statutory footing, I am also tabling a number of amendments relating to the performance assessment system operated by the CQC. The amendments clarify that the CQC will not undertake routine performance assessments of local authority commissioning but, rather, will be able to carry out special reviews of local authority commissioning under Section 48 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008. This will bring the position for commissioning by local authorities in line with that of NHS commissioning as put in place by the Health and Social Care Act 2012.

I will briefly set out two areas where the CQC’s freedom is not being enhanced and explain why. The changes that we are making will give the CQC greater freedom in its day-to-day work, as I have explained. When it comes to the CQC’s strategic role and activities, outside of its routine functions, it is appropriate that the Government maintain oversight of the commission.

The first area to which this applies is investigations of commissioning. The amendments we are making to Section 48 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 make it clear that the CQC has the power to carry out a special review or investigation of commissioning—both of health commissioning by NHS England and NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups and of local authorities’ commissioning of adult social services. Such reviews will only be possible with the approval of the Secretary of State for Health, in the case of NHS commissioning, and the Secretaries of State for Health and Communities and Local Government in the case of local authority commissioning.

Secondly, I reassure noble Lords that we are maintaining the arrangements through which the commission is accountable to the Department of Health. We will retain a range of the conventional measures that exist to manage an arm’s-length body of the Government. The non-executive members of the CQC’s board will continue to be appointed by the Secretary of State, who will also maintain the power to intervene if the commission fails to properly discharge any of its functions. The department will also continue to hold the CQC to account for its financial and operational performance. I hope that these amendments will find favour with the House, and I beg to move.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I express my concern about the provisions of subsection (4) of the Government’s new clause on the independence of the CQC. My instincts are that this will do the absolute reverse of what the Government are seeking to do in terms of the CQC’s independence, which is why my Amendment 143A seeks to remove subsection (4). I do not disagree in any way with the other provisions in this set of government amendments and will explain my thinking. Subsection (4) effectively prevents the CQC investigating, of its own mere motion, the extent to which local authority commissioning practices and decisions on adult social care damage user interests and well-being.

In effect, if the CQC considers, after looking at the results of its work on providers of services, that there is a major stumbling block to good, sound provision of services that promote the well-being of users—the provision in Clause 1 of the Bill—it has to seek the approval of the Secretary of State before it can do any kind of generalised or thematic review of local authority commissioning of services. It has to seek the approval not only of the Health Secretary but of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. That seems a step backwards from the position we have now, where the CQC, as I understand it, could actually undertake these kinds of reviews. I do not see how the new subsection (4) helps the CQC to get to the root of a problem that may be affecting thousands of users of services. We have already seen that the providers were not the instigators of the policy of 15-minute home visits—it was the commissioners of services who instigated that policy. They required the providers to do that; they almost drove them along the path of not paying for the travel costs of the healthcare assistants who were making those visits. The institutional behaviour that has grown up and caused so much concern among the public and in Parliament has been driven by commissioners.

I suspect that we will have other kinds of such issues as we move through a decade of austerity in public services. It ought to be possible for the CQC to take the initiative and try to get to the bottom of those issues by carrying out a thematic review of the commissioning practices. That is why we need to take out subsection (4), which seems to be incompatible with the rest of the provisions in this set of government amendments, which I thoroughly welcome. All credit to the Government for removing these requirements on the CQC, but why are they spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar? Why are we pushing back on the ability of the CQC to decide that it wants to carry out a review of commissioning practices, when that is not in the best public interest? The Government should think again about this.

[Baroness Greengross]

My Lords, I will speak against government Amendments 145, 146 and 149, and speak at the same time to Amendment 147 in my name.

The government amendments would remove from the Bill a requirement for the CQC to conduct regular reviews of adult social care, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, indicated. The Bill gives us an important opportunity to ensure that local government commissioning is effectively regulated. Last year’s EHRC homecare inquiry evidence pointed to serious concerns about some commissioning practices, which were found to put the human rights of older people in particular at risk. Accordingly, the EHRC’s recent review of the inquiry recommendations welcomed the fact that the Government had signalled their intention that the CQC should conduct regular reviews of adult social care commissioning.

Unamended, Clause 83 would reframe Section 46 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 to empower the CQC to conduct periodic reviews of adult social care providers and English local authorities which provide or commission adult social care. It was very disappointing to see that the Government intend to remove clauses requiring the CQC to conduct these reviews through Amendments 145, 146 and 149, in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Howe. Taken together, these amendments would remove the proposed new requirements for the CQC to conduct regular performance assessments or periodic reviews of local authority social care commissioning, and amend existing provisions relating to special reviews and investigations by the CQC. That would leave it able to review providers and to ask the Secretary of State for permission to run special reviews when there has been a particular issue but unable to run ongoing reviews of how local authorities commission services. It seems counterproductive to be removing this power at the same time as committing to challenging bad commissioning from local authorities.

The proposals announced by Norman Lamb about CQC reviews the other day are very helpful. But, again, they seem to be focused solely on providers and what they are doing, not on the commissioners who have directed these providers. If the CQC is being made independent, should it be seeking approval for such reviews? I believe that the Government have tabled this amendment because they believe that the provisions in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 will be sufficient to keep local authority adult social care commissioning under scrutiny. However, my analysis is that the human rights of people receiving care would be better protected by retaining the requirement under the Care Bill as currently drafted so that the CQC should conduct regular periodic reviews of local authorities’ commissioning of adult social care.

16:44

If this amendment is adopted, the CQC will be able to conduct only periodic routine reviews but not of commissioners, which will leave the central element of the social care delivery system without regular independent scrutiny. Routine reviews would raise the standards of adult social care commissioning and, in my view, would result in higher-quality services which better protect the human rights of care service users. In the absence of routine scrutiny, the CQC would be unable to identify thematic trends or poor commissioning by individual authorities that indicate the need for a special review or investigation.

In summary, I am absolutely delighted that this has been recognised as a serious problem, but at the same time I am concerned that some of the Government’s amendments seem to be taking away some of the CQC’s power to act. I am not alone in this view. Leonard Cheshire Disability is worried that these amendments risk reducing the ability of the CQC to challenge poor quality commissioning. Therefore, I ask the Minister to reconsider. I leave him with a question because, from the tone of these amendments, it appears that the Government do not see a role for the CQC in improving local authority commissioning practices. If not the CQC, who does have this role?

I turn briefly to my Amendment 147. While I fully understand that Ministers do not wish to be too prescriptive in the Bill, I feel it cannot be left entirely up to them and the contingencies of the moment. The CQC’s remit covers a wide range of care delivery settings, including hospitals, care homes, dental and GP surgeries and all other care services in England. It will have a wide range of quality domains to supervise and it would be very easy to migrate the quality standards for an acute hospital into elder care where both the conditionality and capacity of the patients may be widely different. I feel that the CQC should be mandated to include indicators of the quality of services provided for the identification and treatment of those conditions that most frequently occur in a particular care setting. For older people this would include those conditions from which they are most likely to be suffering, such as dementia and continence issues.

Continence care should be established as an essential indicator of high-quality services across all care. I have declared my interests in the register—I am chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Dementia and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Continence Care. A number of recent assessments have demonstrated that continence care remains a low priority across NHS settings, with poor treatment resulting in escalated and more costly care needs and poorer patient outcomes. Indeed, the Francis inquiry included an entire chapter outlining the scale of failures in continence care. Given the expected rise in the prevalence of incontinence and the impact that poor care can have on patients and the NHS, continence care must be seen as a key indicator of high-quality care provision across care settings. An explicit requirement within the Care Bill for the CQC to assess providers for the quality of their continence care would directly respond to the failings in continence care identified by Francis, the stated purpose behind Part 2 of the Bill. This would encourage providers to actively address how they manage incontinence by assessing their local protocols and policies about the condition, taking steps to improve awareness among staff about incontinence and undertaking internal audits to continuously improve care standards.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly against Amendments 145, 146 and 149. As the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, has just pointed out, these will take away the requirement that the CQC conduct periodic reviews of adult social care commissioning. These amendments seem perverse, coming hard on the heels of the latest care home scandal, revealed by the coroner’s finding that neglect contributed to the deaths of five residents at Orchid View care home in West Sussex.

Last week, the Close to Home report on human rights and home care by the Equality and Human Rights Commission concluded that some commissioning practices were likely to put at risk the human rights of older people receiving care. The Leonard Cheshire report, Ending 15-Minute Care, also points to problems with commissioning. It would therefore seem to make sense to leave Clause 83 unamended so that the CQC is empowered to oversee the practices of those commissioning adult social care and not just of those providing it.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, in general terms, I support the government amendments. I am sure that my noble friend will want to answer the specific issue which the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, raised. However, I support the Government with a slight caveat. Similar parts of the localism agenda of the Government have likewise seemed to have devolved in order to encourage people to take responsibility. I agree that there is a problem of prescription—if I may use that word in the context of the health service—because we all want to add in to any freedom the particular issues about which we have a special concern. I have real sympathy with those for whom dementia is one of those issues; it certainly is for me. However, we have to guard against that because, in the end, it may produce an artificial series of priorities. In this case, it is much better for the Care Quality Commission to make its own mind up, because it is going to be responsible. I take a rather different view about the recent scandals, in that the commission has to take responsibility for the claims that have been made. If it has to take responsibility, it must have as much control over its agenda as it possibly can.

My concern is simply that the Localism Act claimed to give localities all kinds of new controls over their futures. Yet, this week, we again find the Secretary of State for DCLG calling in a locally agreed solar decision, one supported by the local authority and by the inspector, but turned down—for reasons which are extremely difficult to see—by the centre. I want an assurance from my noble friend that this is real devolution; that the powers which have been given will not be circumvented by some other mechanism within this Bill or other Bills. The purpose of such devolution is to enhance responsibility. My concern is that, often, people who are given and who claim to have responsibility find that the structures are so prescriptive that they cannot take that responsibility seriously. If the amendments are an attempt to ensure that they can carry through their responsibilities in a way which enables the country to look to them to do the job they ought to be doing, that is fine and dandy. However, I hope that we can have reassurance that this is a real change, and not something that is going to be circumvented for the convenience of some Secretary of State by other bits of this or other Bills.

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, I draw to the House’s attention three questions put forward by Leonard Cheshire Disability. That organisation has worked extremely hard to support the Government in their stated objective of stopping 15-minute care appointments for older people, and its questions are worth following up.

First, why is it necessary to remove this power completely from the CQC; what will the CQC be stopped from doing by the absence of this power that otherwise it would not be? Secondly, the Government are committed to tackling poor commissioning and poor practice. If it is not going to be the role of the CQC to challenge local authorities on their commissioning practices, whose job will it be? Thirdly, is there any evidence that that power, as it exists, has been misused? Whatever one’s view about where responsibility should lie—the noble Lord, Lord Deben, made interesting points about that—those three questions are worthy of an answer when we come to formulate that view.

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I, too, am troubled by the seeming perversity of government Amendments 145, 146 and 149. The effect of the amendments seems to be to make it harder for the CQC to conduct investigations into local authority practices, particularly of commissioning. My understanding, from my hazy memory of when the CQC was set up, was that that was a particularly important function. Surely it has become more so, given the commitment to integration between services provided by the health service and those provided by local authorities. Was that not a key feature of establishing the CQC? The timing of this seems to be very odd—perverse, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said—given the current huge concern about the way in which services are commissioned, the so-called 15-minute care visits, and so on.

Do the Government see a continuing role for the CQC in working with local authorities to improve the way that they commission services, or is this a retreat from the way the Government view the CQC? I was very involved in the discussions before the CQC’s relaunch, and understood that to be an important part of its function. The amendments appear to reduce the CQC’s power to help improve local authority commissioning and, because of that, its oversight of care quality. That is a great concern to us all, particularly when we are so concerned about the quality of the services which are commissioned.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, first, I welcome the amendments in relation to CQC independence. I would like assurance that it does what it says on the tin. I assume that the CQC will be regarded as independent. Perhaps it will be making fewer visits to the Secretary of State than it does at the moment. If there are weekly meetings, as is suggested, between the Secretary of State, the CQC, Monitor and NHS England, it is very difficult to believe that it is going to be truly independent. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating; but it is very difficult to know why the Secretary of State needs to see the CQC on such a regular basis if it is really an independent organisation.

Like other noble Lords, I am puzzled why the periodic reviews of local authority performance in commissioning adult social services have been removed from the Bill. I am surprised at the current policy, which is that, as part of wider moves to devolve responsibility for improvement in the sector, local authority commissioning performance and assessment will be led by councils. Presumably that means that it is government policy that the performance of the commissioning function of local authorities in adult social care will be reviewed by local authorities.

With the greatest respect for the noble Earl, Lord Howe, he knows that I am a great admirer of local authorities; I have served on two. However, like the noble Lord who spoke so eloquently earlier about solar decisions being called in by DCLG—to which, no doubt, the noble Earl will have a detailed response—I would not have thought that the commissioning performance of local authorities was thought to be so excellent that they can be left to themselves to police their performance in future.

16:59

We debated the question of 15-minute visits and zero-hour contracts last week. I have no doubt that part of the problem is that it is local authorities that are commissioning the 15-minute visits, and that the amount of money they pay has an influence on the kind of contractual relationship that private-sector providers have with their staff. That is how zero-hour contracts come into being. Therefore, how on earth can we deal with the scandal of 15-minute visits unless we look at the way local authorities are commissioning?

I was interested that the Care and Support Minister, Norman Lamb, was reported last week as saying that the length of home care visits could be monitored by the Care Quality Commission. He said that, with the new independence of the CQC, from next April it proposes to look at whether home care visits are long enough to respond to people’s needs. Some independence, my Lords.

The CQC will also consider how staff working commissions might impact on the care issues under consideration; whether the service is able to respond to people’s needs in the allocated time; whether care is delivered with compassion, dignity and respect; how many staff have zero-hour contracts; and the levels of staff turnover. This is all true; it is from Community Care. Apparently, the Minister said that the CQC will use the information to drive its regulatory activity so that it will know when, where and what to inspect, and will be alerted quickly to the risk of poor-quality care in home-care settings. I put it to the noble Earl that that is all fine, but, given that often it is local authority commissioners who are responsible for the poor quality of provision, surely the CQC should review and inspect the performance of local authorities. Therefore, I very much support my noble friend Lord Warner and other noble Lords on this.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I set out in my opening remarks the principle that lies behind the amendments that I tabled: namely, that the CQC should have more operational autonomy in its day-to-day activities. I sense that the principle is not inimical to many noble Lords. The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, are in contrast to that principle and seek to tie the hands of the regulator and commit it to considering specific issues in all circumstances.

I say straightaway that the issues raised by the noble Lords are important: namely, how providers deal with the most commonly recurring conditions in specific settings, and how hospitals are implementing NICE guidance on the use of medicines. I do not argue that the CQC should not consider these issues. It has made clear in its consultation document, A New Start, that NICE guidance will play an integral role in its new performance-assessment methodology. That shows that we can trust the regulator to set its own priorities and to change them in response to new challenges. However, I submit that they should not be in the Bill.

Noble Lords questioned the CQC’s role in the oversight of commissioning of both health and adult social care. The noble Lord, Lord Warner, tabled an amendment that would have the effect of allowing the CQC to carry out a study of the efficiency of commissioning without seeking the approval of the Secretary of State.

I will explain the approach that we are taking. We are maintaining powers for the CQC to carry out reviews of commissioning in both health and social care. However, where this happens, we believe that it should be a special rather than a periodic review. My noble friend Lady Barker asked why. The main role of the CQC is to inspect and regulate service provision. The very name, CQC, reflects that. Where this leads the CQC to believe that there are problems with local commissioning, it will have the power to look into this further. However, any review of commissioning will impact on the CQC’s capacity to regulate service provision. Therefore, it is only right that this should be carefully considered and subject to ministerial agreement.

If a noble Lord were to ask me in what circumstances such agreement would be withheld, I would be in some difficulty because it is hard to imagine circumstances in which, if there were clear evidence of poor commissioning practices in an area, that agreement would not be forthcoming.

Special reviews can be tailored in all sorts of ways. They can be tailored to look at how commissioners are delivering specific policy objectives—for example, personalisation or service integration. The special review powers could be used to target the poorest performers, conduct thematic reviews across all local authorities—and I shall mention that again in a second—or perform reviews of a cross-section of local authorities. These reviews are a sophisticated power that allows the CQC to get to the heart of an issue in a way that periodic reviews cannot. If there is a good case for it conducting a review of that kind, it will not be stopped from doing so.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, questioned the whole principle of ministerial sign-off for these special reviews. In fact, all special reviews and investigations by the CQC under Section 48 of the 2008 Act currently require the approval of the Secretary of State, so, in that sense, we are not doing anything radically new.

As I said, the CQC will be able to carry out a special review of commissioning where there is evidence that commissioning practices are contributing to the provision of poor care for patients and service users. A prime example of where the CQC could be tasked to conduct an investigation would be if it had evidence that 15-minute commissioning was taking place. That applies to any area where poor commissioning is identified as a contributory factor to the poor provision of care, either in terms of the quality of services or where access to services is raised as an issue by people who use them. I hope that that is reassuring. We are absolutely clear that the CQC will play a leading role in making sure that people receive acceptable standards of care. Indeed, only last week we announced that the CQC was considering the use of 15-minute care visits to vulnerable and elderly people. That is entirely appropriate and I emphasise that it will still have the power to carry out special reviews of that kind.

The noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, went further and said that it was counterproductive to remove the periodic review power for commissioning. She referred to statements about this made by my honourable friend, Norman Lamb, the Minister for Care and Support. I would simply say to her that retaining Section 46 functions—the periodic review functions—would offer the CQC nothing further in terms of enforcement powers against local authorities. Regardless of whether a review is undertaken under Section 46 or Section 48 in relation to an English local authority, the follow-up action remains exactly the same, with the CQC able to issue an improvement notice in the event of a local authority failing to discharge its functions and to recommend special measures to the Secretary of State in the event of substantial failings.

Our approach will allow the CQC to focus its efforts on those areas where there are concerns about commissioning, rather than on all commissioning, including commissioning where the normal oversight arrangements have revealed no overt problems. I should now like to come to those oversight arrangements, because the noble Baroness asked me who is responsible for the oversight of commissioners if it is not the CQC. We need to remember that commissioners are already regularly overseen, in a number of ways, in the new system. In the case of the commissioning of health services, the new NHS architecture has NHS England taking the central role in performance-managing the commissioning of NHS services. It ensures that clinical commissioning groups deliver the best possible services and outcomes for patients. The CCG assurance framework has been developed precisely to ensure that the CCGs are working to improve services and the quality of care for patients.

This new system is also more transparent. The CCG outcomes indicator set will support CCGs and health and well-being partners in improving health outcomes by providing comparative information on the quality of health services commissioned by CCGs and the associated health outcomes, and it will support transparency and accountability by making this information available to patients and the public. That is new. The first quarterly assurance conversations have now taken place between NHS England and CCGs. We expect that CCGs will want to make the outcome of these conversations available publicly as part of the commitment to transparency. The board will publish an annual assessment at the end of 2013-14, as required by legislation.

In addition, NHS England has its own governance processes in place, including the development of the direct commissioning assurance framework to demonstrate that it meets the standards required. As this is developed further, elements will be introduced to bring external scrutiny to its board and function. Ultimately, NHS England is held to account by the Department of Health for its commissioning activity against its delivery of the priorities set in the mandate.

That does not mean that there is no independent scrutiny of NHS commissioning. Health and well-being boards and local Healthwatch will ensure that the public voice is heard where there are concerns about the design and commissioning of services. Where local Healthwatch identifies concerns, it can raise these with Healthwatch England, which can in turn request the CQC to take action. Where the CQC has strong concerns that commissioning is having an impact on the quality and safety of provision, it can initiate—with ministerial permission—a special review or investigation. This is a much richer tapestry than perhaps some noble Lords have portrayed it.

On local authority commissioning, other measures in the Bill will strengthen the duties on local authorities in exercising their care and support functions. These include a new express duty to promote people’s well-being and a duty to shape local care markets to ensure that they are sustainable and diverse and that they offer high-quality care and support. They will not, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, fears, be left to themselves. To start with, the department will work with the local government and adult social care sector to produce statutory guidance on local authority commissioning of care and support. As well as this, the Government are committed to ensuring that there is a clear link between local authority commissioning and the outcomes and experiences of service users. That will be achieved through the adult social care outcomes framework, which will give local people, local Healthwatch and others robust and comparable information on councils’ performance. The Government are committed to making information on adult social care outcomes even more accessible and readily understood by people who use care and the wider public further to enhance transparency.

As with NHS commissioning, local Healthwatch and health and well-being boards will be able, through Healthwatch England, to raise concerns with the CQC about poor commissioning. This is independent, regular scrutiny that will be driven by the views of those with direct experience of service failings—the service users themselves. Although this system is in its early stages, I genuinely believe that the mechanics are in place to ensure that local authority commissioning is scrutinised regularly and in a way that it has not been before.

My noble friend Lord Deben referred to the Localism Bill and wanted assurance that the powers given to the CQC will not be circumvented in various ways. I can assure my noble friend that it is not our intention that the powers given to the CQC will be circumvented by other legislative proposals or any other means.

My noble friend Lady Barker asked why we are stopping the CQC doing what it does now, and whether there is any evidence that the power has been misused. As I am sure my noble friend will agree, the CQC plays a very important role in regulating and inspecting health and care services. It is the nation’s chief whistleblower on health, but to do its job properly it must be able to act without fear or favour from the government of the day. In a nutshell, we want to make it a stronger organisation by ensuring that it has the freedom and independence always to speak out about patient safety concerns, irrespective of who is in government. The removal of the need for the CQC to gain the approval of the Secretary of State for its programme of inspections and so on will particularly complement the role of the CQC’s new chief inspectors in providing an authoritative and independent judgment of the quality of health and social care services.

I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, that the main objective for the CQC, as set out in the 2008 Act, is centred on service provision. The objective is to protect and promote the health, safety and welfare of people who use services. It will do this, as it does at the moment, through looking at service provision and it will look at local authority commissioning when there is evidence of problems.

17:15

Finally, I turn to the question posed by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the regular interaction between the CQC and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State. I hope he will bear in mind that the Department of Health and the Secretary of State act as system stewards, overseeing the work of the CQC and other arm’s-length bodies. It is essential as the regulator of providers that the CQC is independent in its judgments. That is not to say that Ministers and the department should not keep a regular watching brief over what is—he will acknowledge—a very active scene out there, not least in the area of the quality of care delivered by certain hospitals.

Having taken a little time over this, I hope that I have reassured noble Lords not only about the merits of our amendments but that their own fears about what we are asking the CQC to concentrate on are misplaced.

Amendment 142 agreed.

Amendment 143

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

143: After Clause 82, insert the following new Clause—
“Independence of the Care Quality Commission
(1) Part 1 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Care Quality Commission) is amended as follows.
(2) In section 48 (special reviews or investigations), omit subsection (7) (Secretary of State’s power to make regulations as to procedure for representations before publication of report).
(3) In section 54 (studies as to economy, efficiency etc), in subsections (1) and (3), omit “, with the approval of the Secretary of State,”.
(4) After subsection (2) of that section, insert—
“(2A) The Commission may not exercise the power under subsection (1)(a), so far as it relates to the activity mentioned in subsection (2)(d), without the approval of the Secretary of State.”
(5) In section 55 (publication of results of studies under section 54), omit subsection (2) (Secretary of State’s power to make regulations as to procedure for representations before publication of report).
(6) In section 57 (reviews of data, studies and research), in subsection (1), omit “, with the approval of the Secretary of State,”.
(7) In section 61 (inspections carried out for registration purposes), omit—
(a) subsection (1) (Secretary of State’s power to make regulations specifying frequency etc. of inspections), and(b) subsection (4) (Secretary of State’s power to make regulations as to procedure for representations before publication of report).(8) In section 83 (annual reports), omit subsection (3) (Secretary of State’s power to direct preparation of separate reports).
(9) In paragraph 5 of Schedule 4 (inspection programmes etc.), omit—
(a) in sub-paragraph (1) (preparation of programme etc.), “, or at such times as the Secretary of State may specify by order,”, and(b) sub-paragraph (3) (Secretary of State’s power to specify form of programme etc.).(10) In consequence of subsections (3) and (6), omit section 293(3) and (4) of the Health and Social Care Act 2012.”

Amendment 143A (to Amendment 143)

Moved by

[Lord Warner]

143A: After Clause 82, line 10, leave out subsection (4)

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I listened carefully to the points made in this debate, particularly those made by the noble Earl, Lord Howe. I find this brave new world that we are moving into—of which he painted such an attractive picture—a bit puzzling. In the previous debate on the trust special administrator, we heard that the trust special administrator comes into play when this wonderful piece of architecture around commissioning has failed to deal with the job. The CCGs, supervised by NHS England, have simply not been able to deliver the changes that are required through the commissioning arrangements. In that area, the fall-back position which the Government insist that we have, is a trust special administrator, often to make good the deficiencies of an unsatisfactory commissioning set-up. The Government do not seem to have quite as much confidence in their new architecture for commissioning as the noble Earl suggested.

I turn to my amendment, which in effect maintains the status quo and the ability of the CQC to decide, in the light of the evidence it has had from its reviews of performance by providers, that there is a systemic problem with commissioning, the making of arrangements for adult social services. It seems odd that we should just leave this, in effect, to all 152 local authorities and put in place another hurdle to be got over, which is the approval of two Secretaries of State, before the CQC can actually act in the area of commissioning. We have to bear in mind that in the good old days, when I was a director of social services in local government, I had to look over my shoulder at the Audit Commission as to how we were behaving and making our arrangements. The Audit Commission, however, has gone the way of all flesh, so that is the end of another watchdog that was there to make sure, without being too obtrusive, that there could be thematic reviews of the way local authorities carried out their commissioning behaviour. I do not think that this architecture is robust enough to safeguard patients, and I wish to test the opinion of the House.

17:20

Division 2

Ayes: 194

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Labour: 157
Crossbench: 26
Independent: 5

Noes: 220

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Conservative: 135
Liberal Democrat: 64
Crossbench: 17
Independent: 2
Ulster Unionist Party: 1

Amendment 143 agreed.

17:32

Amendment 144

Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

144: After Clause 82, insert the following new Clause—
“Staffing numbers and skills mix
The Care Quality Commission shall, in carrying out its functions, have regard to any official guidance on staffing numbers and skills mix.”

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, we come to an important amendment that relates essentially to staff ratios and guidance. I refer back to the Francis report, which focused very much, among many other serious matters, on staffing ratios and appropriate staffing numbers employed by NHS trusts.

We know very well that given the financial strain currently on the health service there is a large concern about whether there are enough staff on the wards to give appropriate care. Much of the concern around the quality of nursing care and the quality of care by healthcare assistants has related to essential aspects of care, including feeding, caring and all those things associated with what we would regard as appropriate caring. Underlining those things has been a concern as to whether enough staff are employed on the wards.

The noble Earl will know that the Francis report recommended that NICE should benchmark issues around appropriate staffing levels. He will also know that since the Francis report came out we have had the Keogh report into 14 trusts with outline mortality rates. It is interesting that one of the important conclusions of the Keogh review was the need to look seriously at staffing numbers. There seems to be a direct relationship between outline mortality rates and staffing levels on the wards and in clinical areas. We have also had the Berwick review, which the Government established, looking more generally at staffing levels within the health service. The review identified staffing levels as being one of the most important areas on which to focus when it comes to reviewing quality of care.

My amendment relates to ensuring that in its responsibilities the CQC has sufficient focus on staffing levels. This is a very important matter at a time when the health service is being presented with an increase in the number of patients and an increase in technology and complexity at the same time as having to operate on a budget that is just above a level budget. Things are very difficult indeed in the health service. Roughly 70% of the budget of NHS organisations is spent on staffing and expenditure on nursing and healthcare assistants forms perhaps the most important element of the staffing budget. Therefore, in some way we need to protect staffing levels in such circumstances. My amendment suggests that this is a very important role for the CQC to play and I hope that the Minister will be sympathetic to it. I beg to move.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

My Lords, I do not want to speak before whoever supports the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, in his amendment, so I will sit down and speak after the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords, I did not intend for that to happen. Noble Lords may find this quite tedious, but I want to follow both the theme and the specifics of the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. As to the theme, his statement that things are difficult out there today is quite an understatement. Things are hugely difficult. I spent the morning with the TDA in my trust and heard very difficult messages around performance and, more importantly, around finance.

On the specific point about the suggested skill mix and the way of dealing with it in the Care Quality Commission, when we had our Care Quality Commission representative for Barnet and Chase Farm with us a couple of months ago—on a routine visit rather than an impromptu one—she set aside a session to talk to people about healthcare assistants. She got the same message that I have tried to impart to noble Lords on several occasions that the regulation of these people is hugely important. She was trying to understand what difference it would make. Patients who came in to listen at the event could not understand why healthcare assistants were not regulated in that way—although some thought that they were. There is also confusion about who they are and what role they play.

Healthcare assistants and nursing assistants are hugely important to the skill mix, but what they do and what they are able to do is paramount to being able to understand how their contribution to the skill mix really fits. I support the amendment. It can ensure that we once and for all deal with what it really means to be a healthcare assistant, what they can do and how they are regulated.

[Baroness Emerton (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 159 standing in my name and in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Willis and Lord Warner, and of my noble friend Lord Patel. Amendment 159 is about safeguarding patients. I championed safe staffing levels during the proceedings on the Health and Social Care Bill and during the proceedings on the Care Bill to date but failed to get my amendments accepted following a firm rebuttal by the Minister. Therefore, it was with a slightly doubtful mind that on 29 July, before we left for the Summer Recess, I put my name to the amendment before us today.

I then began nine weeks of reflection on whether I should or should not withdraw my name. I want to share the experiences of those nine weeks that have left my name on the amendment. I resolved to try to convince the Minister and noble Lords that if we wish to meet the challenges of high-quality, safe care acceptable to patients and their families in hospitals, we cannot ignore the contents of this amendment, set out under four headings. It recognises that it is only a small part of a very comprehensive Bill focusing on the acute hospital provider but it is nevertheless important that patients should be assured that all the measures that are taken will ensure their safety and the high quality of delivery of care to their satisfaction, resulting in a short length of stay, less likelihood of infection, reduced readmission rates and lower mortality rates.

Surely there is a cost-effective and care-effective way forward, despite the challenges it brings with it. The need to consider staffing levels in the community is equally important if we are to achieve an integrated service from primary healthcare and community care as well as from the acute providers in hospitals. Before the Recess I was involved in discussions about staffing levels with a number of very senior nurses, academics, the Royal College of Nursing and other organisations. The Bruce Keogh report focused on the seriousness of the situation, identifying 14 hospitals with high mortality rates and low staffing levels. That was quickly followed by the publication of the report by Professor Don Berwick, also just mentioned, on the safety of patients, which again referred to low levels of nursing staff as being a problem, but not measured against an evidence-based level.

The group of senior nurses formed themselves into the Safe Staffing Alliance, chaired by Elizabeth Robb, the chief executive of the Florence Nightingale Foundation, who had personally experienced introducing care bundles for five long-term conditions, which led to a dramatic reduction in mortality rates, and who was a member of the Keogh commission. The alliance busily engaged itself in examining the research evidence available internationally, and within the UK, on staffing levels. Its statement says:

“Under no circumstances is it safe to care for patients in need of hospital treatment with a ratio of more than 8 patients per registered nurse during the day time on general acute wards including those specialising in care for older people”.

Very soon after that, Robert Francis spoke to the CQC and referred to his original recommendation on staffing levels. He said, “So much of what went wrong in our hospitals is likely and indeed was in many regards the case in Stafford, due to there being inadequate numbers of staff either in terms of numbers or skills. The evidence given to my inquiry however was not sufficient to persuade me that there should be a minimum across the board staffing level, and I know not everyone agrees with that conclusion. But I could only act on the evidence I had and I was after all only dealing with the event arising out of a particular hospital so the inquiry for all the breadth in the end had limitations. However, evidence has been put forward to me since from the Safe Staffing Alliance to suggest there is a level below which it should be regarded a service is not safe, not that’s the adequate level of staffing but the level below which you cannot be safe. It does seem to me that it’s evidence that is worth consideration and therefore ought to be considered somewhere with regard to whether there is some sort of benchmark which at least is a bit like mortality rates an alarm bell which should require at least questions to be asked about whether it is possible for a service to be safe given whatever the staffing situation is. I just ask you to consider that as being a potential way to show real support for staff, some of whom are working in really challenging circumstances”.

In an interview reported in the press on 8 October, Robert Francis discussed the possibility of services being shut down if insufficient staffing levels were evident.

During September, I met directors of nursing from the teaching hospitals called the Shelford Group, who were grappling with staffing problems but in slightly different circumstances from those in other NHS trusts and NHS foundation trusts. I also discussed the issue with the director of nursing at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, Elaine Inglesby, who gave evidence to the Health Select Committee that demonstrated clearly that the whole hospital was engaged in the safe staffing project. She had been able to implement the suggested staffing levels by using the acuity and dependency tools supplied by the Association of UK University Hospitals and using the ratio of one registered nurse to eight patients as a minimum, based on the evidence from Southampton University, King’s College London and the National Nursing Research Unit. Evidence suggested that there was a need for three registered nurses on night duty.

In this hospital there is a safe staffing steering group to support ongoing development. The introduction of a white board on every ward or department indicates the number of nurses and grades on each shift. This is posted so the patients and visitors can immediately identify how many staff at what grade are on duty at any time. There is a daily safe-staffing teleconference on daily rotas meeting each morning at 8.30. This looks at the morning, late and night shift and presents a true picture of ward and department nurse staffing. Obviously this is an ongoing development project involving the board members and the staff of the whole hospital. To date it is working to the satisfaction of patients, families and, above all, the staff involved.

During this time, I also noted the media and varying reports of events demonstrating failings in service delivery because of low staffing levels, including the reports of warning signs from the Royal College of Nursing and other organisations. I also listened to patients’ experiences, where shortage of staff appeared to be a major concern. The need for so many trusts to seek overseas recruits because of shortage was reported last week. There are also records from the Patients Association, which has received many complaints on staff shortages during this time.

I then went on holiday myself and reflected back over the eight weeks. I came to the conclusion, while declaring that I am a long-retired nurse not on the NMC register, that I could do nothing but support the amendment and continue campaigning for the future safety of patients. I hope I have persuaded the Minister. Although this amendment is only a very small part of this large Bill, because of the ramifications for the safety of patients in hospitals who rely on 80% of their care being given by nurses, we owe it to the nurses and to the patients they serve at least to acknowledge and accept the words of the amendment so framed to allow the flexibility required to meet patient need but avoid high risk to the delivery of care. I trust the Minister will respond accordingly to the amendment.

17:45

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton. May I say—not as an aside but as genuine comment—that we are all in awe of her commitment to nursing and the care profession? It is not just eight weeks, but a lifetime of commitment. I think the whole House is enormously grateful for the contribution she makes.

I rise to support Amendment 144 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, having first thought that it was not required. It seems fairly obvious that the Care Quality Commission shall, in carrying out its functions,

“have regard to any official guidance on staffing numbers and skills mix”.

The idea that any inspector or regulator would look at the guidance and then apply that as criteria would seem an absolutely normal process. Yet on reflection, having read the Francis report and the Winterbourne View report, one suddenly realises that, certainly from 2009 but far back in time as well, the department under successive Governments has offered guidance about safe staffing levels. It has done that in everything, but particularly in acute settings, I appreciate that. The fact that that was not taken into consideration makes the noble Lord’s amendment absolutely appropriate. I cannot see for the life of me why my noble friend would not accept it as a very sensible addition for making sure that the CQC, when it carries out inspections, takes that into consideration.

I would like to spend a little more time on Amendment 159, which has been so superbly introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton. Amendment 159 covers a lot of the same ground but goes further in spelling out the direct link between staffing and patient safety. It is important for my noble friend to understand what it does not do; nobody on either side of the House has sought to impose statutory staffing limits in legislation. That would be counterproductive in getting the sorts of outcomes that we want.

I prefer, as I am sure colleagues on all sides of the House do, to have strong statutory guidance with good inspection, which is what we have had in the past. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, does this—it completes the circle. I am very concerned that this House and the department spend too little time addressing the question of safe staffing. What does that actually mean? I declare an interest as an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Nursing. The RCN associates safe staffing with nursing because nurses, together with healthcare assistants under their supervision, do most of the care. But safe staffing is about the total product, not simply about nursing. It is also about the ward managers and everything else that goes into ensuring that when patients go into any setting, whether it is domiciliary, a care home or an acute hospital, there is an appropriate level of staffing.

When I was writing the Willis Commission report last year, one of the things that came up over and over again was a demand for mandatory staffing levels. I spent some time looking at the literature on safe staffing levels to see whether there was a correlation between having the right number of staff—registered nurses, care assistants, doctors or consultants—and outcomes. Frankly, it is very difficult to find empirical evidence to support it one way or another, simply because nobody in the healthcare system works in isolation from their colleagues. You are only as good as the team that works around you and their skills and training mix. I looked up what was happening in California where for more than 10 years they have had mandatory staffing levels for registered nurses. No other state has followed that. In April Senator Barbara Boxer introduced a Bill in the Senate to try to establish a federal system of ensuring that all hospitals had particular staff levels but nobody has followed that through.

There is some research being done in the UK, such as Anne Marie Rafferty’s 2007 study, with which Members are familiar. It was a really good piece of work which showed a 26% higher mortality rate in the cases of very high patient to nursing ratios. Kane’s meta-analysis in 2007 of all the literature indicated an emerging consensus that there are particular staffing levels beyond which the situation becomes dangerous. It is an issue for the department to constantly keep that under review. The amendment does not go over that ground but makes it clear in terms of safe staffing that there would be a duty on the provider, such as the hospital or the care home or those providing domiciliary care, to ensure that staff levels were appropriate and that staff competence is such to carry out safe care. After all, there is nobody in this House who does not want to see safe staffing within all NHS and other providers of health and care. That seems to be a basic starting point for a high-quality health and care system. We need to be able to ensure that that is the case. You will only find out what safe staffing levels are in a particular scenario and setting if you monitor them. That is why there is a requirement in the amendment to report on it. We are not talking about a report every three or five years, but there should be a continuous report so that when the CQC goes into a setting, it can look at the correlation between safe staffing levels, acuity and mortality rates and other factors, to see whether outcomes are dependent on particular mixes of staff.

Nor is the amendment saying that there should be annual reports. The Secretary of State would decide how often the department should be able to look at those reports. In essence, however, we are trying to establish that ensuring that the staffing mix is appropriate to the setting and to the patients who are being cared for is fundamental to healthcare. I hope that the Minister can give us some serious comfort on that. If we can get that right, we will have a good healthcare system.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

My Lords, I am of course impressed by what has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, who always knows so much about this subject. We have benefited from her great expertise over time. I am also interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Willis, has just said on the same amendment; he cited Amendment 159 but I thought it was Amendment 158.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

It was Amendment 159.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

I leave it to the department to work out whether it was Amendment 158 or 159, but that is not too important.

In many ways Amendment 144 does not go far enough. I am sure that the point of the noble Lord, Lord Willis—that the Care Quality Commission should be capable of thinking of these things for itself in any case—is right. However, the phrase “the skills mix” concerns me. There can be huge differences in the skills mix. I was concerned that the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, having waited for perhaps as long as 10 years, at last got a specialist nurse for neurological conditions. The hospital was delighted because it had had huge demand for such a service. I am a great supporter of specialist nurse services.

The Royal Free then came along and poached that nurse from the Chelsea and Westminster, which then looked at what it could do. I was informed by word of mouth that there was no question or even thought of a replacement because there was a long list, and it was a case of “the first cab on the rank” as to who was deemed to be most needed. It could have been an ordinary nurse, it could have been a surgical nurse or anyone. You moved on and did not replace the person with the skills that you needed and wanted. You had to replace your missing person with whatever the next thing on the waiting list was. That seemed to be a serious cause for concern.

It is essential to know what skills mix is needed. The amendment mentions “official guidance”. It would have to go much wider than official guidance. It has to be attributable to the particular hospital or service that is involved. Although the amendment covers many of the important points, it does not cover the need for every facility to have cover within that department and not to then find that they have lost it because someone left—they could have gone off on maternity leave, they could have left for any reason, but in this instance they were poached by another NHS hospital.

Whatever the answer, it is important. The relationship between the staffing levels is hard to assess and has to be individually done. The Care Quality Commission should be capable of having an indication of what it should be looking at, and needs to be aware of all these problems. Of course, not one of us could oppose having enough staff on the wards, which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said was necessary. However, we are now faced with positions where budgets are limited and they have to look at and work out what they need most. I do not agree at all that it should be just a progression from whoever has been waiting the longest; it should be whatever the hospital, or a particular department, needs the most. Although I support the principle, perhaps it needs more than this. I am hoping that the Minister will be able to assure us that he can incorporate some words within those he already has to make it clear that there must be this obligation. I strongly support Amendment 144 and I am open to conviction about Amendment 158 or 159.

18:00

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I support both the amendments. They are not alternatives but complementary. I want to start briefly from where we are. The issue of staffing numbers, ratios and skill mixes is just a black box as far as the public are concerned. It is something that goes on within the NHS. This has some relationship to our earlier debate about failure. It is often very difficult for outsiders—and I include regulators as outsiders—to understand what is going on in institutions, particularly acute hospitals. This issue is not peculiar to hospitals; it is even more of an issue for community services, in some ways.

I would like briefly to share my experience as the chairman of the provider agency in London. If your Lordships think that things are bad in some hospital services, try the community services. When we started to poke around in the community services, we found huge variations in the staffing levels for populations with particular conditions. There were massive variations in the face time that clinical staff spent with their patients. We have issues in community services which are often probably more dangerous and less reassuring than we have in some of our hospitals. If we are to have such amendments to the Bill, it is clear that they must relate not just to acute hospital services.

We are not going to get public understanding about when hospitals are failing or unsustainable without a better sense of public education about what a safe level of staffing is to give the reassurance that you are going into a facility which is safe. I added my name to Amendment 159 because it opens up the issue of putting into the public arena some data and reassurance about what a safe level of staffing is for some of these services. It can then be prayed in aid by both commissioners and providers when there are issues about whether a unit is sustainable. We often talk about unsustainability as a financial issue, but it is often about staffing issues—the sheer inability to get a safe group of staff together to run the institution. One acid test of why a place is unsafe is the number of bank or agency staff in a unit, who come and go at ever-increasing frequencies. Public understanding of what is going on in these hospitals seems critical to public reassurance.

Nobody wants to put staff numbers into the Bill, but we need something better than we have now to give the public some idea about the staffing levels and skill mix in what are, at the end of the day, relatively closed institutions. It is difficult for the public to understand what is and is not safe without more data, and that would make it much easier to hold boards to account. Amendment 159 would make it clear that the boards of trusts need to come back continually to what they are providing to the public in the safety of their staffing levels. Amendments 144 and 159 certainly do no damage to the Bill. They strengthen it and it is much more in the interests of the public to have this data available locally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner of Parkes, has said, relating to specific establishments and institutions.

[Lord MacKenzie of Culkein (Lab)]

My Lords, I also support both amendments. It seems to me, as a nurse, to be a self-evident proposition that having safe staffing levels and the correct skill mix, taking into account dependency and acuity, is the right thing do. Anyone who has listened to the debates in this House on various Bills dealing with health and social care over the past few months knows that it is an enormously complicated issue. However, we must bring it back to this level of patient safety and the duty of providers to provide safe staffing levels and the correct skill mix. If that is not done, all the other things we talk about will be in vain and we will end up with more reports, more inquiries and more problems.

As has already been said, it is incumbent on Governments to take account of all these things: the Francis report, the review into Winterbourne View and some of the recommendations in the excellent report produced a few months ago by the noble Lord, Lord Willis. It is vital that we get this right. At a time when financial pressures will force authorities to look at diluting the numbers of trained nursing staff and trained staff in the community and replacing them with healthcare assistants or support workers with hugely varied levels of training and experience, it is absolutely right that we get the correct level. As has already been said, both of these amendments can only add to the Bill and take nothing away from it.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I hope that I can give noble Lords considerable reassurance on the Government’s position on these important issues. It is almost axiomatic that safe, high-quality care is dependent on people and that right-staffing, in terms of numbers and skills, is vital for good care. The importance of having the right staff with the right skills and in the right numbers is central to the delivery of high-quality care. Where staff are stretched because they are too few in number, corners will be cut, with inevitable adverse consequences for patient care. Equally, where staff do not have the right skills to carry out their tasks, the quality of care will suffer.

Patient safety is the first priority, and safe staffing levels really matter. The quality of care provided to patients is ultimately the responsibility of the leadership of provider organisations. It is their responsibility to ensure that they have the right staff with the right skills in the right place at the right time in order to provide high-quality care. In the final analysis, it is for hospitals themselves to decide how many nurses they employ, and they are the best placed to do that. Nursing leaders have been clear that hospitals should determine and publish staffing details and the evidence to show that staff numbers are right for the care needs of the patients that they look after.

Although local providers are best placed to do this based on local need, we expect them to look to authoritative guidance and evidence-based tools and learn from best practice to deliver cost-effective and safe care. We recognise that there is a need for national action to ensure that local organisations meet those expectations. As a result of the national nursing and midwifery strategy and vision published in 2012, Compassion in Practice, a considerable amount of work is going on across England to ensure that providers use evidence-based tools, using acuity and dependency measures to set staffing levels, and for boards to publish these staffing levels on a regular basis.

I want to explain what we are now doing to build on that work. First, the Chief Nursing Officer, supported by the National Quality Board, is developing guidance for the system, including a set of expectations, to support provider organisations in securing the appropriate staffing capacity and capability for nursing, midwifery and care. This guidance is being developed with the intention of ensuring safe patient care and that patient outcomes are not compromised. It will include expectations on transparency and publication of information on staffing.

This guidance is being developed jointly by the statutory organisations responsible for quality across the NHS, which are brought together as part of the National Quality Board and which include the Care Quality Commission, Monitor, the NHS Trust Development Authority and NHS England. It will be published next month. I can therefore only agree with the intention behind the amendment that providers need to be open and transparent about their staffing numbers. The positive news is that action is already in place to ensure that this happens.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

What my noble friend has said is incredibly encouraging. However, before he leaves that point, could he take up the very important issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Warner? This is not just about hospitals; it is also—particularly in my case—about care homes and other community settings. Will the regulations apply to all those settings, so that we get continuity throughout the system?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am happy to come to that point. The short answer is that that is certainly our intention.

I turn to Amendment 159, about which I will be a little critical. We consider that requiring health or care service providers to,

“publish a report containing staffing levels based on evidence of safe staffing levels supported by acuity and dependency levels for each patient”,

is really not a viable alternative to what we are already putting in place and would not work in practice. It would be burdensome to implement in precisely that form and could detract from the ability of staff to deliver good clinical care.

I understand, of course, the thrust of the thought behind the first part of the amendment, which says that,

“the first duty that a health or care service provider must consider for any decision is patient safety”,

However, it carries the risk of unintended consequences. It could lead to other important factors, such as innovation and service improvement, not being given sufficient weight and providers becoming unduly risk averse. We need to reflect that any innovative treatment—which we want to encourage in the health service—carries some risk. That is always justified by benefits for the wider system. We do not want clinicians to become reluctant to take risks if this amendment were passed.

Also, we do not feel that specifying report requirements for provider boards is the role of the Secretary of State any more. Rather, the focus has to be to allow for local accountability and local decision-making. However, as I have said, we recognise that decision-making tools are needed and I agree with my noble friend Lord Willis about that. We are working with the CQC, NICE and others to ensure that providers have the evidence-based tools they need to make decisions to secure safe staffing levels. These decisions will then be subject to external scrutiny and challenge by commissioners, regulators and the public, and to inspection by the Chief Inspector of Hospitals.

However, at the end of the day we come back to the fundamental point, that it is the responsibility of individual providers to be accountable for staffing levels in their organisations. The existing registration requirements, which are enforced and monitored by the CQC, already recognise the importance of that. That is my response to Amendment 144. The requirements state that providers must take steps to ensure that at all times there are sufficient numbers of suitable staff to carry on the regulated activities that the organisation provides. Additionally, the Chief Inspector of Hospitals has also made it clear that appropriate staffing levels are part of the requirements of registration for the CQC.

In assessing whether a provider meets the registration requirement on staffing, the CQC refers to relevant guidance about staffing levels and skills mix published by professional councils and relevant expert and professional bodies. These include the Department of Health, Skills for Care, Skills for Health, the NHS and the Royal College of Nursing. Where a provider does not meet the staffing registration requirement, the CQC is able to use its enforcement powers to protect patients and service users from the risks of unsafe care associated with inadequate and/or poorly trained staff.

In its consultation document A New Start, published in June this year, the CQC stated that the focus of its new inspection methodology would be on five key domains. Are services safe, effective, caring, responsive to people’s needs, and well led? These domains will cut across all areas of activity, including levels of staffing and skill mix.

18:15

[Baroness Emerton]

My Lords, on what evidence would the CQC base the answers to those questions?

[Lord Warner]

How easy will it be for members of the public to see this material when they are trying to be sure that they are going to a safe place?

[Earl Howe]

The answer to that question is the rating system, which the chief inspectors are planning to bring in. Proposals for that will be announced very shortly. We attach great importance to that kind of transparency, not only in the NHS but in the care sector. On my noble friend’s question about whether all this would cover the care sector as well as the NHS, as he will know, the CQC issues sector-specific guidance on how to meet staffing registration requirements. Obviously NHS England would only provide guidance that relates to the NHS. As I already said, the Chief Inspector of, say, Adult Social Care would inspect regularly against CQC guidance. The plan is to consult in April 2014 on the CQC guidance on social care.

My noble friend spoke about an emerging consensus on a minimum level of staffing below which care is unsafe. I understand his point, but I am sure he will acknowledge—and did, implicitly, in his remarks—that staffing is not simply about crude numbers; it is not just about nurses. Healthcare assistants and other members of the team all have a key role to play. My noble friend Lady Gardner was absolutely right to point out that the skill mix is relevant in these circumstances. Patient safety experts agree that safe staffing levels should be set locally. It is not for Whitehall to set one-size-fits-all staffing rules. That is exactly why we have asked NICE and other nursing experts to review the evidence, to help organisations to make the right decisions on staff numbers at a local level and then, essentially, to govern themselves. I make it absolutely clear that we fully agree that safe staffing should apply in all settings and that point will be taken into account as we develop our plans.

I hope noble Lords are reassured that action is already being undertaken in a combination of ways, through Compassion in Practice, the CQC registration process, and, shortly, through the role of the Chief Inspector of Hospitals. That will ensure that providers are open and transparent about their staffing numbers and that they assess these staffing levels, not just on the day of an inspection but on a regular basis, using evidence-based tools, and by taking into account local factors that relate to local patient needs and outcomes. I therefore hope that noble Lords will be content to take stock of what I have said and will not press their amendments.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I will say at once that I very much support Amendment 159. I agree with my noble friend Lord Warner that the two amendments run in parallel very well indeed.

I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Gardner, thinks that my amendment may be a little too modest. Perhaps it is a start. I assume that the noble Baroness was not chair of the Royal Free when the “poaching” that she described took place. The point was well made.

The noble Earl, Lord Howe, has listed a number of ways in which we could be assured that staffing numbers and skill mix will be okay both in the NHS and the care sector. The fact is that, however much information is published and however much this might be part of the licensing regime of CQC, these organisations have been around for some time. There is consistent evidence that staffing levels are not sufficient. We have already had the Francis report, which said that NICE should undertake benchmarking on staffing levels. The Keogh report on the 14 hospital trusts said:

“The review teams found inadequate numbers of nursing staff in a number of ward areas, particularly out of hours—at night and at the weekend. This was compounded by an over-reliance on unregistered support staff and temporary staff”.

The Berwick report goes over the same ground. At the end of the day, I do not think there is enough beef in the system to ensure that we have adequate support staff. If NICE is going to carry out the benchmarking, which is a very good thing, we need to make sure that the regulator actually has some beef in terms of ensuring that we get adequate staff levels in clinical areas. I think that my Amendment 144 ensures that that will happen. I should like to test the opinion of the House.

18:22

Division 3

Ayes: 194

---

Labour: 150
Crossbench: 33
Independent: 4
Liberal Democrat: 1

Noes: 204

---

Conservative: 127
Liberal Democrat: 63
Crossbench: 8
Ulster Unionist Party: 2
Independent: 2
Bishops: 1

18:30

Clause 83: Reviews and performance assessments

Amendments 145 and 146

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

145: Clause 83, page 72, leave out lines 16 to 27

146: Clause 83, page 72, line 28, leave out “or local authority”

Amendments 145 and 146 agreed.

Amendments 147 and 147A not moved.

Amendments 148 to 150

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

148: Clause 83, page 73, line 14, at end insert—
“(13) Consultation undertaken before the commencement of this section is as effective for the purposes of subsection (9) as consultation undertaken after that commencement.”

149: Clause 83, page 73, line 16, at end insert—
“( ) In section 48 (special reviews and investigations), in subsection (1)—
(a) omit “, with the approval of the Secretary of State,”, and(b) at the end insert “; but the Commission may not conduct a review or investigation under subsection (2)(ba) or (bb) without the approval of the Secretary of State.”( ) Omit subsection (1A) of that section.
( ) In subsection (2) of that section, for “a periodic review” substitute “a review under section 46”.
( ) In that subsection, after paragraph (ba) (but before the following “or”) insert—
“(bb) the exercise of the functions of English local authorities in arranging for the provision of adult social services,”.( ) After subsection (3) of that section insert—
“(3A) A review or investigation under subsection (2)(b), in so far as it involves a review or investigation into the arrangements made for the provision of the adult social services in question, is to be treated as a review under subsection (2)(bb) (and the requirement for approval under subsection (1) is accordingly to apply).””

150: Clause 83, page 73, line 25, at end insert—
“( ) in section 293 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, omit subsections (1) and (2);”

Amendments 148 to 150 agreed.

Amendments 151 and 152 not moved.

Clause 84: Offence

Amendment 152A

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

152A: Clause 84, page 73, line 42, leave out “exercises functions in connection with the provision of” and insert “provides”

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 152B to 152F. These are amendments to the clauses that establish a new offence and penalties where care providers provide certain false or misleading information. Together with the new duty of candour on providers that we considered last Wednesday, this measure is key to supporting openness and transparency among care providers.

We are making two substantive amendments. First, Amendment 152F extends the offence to directors and other senior individuals who consent to or connive in an offence committed by the care provider, as well as to cases where the negligence of senior individuals has led to the offence by the care provider. This amendment brings the offence into line with a number of other offences that are committed by organisations, such as Health and Safety at Work etc. Act offences and offences under the CQC legislation, where senior individuals are also liable for the offence. This will encourage directors and other senior individuals leading organisations to take greater ownership of the provision of information.

Secondly, since Committee, the Government have reflected on the penalties for this offence. The provision of accurate information is central to the safe functioning of the health and social care system as it provides the intelligence on which commissioners and regulators form judgments about the quality of care. Where that information is wrong, it can result in delays in taking action to protect patients and service users. Falsifying such information is a serious matter that can frustrate attempts to provide safe care for patients and service users. In the light of this, we believe that a custodial sentence is warranted in the most serious cases. I am therefore bringing forward Amendment 152E, which introduces a maximum penalty on indictment of two years’ imprisonment. I emphasise that the Government are not of the view that the custodial penalty will be used with any frequency. The aim of the offence is not to punish directors and other senior individuals but, rather, to drive improvement and performance.

The amendments also address a number of concerns that were raised in Committee. There was some debate about the scope of the false or misleading information offence. I should like to make it as clear as possible that the false or misleading information offence will apply only to the provision of publicly funded care. We will specify in regulations—a preliminary draft of which we have shared with noble Lords ahead of the debate—which information this will relate to, starting with information provided by hospitals. We are making a small number of amendments to clarify the scope of the offence. First, we are amending the definition of a care provider to make it clear that this does not include commissioners or regulators. We are also amending the wording so that the offence could apply to sole traders and all types of partnerships, such as GP practices, and to care providers who are funded by service users under direct payment arrangements. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I want to ask the noble Earl just one question. Why does it not apply to commissioners? We know from events that have happened in the past few years that in many cases commissioners have been responsible for issues by sins of omission or by not being completely open. It is a puzzle to me why all the emphasis is on providing and not on the way that commissioners actually operate. There is evidence, for instance, that the way some commissioners operate can have a direct impact on the quality of provision. We have already discussed this in relation to 15-minute visits. I am puzzled as to why so little attention is being paid to the way that commissioners themselves should operate.

[Earl Howe]

That is a perfectly reasonable question. The short answer is that, in determining the scope of this offence, our focus was and is on information that is closest to patient care, where inaccurate statements can allow poor and dangerous care to continue. That approach responds directly to the Francis report concerns about the manipulation of patient safety information. We believe, therefore, that the proposals are focused and proportionate. We are targeting this offence on the key patient safety and quality data that commissioners and regulators use to assess performance. We think that we have the balance right.

Amendment 152A agreed.

Amendments 152B and 152C

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

152B: Clause 84, page 74, line 1, leave out “body (other than a public body) which” and insert “person who”

152C: Clause 84, page 74, line 4, at end insert “, or
(c) a person who provides health services or adult social care in England all or part of the cost of which is paid for by means of a direct payment under section 12A of the National Health Service Act 2006 or under Part 1 of this Act.”

Amendments 152B and 152C agreed.

Clause 85: Penalties

Amendments 152D and 152E

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

152D: Clause 85, page 74, line 35, leave out “care provider” and insert “person”

152E: Clause 85, page 74, line 35, leave out from “liable” to end of line 36 and insert “—
(a) on summary conviction, to a fine;(b) on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for not more than two years or a fine (or both).”

Amendments 152D and 152E agreed.

Amendment 152F

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

152F: After Clause 85, insert the following new Clause—
“Offences by bodies
(1) Subsection (2) applies where an offence under section 84(1) is committed by a body corporate and it is proved that the offence is committed by, or with the consent or connivance of, or is attributable to neglect on the part of—
(a) a director, manager or secretary of the body, or(b) a person purporting to act in such a capacity.(2) The director, manager, secretary or person purporting to act as such (as well as the body) is guilty of the offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly (but section 85(2) does not apply).
(3) The reference in subsection (2) to a director, manager or secretary of a body corporate includes a reference—
(a) to any other similar officer of the body, and(b) where the body is a local authority, to a member of the authority.(4) Proceedings for an offence under section 84(1) alleged to have been committed by an unincorporated association are to be brought in the name of the association (and not in that of any of the members); and rules of court relating to the service of documents have effect as if the unincorporated association were a body corporate.
(5) In proceedings for an offence under section 84(1) brought against an unincorporated association, section 33 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 and Schedule 3 to the Magistrates’ Courts Act 1980 apply as they apply in relation to a body corporate.
(6) A fine imposed on an unincorporated association on its conviction for an offence under section 84(1) is to be paid out of the funds of the association.
(7) Subsection (8) applies if an offence under section 84(1) is proved—
(a) to have been committed by, or with the consent or connivance of, an officer of the association or a member of its governing body, or(b) to be attributable to neglect on the part of such an officer or member.(8) The officer or member (as well as the association) is guilty of the offence and liable to be proceeded against accordingly (but section 85(2) does not apply).”

Amendment 152F agreed.

Amendment 153

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

153: After Clause 85, insert the following new Clause—
“Training for persons working in regulated activity
In section 20 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (regulation of regulated activities), after subsection (4) insert—“(4A) Regulations made under this section by virtue of subsection (3)(d) may in particular include provision for a specified person to set the standards which persons undergoing the training in question must attain.””

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, in Committee noble Lords were rightly concerned about the way that healthcare assistants and social care support workers are trained and supported to carry out the crucial tasks assigned to them. Amendments were also tabled concerning the regulation of this group of workers. I sought then to reassure noble Lords that the Government were determined to ensure that this important part of the workforce received high-quality and consistent training to deliver the best standards of support and care to patients and service users. Having listened very carefully to the views expressed in Committee, I have reflected a great deal on this important issue and today I am able to go further than I was able to do on that occasion.

First, however, I shall provide a short recap. What we are now doing will mean building on what we have been putting in place since your Lordships’ House last discussed this issue during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012. Common induction standards have been in place in social care since 2005, but the sector skills councils jointly published a code of conduct and national minimum training standards in March 2013. The standards place dignity and respect at the centre of the knowledge required to provide safe and effective care. The sector skills councils engaged comprehensively in the development of both the NMTS and the code of conduct across the health and social care sectors, including NHS and social care providers, the Health and Care Professions Council, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of Midwives, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and patient representative groups.

We know that we need to build on these standards. The department is investing £130 million in training and developing the social care workforce this year. Working through Skills for Care, the Department of Health provides funding of some £12 million each year to social care employers to train and develop their workforce. Health Education England is also investing £13 million in the training and development of healthcare assistants.

18:45

Good employers understand that they need to ensure that their staff are properly trained. Compassion in Practice, launched in December 2012 by the Chief Nursing Officer for England and the Department of Health Director of Nursing, calls on NHS and social care providers to ensure that their staff are supported and trained to do their jobs effectively. The Social Care Commitment, launched in September 2013, is a public commitment by social care employers to improve the quality of care and support services that they provide through managing and developing their staff effectively.

The regulations covering CQC registration already place a legal obligation on employers in relation to the training of their staff. The regulations state that employers should ensure that their staff receive,

“appropriate training, professional development, supervision and appraisal”,

to enable them to carry out their responsibilities safely and to an appropriate standard. Where providers do not comply with registration requirements, the CQC has a range of enforcement powers that it can use, including prosecution. Statutory guidance on compliance with this registration requirement has also been published.

Employers across the health and care system are investing large amounts in training their staff, and the arrangements for induction, training and performance management of this workforce must take account of the type of care and support provided by various employers. Much of it is of a high standard, but it is fair to recognise that there are problems with the consistency and quality of training provided in some cases, and we know that we need to go further. For this reason, I am putting forward my amendment.

Amendment 153 will allow the Government to make regulations to specify who can set training standards for persons working in regulated activity, including healthcare assistants and social care support workers. Once the regulations come into force, the person or persons specified will provide a set of common training standards for healthcare assistants and social care support workers who provide regulated activities such as personal care. These standards can be used to evidence compliance with the CQC’s registration requirements, providing a consistency of approach in providing care that is dignified and respectful to patients and service users. The common training standards will also form the bedrock of what I am going to come to next.

In February, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health commissioned Camilla Cavendish to review the training and support given to healthcare assistants and social care support workers. When we debated the issue in June, the review had not been published and could not be discussed in detail. Our plan is to respond formally to the Cavendish review at the same time as the Government respond to the Francis inquiry. However, recognising the strength of feeling on the issue, I pushed incredibly hard to be able to indicate our intentions today. In advance of that response, I can announce that the Government have asked Health Education England to lead work with skills councils, delivery partners, providers and other stakeholders, such as the Nursing and Midwifery Council, to develop a certificate of fundamental care. We want to call this a “care certificate”.

Our goal in introducing the care certificate is to ensure that healthcare assistants and social care support workers receive high-quality induction in the fundamentals of caring. This should ensure that they understand the skills required and that they demonstrate the behaviours needed to deliver compassionate care. The care certificate, and any training that underpins it, will need to take full account of the standards set by the person appointed by the regulations to do so. This will be key to ensuring that those standards are applied consistently throughout the health and social care sectors.

Camilla Cavendish recommends that the certificate of fundamental care should build on the national minimum training standards, published by the sector skills councils in March of this year, which will also need to be aligned to any standards set in future. She also suggests that Health Education England should work with the Nursing and Midwifery Council on ensuring that practical elements of the nursing curriculum are incorporated into the certificate. We have asked Health Education England to ensure that the NMC and other stakeholders are fully involved in its work on the care certificate. Its work should also build on the best of training provision currently on offer across the health and care sectors.

The care certificate will provide clear evidence to employers, patients and service users that the person in front of them has been trained to a specific set of standards and has the skills, knowledge and behaviours to ensure that they provide compassionate and high-quality care and support.

We will work with the CQC to incorporate into its guidance the requirement for staff to hold a care certificate. In the same way as completion of the common induction standards is currently used as evidence of compliance with registration requirements for social care providers, so completion of the care certificate could, in future, be used as evidence of compliance with CQC registration requirements. The care certificate could be used as a set of standards not only in relation to CQC regulated activities but across all health and adult social care.

The Government recognise the concerns expressed on previous occasions in your Lordships’ House about the training of this critical part of the workforce. However, I hope that the House will recognise our commitment to bringing greater consistency and quality to the training provided to healthcare assistants and social care support workers, enabling them to place compassionate care at the heart of everything they do. I beg to move.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I rise, somewhat gobsmacked, as they say in Yorkshire, at the launching by my noble friend of what has been a major breakthrough in the training of healthcare support workers. I notice that the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, is nodding in approval as this is an area with which she too has been very closely concerned. I thank my noble friend for making that commitment. It makes most of my speech totally irrelevant but, nevertheless, I will add one or two bits just for good measure.

There is no doubt that there is an overwhelming case for appropriately training the 1.3 million healthcare support workers who do such a fantastic job in care homes and domiciliary settings, as well as in hospitals. This has been a national scandal so far. These people are a hugely valuable part of the workforce and it is important to recognise them as such.

I should like to ask some brief questions. Camilla Cavendish recommended that the certificate of fundamental care be a baseline on which there would be an advanced certificate. That would lead directly into nurse training so that there would be no glass ceiling for healthcare support workers, particularly since nursing has moved on to being an all-graduate profession. When the Minister responds, I hope that he will be able to say whether that is within the psyche. The idea of having student nurses working alongside healthcare support workers, particularly those training for the advanced level, is a good one, so that you know the skills mix that you are working with.

In Amendment 153, I railed at the word “may”. The amendment states:

“Regulations made under this section by virtue of subsection (3)(d) may in particular include provision for a specified person”.

Surely, the Minister could go one step further and say that, at Third Reading, it will become a “must” and not a “may”. The one thing we must not have—there are a lot of musts—is a situation where people can move away from this need to be able to make sure that within a short period the whole of our social, health and care workforce will be properly trained to a standard approved by the sector skills council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council. That is a major breakthrough.

My noble friend is right that there are some excellent training programmes. I have seen many of them. I remember one for healthcare support workers at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford within the hospital setting. I know that many care homes give superb training to their staff because that leads to good patient outcomes which sell the product. Has any thought gone into existing training being recognised so that people do not have to go through another hoop for the sake of getting their certificate? Perhaps Health Education England can do that with this. I hope other noble Lords will comment on our amendment.

Amendment 160 remains a thorny issue. A mandatory regulatory system for healthcare support workers has been on the table. Francis himself made it clear that this workforce should be regulated. Until now, my problem with that has been that there has been very little to regulate because if people are not trained to approved standards, how on earth do you have a regulatory system by which you can judge their competence? Now that we are getting one, I hope that the Minister will look again at regulation so that we get the complete package and, my goodness, this will be a Care Bill that we can really celebrate.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Willis, has just referred to my Amendment 160. It relates to the regulation of health and care support workers. I have long thought that the regulation of support workers is necessary, desirable and inevitable because they play such an important role in caring for so many people. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Willis, for the outstanding work he did for the RCN’s independent commission which has informed this debate about standards of care workers.

I very much welcome what the Minister said about the development of a certificate of fundamental care. My noble friend Lord Young reminded me that I ought to ask the Minister at what level that is going to be because anyone who understands these issues will know that the level of a certificate is very important.

I want to draw together Amendments 153, 158 and 160. Given that in future when employers wish to take on care workers they will expect a certificate of fundamental care, does the Minister not think it inevitable that there will be a list of people who have been awarded the certificate? Does he not also think it inevitable that once you have that list, if you then have a person with a certificate and they transgress and there is concern about the way they care for people, there will inevitability be a drive to ask how you get that certificate off them? I believe regulation is inevitable now. There is no way away from the fact that once you have a certificate like this, there will have to be a list or a register and people will have to be evaluated. I for one very much welcome what the Minister has announced because it is a very important step along the road of regulation.

18:59

[Baroness Wall of New Barnet]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the announcement, and I am sure that the noble Earl is not surprised at the depth of feeling I have in welcoming it. I see this as a step towards regulation. He might baulk at that but, as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, said, regulation is important for us, and I have been asking for it for a long time. However, I also have felt: what is it we are regulating in the sense of the absolute ultimate? So I think this gives us a very clear and descriptive way in which that can be measured.

I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Willis, said about “may”. That must be “must”, please, because “may” gives such a lot of flexibility that we may go back to exactly where we are right now if people are not required to carry this out. I very much agree that regulation helps in bringing value into the skill mix. My noble friend Lord Hunt referred to an aside by his colleague sitting alongside him. As somebody who is involved in skills heavily, whether it is NVQ level 1, 2 or 3—which I am sure my noble friend Lord Young was referring to—I know from the work that I have done with Skills for Care that the aim is that between level 2 and 3 will be competent level because obviously it depends very much on what people start with.

A final point, which the noble Lord, Lord Willis, picked up on and which we have in industry as well, is how we measure the skills and experience that people already have when we try to ascertain where they fit in. One of the dispiriting things that we find elsewhere is that, when people are asked to take a level 2 or 3, no recognition is made of what they have already gained while they have been doing the job. Skills for Care knows how to cope with that in the way that the skills levels are drawn up.

I thank the noble Earl very much. I spoke before about being tedious. I am sure that the way in which he has pursued this issue has nothing to do with me or other people being tedious; it is because he has a belief in it.

[Baroness Emerton]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Earl the Minister for what he has said. I think I have probably been more of a pain than anybody on this subject. I thank the noble Earl very much for the assurances that he has given.

I have one or two very quick questions. He knows that I have a thing about Skills for Care and Skills for Health. Who is going to decide the membership of those groups? I am concerned that in teaching skills each individual care worker will want to have the background knowledge to support their skill. It is no good just teaching someone a simple skill without having the knowledge behind it. It reminded me that 63 years ago I was a St John Ambulance cadet. I did an elementary first-aid course where a doctor taught elementary anatomy, physiology and treatment of first aid. I then went on to home nursing and was taught by a registered nurse how to look after patients in the home, provide good nutrition and prevent bed sores. I think probably what I knew at the age of 11 is more than what some of our healthcare professionals know today. What will be the professional input into Skills for Health and Skills for Care? Who will do the syllabus, the curriculum and the teaching? Presumably Health Education England and the NMC will give the backing to that. If we could have that assurance, it would keep me quiet for a little longer.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I also thank the Minister for his persistence within Whitehall in actually getting progress in this area. I think we all feel that he has put a lot of personal effort into it and deserves a great deal of credit.

If I may, I will ask a couple of slightly nerdy questions. I think that the issue of where this stands in the pecking order is vital. Is it down at NVQ levels 1 and 2? Is it up at level 3? How far away is it from the degree-level professional qualifications? In some ways, the title that has been given to this rather diminishes its standing up the food chain, so to speak. A certificate of fundamental care sounds a bit basic, and I am not quite sure what signals are given about the level that Health Education England should strive for in overseeing this particular work. A lot more work needs to be done on that.

Perhaps I may also pick up the point that my noble friend Lord Hunt hinted at. At the end of the day, if employers are to make this operate, they need some kind of register of who has the certificate. They also need to know what happens when they fire somebody and take disciplinary action against someone who has this certificate. Who do they tell? That seems a quite critical issue, because this is a very large workforce and it would be quite surprising if each year we did not get a steady flow of bad cases where an employer has fired someone for a breach of good practice of one kind or another. This would all be set to nought if there was no record of where these cases of disciplinary action have been taken, and people with a certificate were still floating around the system when they have actually been released by an employer for poor practice.

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I have put my name to Amendment 158. I also thank the Minister for pulling a rabbit out of the hat, so to speak. However, I am not as gobsmacked as the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, because I have lost count of the number of times and days in this Chamber that we have debated the need for training healthcare support workers. I am at least glad that it has now paid some dividends.

I am also glad that the noble Earl said that Health Education England would take the lead on this, and will involve the NMC in devising the standardised training programmes, because it has the expertise to do it. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and others that this inevitably means there will need to be some sanctions for those who do not fulfil the requirements for training and therefore fail to be regulated. I am not sure whether that is for this Bill or subsequently, but it will inevitably lead to that. However, I thank the noble Earl for his amendment.

[Lord MacKenzie of Culkein]

My Lords, I join in the congratulations to the Minister on his words this afternoon. For a long time I have felt that trying to get some movement on this issue of education and training for healthcare assistants was rather like the sufferings of Sisyphus pushing that stone uphill. Fortunately, I was wrong and the debates that we have had on this issue over the past few months have clearly borne fruit.

I join the noble Lord, Lord Willis, in saying that the permissive “may” in Amendment 153 should be changed to “must”. It is extremely important that that happens if at all possible. For me, regulating healthcare assistants has been an issue since the long preparation for Project 2000 and the eventual demise of the enrolled nurse, leaving the gap which has now had to be addressed in this way.

The Minister has always been careful to say that the Government do not have a closed mind on regulation. I hope that that remains the position because, given the position we have now arrived at, it is inevitable, for the reasons that my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lord Warner have given, that regulation will come some day. To coin the current phrase, it is a can that has been kicked down the road long enough. We ought to stop kicking it and get there sooner rather than later.

I heard the Minister say in the past that regulation is not a guarantor of good care. That, as far as it goes, is true, because if it was a guarantor, there would be no poor practice or misconduct in any profession. That is not an argument against regulation for all the professions that are properly regulated to safeguard the public. I hope that an open mind will be kept on this and that we can come back to the issue of regulation, which is now inevitable. Having said that, I am grateful and delighted that we have made the progress that we have today and again I thank the Minister for his persistence in this matter.

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am very pleased that noble Lords have recognised the announcement I made today about the development of the care certificate, led by Health Education England working with professional bodies and the sector skills councils. It goes a long way to ensuring that we address training and quality standards for this part of the workforce.

I shall do my best to answer the questions that have been put to me. First, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Willis who has made a very important contribution to the debate on healthcare assistants in the Willis Commission on Nursing Education. I acknowledge his long-standing interest and expertise in this area. While the government position on a recommendation such as regulation is different from his—I will come on to regulation in a moment—we share his concern that healthcare assistants and social care support workers need to have the training to do the tasks that they are asked to do. I am well aware of the recommendations that he has made in that area and we will not lose sight of them.

My noble friend asked about government Amendment 153 and why it does not say “must” instead of “may”. First, I can confirm that we will make regulations in this area. The amendment provides an expressed power to delegate the standard-setting function to another body if we so choose. It is in the Secretary of State’s power to delegate. The amendment states “may” because the Secretary of State may in the future wish to set the training standards which he would be able to do under his existing powers. The Secretary of State would not be able to do that if regulations had been made that delegated this function to another body.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, asked what the care certificate will look like. It is a little too soon for me to answer that in any detail. Health Education England is still considering that issue because of the range of settings in which healthcare assistants and social care support workers operate. We have asked Health Education England to ensure that the approach to the care certificate is flexible so that it is meaningful in every setting. As Camilla Cavendish recommends, they will need to build on the best of the training and development practice which is out there, and the good work that is being done on the code of conduct and the national minimum training standards. A key requirement is to ensure that the skills and behaviours are taught so that we move away from the tick-box approach identified in some instances in the Cavendish review. I know that that is a particular concern—rightly—of the noble Baroness, Lady Emerton. Equally, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, was right to say that we have to think about the mechanisms which would allow, in appropriate cases, the withdrawal of a certificate where an individual had been found wanting in their caring skills.

The noble Baroness, Lady Emerton, asked who will be involved in the development of the certificate. As I have said, Health Education England has been asked to lead this work. It will engage with sectoral bodies, including the sector skills councils, but also more particularly the NMC, the RCN and providers of care. The department will be involved as well. I can reassure her that the code of conduct and the national minimum trading standards were not solely the product of the sector skills councils but were very much the result of consultation and cross-sector working with a number of professional bodies.

My noble friend Lord Willis asked whether there would be an advanced certificate. An advanced certificate, bridging into nursing qualifications, certainly needs to be considered as part of the wider response to Camilla Cavendish’s report and we may have more to say about that when we make our official response. However, we agree that any work done by Health Education England must look at the broader picture and the other recommendations made by Camilla Cavendish.

My noble friend also asked about recognising existing high standards of training, where those pertain. He is absolutely right that we need to build on the best training that is out there and to recognise the tasks that people are called upon to do. The Cavendish review makes recommendations on better quality assurance which we are also considering.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wall, asked what we do about healthcare assistants and social care support workers who are already working in the field. That is a point of detail which is still to be worked through but, in principle, if someone is already working as a healthcare assistant or social care support worker and meets the standards there should be some way for them to demonstrate this without having to undergo unnecessary repeat training.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, suggested that, if we have gone this far, it is almost inevitable that we should proceed to regulate this sector of the workforce. I do not agree with him, but, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord MacKenzie, our minds are still open to the possibility of regulation at some time in the future. However, we need to bear in mind that statutory regulation is not just about training: it is a much broader process and we do not currently view it as appropriate or proportionate for healthcare assistants and social care workers. Statutory regulation involves setting standards of conduct required within a scope of practice; protecting commonly recognised professional titles; establishing a list of registered practitioners, which is quite an onerous process; providing a way in which complaints can be dealt with fairly and appropriately and allowing a regulator to strike off an individual from a register. We must make no mistake about how complex a business this is. I emphasise that we will continue to review this whole question as we go along but we do not think it is appropriate at present.

The noble Lord, Lord Patel, asked what sanctions there will be for people who do not meet the standards described in the certificate and the noble Lord, Lord Warner, asked a similar question. Unfortunately, I do not have a detailed answer for him today. However, it is a pertinent point that, as the development of the certificate continues, we will need to bottom out. Managers and the CQC will play a big role and are important in ensuring that the certificate is an effective way of evidencing people’s skills.

The noble Lord, Lord Warner, asked a related question about who an employer tells if they fire someone with the certificate. The process operated by employers under the existing system should include checks on various matters, including qualifications. However, the disclosure and barring service also provides a further layer of assurance by helping employers make safer recruitment decisions and prevent unsuitable people working with vulnerable groups.

The noble Lord asked what level the certificate would be set at. It is, at this stage, basic training but full details have not been finalised and I hope noble Lords will understand that if I go any further on this point I am in danger of pre-empting our formal response to the Cavendish report. Currently, the national minimum training standards cover issues such as how to communicate effectively with stakeholders, how to ensure that care is person-centred, how to handle patients, and infection control and prevention. However, no doubt those issues will be looked at and, if appropriate, built on.

I stress that I recognise how much of an issue of concern this is. I will take the opportunity to reassure noble Lords that, while what I am describing is the right course of action, we will continue to keep under review further measures as necessary. With that, I hope that noble Lords will feel reassured that there is already in place a proportionate system and process to provide public assurance, and that these measures, in addition to the commitments that I made today in relation to the training and development of the workforce, will in their totality be sufficient to enable them to feel comfortable in not pressing their amendments.

Amendment 153 agreed.

Schedule 5: Health Education England

Amendment 154

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

154: Schedule 5, page 112, line 6, at end insert—
“(0 ) The non-executive members of HEE must include a person who will represent the interests of patients.”

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I will speak also to Amendments 155, 156, 157, 161, 162, 163 and 164.

It is important that Health Education England, through its education and training functions, is able to develop a workforce that is informed by, and responsive to, the needs of patients and service users. Robert Francis QC highlighted the importance of embedding a culture of listening to, and engaging with, patients in his report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust public inquiry. The report included a recommendation that Health Education England should include a lay patient representative on its board. The Government supported that recommendation and tabled Amendment 154 to require the Health Education England board to include a non-executive member who will represent the interests of patients. Indeed, we have already taken steps to recruit such a non-executive member to the board of the Health Education England Special Health Authority. However, it is our intention to go further. Amendment 162 would require local education and training boards to include a person who will represent the interests of patients.

Amendments 163 and 164 reflect minor changes to the drafting of Clause 94. Together, they clarify that the regulations requiring clinical expertise on LETBs relate to the provision in subsection (3)(b) of Clause 94.

In setting Health Education England up as a non-departmental public body, it is important that we give it the appropriate levels of autonomy and flexibility to determine how it organises itself and performs its functions. Amendment 155 seeks to enable Health Education England to arrange for any of its committees, sub-committees, members or any other person to exercise its functions on its behalf. Linked to Amendment 155, Amendment 156 seeks to enable Health Education England to make payments to any of its committees, sub-committees or members, or to any other person to whom it delegates functions. These amendments bring Health Education England into line with other bodies established under the Health and Social Care Act 2012 that have powers enabling functions to be exercised by their committees and by their non-executive and executive members. It is also consistent with Amendment 165, which covers the Health Research Authority.

Amendment 157 seeks to amend the Bill to clarify that Health Education England may not delegate the functions of a local education and training board to any other committee, sub-committee, member or any other person. The functions of the LETB will continue to be the sole responsibility of those committees established as local education and training boards. This is important and reflects the discrete role of the local education and training boards and the separation in the Bill of responsibilities for national and local education and training functions.

We had an excellent debate in Committee on the important role that education and training can play in supporting research. I know we are all in agreement that it is vital to create a workforce in the health service that is innovative and research-literate, with the skills required to diffuse the latest ideas and innovations.

The noble Lords, Lord Turnberg and Lord Patel, and my noble friend Lord Willis sought reassurance that the duty placed in Clause 89 on Health Education England to promote research would be equally applicable to LETBs when exercising their local workforce planning, education and training functions. As I set out in Committee, our view is that local education and training boards are obliged to support Health Education England in delivery of its primary duties. However, I have given this some thought and agree that it is important to reinforce the Bill to make this clearer. Amendment 161 not only seeks to clarify that the duty to promote research applies equally to LETBs but makes it clear in the Bill that Health Education England’s duties relating to continuous quality improvement and promotion of the NHS Constitution apply also at a local level.

These amendments will strengthen the patient voice within Health Education England and the local education and training boards, provide greater autonomy and flexibility, and ensure a strong research duty. I hope that noble Lords feel able to give these amendments their support. I beg to move.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 160A, which is sandwiched in the middle of this group of government amendments. My amendment seeks to add an additional matter to which Health Education England must have regard when publishing its objectives and priorities—namely,

“the needs of patients to have their conditions diagnosed promptly”.

This is intended to promote the interests of patients suffering from diseases that are hard to diagnose but where early diagnosis can be critical. There are, of course, a number of such conditions, but the Minister may not be surprised to learn that the particular condition on which I shall focus is pancreatic cancer, for which early diagnosis is often literally a matter of life and death. This amendment is based on my work with the charity Pancreatic Cancer UK. I am also a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Pancreatic Cancer, chaired by my noble friend Lord Patel, which has been conducting an inquiry into how survival rates can be improved. Speed of diagnosis is critical and depends largely on the level of awareness of pancreatic cancer and its symptoms in primary care.

The 2010 National Cancer Patient Experience Survey found that 40% of pancreatic cancer patients visit their GP three times or more before being referred to hospital for investigation. The National Cancer Intelligence Network has found that half of all pancreatic cancer patients are diagnosed only as a result of an emergency admission to hospital. Patients diagnosed via this route have far lower one-year survival rates—only 9%, compared to 26% for patients diagnosed as a result of GP referral. A 2012 survey of GPs found that half said that they were not confident that they could identify the signs and symptoms of possible pancreatic cancer in a patient. Education and training are needed to give them enhanced skills and tools in order to improve their ability to recognise and diagnose the symptoms of conditions such as pancreatic cancer, and to help prevent the sort of shuttling between GPs and a range of different secondary care providers that some patients undergo before a firm diagnosis is made. That needs to be a clear part of Health Education England’s brief.

The aim of this amendment, therefore, is simply to ensure that such a responsibility is formally included among matters to which Health Education England must have regard. It would require it specifically to recognise that time is of the essence in diseases such as pancreatic cancer, and encourage HEE to identify, share and promote best practice in achieving earlier diagnosis. It might, for example, lead to initiatives such as conducting case reviews with experts from the Royal College of General Practitioners to determine why cases identified through emergency admission could not have been diagnosed earlier. I hope that such initiatives would help to close the gap between the UK and other leading countries that do significantly better in terms of survival rates and other outcomes.

My amendment may not be the best way to achieve these goals but it is important that they should be achieved, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response as to how this can and will be done.

19:30

[Lord Patel]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. He is extremely knowledgeable about issues relating to pancreatic cancer. While the principles of early diagnosis and related outcomes are important for all diseases, this is particularly so for cancers and especially for certain cancers, such as pancreatic cancer. I have spoken before in this House about how two members of my family—my mother and my mother-in-law—both died of pancreatic cancer. Emphasising the need for early diagnosis of any disease is important in the training of doctors and nurses.

[Baroness Wheeler (Lab)]

My Lords, we very much welcome this important group of amendments. If one reads back over the debates on the Bill in Committee, there can be little doubt that the provisions for HEE and LETBs have been considerably strengthened and improved by your Lordships’ detailed scrutiny and deliberations. These amendments consolidate that work.

We have also been encouraged by the progress that HEE has been making under the leadership of Sir Keith Pearson. The website demonstrates this, and the HEE leadership team has been highly visible at conferences and forums, setting out its proposed strategic priorities and consulting on the way forward. In particular, HEE seems to have taken up the key message that, in educating and training staff for NHS and public health, it must have a strategic understanding of the workforce requirements across the boundaries of health and social care and of the need for staff to work in an integrated way. This has been a major concern. I was pleased, for example, to hear the HEE medical director, Wendy Reid, emphasise this at a recent Westminster Health Forum workforce conference that I chaired.

These amendments strengthen the role of LETBs by emphasising that HEE duties under Clause 89 to ensure that quality improvement in education and training, promotion of research—as the Minister has stated—and the NHS Constitution all apply to LETBs. This is an important provision and reflects concerns expressed in Committee that LETBs must pay attention to the maintenance of standards and quality in education and training, as well as ensuring that sufficient numbers of staff are trained locally. This was a point made by my noble friend Lord Turnberg and which the Minister addressed earlier.

Amendments explicitly providing HEE with authority to delegate its functions to its committees, sub-committees, members or other persons are important in allowing HEE the flexibility that it needs to deliver its priorities and functions, and we strongly support them.

On HEE board and LETB representation, we join other noble Lords in expressing our relief at the government amendments, which ensure that people with clinical expertise are appointed to both bodies. This was a serious omission and its inclusion now greatly strengthens the Bill, as does the Government’s commitment that regulations will place a specific requirement on HEE and LETBs to include a nurse and a doctor. It is particularly important, as my noble friend Lord Hunt underlined in Committee, for the people in the driving seat on education and training requirements, standards and future needs at local level to be those who provide the services. HEE and LETBs must understand the pressures that the service is under in relation to staffing and to ensuring that education and training is flexible and responsive to the rapidly changing face and needs of health and social care. The implementation of the Francis recommendations for a lay patient representative on the HEE board and LETBs is also a key change to the Bill, which we strongly welcome and which will only enhance the work and effectiveness of those bodies.

Finally, as supportive of HEE as we are, it is hard to see in HEE work to date a clear strategy for developing the vital cadre of NHS managers that is needed to lead the NHS in the coming months and decades. There was a strong concern about this in Committee and the need for close working with HEE and the NHS Leadership Academy was acknowledged by the Minister. The Joint Committee wanted to see a statutory commitment for HEE to work in partnership with the academy, to ensure that managers in training work alongside their clinical colleagues and to increase the number of managers in the future who have clinical experience. Does the Minister not agree that this needs to be an explicit, upfront priority for HEE, which translates through to the work of LETBs? How will the Government ensure that this vital issue is addressed?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I turn first to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. He has, of course, raised a very important matter. I think that it would be too ambitious for me to offer him complete comfort on this issue at the Dispatch Box, but I hope that I can give him some. It is essential that patients have their conditions diagnosed promptly and effectively. Both Health Education England and the other responsible bodies, such as the professional regulators and royal colleges that are involved in setting the standards and content of education and training, must work together to ensure that the latest best practice is followed to deliver the best possible outcomes for patients. That is fundamental.

Going further, I reassure the noble Lord that in delivering its education and training functions, Health Education England will be very focused on doing so in a manner that supports the efficient delivery of NHS and public health services and the achievement of the best possible outcomes for patients. Health Education England has a clear duty in Clause 89 to exercise its education and training functions with a view to securing continuous improvement in the quality of health services. Those are not idle words; they are significant.

It is also important to remember that the NHS Constitution includes pledges on access to NHS services, including the right to access services within maximum waiting times. The Government are clear that bodies in the new health system must support the NHS constitution, which is why in Clause 89 there is a clear duty for Health Education England to promote the NHS constitution.

Finally, the list in Clause 91 of matters that Health Education England must have regard to includes the Government’s mandate to NHS England. I reassure the noble Lord in that context that the mandate already contains an explicit objective for NHS England to make progress in supporting the earlier diagnosis of illness as part of preventing people from dying prematurely. I acknowledge that this is a very important matter. I hope that for the reasons I have set out the noble Lord will feel somewhat comforted and reassured, at least enough not to press his amendment. I have no doubt that this is a debate that we will continue to have at reasonably regular intervals.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, asked what role Health Education England will play in developing NHS managers and whether it should be a priority for it. Health Education England is working closely with the Leadership Academy to support the development of the next generation of managers and clinical leaders. The Government included this as an objective in Health Education England’s mandate.

Amendment 154 agreed.

Amendments 155 to 157

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

155: Schedule 5, page 114, line 33, at end insert—
“(1A) HEE may arrange for any of its committees, sub-committees or members or any other person to exercise any of its functions on its behalf (but see sub-paragraph (4)).”

156: Schedule 5, page 114, line 36, after “sub-paragraph” insert “(1A) or”

157: Schedule 5, page 115, line 1, after “LETB” insert “, or for a sub-committee, member or any other person,”

Amendments 155 to 157 agreed.

Amendments 158 to 160 not moved.

Clause 91: Sections 88 and 90: matters to which HEE must have regard

Amendment 160A not moved.

Clause 93: Local Education and Training Boards

Amendment 161

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

161: Clause 93, page 80, line 5, at end insert—
“( ) Subsections (1), (2) and (4) of section 89 (quality improvement in education and training etc.) apply to an LETB in the exercise of its functions as they apply to HEE in the exercise of its functions.”

Amendment 161 agreed.

Clause 94: LETBs: appointment etc.

Amendments 162 to 164

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

162: Clause 94, page 80, line 23, at end insert “, and
( ) a person who will represent the interests of patients.”

163: Clause 94, page 80, line 24, leave out “The regulations” and insert “Regulations under paragraph (b) of subsection (3)”

164: Clause 94, page 80, line 24, leave out “that expertise” and insert “the expertise mentioned in that paragraph”

Amendments 162 to 164 agreed.

Schedule 7: The Health Research Authority

Amendment 165

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

165: Schedule 7, page 126, line 36, after “any” insert “of its committees, sub-committees or members or any other”

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, at this point it will be convenient to consider also Amendments 166, 167 and 168. We have previously had some valuable debates about the Health Research Authority’s role in promoting transparency in research. I thank the Joint Committee that scrutinised the draft Bill and the Science and Technology Select Committee in the other place for their reports, which have informed Amendments 166 and 167.

In previous stages of the Bill’s passage, the noble Lords, Lord Patel, Lord Turnberg, Lord Warner and Lord Winston, the noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, and my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury have made particularly valuable contributions to the debate on this issue, which I have listened to with considerable interest. The Government have also discussed the Health Research Authority’s role in promoting transparency with stakeholders and with the existing special health authority.

The life sciences industry plays a key role in the Government’s strategy for economic growth and makes a valuable contribution to both the health and wealth of our nation. The Government agree that there is a powerful case for increasing transparency in clinical trials. Ensuring that research is registered and published and that data, information and tissue are available where relevant will help to make the best use of research, thereby maximising the health benefits for patients and the public from research undertaken and thus maximising the return on our investment in research. Amendment 166 makes it explicit that the Health Research Authority’s objective of facilitating the conduct of safe and ethical research includes promoting transparency in research. Amendment 167 lists some of the ways in which the HRA must promote transparency.

The existing special health authority is already making great strides in promoting transparency in research. The Health Research Authority published an action plan in May 2013, which received widespread support from a range of stakeholders including researchers, research sponsors, funders, professional bodies, stakeholders and members of the public with an interest in transparent research. Since 30 September, registration of clinical trials in a publicly accessible database has been a condition of favourable ethical approval from a research ethics committee.

These amendments will ensure that the Health Research Authority continues to promote greater transparency in research when it becomes a non-departmental public body. By doing so, that authority will continue to reassure people who participate in research that research is not duplicated unnecessarily and that unnecessary risks and burdens continue to be avoided. As promoting transparency in research is specifically included within its objective under Amendment 166, the Government would expect that the annual report would cover the authority’s measures to meet this section of its objective. While there is more to be done in this area, including by research funders, I hope that I have been able to reassure noble Lords that great strides are being taken and will continue to be taken.

Amendment 165 clarifies that the Health Research Authority may delegate any of its functions to any of its committees, sub-committees, members or any other person. The amendment mirrors a similar amendment that we have already debated with respect to Health Education England in Schedule 5—it was Amendment 157.

Finally, I would like to explain briefly Amendment 168, which corrects an oversight in the drafting of the Bill. It ensures that an appropriate body under the Mental Capacity Act (Appropriate Body) (England) Regulations 2006 is a research ethics committee recognised or established by or on behalf of the Health Research Authority, rather than a research ethics committee recognised by the Secretary of State.

I thank noble Lords and others for the contributions that have informed the amendments on the HRA’s role in promoting transparency in research. I hope that they will be welcomed. I beg to move.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, first, I declare an interest as the chair of the Association of Medical Research Charities. The brief comments that I am about to make are an amalgam of those made with the Academy of Medical Sciences, Cancer Research UK and the Wellcome Trust. On behalf of all those organisations, I can say how much we welcome these amendments and the way in which the HRA has so quickly become embedded into the research psyche. The work that it is doing ensures that on each of the major obstacles—of which ethics was the first, particularly in local ethics committees, but going right through to the regulation that it is starting to streamline, particularly with the Human Tissue Authority—we are really seeing a march forward. Frankly, the progress that has been made has staggered me. I congratulate not only the chairman and chief executive of that organisation but the Minister himself.

19:44

However, I would like briefly to explore one or two issues with Amendments 166 and 167. Leaving out “such research” in Amendment 166 and inserting,

“research that is safe and ethical (including by promoting transparency in research)”,

is welcome, but we have concerns about the definition. In particular, as the Minister has tried in Amendment 167 to expand on that definition, I would like to press him on one or two of those requirements.

The HRA itself is concerned that expectation about transparency could get ahead of itself. For instance, on the provision of data and tissue, the research authority itself does not in fact have access to or grant permission for any tissue or data that is in the possession of researchers themselves. I hope that that does not become a blind expectation. Looking at the first of the ethical requirements—paragraph (a) in Amendment 167 on the need for registration of research—while we welcome the announcement that ethics approval for clinical trials will be conditional on trial regulation, the HRA’s remit extends beyond clinical trials to include all forms of research, including that with human participants. There is clearly no expectation or mechanism by which all research should be registered, so this requirement as tabled is currently not feasible or proportionate.

However, the HRA has indicated that it is giving further consideration to the registration of other studies, and I wonder whether the Minister—when this Bill goes back to the Commons, which is probably the most appropriate time—could suggest an alteration. Instead of saying, “the registration of research”, it perhaps should read, “the registration of clinical trials”.

Turning to paragraph (c) on the provision of access to data, we again support the emphasis on research data, but recognise that those data have to be appropriate. It would not be right to be able to give some of those data out for obvious reasons of patient and individual confidentiality. We wonder, therefore, whether the words “appropriate access” would be a better way to limit what the HRA is going to be responsible for. With respect to paragraph (d)—

“the provision of information at the end of research to participants in the research”—

again, I need to know what that means, because providing high-level summary information to every participant at the end of research would be a hugely demanding task. To aggregate it would not be, so “aggregated information” might be a more accurate way of dealing with that problem.

Finally, I come to,

“the provision of access to tissue used in research, for use in future research”.

All the organisations I am speaking for support the principle behind this requirement. It is important to recognise, however, that tissue is a limited resource. It is not always possible or appropriate to ensure that such access is provided. However, with those comments and requests for clarification, I can say that this emphasis on transparency is very warmly welcomed and we thank the Minister for it.

[Lord Patel]

I concur with what the noble Lord, Lord Willis of Knaresborough, just said. All of the research councils and charities support these amendments. There are the caveats to which he referred, particularly related to clinical trials and data. There is another important issue about the summary given at the conclusion of the research, which not only has to protect the confidentiality of the patients but also needs to be brief, because otherwise it is too cumbersome. On the whole, these amendments that we debated long and hard are most welcome.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

I also agree with the view that these are important headings. The precise detail has been mentioned by the noble Lord. Regarding paragraph (c) of Amendment 167, I think that access to the data is quite important although it requires consideration. It is important that the experiment or trial can be repeated. One of the difficulties in the past has sometimes been the announcement of research findings. When those in the same area tried to find out exactly what the findings were based on, there was some difficulty in repeating the experiment and occasionally there was something seriously wrong with the research. Therefore, access to the data certainly has to be kept in view if one is going to have proper transparency. However, I accept that, like paragraph (c) of Amendment 167 and the other paragraphs, it requires an amount of restriction in certain cases.

[Baroness Wheeler]

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s decision in Amendment 167 to support the recommendation of the Joint Committee on promoting transparency in research and ensuring full publication of the results of research consistent with patient confidentiality. It is right that this should be a statutory objective of the Health Research Authority. The arguments in support of this at the Committee stage from noble Lords were very compelling and, since then, have been strongly reinforced by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report into clinical trials and, indeed, the strategy and ongoing work undertaken by HRA itself.

In particular, HRA’s September announcement requiring registration of clinical trials in a publicly accessible database as a condition of ethical acceptance—taking up a longstanding recommendation of the Association of Medical Research Charities—recognises the overwhelming support for this agenda. The HRA has much to do in the coming months to develop its guidance into practical measures, but the Bill now gives clear and explicit direction to its work. The HRA has stressed that it expects the vast majority of researchers, sponsors and funders to embrace the plans to realise greater openness, responsible data sharing and publication of all results, and this is very welcome news.

It is so important for patients and the public to have confidence that the research they have been involved in will be used in the best way to improve understanding and health outcomes for the groups involved. Improved transparency is vital if more patients are to be encouraged to become involved in clinical research—one of the key ambitions of AMRC’s excellent vision for research in the NHS. The noble Lord, Lord Willis, referred to reservations. I was going to raise them and I am glad he did. I look forward to the Minister’s response. He may need to write to us in detail about those reservations and his response to that, or there might be a need for some small rewording of the draft provisions before Third Reading.

Finally, we recognise that the HRA is strongly committed to working with other bodies to overcome the barriers to transparency and create a culture of openness. Changing culture is, however, a tough call in the NHS. We also know from the AMRC research survey covering both doctors and nurses that we have a long way to go to get NHS staff to take part in research in the first place, let alone sign up to the transparency agenda. GPs are an important gateway for getting patients involved in research. However, although a majority of GPs surveyed believed it very important for the NHS to support research and treatment for their patients, only 32% of those surveyed felt it was very important for them to be personally involved. Will the Government ensure that HRA and HEE work closely on this very important issue of buy-in to research and transparency by NHS staff? How will they ensure that the CCGs fully engage in this agenda?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I am very grateful to noble Lords for their questions and comments. Without spending too much time, I shall try to cover the questions raised. Anything I do not cover, I undertake to answer in a letter. My noble friend Lord Willis asked a number of questions about how he should interpret the provisions in Amendment 167 in particular. Incidentally, it is important to point out that the way Amendment 167 is framed means that the HRA may do other things to promote transparency and research, not just the things that are listed in the amendment. The HRA should do what is set out in paragraphs (a) to (e), but it is not an exclusive list.

My noble friend asked me whether we should not be talking about registration of clinical trials instead of research. The amendment requires the HRA to promote the registration of research because we want to encourage transparency in all health and social care research. Greater knowledge about what research is under way or has already been undertaken is essential, so that new research can build on it, minimising the risks, intrusions and burdens for patients. We think that that applies to all research, not just clinical trials. The amendment requires the HRA to promote registration of research; it does not create a requirement for all research to be registered. I hope that that will ease my noble friend’s mind a little.

In delivering its objective of facilitating safe and ethical research, I would expect the HRA to take into account what databases are available for the registration of research, any existing requirements to register research, the need for requirements on registration to be proportionate and practical, and what is happening internationally. In doing so, presumably the HRA would consult stakeholders on achieving this part of its objective.

My noble friend asked me what is meant by,

“promoting … the provision of access to data on which research findings or conclusions are based”.

It is important that the data generated during research are made available to others, where possible, while protecting patient confidentiality. That helps to ensure that we maximise the benefit from investment in research. The Health Research Authority special health authority is currently planning to strengthen the research ethics committee review of researcher intentions, to make findings, data and tissue available. It is undertaking a pilot to consider whether the introduction of ethics officers will increase the proportion of favourable opinions at first review, improve the timelines of review and reduce the administrative burden on research ethics committees. That includes a review of researcher intentions to make findings, data and tissue available.

My noble friend referred to patient confidentiality. I stress, as I have on previous occasions, that in promoting the provision of access to data on which findings or conclusions are based, the common law duty of confidentiality and the Data Protection Act 1998 apply. The HRA will need to take account of these in delivering this part of its objective. We do not believe that it is necessary to state this explicitly in paragraph (c) of Amendment 167.

The noble Lord asked what is meant by,

“promoting … the provision of information at the end of research to participants in the research”.

Participants who take part in research have said that they want to be able to access the results of the research, and that was confirmed by recent HRA public engagement work. The HRA is working with others to set standards and provide guidance on how information should be provided to participants. Consideration of these plans against agreed standards will continue to be an issue for research ethics committees to review at approval. That work will continue through the HRA’s involvement work stream.

My noble friend questioned whether the results should be released to every participant, perhaps in aggregated form. It will be for the HRA, as an NDPB, to set out in its guidance for researchers its expectations as to the information they should provide to research participants at the end of the study. We would expect the HRA to develop its expectations, not only with stakeholders but with research participants themselves. We do not think that it is necessary to state explicitly that information should be in aggregated form.

As regards access to tissues, my noble friend made a good point. Human tissue is a valuable resource for research. Disposal should be a last resort. Making tissue available at the end of a study allows other researchers to make use of material already collected. Maximising potential for research from tissue collected helps to reduce the risks, burdens and intrusions placed on people by minimising the need to collect further tissue. Making tissue available at the end of a research study might involve the tissue being transferred to an appropriately licensed tissue bank, for example. We recognise that tissue has a limited life, and, through quality and assurance systems, tissue that should be disposed of is identified by either the tissue bank or the researcher. I can expand on that for my noble friend if he would like me to.

The noble Baroness, Lady Wheeler, asked whether the Government would ensure that CCGs and NHS staff engage in research. I am pleased to remind her that CCGs have a duty to promote research under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. I hope that that has covered at least the majority of the questions.

Amendment 165 agreed.

Clause 100: The HRA’s functions

Amendments 166 and 167

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

166: Clause 100, page 85, line 12, leave out “such research” and insert “research that is safe and ethical (including by promoting transparency in research)”

167: Clause 100, page 85, line 25, at end insert—
“( ) Promoting transparency in research includes promoting—
(a) the registration of research;(b) the publication and dissemination of research findings and conclusions;(c) the provision of access to data on which research findings or conclusions are based; (d) the provision of information at the end of research to participants in the research;(e) the provision of access to tissue used in research, for use in future research.”

Amendments 166 and 167 agreed.

Schedule 8: Research ethics committees: amendments

Amendment 168

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

168: Schedule 8, page 132, line 45, leave out from second “a” to end of line 3 on page 133 and insert “research ethics committee recognised or established by or on behalf of the Health Research Authority under the Care Act 2013.”

Amendment 168 agreed.

Clause 112: Regulations and orders

Amendment 169

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

169: Clause 112, page 92, line 25, leave out “or duty”

Amendment 169 agreed.

Clause 114: Commencement

Amendment 169A not moved.

Amendment 170

Moved by

[Earl Howe]

170: Clause 114, page 94, line 23, after “cases)” insert “or 71 (after-care under the Mental Health Act 1983)”.

Amendment 170 agreed.

Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Claims and Payments) Regulations 2013

Monday 21st October 2013 Lords Chamber

Motion of Regret

20:01

Moved by

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

That this House is concerned that provisions in the Universal Credit, Personal Independence Payment, Jobseeker’s Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance (Claims and Payments) Regulations 2013 (SI 2013/380) to provide for the payment of universal credit awards on a monthly basis may result in budgeting pressures on low income families; and further regrets that universal credit awards being paid in respect of children or rent charges will not by default be paid to the main carer of the children or to the person liable for that charge, and expresses concerns that this may impact disproportionately on women and vulnerable members of society.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, the regulations before us this evening cover a range of matters, including the claims and payment arrangements and contributory ESA and JSA, as well as arrangements for claiming and payment of the personal independence payment. The thrust of this Motion is to focus on the awards and payment arrangements for universal credit. Of course, these regulations are only one set of a raft of regulations that we have considered concerning universal credit and other benefit changes. Some may be a distant memory in terms of the legislative process, but they are a looming reality for many. The context of all this has shifted dramatically since the start of the Summer Recess, when we were assured by the Minister that we could rest easy in our beds, that universal credit was on time and on budget and that everything was going swimmingly.

The Secretary of State told Parliament in March that universal credit,

“is proceeding exactly in accordance with plans”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/3/2013; col. 827.]

However, the September NAO report uncovered the truth, describing how the Major Projects Authority raised concerns about the DWP having no detailed blueprint and transition plan for universal credit, which must therefore be reset. It recites that the Government will not introduce universal credit to all new out-of-work claimants nationally from October 2013, but will add a further six pathfinder sites this month. The NAO report emphasises that the pathfinder systems have limited function and do not allow claimants to change details of their circumstances online, as was originally intended. The department does not yet know the extent to which the new IT systems will support national rollout. In its October 2011 business case, the DWP expected the universal credit caseload to reach 1.1 million by April 2014; that reduced to 184,000 in the December 2012 business case. What is it now? Can the Minister tell us when the Government will set out a detailed plan for the full rollout of universal credit?

At a time when some of the poorest families in the land are being forced into debt by the bedroom tax and other measures, it is a scandal that the Government are writing off tens of billions of pounds of wasted expenditure because of their incompetent management of the universal credit programme. It is against this backdrop—where the department has delayed rolling out universal credit to claimants, has had weak control of the programme, is not achieving value for money, has been overoptimistic about timescales and has demonstrated lack of openness about progress—that we are obliged to return to some of the basic architecture of the scheme, to challenge whether it, too, has lacked the rigour of full analysis and, in particular, whether some of the protections against the worst impact of monthly payments are fit for purpose.

We cannot yet look to the April pathfinders for help as their scope is very narrow, covering where universal credit is applied to those who are single, are without children, are not claiming disability benefits, do not have caring responsibilities and are not entitled to housing support, but have a bank account and national insurance number. Clearly, these pathfinders will not tell us much about the impact of universal credit on low-income families and those who rent. The characteristics of those admitted to the further October pathfinders are not clear. Perhaps the Minister will tell us what those characteristics are and especially whether they will involve those who rent their homes. If not, at what point will universal credit be applied to those that do? So far as monthly payments are concerned, has the payments exception policy been applied yet to any recipient of universal credit under the pathfinders?

The substantive issues we raise tonight are not new—we raised them throughout our deliberations on the Welfare Reform Bill, and the Minister will doubtless hear from noble Lords with the same force and passion as was evident then. As our Motion sets out, our concerns are about the impact of monthly payments of universal credit on low-income families and about putting the clock back to the days where support for children did not go directly to the main carer and where the default position of rent support going directly to tenants increased the prospect of poor families losing their homes. We know that the justification for making monthly payments direct to claimants is that it will encourage personal budgetary responsibility and mirror the world of work. This is despite the fact that only half of those earning less than £10,000 a year are paid on a monthly basis. Life on benefits is not a comfortable existence for anyone who has tried it—and not just for a week here or there. There is the grinding awfulness of the poverty it brings, where there is simply no margin for error and where hanging on for the next payment date and juggling the cash to meet the next most pressing bill is the routine stuff of life. The temptation is to skip a payment here to meet a pressing payment there and risk becoming trapped in a cycle of debt.

How will monthly payments and assessments make things better? Research by the Social Market Foundation concludes that they will not, the Government’s exception policy notwithstanding. Although supporting the Government’s aim of encouraging greater personal responsibility and financial resilience, it concludes that changes to the payments and assessments system,

“could cause significant hardship for families on the lowest incomes”.

Its research outlined the budgeting methods that many households adopt to see them through, which inevitably involve debt of some sort, whether formal or informal. The households that it researched cited, in particular, the fact that more frequent payments served as a method to help them ration their income and restrain their spending. They feared that the larger payment might be spent too quickly, given the competing demands on their low income. On the exceptions policy, the Social Market Foundation expressed concern that a centralised system of identifying vulnerable claimants was an inefficient way of helping households and suggested an alternative of claimants being able to opt in to a budgeting portal. Have the Government given that any thought?

The Child Poverty Action Group focused on the “rough justice” that can ensue from monthly assessments where benefit claimants receive increased entitlements but which disadvantage claimants whose entitlement reduces. All of this is happening at a time when the discretionary social fund has been abolished along with crisis loans, community care grants and budgeting loans. They are to be replaced by payments on account or short-term advances and local welfare provision to be provided by local authorities. Short-term advances are much more restricted in scope than crisis loans and are only payable to benefit claimants in very tightly prescribed circumstances. As CPAG points out, that will not cover situations where a person has no, or insufficient, money to meet basic needs. Budgeting loans will continue to be payable to universal credit claimants, subject to strict criteria, on a discretionary basis with no right of appeal.

As for local provision, a recent Children’s Society report identified that money given to local authorities to replace community care grants and crisis loans is only a little over 50% of the equivalent spending at 2010 levels. Hard-pressed local authorities are in no position to make up any shortfall. Have any universal credit claimants under the current pathfinders been eligible for support for local welfare provision, short-term advances or budgeting loans, and what has been their experience?

We know that low-income families are poorly placed to cope with the current economic challenges. Some 10 million low-income households are in unsecured debt; three-quarters of those in the lowest income quartile have no cash savings. The cost of living squeeze is not only hitting the poorest, although it bears more heavily on them. Current levels of inflation will mean that universal claimants endure a real cut in their income at a time when energy bills are soaring and childcare costs are rising at almost 6% a year.

One thing is certain. For those who currently struggle to make their benefit receipt last until the end of the fortnight, the temptation to resort to payday lending will be enormous. For irresponsible payday lenders, the temptation to exploit an expanded market created by monthly payments will be irresistible, and with it the risk that continuous payment agreements will drain bank accounts as soon as benefit payments arrive. We applaud the work that the Minister is doing in encouraging the expansion of credit unions, but note that he is on record as seeking to restrict continuous payment agreements to accounts of benefit claimants until utility bills and rent have been accounted for. Could we have an update on that work? Will the Minister support the call that Ed Miliband has made for a special levy on these payday lenders, so that further moneys can be channelled into credit unions?

We raised the issue of the impact of universal credit payments on women, because time and time again it is women who are being hit hardest by this Government’s measures. It is women who are paying three times as much to get their deficit down, even though they still earn less than men. New mothers particularly are being hit, with House of Commons Library research showing that they will lose almost £3,000 during pregnancy and their baby’s first year.

My noble friend Lady Lister will say more about the wallet to purse issue, given her deep understanding of its history, and why the hard-won settlement should not be put in jeopardy. However, the Government have implicitly acknowledged the concerns we have raised about monthly payments, payments going to the main carer where children are involved, and payments going directly to landlords, because those have all been covered in their proposed alternative payment arrangements. As far as it goes, that is to be welcomed, but it raises a number of issues about how it will work in practice. The main concern is that this is a centralised system. Jobcentre Plus will decide whether an individual can have an APA and there is no right of appeal against an adverse decision. The key issue is whether Jobcentre Plus will have the capacity to make the determination a potential entitlement on a fair basis, given the range of circumstances that has to be taken into account.

Will the Minister indicate the expected number of claimants who will receive an alternative payment arrangement by, say, April 2014 and by full rollout? We have seen the first draft of the local support framework, which sets out the principles of the support that will be offered. However, what was planned as phase 2 of the universal credit rollout was supposed to provide the basis for the DWP and local authorities to start to plan these vital services. What is the plan now, given the revised universal credit rollout?

The Government have also launched demonstration projects to test how claimants can manage monthly payments of housing benefit. These are supposed to inform the final development and design of the exceptions policy. Will the Minister please update us on whether the projects will include any circumstances where monthly payments of rent are made under universal credit, rather than under the existing benefits regime?

We have supported the introduction of universal credit and will continue to do so, despite the project being seriously off-track. We have offered our support to help to restore confidence in the project. We have an unease about some of its components, especially combined monthly payments as the default position, and we will continue to press for the development of fair, comprehensive and practical exemption arrangements. We make no apology for promising to revisit these issues regularly and robustly. I beg to move.

20:15

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, there are many issues raised by the claims and payments regulations, but I plan to focus on the two that I raised in our debates on the Bill itself: monthly payments and payment into single accounts. These are lumped together in the guidance on personal budgeting support in a way that is not very helpful, because there are different issues at stake—a point to which I will return. Nevertheless, some questions relate to both matters: most fundamentally on both, the Government have rejected the arguments made by many noble Lords for choice about payment arrangements in favour of a convoluted system of personal budgeting support, which I suspect is going to be pretty difficult and staff-intensive to administer.

The clear injunction in the guidance that alternative payment arrangements are not available through choice would appear to contradict the earlier claim in the guidance that they would be claimant-centric—that is, done with, rather than to, the claimant. While I am pleased that the policy is no longer couched in the language of exceptions and vulnerability, designed to make a claimant feel different, this still appears to be the underlying philosophy.

This is also revealed in the argument that alternative payment arrangements should be temporary, to avoid labelling claimants as financially incapable. However, it is the Government who are in effect labelling them as such, by requiring claimants, who may be managing as well as can be expected, to adapt to payment systems that might simply be inappropriate for their circumstances. This determination to change claimants’ behaviour smacks of the kind of social engineering that sits uneasily with both traditional Conservative and liberal philosophy.

In our previous debate on regulations, the Minister said that he would be able to provide more information about the department’s working assumptions on the number and proportion of claimants likely to be deemed to require personal budgeting support,

“as we work our way through”.—[Official Report, 13/2/13; col. 755.]

As that was eight months ago, is the Minister now in a position to provide more information, as requested by my noble friend Lord McKenzie of Luton in his excellent and passionate opening speech? In particular, will he provide the information regarding those requiring monthly or split payments? Does he accept SSAC’s warning that the range of claimants who require these facilities may be greater than anticipated?

Will the Minister also explain how personal budgeting support will work with couples? In the case of joint claimants, will just one or both need to demonstrate the facts as listed in the annexe to the guidance? Will the decision about whether it is needed be based on a joint interview? Will money advice be offered to both members of a couple and will the Minister also advise us about the progress made with financial products such as jam jar accounts, which he earlier presented as a solution to just about all payment problems?

In July, the Minister was still able to tell the Work and Pensions Select Committee only that he hoped to be,

“coming up with something in the not-too-distant future”.

That is not very encouraging. Has he also taken on board the Social Market Foundation’s warning that jam jar accounts, while potentially beneficial,

“have only partial applicability across the claimant population”,

because of strong resistance from a significant number? Part, though not all, this resistance was because of the likely cost to the claimant. As the Communities and Local Government Select Committee observed:

“More information is needed … on how these accounts would work and who would pay for them”.

The Social Market Foundation cites evidence from the financial inclusion taskforce of the lack of appetite for financial products among about half of the unbanked. Those without a bank or Post Office account will be able to use the Simple Payment service to receive their benefit. As the Minister confirmed in a Written Answer, the problem with this is that it requires claimants to withdraw the whole amount, and not part, of each benefit payment at the same time, up to a limit of £600. This is potentially a lot of cash to withdraw in one go and leaves the claimant vulnerable to both robbery and temptation. Although it is estimated that only about 60,000 working-age claimants will be paid in this way, it is a cause for concern. Why is it not possible to draw part of the payment, as this would surely often be the responsible thing to do?

This brings me to the question of monthly payments, because if it were a more frequent payment, this would not be such an issue. Since noble Lords from across the House first raised concerns about monthly payments, evidence has been mounting to demonstrate just how un-claimant-centric this policy is. It is clear, from both government and independent research, that a significant number of claimants—particularly those out of work—see this as posing a real risk to their financial security. They fear it will upset their budgeting strategies and leave them running out of money.

In a DWP press release about early findings from the direct payment demonstration projects, the Minister acknowledged that the findings,

“show that most people on low incomes manage their money well.”

As SSAC has noted, one of the key lessons was that:

“Budgeting support needs to recognise that people on low incomes often budget on a fortnightly or weekly basis.”

Has it not occurred to the noble Lord that there is a connection here? As the demonstration projects show, many people on low incomes use fortnightly or weekly budgeting strategies as a means of managing their money well. Research shows that mothers, in particular, often take great pride in doing so. By forcing them to change their budgeting strategies, the Government could be setting them up to fail, a message that comes across clearly from the SMF study cited by my noble friend.

That is likely to have an adverse impact on morale, as well as living standards and, in doing so, could undermine the very objective of making claimants more work-ready. Where a more frequent payment is agreed, it will be paid in arrears, in addition to the new seven-day waiting period for some claimants. As the Women’s Budget Group has pointed out, this means that,

“claimants would be paid only half what they are owed for the month seven days after the end of that month and will then wait another half month for the remaining half. This would seem to contradict the Government’s wish to help those who find monthly payment most difficult and can result in hardship cases and requests for advance payments.”

Women’s Aid, to which I am grateful for its briefing, warns that most survivors fleeing domestic violence will have no alternative to claiming a budgeting advance. I appreciate why the Government are not keen to make a half payment in advance, but does the Minister accept that it would create fewer problems than paying in arrears?

As I said earlier, the question of payment into a single account versus a split payment raises rather different issues to that of monthly payment, even if both are likely to have adverse gendered impact. It is about access to, and control over, money rather than about managing it. The erroneous treatment of split payments as a management issue is illustrated by the guidance on when to review alternative payments. It says that the adviser,

“will decide that the claimant is now capable of managing the standard monthly payment.”

Where a split payment has been granted because of domestic violence, as opposed to a partner’s financial mismanagement, such advice is surely irrelevant. On what basis will a decision whether to continue a split payment be made? Does the Minister accept that there may be some situations where it cannot be treated as a temporary measure?

At present, the guidance seems to suggest that split payments will be an option only in cases of financial abuse or domestic violence. Can the Minister confirm that they will not necessarily be restricted to such cases? With whom will an adviser discuss this question and, even more importantly, the initial decision to make a split payment? Will it be both partners, and if so, will it be discussed separately or together, or will it be just the partner in need of diversion? If the latter, what will the other partner be told about the interview? How will advisers negotiate with gendered power relations which are likely to be at work between the partners to ensure that they have a true picture of the situation?

The department’s study of the implementation of JSA DB easement revealed a reluctance to disclose domestic violence to advisers, a concern that was raised by SSAC. This is likely to be the case here too. How will advisers detect domestic abuse, particularly when it is not manifested physically? Where a male partner uses the threat of abuse of various kinds to control a female partner, it could well be kept hidden. What steps can be taken to ensure that a split payment, which reduces the money paid to the perpetrator, does not provoke further domestic violence? Will the Minister indicate what training in financial abuse and domestic violence is proposed for universal credit advisers? More generally, what is the department’s response to SSAC’s recommendation for an effective training programme designed to ensure that advisers have a sufficient understanding and capability to manage the complex and dynamic nature of risk and vulnerability within universal credit?

It is important that the evaluation does not conflate the effects of wrapping up a number of benefits in one payment with payment into a single account under the rubric of a single payment, as did earlier departmental research.

At present, the guidance seems to suggest that split payments will be an option only in cases of financial abuse or domestic violence. Can the Minister confirm that they will not necessarily be restricted to such cases? It is not always possible to foresee situations in which they might be appropriate, and it would therefore be wrong to rule out other scenarios in advance. Indeed, Fran Bennett, to whom I am grateful for her briefing, suggested adding the scenario where a lone parent with children from a previous relationship takes an unemployed new partner into her rented accommodation. It may not be conducive to the success of a new relationship if one partner has control of all their joint universal credit.

I apologise for asking so many questions, but I cannot find the answers in the public advice and guidance. Reading that guidance, I am not convinced that the department fully appreciates how delicate and difficult an issue this is in any couple where there are difficulties of any kind with regard to control over money. Indeed, only last week, in discussing other regulations, the Minister drew attention to the extent of domestic abuse. If the fears of organisations such as Women’s Aid are realised, I suspect that the Government will have to revisit the policy and rethink the default position to ensure that both members of a couple have direct access to their share of universal credit, if they want it.

The Government’s refusal to listen to reason on these key payment issues could derail the successful implementation of universal credit, which is already looking somewhat shaky, to put it kindly. During the passage of the Bill the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said,

“if this is the nail in the shoe that gets the whole thing discredited because it does not work or gives rise to disturbing social consequences, we will have lost the great prize of universal credit that many of us want”.—[Official Report, 10/10/11; col. GC 434.]

We should remember the lessons from the child support legislation, when widespread consensus about key principles meant that insufficient scrutiny of the practical details led to one of the worst examples of social policy-making in recent history. I hope that even at this late stage, the Minister will take heed and remove the payments nail from the universal credit shoe.

[Lord German (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with some of the sentiments that we have just heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and with some of those that we heard in the opening speech of the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie. It seems that there are questions which need to be asked and questions which are still outstanding. However, perhaps some of the clues to the answers that we need to those questions can be found within the noble Lord’s opening speech. He said that we do not yet have the evidence from the rollout of universal credit to give us the learning pattern that we need to establish the route forward for some of the detailed questions which lie before us. They are real issues.

20:30

I draw back to the principles that lie behind the way in which you construct a process dealing with these three major, complex issues. It depends on which way you look through the prism or telescope. As was rightly said, they are all about changing behaviour and the way in which people do things. It is about where the balance lies. Is it in devising, on the one hand, a system where the needs of the most difficult determine its shape, or, on the other hand, do you run with the generality of people’s capabilities and then provide specific support for those who cannot manage, whether that is in the short or long term or transitionary?

I am drawn to the second of those approaches. That is how you encourage self-reliance and how people will be better able to manage their lives and futures: working with the flow and giving a helping hand to those who need it as appropriate. The difficulty, of course, is in where to draw the balance—the line between the one and the other—then in devising structures which are based on a general capability, and then in devising where the boundaries are in providing that assistance and support. From what I have heard so far in the debate, whatever support is provided it must be local, flexible and based upon a local assessment of where people are. Perhaps the Minister can tell me what those processes might be.

In annexe A to the universal credit guidance on budget support, we were given two tiers of categories under which people might need extra support and, possibly, alternative payment arrangements: highly likely factors in tier one and less likely factors in tier two. That was quite an extensive list of 22 different categories of people who will need some form of support with the way in which universal credit is rolled out. If you have a rigid, centralised structure which comes from decisions taken here in London, it will not necessarily meet the ambition of a flexible approach provided with local understanding and assessment.

I will also address some of the issues relating to how these payments will be made. One of the conflicting issues which has now arisen is the consequence for the Post Office card account, which the Government support and which provides a form of basic banking. One of the primary reasons that many in your Lordships’ House would like to see that sort of support continue is that it provides footfall across our local post offices. For many post offices, particularly in urban inner-city areas, that is the means by which they continue to survive. I hear of the Post Office card account plus, which is a trial going on in the east of England with an additional capability for providing jam pots by means of direct debits. Can my noble friend the Minister reassure me that the Post Office card account, or a replacement for it, will exist when the contract for that account comes to an end in March 2015, and that we are trying with the rollout of universal credit to provide the best facilities for people so that they can take advantage of cheaper budgeting arrangements by means of direct debits and other means of payment, particularly to energy companies?

On the issue of monthly payments, which is a major change, perhaps we should look back at the evidence from 2009 when the previous Government changed from a weekly to a fortnightly payment system. That was a doubling that we discussed during proceedings on the Welfare Reform Bill. What evidence came out of that shift? Did the department undertake any active research to find out whether the shift in 2009 had caused any behavioural change, whether there had been major difficulties as a result, whether people’s budgeting arrangements made them fall into arrears, whether they were unable to cope, and whether we could learn any lessons appropriate for the current regime?

After all, we know that claimants will face many management challenges and, where there is a clear need, they will require a level of assistance. It is in this area that I wonder whether Jobcentre Plus, given the strictures placed upon it, has the capability to handle that money advice. We are told in the information with which we have been provided that claimants will be referred to online, telephone or face-to-face support with expert providers at a national or local level, depending on the issue. I understand that this money advice has to be readily available but will it be available to people locally? Will the people making decisions on the back of the advice that people have been given be able to take those decisions and treat people differently? There are concerns about vulnerable people moving on to a monthly payment. It matters that we as a Government are able through Jobcentre Plus to manage the whole process in a local and flexible manner. That goes back to the first set of principles that I outlined.

In respect of payment to one member of the family—the split payments issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, raised—the decision on who will receive the funding in a household is crucial. Given that we have not had the rollout in any area where this policy will have an effect, has the Minister had any thought as to how the need to be flexible regarding who receives the payment will be dealt with? Who will make that decision? Will it be the household? If the household makes a nomination, how will we be certain that that is correctly the view of the whole household, given that there are sometimes pressures that may not be appropriate? Given that there are 12 categories of people who may be treated differently because of the need for alternative payment arrangements, how will that be taken into account locally and how will it be dealt with?

I should like to turn to the question of what level of arrears might be built up, on which we have some evidence from demonstration projects. Can my noble friend confirm that the findings in May 2013 from the department’s work on these trials show that the level of payments were on average 94%, with the lowest being 91% and the highest 97%? Whatever is the case—and the percentage figures are in the 90s—a whole range of people is falling into arrears and represent the gap between 94% and 100%. Can my noble friend provide us with more information on how that will work?

Finally, I reiterate the point about the rollout of universal credit. This is something in which we have all invested our support because it is a crucial change to the way in which we make more efficient and effective ways to support people. It is concerning that we are having to extend that rollout. May we have the latest information on how that will be projected into the future and when we can expect the regime to be fully in place?

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for bringing this matter to our attention again, and for the three powerful speeches which we have already heard. First, I want to emphasise my concern about that part of the Motion which speaks of the way in which universal credit awards paid in respect of children will not necessarily by default be paid to the main carer of the children and the disproportionate impact this will have on women. Through my work, I have become increasingly aware of the mother’s crucial role in the sorts of situations that we have been discussing over the past few minutes and indeed over the past few years. The mother needs to have proper control of the money which is coming for the benefit of the family and in respect of her children. I hope that in our discussions and the way in which the regulations and the whole universal credit system are worked out we shall be able to pay attention to the mother’s role, which in many circumstances is crucial when the whole family is under severe stress.

Secondly, I share the concerns which have been expressed by all previous speakers about the impact of the monthly payments system. It is already beginning to make it more difficult to control the finances of the family and, as the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, said, there is the danger of opening the way for payday lenders. We are already seeing considerable growth in the work of payday lenders. That in itself is not yet due to universal credit but my fear is that universal credit will become a factor as the monthly payment system comes into being.

I wanted to take up one particular detail of the regulations which fits in with the monthly payment concerns but is also specific. Regulation 26 of Part 2 speaks of the back-dating of universal credit and limiting that back-dating to some very narrow categories. This contrasts with the present situation for tax credits, which can be back-dated for up to 31 days so long as the claimant meets the rule of entitlement throughout that period.

I raise that question for two reasons. One is that many people will become eligible for universal credit at the birth of a new child—a particularly difficult moment to be making your claim. Secondly, the regulations acknowledge the possibility of the failure of systems. However, it will be hard to prove that failure if a claim is delayed or not made until three or four weeks after the claimant is entitled to make it, especially if that reason involves the inability of the claimant to access the system, whether due to a fault in the system itself or due to the claimant’s online skills.

What I would like the Minister to say to us is that one-month’s back-dating would be legitimate without a particular reason needed for it. That would reduce bureaucracy and would reduce the complexity of making claims. If he cannot do that, then at least there should be a back-dating for families who have become eligible for universal credit because they have had a new child and are busy with the celebration of its birth. That should happen without the requirement for “medical evidence” to demonstrate the incapacity to claim. Not getting online at the point when you are having a child seems to me to be a self-evident reason for delay in making your claim. There are far more important things to be doing on the day of the birth of your child, are there not?

Can the Minister clarify the circumstances under which a claimant is considered unable to make a claim online as a result of system failure, and whether that can include not just a direct failure of the system but also the difficulties that individuals are facing and will face in getting online to make a claim? I hope that the Minister will be able to give some reassurance so that people do not miss out on credits to which they are entitled by the regulations.

20:45

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, I will follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds in his point about going online. First, I want to say, as others have said, that I very much support universal credit and I am watching with wry horror now the number of people being taken to court for failure to pay the £2 or £2.50 owed on their council tax bills by virtue of the localised council tax system. One wishes that some other parts of the Government had listened to some of the debates that we had in Grand Committee on that subject.

Like others, I am concerned about where some of the cuts are going to fall. In particular, I remain worried by the disincentives to second earners, usually women, in couples whom we want to encourage to go back into the labour market. We increasingly make it less financially worth while that they should do so. I think that is very foolish indeed.

However, my biggest concern has been not just the payment problems, which my noble friends Lady Lister and Lord McKenzie have mentioned, but the assessment issues associated with them. Perhaps I may remind the noble Lord that, as far as I am aware, most of the pathway schemes and experiments so far have been with younger people in urban areas. They are more likely to be IT-literate and more likely to have access to IT facilities. I am chair of a housing association that runs across a rural county. A substantial proportion of my older tenants have no access to WPs. Of those who do, only 14%, when I had my last tenants’ conference, actually used them for financial matters, such as the handling of bank accounts and so on. In order for those other tenants to be able to claim universal credit, they have somehow to access a WP. I have four centres across the county of Norfolk—in King’s Lynn, Norwich, Dereham and Great Yarmouth, and possibly North Walsham, but we will see—in which we will set up local offices. There will be terminals and there will be people to guide people through their applications. That is fine, except that people may have to go on something like a 15-mile bus ride to make their application. Because it is a paperless system, they will not be able to correct any mistakes online. They will not be able to answer any queries about the information. They will not be able to follow it up because they will be back home.

I tried to see whether there was any way I could bring IT facilities to people in that situation. I considered, for example, whether I could provide terminals in people’s homes inexpensively, possibly through a leasing system. Yes, I could, except that those same tenants cannot afford to pay the broadband or dial-up charges. So I cannot put them online in their homes. I then thought about whether I could in some way get them smartphones to give them some online access. No, they cannot afford the charges of smartphones. So they cannot afford to go online. Indeed, in some parts of Norfolk you cannot even get access to broadband, but that is another matter. We have only 90% coverage, so sod the 10%. No doubt they will get their money somehow. None the less, in large parts of Norfolk, there will be a large number of people who have no access to terminals in their home or to a smartphone, who have no computer skills, who have to go into a local centre, and who, if any mistake is made, will have no ability to correct it.

You may think that assessment will be only once a year or once every six months and therefore this is a minor problem compared with the payment issues. I hope that is right, but one of the crucial reasons why the old CSA computer toppled over, which was at the core of the failure of the CSA to deliver the service it should have delivered, was that half of all lone parents had more than 12 changes of circumstances in a year. They were largely associated with changes in childcare at each holiday period because it did not fit the school’s working time or the mother’s work patterns. You can get real-time information from an employer about income, but you cannot get real-time information in the same way for ever-changing childcare bills. That means that that lone parent or that couple will have to reassess, reclaim and adjust their UC online as it is going to be paperless. Will the Minister tell me how I should respond to this? I have hundreds of tenants who at the moment have no IT skills, no access to gaining them, although I am trying to do crash courses where people are willing to take them, no terminals at home, no ability to afford dial up if it were to exist and no access to phones. How are they going to input the information they need to input to get the money they are entitled to? I would be glad of some help on this point.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)]

I shall make a short contribution to this important debate. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, for introducing it. Using a Motion of Regret is clunky, but this is important. I shall start with a question about parliamentary process. Things have changed since the old days. In my experience of parliamentary change of this kind, Bills were much less far reaching and were implemented over a much shorter timescale. After the six-month period of purdah, Ministers could always explain the unfolding of the regulations that flowed from the primary Act. We are getting to a stage where we are paying more attention to guidance rather than to statutory instruments. Statutory instruments are becoming almost as skeletal as the primary legislation. Therefore, how are parliamentarians able to keep up with what is going on, particularly when this is at least a five-year implementation phase? I think it would be a good trick if the Government could achieve it in a five-year period.

In parenthesis, I want to strengthen the Minister’s hand. Speaking for myself, I am much more interested in getting this universal credit reform right than I am in sticking to any timetable, political or otherwise. I have next to no interest in what will happen in May 2015 compared with this important legislation. It is transformational architecture, but because it is transformational, it is difficult to deliver for reasons that we have heard.

It is not just that it is taking five years to do. It is now intimately engaged with other government departments. HMRC is the prime one, but not the only one. There is also DCLG—is it DCLG or DCLM?

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

DCLG.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

Thank you. I am Scottish. Luckily it does not apply to me.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham]

You are lucky.

[Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope]

I know.

We have a lot of extra heavy lifting to do to try to make sense of what is going on. If that was not enough, we have for the first time a completely transformational application of ICT technology in digital delivery. All that means that this has to be done slowly and sensitively. I would like to think that the kind of flexibility that the Minister showed in the seminal Committee stage of the 2012 Act is still available to us because if he is not sensitive to the sort of things that are being raised he risks prejudicing public perception of what he is trying to do, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said.

I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of people who will need to take advantage of universal credit in future are literate and have internet access. We know from government research that the penetration of digital technology is increasing and will continue to do so. It is the two lowest deciles of income distribution in terms of household income that I continue to lose sleep about—people who earn less than £10,000 a year. We have been hearing about some of these acute problems and they are just as acute as they were in 2012. I understand that we have to hasten slowly to get this right, but we have to find a better way of informing Parliament about what is going on. I think the next set of detailed guidance that we can expect—my spies tell me and my spies are everywhere—will be in the late summer of 2014 and the next substantial rollout might not be until the spring of 2015. How are we, as parliamentarians, to keep up with what is actually going on? Reading the newspapers is not always helpful because, although they can highlight some of the problems, they do not tell the whole story.

I make a plea to the Minister. Can he think about ways of dealing with this other than Motions of Regret? It is a game we can all play, and we could do it every month if we had to, but I think there is a more grown-up way of accepting that, for the next two years and, indeed, for the rest of this Parliament, there will be periods when the Government could find a parliamentary opportunity for us to have a sensible discussion, be given reassurances and ask these detailed questions which are so important, not just to us, but to the people outside.

I agree with everything that has been said about the monthly payment, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister. That is probably my biggest worry. I know that she has more expertise than I about the split payments, but I listened carefully to what she had to say and I think that her questions deserve answers. The additional problem of behavioural change, on top of everything else, is something that is too dangerous, and I wish we were not doing it at all. Maybe we could do it in future, when this gets straightened out, but it is too risky to do it in this way.

My final point before I sit down, because it is late, is that the SSAC has done a very good job. I still remember the long look I got down the ministerial nose when I suggested this at the beginning. This was my idea, because I thought it would help. Luckily, the Minister eventually took my advice. The SSAC has done a remarkable job and I hope that the Minister will continue to involve it. Although it does not have any statutory control over guidance, if we get to the position where guidance is needed, such as in the definition of what is vulnerable, and we cannot get that clear with the stakeholders that the SSAC knows and works with so well, then we will be lost when this gets implemented. I hope that the Minister will give us an assurance that the SSAC will have a key and continuing role in this evaluation and monitoring process. Otherwise, it will be more difficult to achieve successfully.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

My Lords, I should genuinely like to thank everyone who has spoken today. I want to emphasise that I listen very closely to what noble Lords say in this House and, without shame, steal as many of the good ideas as I can. This is not just with a long nose, using SSAC, which has done an extraordinary job in helping us to sort out not just the regulations on universal credit but a lot of other things, too. I shall describe some of what we have been doing since we went through that committee and some of the ideas that we debated together then which I have tried to use and embed.

I hope also to allay some of the concerns expressed by noble Lords. When one has a new canvas, as we have here, one can worry about absolutely everything. It is important to be alert to the issues that one needs to worry about and then, as the evidence comes in, to see what the real problems are and to be able to move. We have laid out this evening a range of possible things that could go wrong. Some of them may go wrong and we will need to do something about them. Others may not emerge as issues, so it is important that we are watching this like a hawk.

21:00

I will take this opportunity to remind noble Lords of what we are trying to do with universal credit. It is replacing not a good system but a flawed system, which has a lot of problems. It is designed so that claimants can better understand what their benefit is and so that their incentives are improved. It is dynamic and responsive and it influences claimant behaviour—we make no apology for that—by helping to ensure that they can see that work is always a better option. It brings together in-work and out-of-work support into a single payment, in a way that is not the case today. That is at the heart of what we are doing to break down the barriers that stop many people taking work in the first place.

I will first touch on where we are with universal credit. A lot has been said about it in the press and by the National Audit Office, which the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, talked about. The National Audit Office said that further work and investment were required for full rollout; we know and acknowledge that. We are doing a pathfinder, which people are able to do online. Many more people than we expected as a proportion have done so, although noble Lords will not be slow to point out that they are a particular type of people. We have accepted the recommendations of the Major Projects Authority to review the IT and make it more flexible and secure, and we are looking very hard with GDS—the Government Digital Service—to see how we can get best value out of IT.

I need to clarify a point that has confused some people. When the NAO said that there was no clear idea how the system would work, it is very clear that it was not referring to the policy. We have done an enormous amount of work—indeed, noble Lords in this Chamber have done a lot of work—in making that clear. It was about the IT technology underlying it; that is where the issues are.

We have a pathfinder, which is up and working well. We go national this month. We start in Hammersmith in a few days and we will go forward with a further five jobcentres in the period up to next spring. Just as important as the pure universal credit is the rollout of key elements of universal credit, so every jobcentre will be using the claimant commitment by next spring. We are installing internet-access devices in 6,000 jobcentres across the country, which may be a solution to the problems that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, talked about. We have 11 in-work progression pilots up and running, which test ways to help claimants on low incomes increase their working hours in order to reduce their dependency on benefits.

We are right to go for a phased rollout to ensure that we test universal credit and the support available to vulnerable claimants every step of the way. We are working intensively, as noble Lords must imagine, to complete our rollout plans and we remain committed to delivering UC safely and securely over a four-year period to 2017. I echo what my noble friend Lord Kirkwood said about what was more important. I am not allowed to say that timetables are not important, because they are, but it is far more important that we do this safely and reliably and do not cause the kind of problems that noble Lords are worrying about when they think back to the CSA, for instance. We will make another announcement later in the autumn on further plans for the rollout.

We are doing other testing; the direct payment demonstration project has been referred to. We have also had 12 local authority-led pilots testing face-to-face support. We are expanding the credit union pilots and the testing of a personal planner to prepare claimants for universal credit in a live environment.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, asked about the claimants. Regrettably, we have a strict publication schedule; these are national statistics now, so the timing of publication of some of those details that noble Lords would love to hear about is such that we are aiming to start publishing at the end of this year, 2013, so there is not too long to wait.

My noble friend Lord German talked about the importance of local flexible support. Picking up many of the ideas that we were discussing in Committee, the framework around UC is certainly almost as important for the vulnerable as UC itself, and that is what the local support services framework is about.

In February, we published the principles of how those partnerships will work. This is something that we have not done as a country before, so we are really trying to pull in the support, looking at where we have overlaps and where we have gaps. We have had some extraordinarily close working partnerships between the Local Government Association, Scottish local authorities, the Welsh Local Government Association, the DWP, local authority representatives generally and third sector groups. We are really beginning to develop a plan and will issue the next iteration of that shortly, but that is going to be very much about the elements that we need to trial and test—detailed trialling and testing of all these different elements about which noble Lords are rightly concerned. We will incorporate into the update and test plan what we have been learning from the local authority-led pilots, the pathfinder and the direct payment demonstration projects, as well as feedback from staff.

I have talked about the extra 6,000 computer terminals that we will have in jobcentres, but one of the things that the local support service framework will be looking at very closely is the provision of the kind of access that the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, was concerned about.

The noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, raised the issue of monthly payments. He and other noble Lords have been worried about how that will work. One of the important things about it is what it does for the poverty premium. I am going to talk about that in a little while, but let me go back to the basics here.

With universal credit we are encouraging claimants to take responsibility for their financial affairs, particularly in relation to those issues that act as a barrier to work. About 75% of people have their wages paid monthly and that figure has been rising steadily over the past decade. In addition, more than 60% of those earning more than £15,000 per annum—which is where the majority of the UC working population sits—are now paid monthly. So this is about building a system for the majority with, as my noble friend indicated, support for those who need help to manage it. As noble Lords have pointed out, many claimants are currently paid multiple benefits: different amounts, different paydays, different frequencies, and that makes budgeting difficult. They may have learnt how to manage round it, but the cost of it is often the poverty premium.

The poverty premium is, essentially, paying more for essential goods and services because you are unable to commit to monthly direct payments or take advantage of offers and discounts. Let me give some examples. Some energy companies offer a discount of up to £100 for customers who pay using a monthly direct debit plan and mobile phone bills can be up to three times more expensive if using a pay-as-you-go plan. Financially excluded households also pay more for essential household goods because they are less likely to have savings to cover unexpected spending or be able to access affordable credit. As a simple example, the price of a washing machine shows that I could pay £317 if I bought it today from a major online retailer but if I went instead to a weekly hire-purchase scheme I would end up paying more than £1,000 for exactly the same product.

The poverty premium takes money away from the people who can least afford it. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, worries about the poverty premium as much as any other factor for these groups of people. If we can get it right, that is one of the most important and attractive features of paying people a proper amount of money monthly. It will help them change how they pay their bills; it will allow them cheaper tariffs for gas, electricity, mobile phones and other bills; it will help them develop financial capability and confidence and it will allow low-income households to build or improve credit ratings and gain access to affordable credit.

We have to recognise that some people will need help to budget and we will have a budgeting conversation with each claimant when they make a new claim, identifying what help and support they need and ensuring that safeguards are in place to help them manage their money. We will ensure that those responsible for children and housing payments are supported where necessary. Couples will decide which bank account their universal credit payment will be paid to but, in cases where couples cannot decide, we will make payment either to the main child-carer or, if there are no children, to the person responsible for paying the bills. We can, if necessary, split the payment within the household or make more frequent payments. I remind noble Lords that child benefit will continue to exist outside universal credit and will be paid to the main carer.

There is a concern that many claimants do not currently have access to a transactional bank account. I can reassure noble Lords that we already have a voluntary agreement with the major UK banks to offer basic bank accounts and we are working with the Treasury and the banking industry to review minimum standards for basic bank accounts. We are also consulting with financial providers across the private, social and third sectors to explore ways of making budgeting, or jam-jar, accounts more widely available.

The POCA contract expires in 2015 with an option to extend for two years. I can inform my noble friend Lord German that we are currently in discussion with the Post Office regarding the future of the service. We are committed to ensuring that claimants have access to appropriate financial and banking products, and will continue to work with the Post Office to develop its suite of products in line with claimant needs. We continue to work on the budgeting, or jam-jar, account, looking at a range of potential budgeting tools. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked about that.

21:15

I have approved a further investment of £38 million to help credit unions provide financial services for up to 1 million more consumers by March 2019. That could save low-income consumers up to £1 billion in loan interest payments. Clearly, I have a great concern about the payday lending industry. I am in discussion with regulators, in particular the FCA, about how to make sure that they do not undermine the position of low-income households going into universal credit.

On budgeting pressures and housing, I will emphasise why this is important. Monthly housing costs paid direct to claimants are a key to building up financial capability. Clearly, we cannot have a situation in which a barrier for someone moving from being out of work to being in work is the fact that they have to transform the way in which they pay their landlord. For claimants who genuinely cannot manage to pay their rent, we can make managed payments of rent to landlords to protect the tenancy. At the start of a claim, we will review the claimant’s financial capability, and we will look at it again if the claimant accumulates one month’s rent arrears as a result of persistent underpayment. At that stage, we will make an early intervention, reviewing what financial support they may need and making managed payments of rent to their landlord if necessary. If the claimant goes on to accumulate two month’s rent arrears, we will automatically pay the housing-cost element direct to the landlord, and cover the arrears through deductions from the universal credit.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, referred to the way in which the payments were made. A budgeting advance can be made, but clearly it is just an advance; it is not a question of getting half early and another half at the end of the month. It is half early, the full amount at the end of the month and then a very gradual repayment of the early advance. Therefore, the position is not the one that the noble Baroness envisaged.

On part-payment, we will have the ability to issue universal credit through a simple payment, as the noble Baroness requested. However, this will not be the right method of payment for the majority of claimants; we are looking for most people to be paid through a bank account, as they are already.

On demonstration projects, my noble friend Lord German made the point that the average collection rate was 94%, and that the rates were improving. I believe that most claimants will be able to manage their household bills. However, where they cannot, we have safeguards in place to protect the household’s tenancy and the landlord’s financial position.

We recognise the importance of safeguarding the welfare of tenant claimants who have incurred debts. Therefore, under universal credit, there will be a co-ordinated approach to making deductions, aimed at protecting the most vulnerable from financial hardship. Safeguards have been introduced, such as an overall maximum amount that can be deducted from someone’s universal credit each month, which equates to 40% of their standard allowance. This rate aligns with the amount that a claimant could receive under a hardship payment. If you look at the proportion of a standard payment, that boils down to a typical family of two parents and two children living in the rented sector seeing their overall payment decrease by a maximum of 13%.

My noble friend Lord German asked who gets alternative payment arrangements. We will consider information provided by claimants, advisers, third-party organisations and anyone who may support or assist the claimant. We will make the alternative payment arrangements on a case-by-case basis and not through a centralised or automated system. Decisions will be made with the claimant rather than for the claimant. It is not about having a central system.

I am running on a little long. If noble Lords would not mind me being another five minutes, I will go through some of the issues. I am conscious of the question about scarcity of information coming to noble Lords and ask their indulgence on that basis. I want to deal with as many of the issues as I possibly can.

On the questions about women, households with single women and coupled households are, on average, better off after the introduction of universal credit. It still encourages people to work and benefits claimants who find the existing system a barrier to work.

As my noble friend Lord German and the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, mentioned, a range of factors affect split payments: people with drug, alcohol and other addictions; learning difficulties; mental health conditions; temporary or supported accommodation; homelessness; severe debt problems; and domestic violence, which we have now defined in a much more satisfactory way. They do not make for an automatic switch to split payments or alternative payments, but mean that we have a basis on which to make a case-by-case consideration. On the issue of violence, we can take referrals from third parties such as support workers, landlords and others.

More generally, universal credit incentivises second earners to work, with the number of second earners who lose more than 70% of their earnings by moving into work being significantly reduced. I am not ruling it out on any fundamental ground; there is a complexity issue here, but there is also a cost issue, given that there is already an incentive there.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds raised backdating. We will expect households where there is a change of circumstances which means they become eligible for UC to make that claim as soon as possible. However, if they are in hospital or incapacitated we will consider a claim for backdating.

The system failure issue is about system failure, not about people not being able to work the system; the system has to be down. I remind noble Lords that we have telephone and face-to-face systems and home visits as part of our service. It is not an automatic, “you have to use the online system and that’s that”. There will be a tiered system, although we are looking to get as many people online as possible. Indeed, it is amazing how the digital approach is taking off. We are now looking at people using not computers but smart phones. In fact, the GDS is being redesigned for a phone not a computer because that is the latest technology.

I have committed to a very full programme of evaluation for universal credit. It will include studies of implementation covering themes such as customer, staff and stakeholder experience. We will ensure that we understand the impact of this reform on all types of claimants. We are currently evaluating the pathfinder, and through our work with claimants and external stakeholders, we are looking at a range of issues, including the impact of monthly payments and how people are budgeting. Clearly, early findings from that will inform the further rollout of universal credit.

We believe that universal credit is the right approach. Indeed, I hear from noble Lords in this Chamber that the main approach is seen as the kind of root-and-branch reform that we need in our basic welfare system. It will provide better work incentives, but it is vital that we build around it a system that protects the most vulnerable and works with universal credit. I commend these reforms to the House. I trust that my response has reassured noble Lords and that as a consequence the Motion will not be pressed.

I heard my noble friend Lord Kirkwood’s point about keeping the most informed and valuable audience in the country about this informed and in dialogue, and I will think about it pretty hard.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

I am very sorry to prolong matters. I quite understand that it has not been possible to answer all the questions asked, but will the Minister undertake to write to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate with detailed responses to the questions that have been asked?

[Lord Freud]

I have tried to answer absolutely everything. I will double check. If I have missed anything, I will write on it, but my answers are on the record. I think that I answered virtually everything, but if there is anything more, I will make sure that I cover it.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who spoke in this debate. It has been a debate of some quality and detail. I also thank the Minister for his very detailed reply. Like my noble friend, I think it would be good to look at the record to see what, if anything, might be outstanding. We acknowledge that the Minister listens to the House and certainly responds to the House—for 28 minutes on this occasion.

We welcome the announcement about credit unions. That is good news. As the Minister will, I hope, have understood, we are on the same page as far as support for universal credit is concerned. We are all signed up to a single in and out of work payment. We welcome the fact that the Minister has accepted the Major Projects Authority’s recommendations. On that, and touching on a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, about helping us keep abreast of what is happening, there was a contrast between our perception about where universal credit was when we went on holiday and the rather rude awakening of the NAO report. I hope there is a way of smoothing that in future.

We have news about a further six pathfinders starting this month. The scope of the people involved in them is still a little unclear, as is whether it is still the fairly narrow category that we started with in April and, in particular, whether it excludes people who rent their accommodation. On the pathfinders—this again touches on one of the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood—we do not want this to be rushed; we want it to be right. As I understand it, some of the early pathfinders are focused on helping subsequent policy development. That is why it is important that there is some co-ordination.

I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Ripon and Leeds for his support. We are on the same page in concerns about payday lenders. The right reverend Prelate did get an answer about the backdating of universal credit. Whether it is sufficient, he may wish to reflect. He made the telling point about the crucial role of mothers in the evaluation and understanding of how universal credit should work.

21:30

My noble friend Lady Hollis, as ever, put in a plea for council tax to be taken back in by the Government. Knowing my noble friend, this will be a recurring theme in our debates between now and goodness knows when—until Mr Pickles gives in. However, my noble friend did raise an important point about paperless transactions, how those work, how people correct the position, particularly when they are remote from IT access, particularly in rural areas.

The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, talked about getting it right and about guidance being increasingly where the detail is. It used to be that the primary legislation was the framework and then the regulations would flesh that out in some detail. We are now shunting it further down the process. If there are ways of informing us along the way more effectively then that would be very helpful.

My noble friend Lady Lister, as ever, made a powerful and telling contribution. She should never apologise for asking questions. What is important is that we get the answers—and I accept that we have had a raft of answers tonight. Whether we have had them all, we will have to read in the record. The points my noble friend made about the challenge to how the jam-jar accounts are working, how the system works for couples, and how one detects issues of domestic abuse and violence at home are really important ones and illustrative of the sort of detail that has to be outlined in the guidance on how it is going to work in practice. My noble friend also made the point that focusing on principles is fine but overlooking how it will work in practice is the slippery slope.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord German, also recognised that there are questions to be asked about the monthly payment issue, particularly about the capability of Jobcentre Plus, again an issue about which we have common concerns. He talked about arrears in the demonstration project. As I understand it, these are demonstration projects about monthly payment of housing benefit. Therefore, that is not a replica for monthly payments of universal credit because alongside the housing benefit payment there is the usual sequence of other payments. Now, how much one learns from that in developing the rest of the system, I am not sure. Having said all of that, I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.

House adjourned at 9.33 pm.