House of Commons

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

Tuesday 14 January 2014

The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock

Prayers

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to promote awareness of atrial fibrillation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

NHS England is responsible for promoting awareness of atrial fibrillation among health care professionals, and the new NHS improvement body, NHS Improving Quality, is encouraging GPs to detect and manage atrial fibrillation by promoting the use of GRASP-AF risk assessment tools. My hon. Friend will know about that as it is supported by the all-party group on atrial fibrillation, which recently published a helpful report on AF. I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend and his colleagues on that.

[Glyn Davies]

What steps are the Government taking to improve the uptake of National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence-approved medicines and alternatives to warfarin for the treatment of atrial fibrillation to reduce the incidence of AF-related stroke?

[Jane Ellison]

NICE has issued technology appraisal guidance to the NHS on the use of newer anticoagulants—I think there were three in 2012—for the treatment of atrial fibrillation. NHS commissioners are legally required to fund treatments recommended by NICE in its technology appraisal guidance.

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

Mr Speaker, there is a crisis here. The fact is that half of those who suffer from AF—as a member of my family does—do not know they are suffering from it and are not diagnosed. If they are not diagnosed, that leads to great expense to the health service because they are very prone to having a stroke. Even when doctors know about AF, they say inappropriately, “Have an aspirin as part of your medication.” Some 25% of doctors recommend aspirin, and that is very dangerous. When will the Minister wake up? AF is a dangerous condition and it is very expensive.

[Jane Ellison]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is a serious condition, which is why GPs need to take it extremely seriously and ensure that they look at the tests, and particularly at those who are susceptible to AF. We will get new NICE guidance in the summer on some aspects of self-monitoring, which will be an opportunity to remind all clinicians of their responsibilities.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

There is a community resuscitation strategy for the whole of Northern Ireland, and my constituents in Strangford, the Ards peninsula and Crossgar have examples of that. Will the Minister consider a community resuscitation strategy for England and Wales, similar to the one we have in Northern Ireland? It would help in this case.

[Jane Ellison]

I am happy to look at that. It is obviously an NHS England responsibility, but I will ensure that I draw its attention to the scheme that the hon. Gentleman mentions in Northern Ireland.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

2. What steps his Department has taken to ease the short and long-term effects of winter pressures on the NHS.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

12. What steps his Department has taken to ease the short and long-term effects of winter pressures on the NHS.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

In the short term, a record £400 million has been assigned to help the NHS through this winter, with £250 million announced in August, much earlier than before. For the long term, we are restoring the link between GPs and vulnerable older patients by bringing back named GPs for all over-75s—something that was broken in 2004.

[Chloe Smith]

I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. My constituents, including a family who came to my surgery on Saturday, are frustrated by the brick walls that sometimes seen to exist between different bits of the health service, and which are all the worse in urgent and traumatic winter cases. Different health services in Norwich have come together in Operation Domino to improve services in the face of demand, and they have used winter funding money to run a new style of urgent care unit at Norfolk and Norwich hospital. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Norfolk is leading the way?

[Mr Hunt]

I congratulate the health services in Norfolk—and indeed in Norwich—on what they are doing to break down those barriers. That is the key issue, and this year I am working closely with the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), to merge the health and social care systems—a £4 billion merger—to ensure that medical records can be shared across all the different systems, and that there is a named accountable doctor for the entirety of people’s time outside hospital. I hope that will make a difference in Norwich as elsewhere.

[Mark Menzies]

My constituency has a high proportion of elderly people. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to reduce admissions of elderly people to hospital this winter?

[Mr Hunt]

We are doing a very great deal and the £400 million announced to help the NHS through the winter is a record amount. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that a lot of that money is being spent not inside A and E departments but in the community to help GP practices, and to try to recognise properly that for many older people—particularly vulnerable people with dementia —a busy A and E department is not the best place to go when something goes wrong, and if we possibly can we should avoid it.

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

Is it the case that worries about winter pressures are greatest in A and E, and that the crisis in A and E is entirely of the coalition’s own making? Ministers have been warned about cuts to elderly care and letting GPs off the hook on office hours and opening in the evenings and at weekends, and about the increasing costs of locum staff. They have been warned but they have not acted. What will the Secretary of State do now, late as it is, to ensure that A and E has enough doctors to see patients safely through the winter?

[Mr Hunt]

The Opposition try to talk up a crisis in A and E, but unfortunately, such talk does not withstand the facts. Let us look at the facts on how A and E is doing and perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will understand. We are seeing 2,000 more people every single day within the four-hour target than were seen when Labour was in power; we have 20% more A and E consultants; and the waiting time to be seen in A and E is half what it was under the Labour Government. However, we are doing more: we are addressing the long-term pressures in A and E, including the barriers to the social care system, which were mentioned in an earlier question, and the lack of good primary care alternatives. That is why we are restoring named GPs for the over-75s.

[David Wright (Telford) (Lab)]

A and E is in crisis across the country, but getting people out of hospital in a suitable time frame is also important. What is the Secretary of State doing to better connect the health service with other social care providers? Does he acknowledge that, in places such as Telford and Wrekin, there has been a substantial cut in continuing health care funding, which means the system is in danger?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Did I hear a mention of winter in the context of this question?

[David Wright]

In the winter, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Hunt]

Thank you for that guidance, Mr Speaker. Let me assure you that this winter, a lot is happening in Telford to break down the barriers between the health and social care systems. One big change we are championing—it is starting to happen for the first time—is a seven-day social care system, so that hospitals can get people assessed and discharge them at weekends. With respect to the hon. Gentleman, if he looks at the facts, he will see that that is beginning to happen in a way that it did not when Labour was in power. He should welcome it.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the planning for, and the extra resources he has committed to, relieving winter pressures in A and E departments. What effect does he expect the additional combined budget for health and social care to have on admissions to A and E, particularly of older people?

[Mr Hunt]

We know that every year, 1.2 million of 5.2 million admissions to hospitals are avoidable if we have better alternatives in the community. The Government believe that restoring that personal link between doctors and the people on their lists—the people in their communities—who could often be much better looked after outside hospitals is the way to deal with that. That is why we are making that major change to the GP contract—it is the biggest change since named GPs were removed in 2004. That will benefit my hon. Friend’s constituents and those of all hon. Members.

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

Before Christmas, the Secretary of State said that the A and E crisis is behind us. However, NHS data released last Friday show that patients have just experienced the worst week in A and E so far this winter. The A and E target was missed; 103 trusts failed to meet their individual target; and, shockingly, more than 5,000 patients were left waiting on trolleys for more than four hours—more than double the number in the previous week. The Secretary of State asks us to look at the facts, but those are the facts. They are apparent to all except, seemingly, him. Is he really still of the view that the crisis is behind us?

[Mr Hunt]

Let us look at those facts for last week and compare them with the facts in the identical week when the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), the shadow Health Secretary, was Secretary of State. When he was Secretary of State, 362,462 people were seen within four hours. Last week, we saw 365,354 people—3,000 more people—within the target. A and E is doing better under this Government than it ever did under Labour.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

3. How many mesothelioma cases are being treated by the NHS; what strategies have been adopted for treatment and prevention of mesothelioma; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

In 2011, 2,238 people were diagnosed with mesothelioma. NHS England has set out guidance on the diagnosis, treatment, care and support of patients with that serious disease. That will deliver access to high-quality and consistent services across England. Both clinicians and patients are involved in the development of the guidance. UK legislation requires the active management of asbestos in buildings to prevent further exposure.

[Mr Brown]

The number of full-blown mesothelioma cases is expected to peak next year and then decline. The Department of Health is best placed to say whether that is happening. Will the Minister assure the House that the Department is carefully monitoring the situation and is in close contact with the Health and Safety Executive with a view to ensuring that our public protection measures are adequate for the challenge we face?

[Jane Ellison]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is a very serious situation, and we of course keep a very close eye on it. Higher-risk work with asbestos must be licensed by the HSE, which has recently published an updated approved code of practice, “Managing and Working with Asbestos”. The code provides guidance and practical advice to companies, because we do not want more people being exposed in the way that so many have been in the past.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

There is particular interest in this dreadful disease in my constituency because of the location of a factory that used asbestos. Can the Minister assure me that further research into treatment for this condition will be carried out in conjunction with research institutions in Wales and in conjunction with the Welsh Government?

[Jane Ellison]

Obviously, health is a devolved matter, but research goes across the United Kingdom. In 2012-13, we spent £2.3 million on research into this disease through the National Institute for Health Research. The hon. Gentleman may be aware that during the passage of the Mesothelioma Bill, which has recently passed through this House, ministerial colleagues agreed to write to the Association of British Insurers. The Department of Health is seeking to set up meetings with the ABI and the British Lung Foundation to explore how insurers can individually sponsor specific mesothelioma research.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

4. How much has been spent on medical locums in accident and emergency departments in each year since 2009-10.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

Staff employment is a matter for NHS trusts and we do not collect that data centrally. We recognise the challenge in recruiting and retaining A and E doctors, who can take up to six years to train. However, growth in the medical work force has kept pace with the increase in attendances since 2010.

[Valerie Vaz]

I am sure the Minister will agree that it is a grotesque situation where a trainee doctor working as a locum is paid as much as a fully qualified doctor. That is the result of not listening to legitimate concerns during the passage of the Health and Social Care Act 2012, so will the Minister not blame women in the work force or overpaid doctors but do something quickly to stop this drain on public money?

[Dr Poulter]

I hope the hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that under the current Government we have reduced locum costs to the NHS by about £400 million. That is, of course, good medical practice: it is good for patients to receive better continuity of care from permanent doctors. In A and E, specifically, we have seen the work force grow by more than 350 since 2010.

[Simon Kirby (Brighton, Kemptown) (Con)]

Last week, my son had to visit A and E in Brighton and spent the week in hospital. Will the Minister join me in thanking the hard-working doctors and nurses, including locums, in Brighton for their outstanding care and dedication, and for the excellent service they provide?

[Dr Poulter]

Yes. My hon. Friend will be aware that I have a particular knowledge of his local trust. I pay tribute to the dedication of the many high-quality front-line staff working there, and to those who put in extra hours to work as locums, usually from within the existing trust work force, who often have to cover maternity leave and other periods of staff sickness.

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

17. The Minister talks complacently about improvements in A and E consultants, but in Queen’s hospital in Romford only seven of the 19 posts have permanent A and E medical doctors in post. Surely he is fiddling while Rome is burning. People are not getting the service they need, while he is spending a fortune on locums.

[Dr Poulter]

The important point the hon. Lady has to remember is that it takes six years to train an A and E consultant, so it would be much better to put the question about advanced work force planning to the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), rather than to members of this Government. Since we have taken charge of medical education and training, the number of those entering acute common training—those who may go on to become A and E consultants—has increased. We are now seeing a complete fill rate for those entering that training—something that the previous Government were not able to achieve.

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

How much of this difficulty might be caused by excellent staff working part time in accident and emergency? On a recent visit to the emergency department at York hospital trust, I was struck by the excellent work done by doctors, many of whom, by choice, worked long shifts three days a week. Will my hon. Friend look into this matter?

[Dr Poulter]

I will certainly do that and write to my hon. Friend to reassure her, although members of staff who work part time often put tremendous effort into their work, and we often get well rewarded by the broader experience they bring as a result of being part time, so there are benefits to having part-time staff in the NHS.

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

Figures out today show a staggering 60% rise in spending on locum A and E doctors under this Government—in some trusts, 20 times more—because they cannot recruit staff. It has now come to light that Ministers were warned about this problem three years ago. Dr Clifford Mann, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, said that when he tried to raise this issue, he was left feeling like

“John the Baptist crying in the wilderness”.

Why did Ministers ignore an explicit warning in 2011 from the top A and E doctor in the country?

[Dr Poulter]

The first warnings about the challenges facing A and E were put to the previous Government in 2004. The shadow Secretary of State was a Health Minister in 2006 and Secretary of State in 2009-10, but he failed to act adequately to deal with the shortages. It takes six years to train A and E consultants, so it will take six years to deal with the problem. The good news is that under this Government enough doctors are entering acute care common stem training to fill the places available.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not wish to be unkind to the hon. Gentleman, but his answers almost invariably suffer from the failing of being far too long. It is nothing to be smug about; he really has to improve.

[Andy Burnham]

Mr Speaker, sometimes it takes a long time to rewrite history, which was what the Minister was just doing. The first warnings did not come in 2004. Dr Mann said:

“The first warning signs were three years ago when we failed to recruit 50% of our posts. Those concerns were raised at the time.”

Why does he believe his concerns were ignored? He blames “decision-making paralysis” caused by a top-down reorganisation no one wanted and nobody voted for. Ministers dismantled work force planning structures, making redundant the very people who could have done something to stop the locum bill spiralling out of control. Will he now concede that breaking the coalition agreement promise of no top-down reorganisation has weakened the NHS and made the A and E crisis worse—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

We’ve got it. We’ve got to have an answer.

[Dr Poulter]

It is the right hon. Gentleman who needs a lesson about not rewriting history. Dr Mann said that this issue had been building for the past decade. When the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State and before that a Minister in the Department, he failed to make those long-term work force decisions and also signed up to the European working time directive, which exacerbated the problems on medical rotas. Those were decisions that he made. He created this crisis; we are fixing it and increasing the number of doctors working in A and E.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

5. What steps he is taking to promote the health and well-being of older people.

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

We will ensure that everyone over the age of 75 has a named GP responsible for delivering proactive care for our most vulnerable older citizens in the best tradition of family doctors. Through our £3.8 billion better care fund, we are also merging the health and social care systems to provide more joined-up health and social care.

[Jesse Norman]

Dementia is a terrible blight for an increasing number of older people. Last week, I had the great privilege of opening Henffordd Gardens in Hereford, a supported living scheme that will allow dementia sufferers in my constituency to enjoy a better quality of life for longer and is a model of good practice for the country. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating Herefordshire Housing and all those who have worked so hard to bring this plan to fruition?

[Mr Hunt]

I absolutely join my hon. Friend in congratulating Herefordshire Housing. One of the key things about people with dementia is that relatively small adjustments to their homes can make it possible for them to live at home healthily and happily for much longer under the care of a husband, wife or partner without having to go into residential care. Those are precious years that we should treasure and do everything we can to facilitate, so I am delighted that that is happening, and he will be pleased to know that, thanks to the Government’s initiative, it is happening all over the country.

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

Figures from the House of Commons Library show that £1.8 billion has been cut from social care budgets since 2010. Does not that imply that delayed discharge among older people will be driven upwards because the finances are just not there to look after them?

[Mr Hunt]

I think the figures the hon. Gentleman is talking about are efficiencies and not actual cuts. [Laughter.] Well, Members should look at the figures carefully. If they are the figures from the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, that is what they will find. If the hon. Gentleman looks more specifically at the figures related to delayed discharges, he will find that, year on year, the number attributable to the social care system went down by 50,000 bed days in the last year.

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

One of the principal ways of promoting the health and well-being of older people in my constituency would be a rapid sign-off for the rebuild of the Townsland hospital complex. I recognise that the decision lies with NHS Property Services, but will the Secretary of State join me in using whatever influence we have to put pressure on it to get a move on?

[Mr Hunt]

I have spoken to my hon. Friend about the scheme, which sounds excellent. Obviously we want to encourage it, while working within the correct processes. The Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), has agreed to meet him to do all we can to speed it along.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

One of the things that some older people would like is to move closer to their families. Will the Secretary of State update me on what discussions he is having with the Scottish Government on the portability of home care packages across the border?

[Mr Hunt]

We are very keen to make home care packages much more portable. There are problems with home care packages across the board, particularly the 15-minute slots that, frankly, are completely unacceptable. We are definitely looking at that issue and I encourage the hon. Lady to talk to the Minister responsible for care services, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), to get more details on the progress we are making.

[Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) is the most important single question facing the health and care system? Do not too many elderly people—the greatest single source of growing demand on the health and care system—experience our system not as a national health service but as a national illness service? Is not the challenge facing the system to ensure that, as people live longer, we enable them to get greater quality out of those extended life years?

[Mr Hunt]

As so often, my right hon. Friend encourages us to raise our heads above the horizon and to look forward. He is absolutely right. There will be 1 million people with dementia by 2020 and, as he knows, most of those will have other long-term conditions alongside dementia. The name of the game will be looking after people so they can live healthily at home, which will be the focus of health policy.

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

Regular social interaction and a comfortable home environment are critical to the health and physical and mental well-being of older people. Has the Secretary of State carried out any assessment across Government or within his own Department of the effect of cost of living pressures and cuts in local services on the home environment, and on older people?

[Mr Hunt]

We are very conscious of that, which is why we introduced the triple lock on pensions and protected pensioners from the brunt of the cuts that this Government, sadly, have had to make to deal with the deficit we inherited.

[Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

Dementia is the disease that people over the age of 50 say they fear the most and it is one of the biggest challenges for our society and for our health and social care systems. One of the ways to meet that challenge is through research, and the coalition Government is to be commended for the doubling of spending on research into dementia by 2015. However, it will take another decade, until 2025, for this Government or a future one to double it again. Will he reconsider that? Surely there needs to be greater ambition and greater pace to deliver the cures, the solutions and the prevention we need.

[Mr Hunt]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his work on dementia when he was working at the Department of Health. We are doing our bit as a country but we will not be able to do it on our own. Dementia is an incredibly difficult disease to crack, which is why, in December, the Prime Minister hosted a G8 summit to encourage other leading countries to increase their investment in dementia. We secured a commitment that they would significantly increase that investment and we want to encourage the private sector to do the same.

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

6. When he expects to publish a revised adult autism strategy for England.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

The Department of Health is currently leading a review of the 2010 adult autism strategy for England, “fulfilling and rewarding lives”, and we will publish a revised strategy by the end of March.

[Angela Smith]

Given some of the difficulties encountered by local areas in developing and sharing innovative practice in progressing the strategy he has just talked about, what consideration has the Minister given to the National Autistic Society’s proposal for an innovation fund as laid down in its “Push For Action” report?

[Norman Lamb]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The National Autistic Society is doing fantastic work, working closely with the Government. It has put this idea forward and we are considering it seriously; it has real merit. We shall announce our decisions when we announce the results of the consultation in March.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

What plans does my hon. Friend have to use the review as an opportunity to bring forward programmes that will increase autism awareness among the general public?

[Mr Buckland]

My hon. Friend raises an incredibly important point. Awareness is still far too low. We are now in a position where the legislation is in a good place and we have a good strategy, now being reviewed. There remains, however, an awful lot of work to do on implementation on the ground and on making a real difference to the lives of people with autism.

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

7. What representations he has received on IT and data security issues relating to the GP extraction service; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

Sharing and linking GP and other data—lawfully, securely and appropriately—helps to improve care and provides a solid basis for research to benefit everyone. In addition to more than 100 items of correspondence on the GP extraction service received since July 2013, the Department of Health has also had representations on these issues from the Solicitor-General.

[Chi Onwurah]

I strongly support the better use of data and ICT to improve national health services, but it must be done securely and with informed patient consent, especially when the data are to be sold on. Yet the Health Secretary admits that he has not carried out any risk assessment of the move to a paperless NHS. Has a risk assessment been carried out for the extraction service and, if so, will he commit to publishing it and any recommendations made?

[Dr Poulter]

We have, of course, constantly assessed it. I hope the hon. Lady is not criticising the principle of improving and joining up care through better passing of data between services, which obviously has to be a very good thing. Let me reassure her that making available patient-identifiable information to third parties without the patient’s consent or on some other legal basis would be illegal. Information is held securely.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I congratulate Ministers on the reforms to open data and transparency, which have been a powerful catalyst for accountability and improvement in the health service—in particular, the care.data reforms. The Minister will be aware of my ten-minute rule Bill on the subject. Will he give us some assurance on the steps that the Department is taking to ensure the integration of data between the care and the NHS sector?

[Dr Poulter]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that the absolute heart of what we are doing on joining up data is ensuring that we join up data better and promote integration. Some of that will come from the £3.8 billion we are providing for more joined-up and integrated care between health and social care as part of our integrated care fund, or better care fund as it is now termed.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

But why is it harder to get a GP appointment now than it was five years ago?

[Dr Poulter]

I think the hon. Lady will find that it was getting harder under the previous Government. It was not helped by the fact that, as we know, although it was not the fault of GPs, the contract that GPs were presented with by the previous Government made it difficult for many patients in many parts of the country to access primary and community care out of hours.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

8. What progress his Department has made on introducing a cap on care costs.

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

Everyone will be protected against catastrophic costs by the insurance that, in line with the Dilnot commission recommendations, the cap provides from April 2016. We are currently considering the responses to the recent consultation on how the cap will work, and will publish draft regulations and guidance later this year.

[Damian Hinds]

Thanks to tough decisions from this Government, we can look forward to a time when people will no longer have to sell their home to afford care, but what can be done to raise awareness of this landmark policy so that older people, and indeed younger people, can be reassured?

[Norman Lamb]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and I am immensely proud that this coalition Government are reforming a grossly unfair system—something that should have happened a long time ago and is massively overdue. This Government completely recognise the absolute importance of an awareness-raising campaign, which will be carried out by local government, national Government and the financial services industry.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Ministers have repeatedly claimed that no one will pay more than £72,000 in care costs, but given that the cap will be based on the rate local authorities charge for care and not the actual amount people have to pay, will the Minister confirm that people will have to pay more than £72,000 and that the so-called cap is not a cap at all?

[Norman Lamb]

People can always choose to spend more than local authorities deem it necessary to spend in order to secure care. However, we are implementing exactly the scheme that Andrew Dilnot recommended, and when he announced his proposals they were welcomed by the hon. Gentleman’s own party as a significant advance.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

9. What steps he plans to take to improve the quality of health care provision in the east midlands.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

Clinical commissioning groups in the east midlands will receive increases in funding in 2014-15. Specifically, Lincolnshire West CCG will receive an increase from £1,111 to £1,124 per head of population, and Lincolnshire East CCG will receive an increase from £1,249 to £1,258 per head.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Does the Minister recall the very worrying Keogh report, published last year, which showed that Lincoln hospital in particular had a higher than average mortality rate? Some of us felt that if we had a stroke or a heart attack, it would be a lot safer for us to be taken to the nearest big city, such as Leicester or Nottingham. Will the Minister join me in welcoming the fact that Lincoln hospital has made progress since then, and is now expected to have a below-average mortality rate?

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that the Government have taken seriously the need to deal with poor care where it exists. We have proudly taken a stand on that. It is also important for hospitals to understand that although they are making progress, there is still much more work to be done. I am sure that my hon. Friend and I are both keen to support the Care Quality Commission, Monitor and other regulators in order to ensure that care continues to improve in Lincolnshire.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

There are currently 28,000 diagnosed diabetics in the city of Leicester, and it is clear that the whole of the east midlands—indeed, the whole country—faces a diabetes epidemic. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the CCGs and health and wellbeing boards in the east midlands work together and focus on prevention?

[Dr Poulter]

That is a very good question. Local health and wellbeing boards are an excellent vehicle for the adoption of a more joined-up approach throughout health care, enabling other key players in the health and wellbeing sector to drive forward improvements. It is for the boards to consider the local issues outlined by the right hon. Gentleman, such as increasing obesity and other public health challenges, and to ensure that they work with and direct funding towards local communities. The Government have provided 40% of their public health funding for that purpose.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

My constituency is served by the Yorkshire and East Midlands ambulance services. Could we not make better use of our ambulance services and benefit those who require emergency admission by enabling paramedics to convey fewer patients and provide more care from the back of ambulances? I realise that that will probably necessitate tariff reform.

[Dr Poulter]

It is true that many parts of the medical and health care work force can contribute to the delivery of high-quality care, and paramedics have an opportunity to do that. As part of our “Refreshing the mandate for Health Education England” initiative, we will be considering how we can make progress in that regard during the coming months and years.

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

I wish you and Ministers a happy new year, Mr Speaker. We certainly hope that it is a much happier new year for NHS patients.

In the last 52 weeks, almost two in 10 patients who arrived in accident and emergency units at the University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust waited for more than four hours. In 2011, the local risk register for Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland primary care trust cluster warned that the Government’s reorganisation of urgent care services would lead to the

“risk of…inability to develop a resilient, predictive, high quality, Urgent and Emergency Care System.”

Given warnings from local risk registers about the disastrous impact of the Government’s reorganisation, and following the worst week of the winter so far for accident and emergency services, will the Secretary of State come clean, act transparently, and publish the warnings contained in the national risk register?

[Dr Poulter]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that the last Government never published risk registers. The policy that we have adopted is therefore entirely consistent with theirs. However, as the hon. Gentleman will recognise, it is not for Whitehall to micro-manage local commissioners and health care services. Decisions of that kind need to be made locally, by local commissioners working with patient groups in the best interests of patients and local communities.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What plans he has for regulation of the counselling and therapy professions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

We support the system of accredited voluntary registration established by the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care. It has already accredited counselling and psychotherapy registers and others are seeking accreditation.

[Geraint Davies]

But the Minister knows that under this Government the number of people referred to psychotherapists and counsellors has tripled to 1 million at a cost of £400 million, and some of them are faced with so-called gay to straight conversion therapy. When will he support my Bill to regulate psychotherapists and ban so-called “gay cures”, which cause enormous trauma among their victims and are being promoted this Thursday at a big conference in Westminster?

[Dr Poulter]

As I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware, the reason there have been increased referrals to therapists is that this Government are investing in early intervention and ensuring we invest in improving access to the psychological therapies programme so we can get to people with mental health problems much earlier and give them better support before they reach the point of crisis.

If I may beg your indulgence for one second, Mr Speaker, on the hon. Gentleman’s specific point about gay to straight conversion therapy, I also find that absolutely abhorrent in principle, but the issue is—it is an important issue and he should listen to this—that if we were to ban or put in place regulations on that it may have unintended consequences. That may stop counsellors practising who are supporting people coming to terms with their sexuality. That is an important service, and I hope we can support it on both sides of this House.

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

11. What assessment he has made of the effect of social care budget changes on the number of accident and emergency attendances.

[Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

13. What assessment he has made of the effect of social care budget changes on the number of accident and emergency attendances.

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

16. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of social care budget changes on accident and emergency attendances.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

Although councils have reduced social care budgets, the evidence suggests that this is not having an impact on the NHS. In fact, the data published by NHS England show that councils are getting better at getting people out of hospital at the appropriate time.

[Grahame M. Morris]

The National Audit Office reports that cuts to social care led to nearly 500,000 delayed bed days in accident and emergency in 2012-13, so will the Government see sense and commit to investing in lowering the eligibility threshold to moderate, ensuring that older and disabled people’s needs in Easington and throughout the country can be met in their community so they do not need to present to A and E causing further pressures on it?

[Dr Poulter]

Taking the hon. Gentleman’s question in the spirit he intends, I think there is a misunderstanding of the statistics. We need to reduce the pressure on A and E, and evidence from NHS England already shows that improvements in how social care works with the NHS over this Parliament are delivering improvements to care. In 2011-12 there were about 523,000 bed days lost because of delays attributable to social care, but in 2012-13 the number had fallen to 476,000, a drop of nearly 50,000. That shows that social care is working well to reduce pressure on A and E.

[Robert Flello]

I am absolutely amazed at the answer the Minister has just given. Stoke-on-Trent, which, despite the local authority having to cut a third of its budget, has managed to make cuts—or efficiency savings as the Government would call them, of course—and move money into social care. Despite that, however, it still has less to spend this year than it had just three years ago, and that is resulting in people not getting social care because of cuts to the budget and to eligibility. When is the Minister going to wake up and do something about it?

[Dr Poulter]

There is always a lot of political smoke around this, but spending has roughly been flat in cash terms according to the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services survey and councils are budgeting to spend more this year than they were last year on social care. In addition, we are setting up the integrated care fund of £3.8 billion to better join up health and social care, and that will help to improve the care available to patients as well as reduce pressure on budgets.

[Barbara Keeley]

But Government budget cuts have forced Salford local authority to change its eligibility criteria. For 1,400 people it is going to be zero-day social care, not seven-day social care, and even our excellent Salford Royal hospital is going to struggle when those 1,400 people find that the hospital is the only option for them. Age UK says these cuts make “no financial sense” and are “morally wrong”. When are Health Ministers going to see that point?

[Dr Poulter]

I make two points. First, the eligibility criteria began to change under the previous Government, so it is wrong of the hon. Lady to try to make political points which do not stand up to scrutiny. Secondly, I am disappointed that she is unable to recognise that there is very good integration of health and social care in Salford, in her own constituency. That is a model that we could look at to see how good care can be delivered elsewhere.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I am delighted that Cornwall has been chosen as a pioneer area for joining up health and social care. It is the only pioneer area to be led by the voluntary sector. Will the Minister meet me and the Cornwall team to enable us to deliver that care in Cornwall?

[Dr Poulter]

I can confirm that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), will be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to take that further, and that he and I will be visiting Cornwall in the next few months to see at first hand the excellent work that is being done there.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Would the Minister like to congratulate the Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Kettering general hospital and the Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust for coming together to form the frail and elderly crisis hub in Northamptonshire, to prevent unnecessary admissions of elderly people to local accident and emergency departments?

[Dr Poulter]

I would very much like to do that. It is important, given that we sometimes have adversarial discussions on these matters, to highlight the examples of good practice. The example in my hon. Friend’s local area of Kettering is exactly the sort of initiative that we need to see elsewhere in the country. That is why we have given £3.8 billion to better support the integration of health and care.

[Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)]

Changing working practices in hospitals is an important way of reducing pressures on social care and on A and E. Will my hon. Friend join me in praising the staff of the George Eliot hospital, who, through changes to working practices implemented under the supervision of the Keogh process, achieved the second-best A and E four-hour target performance in the country over the busy Christmas and new year period?

[Dr Poulter]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the fact that integrated care working, better intermediate care and ensuring that GPs work closely with accident and emergency departments are exactly the kind of factors, along with joining up health and social care, that take pressure off A and E departments. I am delighted that things are going so well in his local area.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Happy new year, Mr Speaker.

People want a care system that gets the best results for patients and one that makes the best use of taxpayers’ resources, but under this Government they are getting neither. Half a million fewer people are now getting social care services to help them to continue to live at home, and half a million more older people are being admitted as more expensive hospital emergency cases that could have been avoided. Will the Minister tell us how that record represents good care and good value for taxpayers’ money?

[Dr Poulter]

The point I made earlier is that the number of cases of bed blocking due to social care delays has decreased under this Government. Also, it was the previous Government who began to change the eligibility criteria. Labour Members talk about a crisis in social care, but per-head funding for social care fell in the last term of the previous Government. That is the legacy that we are dealing with, and we are sorting it out—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I do not wish to be unkind to the Minister, but I am quite interested in making progress with Back-Bench Members, who have had to wait too long.

[Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)]

14. What assessment he has made of the causes and effects of the 2010-11 financial losses of NHS Croydon; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

As my right hon. Friend knows, an independent report published by NHS London in June 2012 identified a systemic failure of financial management within NHS Croydon, which caused an inaccurate picture of the organisation’s financial position to be presented. However, the report found that that there was no adverse effect on local patient care.

[Sir Richard Ottaway]

In 2011, NHS Croydon posted a surplus of £5.5 million. This was later corrected to an overspend of £23 million—an error of £28 million. Two years later, no one has been found culpable, no one has accepted responsibility and officials are refusing to answer questions. Does the Minister accept that unless someone is held responsible, the responsibility will lie with her?

[Jane Ellison]

My right hon. Friend is right to feel frustrated. The report did not find any one individual responsible; it found systemic failings. What really matters is what has been done to ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again, or that the chances of it happening again are minimised. Following the publication of the report, NHS London wrote to all the primary care trusts outlining the lessons to be learned, and my right hon. Friend will be relieved to hear that all clinical commissioning groups’ chief financial officers have been subject to a rigorous independent assessment and appointment process.

[Mr Speaker]

We come now to topical questions. It would be good to get through the list and beyond, so may I just remind Back Benchers and Front Benchers alike that topical questions and answers are supposed to be brief?

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

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

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

I know that the whole House will wish to join me in remembering Paul Goggins at our first Health questions since his tragic death. He campaigned with great distinction on a number of health issues, including contaminated blood, mesothelioma and services at Wythenshawe hospital. I had the privilege of visiting a GP surgery in his constituency with him, and I know how much this utterly decent and selfless man cared about the health of his constituents. He has so sadly passed away, and the whole House will want to honour his memory and pass on our condolences to his family.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I certainly associate myself with the Secretary of State’s remarks. Will he undertake to look carefully at The 1001 Critical Days manifesto, which was recently launched by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), the right hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), who is in his place, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion and me? Will he look at what more can be done to provide a comprehensive care pathway for the perinatal period?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

Yes, we are looking at that closely, with the Minister responsible for paediatric services doing so particularly closely. In principle, we support what my hon. Friend is trying to achieve with that document and we welcome its contribution to the debate.

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

Last week, we heard shocking revelations about the reasons behind the Government’s U-turn on minimum unit alcohol pricing. In particular, researchers at Sheffield university have confirmed that they were asked by government not to publish a report that would have undermined the Government’s decision to shelve minimum unit pricing. Why were Ministers so keen to suppress the report? Will the Secretary of State please tell us why some of our country’s leading public health experts are accusing Ministers of deplorable practices and of dancing to the tune of the drinks industry?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

On the hon. Lady’s substantive point, the reports for the British Medical Journal investigation, which I read in full, did not say that at all and in fact confirm that that was not asked, so what she says is not quite right.

On the wider point, over the past two weeks we have heard a succession of attacks from the hon. Lady and the Opposition about dealings with industry and business. This Government have set out to work in partnership across business and industry, with public health experts and local authorities, to tackle some of these really big public health issues. It is simply incredible that the Labour party believes that these big issues can be taken seriously without engaging with business. Instead of demonising businesses, let us hear some praise for those such as Lidl, which yesterday announced that sweets would be removed from all its checkouts across the country, in response to its customers—a voice that is too little heard by the Labour party.

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

T2. Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the UK Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalopathy Research Collaborative for providing a mechanism for ME charities, researchers and clinicians to work together in a co-ordinated way? What support will his Department give research into the causes of and treatment for ME?

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

I am not the Secretary of State, but I would be very happy to join my hon. Friend in congratulating the collaborative, which is doing excellent work to generate more CFS/ME research. Spend by the National Institute for Health Research has already doubled in two years, and more funding applications are welcome. The NIHR has awarded nearly £0.9 million to the collaborative’s deputy chair for a senior fellowship studying paediatric CFS/ME.

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

T4. Given that tomorrow Staffordshire county council intends to confirm devastating cuts to services for those with special needs, including the closure of the purpose-built Kidsgrove day centre in my constituency, does the Secretary of State agree that it is time now for the council to wait and at the very least share its detailed needs assessment and future action plan before forcing these cuts through?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

I am very happy to look into the issue that the hon. Lady raises. Obviously, some very big changes are happening in the Staffordshire health economy, and the purpose of those is to improve services for everyone, so if she gives me the details of her concerns, I will happily look at them.

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

T3. At the end of last year, the Prime Minister hosted the very successful G8 summit on dementia. What plans does the Secretary of State have to continue, and indeed enhance, the UK’s global leadership on tackling dementia in 2014?

[Mr Hunt]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a critical job that we must do this year. The purpose of the G8 summit was to wake up the world to the huge threat posed by dementia, as the world woke up to the threat of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s and the threat of cancer in the 1960s. We need to continue that work. Summits will be going on in America, Canada and Japan over the course of the next couple of years, and we need to keep up the momentum, because everyone agrees on the need to do such work.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

T5. On 1 January, the York Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust ceased providing antenatal advice classes for pregnant women and refers them instead to online advice on its website. Is that an approach the Government support, and will they urgently invite the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to review the change in policy and look at its effectiveness?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)]

I am sympathetic to the point that the hon. Gentleman raises, and I am happy to meet him to discuss it further so that we can see whether the matter needs to be addressed.

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

T6. On any given day in the Derriford hospital in Plymouth, 75% of patients are over 65 years of age and rising. Does that not demonstrate the demographic pressures that face our acute hospitals, and what more can this Government do to ensure that people, especially elderly people, are treated in the community?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

We are doing a huge amount, but the first thing is to ensure that there is someone in the NHS who is accountable and responsible for all vulnerable older people outside hospital, because out-of-hospital care is where we need to have the big revolution. There will be a big change in April with named GPs for the over-75s. The integration of the health and social care systems is the next step. I hope that my hon. Friend will see real progress for his constituents.

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

T7. The Secretary of State has had a letter from 118 specialists about the MenB—meningococcal B— vaccine. It is available to parents who pay privately, but denied to most of our children by the Joint Committee on Vaccine and Immunisation. Will the Secretary of State agree to meet the families of children who have had meningitis B and consider all the points raised by the clinicians before letting the JCVI rule out access to the vaccine?

[Mr Hunt]

I recognise the real concern over the previous advice given by the JCVI. I hope that the hon. Gentleman agrees that, on something as important as this, it is helpful to have an independent body coming to these decisions and making a ruling. When a ruling is made, we are legally bound to accept the advice, which means that there is a measure of independence. I have met families campaigning for the MenB vaccine. We are waiting to hear what the JCVI says in February. We should let it come to its conclusion after re-reviewing all the advice and the literature.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

T8. The Government’s decision to increase our dementia research budget was welcome news, and the G8 conference agreement to share research among all G8 members was an important development too. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is a role for MPs in helping to keep constituents informed about scientific developments that may lead to significant progress?

[Mr Hunt]

I do agree, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on his work. I know that he is meeting Alzheimer’s Research UK next month in his own constituency. This matter is something in which we can all be involved in our own constituencies. There is a lack of willingness to talk about dementia. Many people are frightened of it, and the more we can do to raise the profile of this condition, the more we can give people hope that something can be done about it.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Although I support the principles of the Better Care Fund, does the Minister recognise that, in the context of severe cuts to local authorities and cuts in the NHS, the top-slicing of existing budgets is not sufficient? To encourage the kind of innovation that we need to get better integration, we must have additional funding.

[Norman Lamb]

The Government are getting on and implementing integrated, joined-up care. I remember talking about it constantly when the hon. Lady’s party was in government, and nothing ever happened. We are taking concrete steps to join up the system with the benefits of the £3.8 billion Better Care Fund.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

T9. The Secretary of State is aware of the plans being developed by Milton Keynes hospital to expand its A and E capacity. In the interim, will he set out what assistance he can provide to ease short-term pressures?

[Jane Ellison]

I can confirm that the Department of Health is investing an additional £250 million over the next two years in A and E, with NHS England also allocating an additional £150 million for the current year. Milton Keynes has been allocated £2.8 million to support local initiatives to relieve pressures on A and E, and I know that, as a great champion for his local hospital, my hon. Friend will welcome that additional support.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

Given the ongoing crisis in A and E units in the UK, particularly in the area I represent in Northern Ireland, will the Minister confirm whether the Health Minister in Northern Ireland has had discussions about possible solutions to finding and recruiting extra doctors?

[Dr Poulter]

I am not aware of any direct conversations with Ministers here, but as the hon. Lady will be aware, the Minister responsible for A and E services is my right hon. and noble Friend Earl Howe. I will write to her about the discussions that have been had with the noble Lord and Health Education England.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

T10. I warmly welcome initiatives such as the introduction of personalised GP care for the over-75s, but what more can be done to ensure that personalised care treats the individual’s well-being as opposed to merely a collection of symptoms?

[Mr Jeremy Hunt]

We want people to be treated as individuals, not a bundle of illnesses. That personalised care must happen not only out of hospitals but in hospitals, too. We want doctors to take responsibility for the whole stay and to avoid that sense of people being passed from pillar to post. That is an area in which we hope to announce some important changes shortly.

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

In an earlier response, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), expressed his dislike for the working time directive. Would the Secretary of State be happy to revert to a situation in which patient safety, already compromised at weekends, is further compromised by over-tired doctors?

[Mr Hunt]

No one wants to go back to the bad old days of junior doctors working all the hours God gives, but the working time directive has had a negative impact on patient safety. It has made training rosters more difficult and it has meant that there is less continuity of care as people do not see the same doctor when they go back to hospital. We need to look at whether we can do that better, because it is not helping patients.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

By Christmas, almost 2,000 staff at Kettering general hospital had received their flu jab—that is about 60% of front-line staff. Would the Secretary of State like to congratulate the hospital and its members for its bid to become the acute trust in the east midlands with the best flu jab record for three years in a row?

[Mr Hunt]

Absolutely. I am very encouraged that across the NHS trusts have had a much higher uptake of flu jabs for staff than in previous years, but Kettering is leading the way.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

At the excellent James Cook University hospital between 19 December and 1 January, 49 ambulances were delayed for more than 30 minutes, 168 beds were blocked and 82% of admitted patients had been treated within 18 weeks, rather than the Government target of 90%. Why does the Secretary of State think that that is the case?

[Mr Hunt]

Because there is sustained pressure throughout the NHS. Across the NHS, hospitals and ambulance services are doing very well in the circumstances. I am happy to look at the hon. Gentleman’s specific concerns to make sure that his local NHS trust is doing everything it should.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Is the Secretary of State aware that every fast food outlet in the United States displays the number of calories for each portion of food that it sells? Given that some fast food restaurants in this country, such as McDonald’s, already do that, does he believe that more should be done to make all fast food outlets in this country display the number of calories so that people are educated before they make a choice about what they are going to purchase?

[Jane Ellison]

My right hon. Friend is quite right to say that that is a real priority. The responsibility deal, on which we have worked with our partners, means that 70% of fast food and takeaway meals sold on the high street in the UK have clearly labelled calories, but there is always more to do. This is a priority for the responsibility deal and we are working closely with our industry partners to make more progress.

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

Does the Minister believe that social isolation, which is a key contributor to the health and well-being of older people living on their own, has got worse or has improved under this Government?

[Norman Lamb]

I think that social isolation, if we are honest about it, has got worse over quite a long period, particularly as extended families have been dispersed far and wide. The answer has to be for the whole of society and must involve statutory services working together with the voluntary sector. In Cornwall, one of the pioneers in integrated care, there is a fantastic collaboration between the voluntary sector and the statutory sector to ensure that they directly address the problems with loneliness.

[Mr Speaker]

Last but not least and I hope with exemplary brevity, I call Tessa Munt.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

What steps is the Secretary of State taking to ensure that the number of cancer indications treated in this financial year by stereotactic ablative radiotherapy does not fall below the number of treatments delivered in the 2012-13 financial year?

[Jane Ellison]

That is an area that the hon. Lady and I have discussed at some length. I know that she feels strongly about it. We have meetings coming up to discuss it and I think that it would be easier to deal with her detailed points in those meetings.

IT Systems (Army Recruitment)

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

12:34

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the performance of Ministry of Defence IT systems and the effect on Army recruitment.

[The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Hammond)]

The Army entered into a partnering contract with Capita in March 2012 to manage the recruitment of regular and reserve soldiers. That is an Army-led initiative designed to free up military personnel from recruitment-related administrative tasks and to improve both the quantity and quality of Army recruits. It will play a key role as we transition the Army to the new Army 2020 structures.

I should make it clear to the House that the Army has not outsourced its recruitment; it remains in overall charge of recruitment and will continue to play a major role in attracting and mentoring recruits. Capita’s role is to manage the supporting processes by which a would-be recruit becomes an enlisted regular or a fully trained reservist.

As I have explained to the House previously, there have been initial difficulties with that recruiting process as we transition to the new recruiting arrangements with Capita. In particular, we have encountered difficulties with the IT systems supporting the application and enlistment process. The decision to use the legacy Atlas IT platform was deemed at the time to be the quickest and most cost-effective way of delivering the new recruitment programme. An option to revert to a Capita hosting solution was included in the contracts as a back-up solution.

I was made aware in the summer of last year that the Army was encountering problems with the integration of the Capita system into the Atlas platform. Since then we have put in place a number of workarounds and mitigation measures for the old IT platform to simplify the application process, and we have reintroduced military personnel to provide manual intervention to support the process.

Having visited the Army’s recruitment centre in Upavon on 30 October, it became clear to me that, despite the Army putting in place measures to mitigate those problems in the near term, further long-term action was needed to fix the situation. It was agreed in principle at that point that the Atlas system was not capable of timely delivery of the Capita-run programme and that we would need to take up the option of reverting to Capita building a new IT platform specifically to run its system, which will be ready early next year.

In the short term, we have already taken action to bring in a range of initiatives that will make it progressively easier and quicker for applicants, both regular and reserve, to enlist. As I informed the House in December, we have taken a number of actions, including: the introduction this month of a new front-end web application for Army recruitment; a simplified online application form; more streamlined medical clearance processes; greater mentoring of recruits by local reserve units through the application, enlistment and training process; and the reintroduction of reserve unit recruitment targets and the provision of recruitment resource to reserve unit commanding officers. With an improved Army recruitment website, streamlined medicals and an increase in the number of recruiting staff, recruits should see a much-improved experience by the end of this month.

As we move forward, we are looking at further ways of improving the management of the recruiting process in the intervening period before the introduction of the advanced IT system now being developed in partnership with Capita, which is expected to be deployed in February 2015. We have just launched a new recruitment drive for the Army, both regular and reserve, which will remind the House and the public that the Army is always recruiting and continues to offer exciting and rewarding careers in both the regular and reserve forces.

[Vernon Coaker]

I thank the Secretary of State for that statement.

In these first few weeks of 2014 there is no danger of auld acquaintance being forgot with this Secretary of State and Government. It may be a new year, but is it not the same old story of complacency, inefficiency and a lack of transparency at the Ministry of Defence? Here we go again. The Secretary of State has been forced to come to the House of Commons to try to explain catastrophic failures costing millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. This time it is an IT fiasco. It did not have to be like this.

Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that many in this House, myself included, warned that the Government were taking risks with Britain’s security by not fixing the reserve recruitment crisis before reducing numbers in the regular Army, and now we have the IT debacle? Does he accept that, just like the mess the Government made of privatising procurement, his entire armed forces reform programme is in danger of collapsing, too?

I asked the Defence Secretary specifically about the IT problems and Capita on the Floor of the House on 20 November 2013. Did he not say that everything was in hand? It is clear that the computer said no, but the Defence Secretary said, no problem.

Does the Defence Secretary remember telling the House on 4 November 2013 that there had merely been “teething problems” with the IT support for Army recruitment? If today’s reports are accurate, I would advise the Defence Secretary to seek dental advice elsewhere, because today we have learned that the problems are even worse than anyone thought and still have not been fixed.

Will the Defence Secretary tell the House which Minister signed off the deal and who has been responsible for monitoring it? Will he confirm that the project, costing £1.3 billion, is almost two years behind schedule and will not be fully operational until April 2015 at the earliest?

The Future Reserves 2020 report, placed in the Library on 18 December—I am sure it was only a coincidence that that was the day on which the House rose for the Christmas break—confirms that an improved IT system will be developed in partnership with Capita. Will the Secretary of State confirm how much that will cost? Is it the figure of nearly £50 million that has been reported in the papers today?

Will the Secretary of State also confirm that £15.5 million has been spent building the existing flawed computer system behind the project? Finally, is it correct that this continuing disaster is costing taxpayers £1 million every month?

On 10 April 2013, the then Minister of State, the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), said that

“the Recruiting Partnering Project with Capita…will lead to a significant increase in recruiting performance.”—[Official Report, 10 April 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1134W.]

Is there any Member of this House, any member of our armed forces or, indeed, any member of the British public who still believes that?

The blame for the mess we are now in lies squarely with the Government. We cannot take risks with our armed forces and we cannot gamble with our nation’s safety and security. Does the Defence Secretary not need to get a grip and sort out this shambles?

[Mr Hammond]

That is precisely what I am doing. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should remind himself that the initial gate business case for this project to outsource recruiting was approved in July 2008, so I hope we are not in dispute over the principle.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned an IT debacle. Yes, there are big problems with the IT and I have told the House on repeated occasions that we have IT challenges. There are problems with IT in Government. The hon. Gentleman speaks as if he was not a member of the Government who spent £13 billion on a health computer system that we had to write off and £400 million on a work and pensions computer system that had to be written off.

What we are doing now is gripping this problem and addressing it. That means, in the short term, workarounds and putting additional manpower into the system to provide additional support. Short-term solutions include the new front-end web application, which will go live over the next two weeks, to improve the experience of applicants accessing the platform.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the costs and I can give him some figures. The Capita solution will cost about £47.7 million to produce a full new IT platform. The alternative Atlas IT platform proposal would have cost about £43 million, so the additional cost of the Capita solution is about £4.5 million. He asked about the £15.5 million of sunk cost. Our initial estimate is that about £6.7 million of that represents costs that will have to be written off, but that will be subject to a proper audit process.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the additional cost—the running cost, as it were—of the interim solution that we have put in place. It comprises additional payments that have to be made and the cost of the additional manpower that has been delivered into the system. That is currently running at about £1 million per month. The solution that we have adopted and that we have now approved—going ahead with Capita platform and placing the integration risk back on Capita—is judged to be the quickest way of eliminating that ongoing expenditure and the best way of delivering a permanent solution for the benefit of the Army and the taxpayer.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I again suggest to the Secretary of State that plans to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists will cost much more than the Government envisage, leading to false economies and a waste of taxpayers’ money. Given the tens of millions of pounds already wasted on this IT shambles, will he outline how much more it will cost to put it right? Does this not reinforce the point that the Government should now halt and stop the disbandment of regular units until we are sure that the plan to replace them with reservists is both cost-effective and feasible?

[Mr Hammond]

Let me deal with the cost point first. The overall programme, the Capita recruiting partnership project, has a budget of about £1.3 billion over a 10-year period. As I have just outlined, the additional cost of the IT platform is estimated to be £47.7 million.

Repeating the question that he has asked many times, my hon. Friend asked whether it is appropriate to replace 20,000 regular soldiers with 30,000 reservists. That is not what we are doing; we are changing the shape of the British Army and we are changing the role of reservists, whom we intend to fill specialist roles and provide resilience in the case of a prolonged future deployment. He makes a regular versus reserve point, but I should be clear with him that the recruiting platform is used for regular and reserve recruitment: it affects both regulars and reservists.

[Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

I declare a non-pecuniary interest as I chair Knowsley Skills academy, which has a 100% success rate in preparing candidates for entry into the military.

Does the Secretary of State accept that, regardless of who initiated the project, the problem is not the IT system, but the fact that the online recruitment model is flawed? It does not allow those doing the recruiting to identify at an early enough stage what candidates have to do to get up to the necessary standard to meet the requirements. He needs to go back to a professional soldier looking candidates in the eye and telling them what they need to do to get up to the required standard.

[Mr Hammond]

There is some truth in what the right hon. Gentleman says. One measure we have already put in place for reserves recruitment is reverting to an early face-to-face interview over a weekend session, where it is possible to deal with several processes in one hit, rather than stringing them out over a much longer period, which was how the system was originally set up.

It is clear to me that the original concept did not give a big enough role to front-line reservist units in managing the process of attracting recruits and then mentoring them through the pipeline to the point at which they join stage 1 training. We have now put that right, with recruitment budgets and recruiting targets allocated to reserve unit commanding officers, who will be held to account for delivering the recruiting targets. From the reserve units that I have visited and the COs to whom I have talked, I know that they are very glad to have back that role and responsibility.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

In welcoming the recent package of changes and the work of the new and energetic major-general at the Army recruiting group, Major General Chris Tickell, may I suggest to my right hon. Friend that one of the key lessons to learn is the importance of developing distinct pathways towards the same ultimate aim? That applies not just to the recruiting group, but to other areas such as the military secretary’s department and the wider personnel function. That is what is done in every other country in the English-speaking world.

[Mr Hammond]

I think that my hon. Friend is talking about a distinct pathway for reserves, as opposed to regulars.

[Mr Brazier]

indicated assent.

[Mr Hammond]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend. It is largely as a result of his insistence on that point that I have become focused over the past four or five months on the importance of maintaining that distinct ethos, not just in the recruitment process, but elsewhere in the reserves. I agree with him entirely.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Millions wasted on planned “cats and traps” on aircraft carriers, millions wasted on a failed GoCo and millions wasted on a failed IT system—will the Secretary of State tell us how many members of the armed forces would still be in their jobs if it were not for the millions that have been wasted by this Government’s failures?

[Mr Hammond]

Unfortunately, the hon. Lady forgot the £1.6 billion that was wasted by deliberately delaying the aircraft carrier contract because of a shortage of £300 million of cash in-year. The restructuring of the British Army is a long-term strategic response to the fiscal environment and the post-Afghanistan challenges that we face. The size of the Army is right for the future.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

How many military personnel have been deployed to bail out Capita’s failure to deliver on recruitment?

[Mr Hammond]

First, we need to be careful about succumbing to the temptation which there always is in this House to blame Capita.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

You did.

[Mr Hammond]

No, I did not. It is Atlas that has failed to deliver an IT platform that Capita can utilise effectively.

To answer the question of the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell), just under 1,000 personnel are involved. Some of them have been surged into front-end recruiting and are acting as military recruiters on the ground, and others are providing manual support for administrative tasks that should be, and ultimately will be, carried out by the IT platform.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

Not long after the Secretary of State visited Upavon, it was visited by a number of members of the Defence Committee, including me. It was clear that there had been problems for quite some time. The Capita representatives said that there was no reality in what they were being asked to deliver. When did he and his Ministers first become aware that there was a serious problem with the project?

[Mr Hammond]

As I said earlier, in early summer last year, it became clear that there were problems in integrating the Capita processes with the Atlas IT platform. It was when I visited Upavon in October that I formed the conclusion that there was no way of resolving the Atlas problem, and that we had to revert to the Capita option and place the integration challenge back with Capita to deliver a platform and a process.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Complex IT problems are common in the public and private sectors. It is important that steps have been taken to put the problems right. Will my right hon. Friend come back to the House in the near future to convince us that the targets on the recruitment of regulars and reserves are being met, so that the wider public can be confident that the problems have been resolved?

[Mr Hammond]

As was mentioned by the shadow Secretary of State, just before Christmas I published the trajectory of recruiting targets for the reserves that we will have to meet to deliver on our commitment of 30,000 trained reservists by 2018. I have given the House a commitment that we will publish the out-turn figures on a quarterly basis. Aside from the numbers, anyone who looks at the Army recruiting website will start to see measurable, noticeable improvements by the end of this month, as some of the interim solutions start to take effect.

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

The Secretary of State still seems confident that these are initial difficulties that can be overcome. I am not so convinced. I think that they are systemic problems. These problems shed light on his decision to reduce the regular Army before the reservists are fully tested. Now that he knows about the problems, will he say in his own terms at what stage he will say that these are no longer initial problems and that we need to review the situation properly because there is a systemic failure in his approach?

[Mr Hammond]

To interpret the hon. Lady’s question, I am clear that the problems with the ICT platform are not initial difficulties. We have made a clear decision that the Atlas platform is not fit for this purpose and have asked Capita to develop a dedicated platform for Army recruitment.

However, I think that the hon. Lady is probably referring to the wider challenge of recruiting the necessary reserve numbers. She is right to say that there are two components to that. There is the technical challenge of processing recruits through the pipeline. I have admitted to the House on a number of occasions that the system is very clunky, which is partly but not exclusively because of problems with the ICT platform. There is also the wider challenge, in the face of societal change and public attitudes, of encouraging people to want to join the Army Reserve and encouraging employers to want to support employees in joining the Army Reserve. It is very early days, but the signs are encouraging. I have no doubt that I will continue to report to the House as the evidence becomes more readily available over the course of the year.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), my right hon. Friend referred to the reservist recruiting targets that he set out before Christmas. He has also indicated to the House when he first became aware of the IT problems. Will he confirm that the targets that he set out for reservist recruitment took into account the problems that he has outlined to the House in his statement today?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, the growth trajectory is fully cognisant of the challenges that we face and the time scales for correcting those problems.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

The fact that Atlas is not fit for purpose and the mess that we are in suggest that there was a fundamental flaw in the design of the project and in the project management thereafter. When such mistakes occurred under the previous Administration, the Conservative party regularly asked for somebody to resign. Who will take responsibility for this failure?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman might like to reflect on the previous Administration’s record of taking responsibility for their failures. Hon. Members who are interested in the IT challenge in government will recognise that there is always a tension between the desire to utilise existing platforms and contracts to deliver IT in an effective and efficient way that provides value for money, and the fact that the Department shoulders the integration risk. By asking Capita to develop a process using the existing Atlas platform, the Department effectively accepted the integration risk. We are now asking Capita to shoulder the integration risk by developing a platform that is purposely designed for its process.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I welcome the statement by my right hon. Friend today and his action to recruit reservists. However, the continued uncertainty over the Rifles reservist base in Truro is having an impact on recruitment. Will he give an update on his consideration of the case that I have made to keep the Rifles reservist base in Cornwall? People in Cornwall really do want the opportunity to serve their nation in this way.

[Mr Hammond]

My right hon. Friend the Minister for the Armed Forces tells me that he discussed that issue recently with my hon. Friend. We are looking at the decision on reserve basing in Cornwall. We have announced our plans for reserve basing, but have indicated that there is flexibility in those plans. We must, of course, recruit where the recruits are available. We recognise that necessity.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State referred to streamlining medical requirements as part of this process. We have all had people in our constituencies who have attempted to join the armed forces, but subsequently found that their bodies were not robust enough to fulfil the process. That is damaging for them and costly for the armed forces. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that streamlining the process will not lead to more people dropping out as a result of being unable to fulfil medical requirements further down the line?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and there are two parts to the problem. One is the time it is taking us to get medical records from GPs, and we are addressing that specific problem. Even if that is overcome, however, there will still be a time lag in getting medical records from GPs. We are looking at whether we can use a system similar to that used in officer cadet training units in universities, where recruits can answer a simple medical questionnaire to enable them to begin taking part in some carefully defined activities. That would capture and get them engaged in that first flush of enthusiasm, rather than leave them sitting on the bench for months, waiting for medical records to come through from their GP.

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

Given the IT challenges we face, will the Secretary of State confirm that we are still on track to meet our recruitment targets? With the rebalancing of the Army’s regular reserve forces, will he say what more is being done to encourage those who have served as regular officers and soldiers and completed that service, and who might now consider service in the Territorial reserves and take advantage of that experience?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and recruiting ex-regulars is an important part of our strategy for building the reserves, not least because ex-regulars drop straight to the trained strength if their regular Army service is recent enough. As he will know, we are currently offering an enlistment bounty for ex-regulars to join the reserves, which reflects some part of the cost saving that we make through not having to take ex-regular recruits through the full reserve training process.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

This administrative quagmire is the latest part of what is becoming a worrying and costly pattern of events under the Secretary of State’s stewardship. He had a good reputation for competence around Whitehall before he took up his latest job. What has happened?

[Mr Hammond]

The important thing in a Department as large and complex as the Ministry of Defence, with a budget of £33 billion a year, is not to pretend that we can operate the vast range of contracts and arrangements we have in place without some failures. That is never going to happen. The challenge is to grip failure when it becomes apparent, and to manage and resolve it as quickly and efficiently as possible. I am prepared to stand on my record of delivering that kind of outcome.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

As an officer commanding the Royal Air Force recruiting offices in Newcastle and Middlesbrough, I saw at first hand the challenges of recruiting particular trades and branches—at the time it was aerospace systems operators, and Royal Air Force regiment gunners. Will my right hon. Friend say what implications and consequences there have been for Royal Navy and Royal Air Force recruiting as a result of some of the challenges with Army recruiting in recent months?

[Mr Hammond]

The platform that the Army is putting in place is ultimately intended to deliver for all three services, but at the moment it is the Army that is principally affected by those problems. I understand that Royal Auxiliary Air Force recruitment is going extremely well at the moment.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

On 11 December—about a month ago—I asked the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), why the Government had not planned the ICT better so that the new recruitment processes and Ministry of Defence systems would work better. He said:

“What we have done is to put in proper controls and create the conditions in which smaller and leaner organisations can come in and offer better value.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 225.]

Back in the real world, how many recruitment applications have fallen between the cracks of this failed system?

[Mr Hammond]

I have heard Capita referred to as a lot of things, but not normally as “smaller and leaner”. The hon. Gentleman is referring to precisely the tension that I mentioned a few moments ago—between the desire to allow smaller players to come in, provide IT solutions to the Government and utilise existing IT solutions, and the desire to ensure that the integration risk lies with the supplier. My view is that the Government are poor at managing integration risk, and I suggest that a solution that may look superficially good value, but which transfers integration risk to Departments, is probably to be viewed with some suspicion.

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

The Secretary of State explained that the interim solution will lead to an improvement in recruitment numbers over the next few weeks, and that we should start to see that improvement come through. Will he therefore explain why the interim solution is not capable of being turned into a much cheaper long-term solution?

[Mr Hammond]

There are a number of elements to that. I said that potential recruits seeking to access the system will notice an improvement in the quality of the IT platform, principally because the front end—the web-based portal through which they will access the system—will be replaced at the end of January by a system that is now running but still being trialled before it goes live. The system will work, but that is by applying additional manual resource, which, as I have already told the House, is costing us £1 million a month. The purpose of the partnering contract is to take about 1,000 personnel who were involved in the administration of recruiting out of that role, and save about £300 million a year. In the long term we still need to harvest that saving, and it will be necessary to have a proper ICT solution to do that.

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

How many recruits have fallen through the cracks?

[Mr Hammond]

That is difficult to say because, by definition, when we talk about recruits falling through the cracks, we are essentially talking about people who have become frustrated with the delay in the process and simply dropped out and gone away. We are seeking to track those people and to go back and re-engage them, as it were, but I know from anecdotal evidence—e-mails I get in my personal e-mail account—that a number of people have just got fed up with the system and given up. The Army is acutely conscious that we cannot afford to waste any potential recruits.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Royal Marines are outside this Army recruitment system because they come under the Navy recruitment platform? I am slightly alarmed to hear that he intends to roll this system out to the Navy and the RAF. What lessons might the Army learn from naval and RAF recruitment, and what efforts are being made to recruit from our great pool of cadet forces across all three services?

[Mr Hammond]

There are several questions there. First, the IT platform—the management of the process—is intended to provide a tri-service platform, and once it is fully operational, it will provide savings to the Navy and Air Force as well. Cadets provide an opportunity to showcase careers in the armed services, and we know that significant numbers of recruits have cadet experience. I want to be clear that we should support young people who join the cadets, and when they are interested in a career in the armed services, we should support them to explore the possibilities of such a career. As my hon. Friend will know, we are also committed to rolling out an increased number of combined cadet forces in state schools, to mirror the great success that those established combined cadet forces in independent schools have already demonstrated.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

The Defence Committee report published today expresses concern that the rate of voluntary outflow from the armed forces is way above the long-term average. It also mentions the problems in pinch-point trades. What is the Secretary of State doing to address those problems? Would it make sense to modify the redundancy scheme, at least in the short term, until the recruitment problems are overcome?

[Mr Hammond]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that nobody who is in an area where we have a shortage is eligible for redundancy. The redundancy programme essentially addresses the changed structure of the Army. At the same time, we have an over-supply in certain areas and a chronic shortage in others. In the short term, we are paying retention bonuses in pinch-point trades, particularly in the Royal Navy—sea-going engineering skills and nuclear engineering skills are in desperately short supply. We are actively managing the work force with retention initiatives. In the longer-term, we must grow the skills we need. We are working with the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to ensure that we generate the nuclear engineering skills the armed forces need as the UK civil nuclear industry regenerates.

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

Having undertaken recruitment programmes for some of the largest companies in the world, I can reassure the Secretary of State that such large initiatives always take time. This is not a sausage machine; it is about getting the right people for our armed forces. I urge him not to be too concerned with obsessing over quarterly targets.

[Mr Hammond]

I am sure my hon. Friend’s advice is sound, but hon. Members, who are focused on the challenge of reaching the 30,000 target by 2018, will want to hold the Government to account on the interim recruiting targets. However, my hon. Friend is right in another important respect. Changing how we recruit is not just about getting additional numbers in at the top of the hopper. It is about improving the efficiency of the process; ensuring that we get a greater percentage of initial applicants accepted; and ensuring that a greater percentage of those who are accepted for enlistment make it through to the completion of training and join the trained reserve strength. Making the process more efficient will save us money and deliver us the results we need.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Yesterday, I questioned Department for Work and Pensions Ministers about Capita’s failure to deal expeditiously with cancer patients who apply for the personal independence payment. Today, the Secretary of State for Defence asks hon. Members to have confidence in Capita sorting the recruitment mess out. Why should the country and the House have any confidence whatever in the capacity of that organisation to do that?

[Mr Hammond]

Outsourcing services is here to stay. At the cost that regular Army soldiers represent to us, we cannot contemplate using them to perform administrative tasks in the recruitment process in future. Those tasks must be outsourced to be sustainable. We are confident that Capita has a solution. At the outset of the contract, we chose not to adopt the Capita solution, but to go with extant departmental policy, which was to use the existing Atlas platform. We have now reversed that decision for the Army recruiting programme.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Based on the figures the Secretary of State has given today, the original decision to try to integrate the Atlas platform seems strange. When that decision was taken, was there no contingency plan? Given the history of trouble with Government IT projects and the importance of the project, what consideration was given to a contingency plan when the decision was taken?

[Mr Hammond]

The contingency plan was put in place and the fact that there was a risk was clearly recognised at the time. The contracts with both Capita and Atlas were written to allow for a reversion to a Capita-hosted solution if the Department decided that that was necessary. That is what we have done.

Registration of Stillbirths

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

Motion for leave to bring in a Bill (Standing Order No. 23)

13:14

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

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953 to provide that parents may register the death of a child stillborn before the threshold of 24 weeks gestation.

My wife and I are very fortunate to have three teenage children. All were born healthily and without complications. We, like other hon. Members, are lucky, but other parents —I suggest that there are more than many would realise—have not been so fortunate. Some experience loss through miscarriage, often repeatedly; some give birth routinely but experience the pain of losing a child within days, weeks or months; and some go through all the trials and tribulations and highs and lows of pregnancy only to give birth to a stillborn child. It is to try to help those parents that I am introducing this Bill.

Perinatal mortality rates—stillbirths and neonatal deaths of babies within 28 days of being born—remain worryingly high in the UK. In 2012, 7.4 deaths per 1,000 live births were recorded. That was little changed on the year before, although an improvement of about a third from 30 years ago. That is better than some of our European counterparts, but worse than most. It is also nothing like the progress that has been made on preventing cot deaths, which, after much high-profile attention and the “Back to Sleep” campaign in the 1990s, have fallen dramatically by two thirds in less than 20 years.

Other countries, such as Holland and Norway, have reduced their mortality rates much more dramatically, yet, in the UK, we continue to see wide variations geographically and demographically. For example, the stillbirth rate in the south-west of England is 4.7 per 1,000 live births; in the north-east, it is 5.8, a 23% difference. There are big differences between age groups and mums from different ethnic backgrounds.

The simple fact is that 3,558 babies were stillborn in England and Wales alone in 2012. One in 200 pregnancies ends in stillbirth after 24 weeks—it is 15 times more common than cot death. That equates to nearly 10 babies every day. That is 10 mothers who have lost a child after completing more than half the term of a pregnancy. They then have to go through the pain of childbirth to see a baby who will not grow up. In 2011, the figure was 3,811 babies, and in 2003, it was 3,612. The situation has not improved in the last decade.

I am not the first hon. Member to raise the issue in the House. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who has worked tirelessly through debates, and through his work with constituents and Sands, the excellent stillbirth and neonatal death charity. I also recognise the work that Health Ministers and the Department of Health have done with the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, and with the Royal College of Midwives, to promote better research into causes, develop a stillbirth prevention programme and examine variations in clinical practice.

I am using this opportunity to reiterate the challenges we still face over perinatal mortality rates, but the situation is worse, hence the focus of my Bill. A stillbirth is classified as such only if the gestation period is 24 weeks or more. One day less, and that stillbirth becomes a non-viable delivery, or is more commonly referred to as a mid-trimester miscarriage. There are no central records of exactly how many babies are born in that way, so they do not form part of the perinatal mortality figures.

Without wishing in any way to downplay the importance and pain of a miscarriage, particularly for new parents struggling to have their first child, the experiences are different. That was brought home to me most starkly by the story of a constituent of mine, Hayley, who came to see me before Christmas, campaigning for a change in the law.

Last year, Hayley was pregnant. For nearly 20 weeks, she carried the child of her partner Frazer. She felt the baby kicking. She went through all the other ups and downs of a first-time pregnancy. Sadly, after around 19 weeks, something went wrong, and Hayley and Frazer’s baby died unborn. It was not a miscarriage, and the following week Hayley had to go through the pain of giving birth to a baby that she knew was no longer alive. She had to take powerful drugs to induce the pregnancy. She experienced contractions. She went into Worthing hospital and had pain relief. The following day in June, she gave birth to her baby, Samuel. She held Samuel in her arms. She and her partner took photographs, had his hand and footprints taken and said their goodbyes.

Fortunately, Hayley was given good support by the clinical staff at Worthing hospital and had bereavement guidance later. She has an understanding employer in West Sussex county council. She was also fortunate to find a sympathetic funeral director. The funeral took place two weeks later.

To all intents and purposes, Hayley went through all the experiences of pregnancy and the pain of childbirth endured by any other mother, but they were coupled in this case with the unimaginable grief of a parent who has lost a child before they could ever get to know him. She did not just go through a stillbirth: she had a still baby; she became a mum. The crucial difference is that Hayley’s and Frazer’s baby is not recognised in the eyes of the state because he was born before 24 weeks’ gestation. If he had survived until 24 weeks and one day, he would have been recognised and the death properly registered in a register of stillbirths, forming part of the statistics I referred to earlier. More than just adding to the statistics though, that would have been the acknowledgement of an actual, individual baby. To add further insult to injury, Hayley had to hand back her maternity exemption certificate straight afterwards.

That stark difference surely cannot be right; it adds insult to the unimaginable pain that the parents have already had to suffer. Until the passing of the Still-Birth (Definition) Act 1992, which amended the Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953, the threshold was 28 weeks, so prior to that even more babies went unrecognised in official records. That change followed a clear consensus in the medical profession on the age at which a baby is considered viable. Since then, in fact, there have been cases of babies born before 24 weeks who have, incredibly, survived.

It is true that there is an informal procedure for hospitals to issue so-called commemorative certificates for foetuses that are not classified as stillbirths. They provide parents with a certificate that records their pregnancy loss before 24 weeks. Sands has produced a template of a certificate of birth and encourages all hospitals to adopt it. However, it is unofficial and counts for little in the eyes of the state.

Late last year, Hayley became pregnant again, but sadly suffered a miscarriage after five weeks. Coming hard on the heels of the stillbirth, this was a further huge blow for her and her partner. The effect was no less tragic than the earlier stillbirth, but the experience was a very different one. Yet the stillbirth and the miscarriage are treated as just the same in the eyes of the law, and it is this inequity that I want to put right.

My Bill would provide for the official registration of stillborn babies below 24 weeks’ gestation. It would not be based on a crude time threshold of what is deemed a viable foetus, but on the experience of giving birth. Hayley and Frazer’s baby would be recognised as having existed; Samuel’s death would have been registered. That would go some way to providing some comfort to parents such as Hayley and Frazer at an unimaginably painful time. It would provide some form of closure and allow them to move on more easily. It would also provide more data to aid the analysis of why such stillbirths happen and, hopefully, of what can be done to jump-start a resumption in falling numbers from the last decade’s plateau. For those who say that the physical act of registering a dead child alongside those registering a healthy birth could open up wounds and exacerbate the grief of the parents, I am sure that a more discrete and empathetic procedure could easily be devised.

The Bill has nothing to do with changing the law on abortion. It does not propose to change the status quo with regard to entitlement to maternity benefits and bereavement entitlement, although I think official recognition would make it easier to secure appropriate empathy and flexibility from employers. The Government have already made changes, rightly, to maternity allowance guidance to ensure mothers whose babies are stillborn after 24 weeks receive benefits they are legally entitled to, and the process has been made easier.

My Bill proposes a modest measure that requires minimal changes to legislation and little cost to the state, but for mums like Hayley, and her partner, and thousands of others struggling to have children, it has the potential to make a huge difference in helping them to handle the grief of a loss that most of us could not imagine. It is the right thing to do, it is the right thing for this House to do, and I commend it to hon. Members.

Question put and agreed to.

Ordered,

That Tim Loughton, Chris Heaton-Harris, Mr Gary Streeter, Paul Burstow, Tracey Crouch, Sarah Teather, Mr Frank Field, Andrea Leadsom, Mrs Caroline Spelman, Pauline Latham and Jim Shannon present the Bill.

Tim Loughton accordingly presented the Bill.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 28 February, and to be printed (Bill 153).

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [Lords]

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

Consideration of Bill, as amended in the Public Bill Committee.

New Clause 1

Probation Service Reform: Parliamentary Approval

The Secretary of State may not undertake a national restructure or reform of the provision of probation services unless the proposals have first been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, both House of Parliament.’.—(Jenny Chapman.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

13:25

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 4—Piloting of probation reform—

‘The Secretary of State may not undertake a national restructure of the provision of probation services until the proposals have first been subject to an independently evaluated pilot scheme, and the results of that evaluation laid before both Houses of Parliament.’.

New clause 5—Provision of probation services: report to Parliament—

‘(1) The Secretary of State must lay before both Houses of Parliament a report on the performance of all providers contracted to provide officers to perform the duties of supervisor or responsible officer as described in this Act after one year of this Act coming into force.

(2) The report must include—

(a) an assessment of the information made available by each provider to the public, and their assistance to the Ministry of Justice in its performance of duties under the Freedom of Information Act 2000; and

(b) an update on what measures were included in each contract to allow the Secretary of State to penalise a provider that fails to perform to national standards or fulfil its contractual obligations, and on what occasions these measures have been brought into force.’.

New clause 6—Review of the effectiveness of prison services in delivering the Transforming Rehabilitation Strategy—

‘The Secretary of State may not undertake to introduce competitive tendering for the provision of probation services until a review of the prison service’s ability to implement the Transforming Rehabilitation Strategy has been conducted, and the results of that review laid before both Houses of Parliament.’.

New clause 9—Contracts—

‘Arrangements made by the Secretary of State resulting from this Act in accordance with which functions are conferred on officers of non-public sector providers of probation services, must include provisions requiring that—

(a) contracts for the provision of probation services from such providers be published;

(b) the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of such providers in discharging relevant functions be subject to National Audit Office assessment;

(c) companies under investigation for fraud may not bid for, nor be part of consortia bidding for, a contract for the provision of probation services; and

(d) companies with the status of prime contractor under the Work Programme may not bid for, nor be part of consortia bidding for, a contract for the provision of probation services.’.

New clause 10—Transparency—

‘Any contract for probation services shall be transparent and available for both public and parliamentary scrutiny, and be the subject of National Audit Office inspections.’.

New clause 11—Prohibition—

‘No company or other consortia shall be allowed to bid for Probation Service work if they are being investigated for fraud.’.

New clause 13—Annual reporting of reconviction rates—

‘The Secretary of State must publish an annual report which must include details of the impact of new supervision legislation for those offenders serving less than 12 months on the reconviction rates of offenders supervised by providers of probation services and as a consequence of participating in any programme or intervention.’.

[Jenny Chapman]

I would like to start with a few words on our friend and colleague, the former Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East, Paul Goggins. Paul served on the Public Bill Committee for this Bill, and I also served with him on two other Bill Committees. I have to say, and I am sure others Members agree and have said it already in this House, that he was the most thoughtful and supportive colleague anyone could ever have hoped to have sitting behind them on a Bill Committee. He advised me and gave me feedback, and he would definitely have been here today making a very strong contribution to our consideration on Report and on Third Reading. If he was here, our deliberations would be much improved.

I worked with Paul on amendments relating to looked-after children. He would have been very pleased to see the Government shift their position on the length of time that looked-after children can remain in foster care and be supported to do so. That is something he should have taken personal pride in. Although he was not the sort of person who would be arrogant enough to have personal pride, I think he should get the credit for this particular change. I know that he would have planned to speak today and that he would have tabled amendments. I am sure his name would have appeared many times on the amendment paper.

New clause 1 will look very familiar to those who have been following the passage of the Bill through both Houses. For a short and welcome period, it was included in the Bill. The Opposition, and I imagine a number of Government Back-Bench Members, would like to see it put back. I will point out from the start that the call for parliamentary scrutiny did not start life as an Opposition amendment. Although the Minister might sometimes think it, it was not cooked up on the Labour Benches just to make his life uncomfortable. The call for parliamentary approval before significant upheaval of the probation service was a Cross-Bench amendment tabled by the noble Lord Ramsbotham who, as colleagues will know, is a former chief inspector of prisons.

Lord Ramsbotham’s amendment was supported by every Cross-Bench peer who heard him speak to it. While the Bill focuses on one element of change to probation, it is flanked by a massive irreversible sell-off of a public service. It appears that the Government were hoping just to push that through under the radar and we think that that is very wrong. The former chief inspector of prisons was concerned enough by the proposals to try to stop that happening and enough noble Lords agreed with him to pass the original version of the amendment. New clause 1 concerns proper parliamentary scrutiny: MPs taking responsibility for a decision that will irreversibly alter the way in which offenders are supervised in the community, and for which there is no evidence and precious little support.

New clause 4 would provide a duty on the Minister to pilot his proposals for probation before rolling them out at what we think is breakneck speed across the whole country. They are conspicuously absent from the Bill. I will briefly remind the House of the Government’s proposals that are causing us such concern. They plan to abolish all local probation trusts; to sell off the majority of services to providers with no experience of probation or supervising offenders; to split up offenders according to risk categories, despite the fact that risk regularly changes; and to roll out an untested payment-by-results model to every region in one go. Probation services will be fundamentally unrecognisable after this upheaval.

13:30

The Minister might think that our list of concerns is becoming a bit tedious, but the only reason the House has had the opportunity to debate these proposals is that Members of the Opposition and another place have forced the Government’s hand. We regret this enormously. The Government ignored the will of one House of Parliament when it asked for a chance to study the plans in depth, and then they voted to remove the amendment from the Bill in Committee. We hope to fare a little better today and that they will consider it appropriate and helpful to have parliamentary oversight of the future of this incredibly important public service.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

On the pilot, some of us in the House expressed our concerns. I have now looked into the matter a bit further, and it seems that it would take three or four further years properly to conduct a pilot. Would that not be three or four years during which a continual problem would remain unaddressed?

[Jenny Chapman]

The hon. Lady might want to reflect that had the Secretary of State not cancelled the pilots already taking place, we might now have had a year’s worth—the pilots would not necessarily have to last three or four years—of evidence, information and lessons learned that might have proved invaluable to the Minister as he proceeded with his programme.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

Would the hon. Lady accept, then, that there would be some delay to short-term prisoners getting the help they need, if we implemented the roll-out programme she is suggesting?

[Jenny Chapman]

I do not quite follow the hon. Gentleman’s logic. Had we kept the pilots running, we would be exactly where we are now, but with more information on which to base a decision. Also, we could conceivably deliver supervision to short-sentence prisoners without the sell-off and reform the Government seem hellbent on implementing.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that my colleagues’ arguments are against pilots in general, not pilots in this specific case?

[Jenny Chapman]

We are in favour of piloting. We like to have evidence on which to base decisions, and we think it odd that the Government scrapped a pilot that was already set up and of which they spoke very highly when they set it up. That was a very strange decision, and we think the Government made a mistake when they cancelled the pilots.

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

I have a lot of sympathy with the hon. Lady’s point about the need to pilot this significant change. She just criticised the Government for making a mistake in cancelling the pilots, but is it not also true that the Offender Management Act 2007, which Labour introduced and which allows Governments to make these changes, did not specify the need for a pilot? Does she accept that that was a mistake as well?

[Jenny Chapman]

I will come to the 2007 Act later, but since the hon. Gentleman has mentioned it now, I shall comment on it briefly. The 2007 Act created probation trusts, and they have now been in existence for several years and actually become quite good—I am sure even the Minister would concede that they are performing very well—but they could perform an awful lot better if challenged and supported to do so. We strongly believe, however, that the 2007 Act should not be being used to abolish the very entities it was set up to create.

On piloting, we have tabled new clause 4 to address the Government’s complete lack of evidence for their proposals. When we ask for evidence for how well the model might work, why it was picked and how much it will cost the taxpayer, we are told that the Secretary of State just believes it is the right way to go about things. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I do not think he is a particular fan, reported its concern that the Government did not appear to consider any other policy options before alighting on this one. It seems that he has had his heart set on this from the very beginning.

Previous Ministers in this Government believed that the proposals should be piloted. In early 2012, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) announced two “ground-breaking” probation pilots to

“help develop…Payment by Results policy”

and to

“test how…public, private and voluntary…partnerships…could”—

“could”, he said—

“drive…reductions in reoffending”.

Had these pilots gone ahead, we would have had more than a year’s experience of this sort of model, but unfortunately the current Secretary of State cancelled them as soon as he took up his post. When we ask, as Opposition Members rightly do, how well these proposals work, there is no evidence with which to answer the question, because the Secretary of State has not tested them, and does not intend to do so, to see whether they work. If he were here, I hope the hon. Member for Reigate would be tempted to vote for new clause 4, because he seemed to support the principle when he was a Minister.

We are left, then, without any evidence and without a pilot, and we have lost the opportunity to test the details of these plans on a much smaller scale and with a manageable level of risk. Inevitably, there will be teething problems and inexperienced providers, there will be failures in communication and there will be glitches in the new IT system. We have just had an hour’s urgent question on the difficulties of introducing a new IT system, yet here we are implementing one at the same time as a wholesale upheaval and sell-off of the service. All this will have to be contended with all at once and on a national scale.

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

My hon. Friend is no doubt aware of the fiasco of the IT service for interpreters in courts, which, dare I say it—ironically—is another Ministry of Justice success story. Does that not underline her point?

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend is completely right. Serving on the Public Accounts Committee, she will be familiar with the manifold problems that the MOJ has with commissioning and procurement. I will refer later particularly to the court interpreters contract and the inclusion of small mammals, which hon. Members might find surprising.

We have recent experience of the fallout from a botched implementation. At the end of last year, universal credit was slowed down, for its own good, after being poorly managed and heavily criticised and after wasting what was predicted to be millions of pounds of taxpayer money. The Work and Pensions Secretary assured Members that the programme would eventually work because under the timetable they were

“testing the system and learning first, and then finally implementing it.”

When I asked him, he said that I needed

“to understand the difference between an approach that rolls something out at every stage and learns from it”—[Official Report, 10 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 139-144.]

and an approach that rushes something in and sees it fail. Well, I think he is right, but I am well aware of the difference. It is just a pity that he has not had the same discussion with the Justice Secretary.

After the recent track record of the Ministry of Justice in mismanaging procurement processes, the PAC recommended that the Ministry

“should draft and implement future contracts so as to minimise transitional problems, for example through piloting and rolling-out new systems gradually.”

The NAO agreed and reported that steady regional roll-outs would allow the Ministry to limit the effect of poor performance. But rather than learning from past mistakes and introducing his reforms at a sensible pace, the Secretary of State is instead opting for a national roll-out at breakneck speed. The operating model for the reforms was published only in September, yet if it all goes to plan trusts are supposed to be abolished by April. Lord Ramsbotham described the timetable as a party political time frame

“that pays no attention to practical reality.”

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

My hon. Friend is certainly reinforcing concerns raised by officers in Devon and Cornwall about the way in which this is being handled. Although they are unhappy about the whole process, they would be prepared to consider operating within a pilot to see whether it had legs, to put it crudely. Does she agree with that?

[Jenny Chapman]

It will not surprise my hon. Friend to know that I do agree. I visited the pilots when they commenced and was impressed with the entrepreneurial attitude taken by trust chief execs and the desire to make them work. For all that the professionals involved had misgivings, the desire in the probation service to make whatever it is dealt work for the benefit of victims of crime and the offenders it works with is quite overwhelming. It is such a shame that those very organisations that have developed to become quite outstanding are going to be abolished.

Lord Ramsbotham said that the time scale paid no attention to practical reality and he is absolutely right. The Chair of the Justice Committee has said that there are

“significant risks in the pace at which the government intend to implement the programme.”

The Minister’s own officials describe the timetable as “aggressive” and a number of probation trust chairs have written publicly to the Secretary of State to advise that he must delay his plans or risk inevitable public protection failures. The chairs of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire probation trusts have, in turn, warned that the timetable is risky and unrealistic and has serious implications for service delivery.

The Ministry of Justice’s own assessment of the implications for service delivery are bleak. A leaked copy of the Department’s risk register reported an over 80 per cent. chance of an

“unacceptable drop in operational performance.”

We have been over this—I have lost count of the number of times that the Minister and I have had this conversation —so I know he will reply that it is not the Government’s practice to publish departmental risk registers. But as the information is already out there, does he not think that it would be beneficial for the Secretary of State to come to the House to discuss the possible risks with Members? I would like to know what an

“unacceptable drop in operational performance”

might look like when we are talking about the supervision of dangerous offenders in the community.

The area of the proposals that has raised the most professional concern is the issue of risk management itself. These are people who are in the risk management business. The Government’s plans will fragment the service and split up offenders based on their category of risk, with low and medium-risk offenders being managed by new providers while those deemed to be high risk stay with the public sector. The problem with that split is that risk is not static and regularly shifts. Around a quarter of offenders change risk category during their order and they do not just change it once or in incremental steps. Low risk can become high risk almost instantaneously if an offender’s circumstances change. The Government are institutionalising into this system a break, which we think is dangerous, where offenders whose risk escalates will have to be handed over to a different provider at the moment they are most volatile, with all the risk that that brings in terms of time delays and communication failures, which we know from other areas cause real problems. That is an unnecessary and, worse, a dangerous layer of bureaucracy that the Government should be doing all they can to avoid. The chief inspector of probation has warned that

“any lack of contractual or operational clarity between the public and private sector will, in our view, lead to systemic failure and an increased risk to the public.”

We find that deeply concerning.

13:45

The Minister has previously given assurances that providers and the national probation service will be co-located to ease handovers but I am not hugely comforted by that. He cannot guarantee that that will be the case in a few years’ time when providers have taken over their own office management; of course he cannot. Anyway, does being in the same building mean that an officer of the national probation service will have the time to monitor the entirety of a community rehabilitation company’s cohort as well as their own case load? It is just not realistic. Will the national probation service be guaranteed the resources and capacity to take over quite a high percentage of CRC cases if that is what it needs to do? We are not reassured, and neither is the profession, that that will be the case.

13:45

[Lorely Burt]

My understanding is that within the CRCs there will be skilled professional people whose job it will be continually to asses the risk factor of low and medium-term prisoners. Would that not indicate that those issues are being covered?

[Jenny Chapman]

I would hope that there will be someone working in a CRC who could assess risk. The point is that whenever we have a transition between organisations, there will be different systems. The relationships will not be so strong and there will be scope for communication failures and for information not to be passed on. That gets to the nub of the concern felt by us and by those working in the sector about where the problems will arise with what the Government are proposing.

The Government have made much of the fact that new and inexperienced providers will only manage those who are low and medium risk. But the Minister knows that low and medium risk includes offenders who have committed sexual assault, burglary, violence against the person, domestic violence and other quite serious offences. All of them will now be under the supervision of companies that have no experience of managing this kind of risk. Alarm over this lack of experience of providers is part of a wider concern not only that the proposal is not fit for purpose, but that some of these potential providers are not properly fit to deliver it either.

The Government are, I know, painfully aware of the MOJ’s record on procuring services and managing contracts. After the somewhat infamous saga—here is the mammal bit—of the language services contract, the PAC concluded that the Ministry of Justice

“was not an intelligent customer”

and the Chair of the Justice Committee reported that “serious flaws” were exposed in the Ministry’s procedures and policies and that the process was a “shambles”. The NAO concluded that the Ministry

“underestimated the project risks when it decided to switch from a regional to a national rollout”

and allowed the contract to be operational before it was ready. I do not need to spell out the extent of the risk to public safety if these sorts of failures are allowed to occur in this exercise.

Perhaps because of all these problems, Ministers have pinned all their hopes on the payment mechanism. They assure us that success is guaranteed because providers will be paid by results. But Members will recall similar claims being made about the Work programme, in which every provider started by failing to meet its targets. Ministers have also so far been unable to tell Members exactly how much of a fee will be paid by results and how much the provider will get up front, regardless of their performance. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) made an excellent point in Committee, when she said that when universal credit had been bailed out the original structures were still in place to provide services that the reforms could not. There was at least some sort of continuity. Given that the Secretary of State is planning to abolish every probation trust in a matter of months, what will be in place to protect the public? Should a provider fail or the entire roll-out have to be halted because of poor performance, nothing would be in place.

The performance of providers and the very real concern about failure brings me to new clause 5, which deals with contract management. It is designed to ensure better performance from providers and much better management of contracts by the Ministry of Justice than we have seen in recent years. I know the Minister will accept that this is needed. Now we come to the bit about the rabbit! The MOJ paid for a rabbit to be licensed as a court interpreter—the commissioning car crash, as it was called, meaning the language service’s contract. The Chairman of the Justice Select Committee concluded that the Ministry’s naivety at the start of the process appeared to have been matched, once the new arrangements came into operation, by its indulgence towards underperformance against the contract.

We will disagree today on how well the Secretary of State and his Department can manage this kind of process, but I am sure that the Minister would agree with the Opposition Front-Bench team at least on the fact that we must not tolerate underperformance if and when these contracts come into force. We cannot allow these problems to happen again in the future. Neither the Ministry’s nor the Government’s records are particularly encouraging on this front. The Justice Select Committee in its review of the budgeting structure of the MOJ reported—astutely, I think—that the Department has a tendency to focus on policy creation rather than implementation. The recent independent review of MOJ contracting reported in December that there were long-standing and significant weaknesses in contract management at the Department. It found that the focus on contracts lessened significantly after the initial procurement and, in some cases, there appeared to be a lack of appetite for continuous improvement. The review concluded that opportunities to mitigate risks and optimise services were being missed.

We have seen first hand the damage done when the Ministry’s attention span fails to keep track of a contract. Our new clause 5 attempts to support the Government to get a bit better on that. Contracts for two major providers and potential failures in probation bidding are currently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office, after the taxpayer was overcharged by millions for the tagging of offenders who were dead, had been released or, in some cases, had left the country. The prisoner escort contract with Serco has been referred for investigation by the Metropolitan police, and the Ministry’s own review of contracts has led to two more G4S contracts being referred to the SFO. It should not be necessary to mention how unhappy Members on both sides of the House would be if a company under investigation for fraud were to be permitted to bid to manage public protection, so I am sure the Minister will want to assure us that that will not be the case. So far, the Government have not done so.

Opposition Members have proposed a number of safeguards in new clause 5, which we believe should be included to improve the quality of the Government’s reforms. If the Government are hellbent on going ahead, new clause 5 would provide at least some kind of oversight and scrutiny for this House. We want them to pilot the proposals and seek parliamentary approval, which we have discussed. We tabled in Committee a number of measures to help improve the quality of contracts. These included ensuring that all providers of this key public service would be subject to freedom of information requests, that contracts would last for a maximum of five years so that a Government were not able to make decisions binding the entire Parliament that follows them, and that taxpayers’ money should be protected by the inclusion of break and clawback clauses in all contracts.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I am listening intently to the hon. Lady’s argument, but how can it have real force if she dismisses the experience of contractual arrangements gained over a significant period of time with organisations such as Turning Point, the St Giles Trust and Catch 22? The argument cannot have force if she dismisses out of hand the quality provision of rehabilitation by these and other organisations. Is she saying that these organisations cannot be trusted with the management of rehabilitation?

[Jenny Chapman]

I do not have a problem with any of the organisations to which the hon. Gentleman refers. The fact that organisations are third sector does not of itself make them good, responsible and right in every case. If organisations are to take on these contracts, they will do so almost entirely in conjunction with other large companies, and it is reasonable to expect them to be open to scrutiny; my experience suggests that they will be.

[Mr Burrowes]

I am trying to get to the point of the characteristics of the organisations that are fit for the purposes involved. One cannot label an organisation as acceptable simply because it is third sector if it is inappropriate. Does the hon. Lady recognise the principle that there is a role for private sector involvement in rehabilitation?

[Jenny Chapman]

Yes, I do. All I am asking for is parity. A public sector provider of these services is subject to a certain level of scrutiny, not least in respect of freedom of information, and when we are spending increasingly vast sums on a small number of private sector providers it is not unreasonable to expect them to be subject to similar oversight. The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to learn that the Government voted against all these measures in Committee, saying that the current arrangements offer enough protection and assuring us that any necessary safeguards would be included in the contracts.

I am afraid to tell the Minister, who is well respected in this House, that it is a little difficult simply to accept even his word on such important issues, particularly given that the Government’s record on outsourcing is so awful. We have already discussed the compelling example of the court translation services contract, and another example fresh in our minds is the running of Oakwood prison.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Jeremy Wright)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way and, as ever, for her kind words. I suggest, however, that I am not asking her to take only my word about the safeguards in the contracts. We will publish the contracts in draft so that the House can see for itself.

[Jenny Chapman]

Perhaps, then, if that is the Minister’s attitude, he will be minded to support our new clause 5. It is reasonably worded and if he reads it carefully he might find that he can support it.

Returning to HMP Oakwood, the Government have somehow managed to build a brand new, state-of-the-art prison that seems to be failing on every imaginable front. A surprise prison inspection last year found inmates reporting that it was easier to get drugs than soap on the wings, while the inspectorate report revealed that the inexperience of staff was visible everywhere, with staff unwilling to challenge bad behaviour and many being

“passive almost to the point of collusion”.

As the report continued, indicators of levels of violence were high, there were not enough activity places and the control and supply of medication was “chaotic”. The chief inspector of prisons called the state of the prison “unquestionably concerning”. The Secretary of State was disappointingly somewhat less firm in his criticism, largely dismissing these as “teething problems”. A couple of months later, inmates managed to stage not one, but two rooftop protests. As late as last week, six months after the inspectorate visited the prison, West Staffordshire police were notified of an incident lasting through the night, apparently involving an entire wing being barricaded by inmates.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

I am sure it is entirely my fault for being obtuse, but could the hon. Lady try to weave her remarks about the prison into her arguments in support of the new clause because I do not see a connection?

[Jenny Chapman]

I will attempt to assist the hon. and learned Gentleman. The point is that Oakwood prison is run by one of the would-be providers of probation services.

[Jeremy Wright]

It is not.

[Jenny Chapman]

Perhaps the Minister knows more than I do—I hope he does—but nothing we have read suggests that G4S will not take part in any way in the provision of these services. A statement made on 19 December informed us that it would not be a lead bidder, but also indicated that it might be part of a consortium.

14:00

[Jeremy Wright]

Perhaps I can help. The list of prime bidders has now been published, and Members may well find it worth their while to have a look at it. It is true that neither G4S nor Serco appears on the list, but a number of others organisations do, including 10 probation mutuals.

[Jenny Chapman]

But those are lead bidders, and I understand that none of the contracts will be taken on by one organisation alone. There is nothing to prevent G4S and others from being involved in the provision of probation services when the contracts are awarded. The other reason this information is relevant to probation is that it reveals that the quality of the supervision and enforcement of contracts by the Ministry of Justice is not quite what we would like it to be.

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

The statement that was made to the House a couple of weeks ago was explicit about the possibility that G4S and Serco would form parts of consortia. I think that the Minister should make the position absolutely clear.

[Jenny Chapman]

That is certainly my understanding, and nothing that the Minister has said so far contradicts it. Unless we hear something more definitive from G4S, the Ministry of Justice or the Minister today, I think that that must remain our assumption.

The MOJ tends to take its eye off the ball as soon as a contract has been signed, so new clause 5 helpfully provides for a longer-term regular check on the performance of probation service providers. Its scope is really quite limited: it merely requires the Secretary of State to report to both Houses of Parliament on the performance of all providers that are contracted to manage offenders. In particular, the report must include an assessment of the transparency of each provider, and must specify what information it is making available to the public and how reliably it is responding to freedom of information requests submitted to the MOJ. It must also update both Houses on what measures were included in the contracts to ensure that poor performance could be penalised, and on whether any have been invoked.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

In the past, the Justice Committee has suggested not that private companies should be subject to freedom of information requirements, which would be contrary to any working commercial system, but that when writing contracts, public bodies should ensure that they have access—and thus create freedom of information access—to any information that would have been public if the work was still being done in the public sector.

[Jenny Chapman]

We would probably go a little further, but I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says. The new clause merely requires companies to respond in a way that helps the MOJ to meet its own freedom of information requirements.

Opposition Members are becoming increasingly concerned about the blind spot that seems to be developing in relation to outsourced contracts. Given the rate at which the Secretary of State is issuing invitations to the likes of Eddie Stobart to take over justice contracts, more and more information is being put out of the taxpayer’s reach.

Responding to amendments tabled in Committee, the Government argued that the status quo, whereby a contractor is considered to hold information on behalf of a public body, was working well enough. We disagree, and the Minister knows that, in practice, there is information that private contracts choose to keep to themselves while public providers are rightly held to account. That is not a level playing field, and it does not give us, our constituents or, indeed, the press enough power to scrutinise those who are wielding large public budgets and providing front-line public services.

[Meg Hillier]

The heads of some of the big private sector providers recently appeared before the Public Accounts Committee. They expressed a wish for more openness, and some of them told us that they were being constrained in that regard by their contracts with the Government rather than by their own desires.

[Jenny Chapman]

I was not aware of that, but I am very pleased that some of the big providers are taking that attitude.

We have pledged to expand the scope of freedom of information requirements if we win the next election. We should have liked the Government to make a start with probation providers, but, unfortunately, it seems that so far they are unpersuaded. We hope that, as a compromise, they will agree to monitor the extent to which providers respond to their duty to release information to assist the Ministry of Justice with its FOI duties. That will allow us to establish whether the current provisions are indeed sufficient, or whether more needs to be done to make companies accountable to the public.

Finally, new clause 5 requires an update on what measures were included in contracts to ensure that poor performance can be dealt with properly. We are very concerned about that. The Government refused to assure us that break clauses, which allow the taxpayer to walk away if a provider consistently fails to perform to national standards, would be included in all contracts. Instead, the Minister has given his word that underperformance will not be tolerated, and that contracts will include a number of safeguards to protect the quality of the service and the cost to the taxpayer. The new clause would simply allow Members to hold the Minister to that welcome assurance.

The Government’s proposed reforms are ill thought through, risky and, in our view, reckless. We believe that the Government should slow down the process and take the time to get it right. In fact, they may well be right, and if they organised pilots and obtained some evidence, we would be the first to support them. However, if they press ahead with their gamble with public safety, the bare minimum that our constituents must be assured of is that providers will be expected to perform exceptionally well.

New clauses 1, 4 and 5 are intended to build safeguards into the process. They would allow plans to be properly scrutinised, tested, and made fit for purpose. The Secretary of State is taking a gamble with public safety. He is rolling out an untested model in the hands of unqualified providers, and he expects us to be reassured by his inner belief. It is a great pity that the Government are not willing to proceed slowly, to do things properly, and to work with the professionals, and even the Opposition, to arrive at a result on which we could possibly all agree.

[Mr Burrowes]

I am, in some ways, trying to help the hon. Lady’s case. She has referred to “unqualified providers”. I know that she does not want to pick and choose between different sectors, but is she saying that those 10 probation mutuals are unqualified?

[Jenny Chapman]

Absolutely not. I welcome the involvement of probation mutuals. I think that it would have been a great deal easier, less time-consuming, less expensive and less traumatic if some of those organisations had been allowed simply to get on with it without having to form themselves into new organisations. Had the Government’s initial proposal been for all trusts to be able to re-form as mutuals, using the skills, experience, knowledge and relationships that they already have, we would not have needed to engage in this debate today.

We will press new clauses 1, 4 and 5 to a vote. If the Government are so confident about what they are doing, why should they not submit their plans to proper parliamentary scrutiny?

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I will be brief because we enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) for some little while. Essentially the point of difference between her and me, certainly in relation to new clause 1 and the new clauses that mirror it, is that she would like to delay the progress of the implementation of the Government’s proposals and I would like them to be implemented as soon as possible.

There has been a considerable amount of to-ing and fro-ing both across the Dispatch Box and between Members of Parliament and their constituents who work within what I loosely term the probation services, by which I mean not specifically the Government agency, but those who carry out rehabilitation services. I have recently met members of staff of the Leicestershire probation service and when I was a shadow Justice Minister I made a point of visiting a huge number of probation offices, meeting both probation staff and those who work not in the Government agencies but in the charitable sector, such as the organisations my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) mentioned in his intervention. It struck me that, by and large, there was a big hole in the way we look after short-term prisoners and repeat offenders. They were released from prison unsupervised, and the sooner we start supervising these under-12-month prisoners the better for them and for their victims and society as a whole.

I can appreciate the political arguments the hon. Member for Darlington advanced. I appreciate that from her pre-parliamentary background she has an affiliation with the GMB and therefore has an interest in—

[Jenny Chapman]

indicated dissent.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

Well, I hope I have read the hon. Lady’s entry correctly. Perhaps she had better come and see me later and we can get it corrected. In any case, her party has a closer affiliation to the trade union movement than I personally have and my party has. I can therefore understand why she is advancing these arguments requesting pilots and other forms of delay mechanisms, because she does not want these measures to come to pass. I think that argument has been had and the situation now needs to be resolved, however, and I therefore urge her not to press her amendment to a Division. I am far more interested in the results we can achieve for our constituents and those offenders who desperately need the supervision they are currently not getting than I am in the political arguments.

[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Might not another reason for our pressing these amendments be accountability and wanting to see evidence?

[Sir Edward Garnier]

No doubt that might be one of the collateral reasons, but that does not undermine the point I am making, which is that we need to help these under 12-monthers as soon as possible. If we are to have further statutory brakes on the introduction of supervision, either through the national probation service or through the non-Government organisations—

[Jenny Chapman]

rose—

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I seem to have provoked all sorts of charming people. I give way.

14:15

[Jenny Chapman]

I really did not want to intervene and was trying very hard not to do so, but I just want the hon. and learned Gentleman to understand that we are not opposed in any way whatever to the introduction of supervision for prisoners who serve short sentences, but we believe there are other ways in which that could have been implemented without going through this ridiculous process that the Government are hell-bent on pursuing.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

Is it St Francis I am reminded of: “Oh Lord make me pure, but not yet”?

[Jeremy Wright]

St Augustine.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

St Augustine. I am so glad for that correction. The Minister is multi-talented.

I do not think I need to pursue my argument. I have made the point I want to make, and I understand the points the hon. Member for Darlington has made and I disagree with them. I suggest we get on and permit the arrangements to be advanced as soon as possible. I say that not out of party political animus; I say it out of a desire to see something done, having spent five years in opposition between 2005 and just short of 2010 taking an intense interest in the way in which we ran our prison system, our criminal justice system and our rehabilitation system. I also say it as someone who has sat for 12 or so years as a Crown court recorder and who had to deal quite regularly with the results of failure, and I think the time has come to stop that.

[Sarah Champion]

May I begin by apologising as I will not be able to be present for the final winding-up speeches? I mean no disrespect, but I have an outstanding parliamentary engagement I just cannot get rid of. [Interruption.] Sorry; an engagement I cannot be excused from.

Every time I have been involved in proceedings on this Bill it is as though I have stepped into the twilight zone. I was on the Bill Committee and in the Opposition debate on this issue, and from what I am hearing today, the same thing keeps on happening and I do not understand why.

I support new clause 5 and the other new clauses to which I have added my name. We are asking for a full debate in Parliament about a major overhaul of the judicial system. The safeguard of new clause 1 was previously inserted in the Bill in the other place but was removed by the Government in Committee. I do not understand the logic for doing that.

The nub of this Bill—which is not actually included in its provisions—is that 70% of the probation service will be privatised. I do not understand the motivation for doing that. I hear the arguments and I hear a lot of myths about what Labour is saying and is not saying, but the two do not stack up and I am just not hearing the evidence for making the change.

[Gareth Johnson]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that a tendering-out process is vital if we are to assist short-term prisoners and that that cannot be achieved within existing budgets?

[Sarah Champion]

I hear that point and I have heard it made for months now, but I do not agree that that is the only way forward and I am yet to hear the evidence that tells me that it is the best way forward. I would like to develop that point.

As we are not being presented with evidence, the only conclusion I can reach is that the policy is driven by ideology rather than facts. This is not a subject we should be playing with. We need to have evidence and proof. Even a pilot would give us time—that breathing space and that evidence. That is why I support new clause 4. The proposal is being rushed through. The system is over 100 years old and it has served us well in that time; we have been debating the proposal for only the past six months.

I would like to set the record straight once again on Labour’s position. We are not in any way opposed to supporting offenders who have had sentences of under 12 months. We actually tried to bring that support through but were unable to do so. We are very supportive of that, but we question the one way that has been presented to us in which it should be done.

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady is right that the previous Labour Government set out exactly such an aspiration and she is right, too, that they came to the conclusion that they could not achieve it, but does she not accept that they came to that conclusion because they could not find a way of affording it? That is precisely why we have put forward these proposals—it is the only way we can see of affording that extra cost. So far, I have heard nothing to suggest that there is an alternative.

[Sarah Champion]

I support what the Minister says, but there are two points to make. First, we have not been presented with the costs, so we do not know whether it can be afforded. Secondly, I do not agree with the premise that that is the only way to go forward.

Although I would not choose it, we are not fundamentally opposed to commercial companies tendering for and running Government contracts, as long as they are proved to be the best provider. We are also not at any level against voluntary organisations being involved. Indeed, a number of such organisations are providing specialist services in Rotherham, and we want that to continue. I am sure that that is happening across the country. This is not an either/or situation.

I want to use this debate to challenge some of the Government’s reasons for this massive overhaul of our judicial system, in the hope that even just one person in the Chamber will listen to some of the evidence that we are putting forward and question the assumptions that are being made. The underlying assumption is that the existing system is not fit for purpose, yet the National Offender Management Service published a report in July 2012 that demonstrated that the quality of the probation service was either good or exceptional in every single probation trust. After the probation service as a whole won an award for excellence in 2011, the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), who was Minister for prisons and probation at the time, said—

[Mr Burrowes]

The hon. Lady has attended the debates on this subject. She was here for the Opposition day debate and she served on the Bill Committee. Plainly, the focus of the Bill is the provision of rehabilitation for short-term offenders. Will she provide statistics on who is looking after those short-term offenders and on their reoffending rates? Is it really acceptable to defend the status quo?

[Sarah Champion]

I agree that it is unacceptable that those people are not getting support now. I would like to go further and start their rehabilitation in prison. I would like there to be a complete system, so that when people come out they will be able to engage much better in society and will not reoffend.

[Lorely Burt]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Champion]

I should just like to tell the House what the hon. Member for Reigate said. After the probation service as a whole won an award for excellence in 2011, he stated:

“This prestigious award recognises the professionalism of probation staff and the excellence of their work. This very public recognition of not just what they do but, perhaps more importantly, how well they do it, will be a source of pride for probation staff.”

The existing probation trusts are doing an excellent job, and that is being recognised. They are not broken.

[Lorely Burt]

I do not think that anyone in the House would dispute the fact that the probation service does an excellent job. However, during the last 10 years of the previous Government, the cost of running the service rose by 70%. The hon. Lady says that she does not disagree with the use of private providers or with the aims of the Bill. Can she explain how on earth it would be possible to realise those aims without taking these steps?

[Sarah Champion]

Unfortunately, I cannot explain that, because the plans have not been put before us. I am therefore unable to scrutinise them or to change them to the degree that I would like. I am supporting new clause 1 because I would like the House to be able to debate those matters, but we are not being given the opportunity to do so.

Another assumption that is being presented to us is that probation trusts are failing to reduce reoffending rates, yet reoffending rates are falling. The latest statistics published by the Ministry of Justice show that the probation service reduced reoffending by a further 5% below the target figure. This continues the downward trend in reoffending rates witnessed over recent years, and reoffending by all adult offenders in the community subject to probation supervision is now at its lowest since 2007-08. The probation service has achieved that while making the considerable budgetary savings asked of it. In South Yorkshire, the figures are even better, at 12.77% lower than the target figure.

Reoffending rates are important, but they are not the only criterion for success in this area. The probation service can also boast that victim feedback has been positive in 98% of cases; that targets for completions on domestic violence interventions, and for court report timeliness, have been met and exceeded; and that completion targets were also met or exceeded on the vast majority of probation programmes. The probation trusts are doing a superb job, and they should be allowed to continue to do so.

Another assumption that keeps being mentioned in the debate is that the only way in which supervision for people serving a sentence of under 12 months can be afforded is through privatisation. However, the proposals will necessitate the wholesale reorganisation of the probation service and a lengthy and complex national tendering and contracting process, all of which will require significant investment before we even get to the meat of doing the job. There is huge concern over the lack of information on the cost of the proposals. We have asked for that information, but it has not been presented. Despite the publication of several impact assessments, the Ministry of Justice has yet to set out the cost of the reforms and the way in which they will be funded. This is a fundamental point. If we are expected to take this leap in the dark, at least we should be chucked a lifeboat so that we can get into it.

The current budget for probation is approximately £800 million a year, suggesting a 10-year budget of £8 billion. The House of Commons Library has broadly estimated that the 10-year value of outsourced probation would be between £5 billion and £20 billion. That is in addition to the budget for the remaining public sector probation service. That suggests that a significant increase in costs is being predicted, contrary to Ministry of Justice claims that the reforms are a cost-saving initiative. In addition, there would be the unknown percentage resulting from performance-related pay.

Now it starts to get surreal—not that it was not already. The Government say that the probation service cannot tender because of the performance-related pay aspect, so why do they not just drop that element? The probation trusts have been saying all along that they would like the opportunity to support people serving short-term sentences. They are clearly the best trained and most skilled specialist people to do that work, but they are not even being allowed to tender for it. I find it incredibly challenging that the main stumbling block to retaining the status quo in that area is that the Government will not drop the performance-related pay element.

I support new clauses 5 and 11, but other people want to speak so I shall not say any more about the companies that are tendering for the work. Nor will I go into the whole data protection issue that will result from state, private and voluntary organisations sharing information. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) has already mentioned the logistics of reorganisation and the risks incurred during a transition period. Those risks are enormous. We are not talking about people not getting paid for a week. We are talking about people being out in the community without the necessary supervision, and the potential for the data to collapse around them so that we would not even know where they were.

In conclusion, new clause 1 would prevent the Government from being able to sell off or restructure the probation service unless their proposals had first been laid before, and approved by, both Houses of Parliament. The Government have not given Parliament any opportunity to scrutinise their plans to privatise probation, claiming instead that they can use existing legislation to push the plans through. The only time we have debated this topic is during Opposition day debates. That cannot be democratic. The way in which this has been handled has shaken me to the core.

[Jeremy Wright]

Of course democratic accountability is important. The hon. Lady has mentioned the opportunities the House has had to debate these matters. She has mentioned the Opposition day debate, in which there was a vote and the House voted against her point of view. She has also mentioned the Second Reading debate, after which the House voted against her point of view. She was also in the Committee, where the Committee voted against her point of view. How much more democracy does she need?

[Sarah Champion]

Again, it would be nice to have the evidence; instead, we are debating in the dark. I find it shocking that we had to raise the issue in an Opposition day debate, rather than the Government presenting their findings to us.

For me, it is right and proper that this House should debate the privatisation of 70% of probation services; the fragmentation of the resulting services; the abolition of local probation trusts; the commissioning of services direct from Westminster; and the imposition of an untried, untested payment-by-results model. Instead, the Government are pushing ahead with their half-baked plans for probation privatisation by misusing existing legislation and avoiding parliamentary scrutiny. I can only assume that that decision is driven by political ideology, but this proposal will put the public at risk.

The chairs of the probation trusts of Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire have written to the Minister to warn him of the dire consequences of rushing this reform through. Those experts say that

“performance is bound to be damaged and that public protection failures will inevitably increase”.

They go on to say that the fragmentation proposed by this Government would lead to

“more systemic risks and more preventable serious attacks and deaths”

and that the current timetable was

“unrealistic and unreasonable...with serious implications for service delivery and therefore increases the risk to public”.

I urge the Minister to listen to the people who know and understand the service best, and to support our proposal in new clause 1.

[John Pugh]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 4. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) mentioned ideology. It might surprise her to learn that I am a great fan of ideology; I think that people should have clear political beliefs. There is at least one clear ideology on public services, which states that government services are best delivered not by a Government agency but by private bidders trying to satisfy the Government. There is a general view that Government agencies are necessarily incompetent, inflexible or naturally the prisoner of Government employees and unions, and that outsourcing is always the best and first option.

14:30

A known technique is used, as we have seen in connection with this Bill, which is to discredit the existing service; propose restructuring and reform; argue for appreciable haste; reduce the Government’s role, where possible, to that of a commissioner rather than a provider; and then, if necessary, to talk up what has been referred to as “bid candy”. That involves talking about mutuals or charities, rather than private providers, which will be the big players in most scenarios. In addition, savings are promised, as are a reduction in bureaucracy and greater efficiency through competition. The ideology is always clear, although the political manoeuvring is sometimes less than transparent. Critics legitimately claim, as they have done in this debate, that a loss of institutional memory occurs and a less integrated service results, just as the demoralisation and de-professionalisation of existing staff results too. There are other attendant risks, such as the risk of putting profit before service or cost before quality. An ideological view would, however, assure us that we can have all the upside gains from this approach and none of the downside risks if we are clever enough, plan right, commission wisely and so on. I am sure that is what the Government will say.

That is where the debate goes, and it is where we are now, but for one thing: ideology, or what we think should happen, is always trumped by evidence—by what actually happens. Regardless of what we think ought to work, we have to look at what actually does work. So far, there is no evidence that the suggested demarcation and division of work load projected by this legislation can work; that clients can be permanently labelled either “high risk” or “low risk”, or move effortlessly from one category to the other; that the savings—this does worry me—can be guaranteed; that there are enough good bidders in all markets to provide a good and equitable service, which should worry the Minister; and that it is necessarily a good thing to have mandatory 12 months’ supervision of all people in all circumstances, with that being the most efficient and effective way of using the probation service, which it might be, but the evidence is not there so far to support that. There is no evidence to suggest that the current system is not working as well as can reasonably be expected or that payment by results is likely to work better.

On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that staff are demoralised and unconvinced. We do not need to be persuaded of that; it is the case. Plenty of evidence from previous restructurings in the NHS shows that wholesale restructuring absorbs time and resources, and reduces efficiency, and that there are still lingering communications systems issues to address—we have mentioned the IT system, too. Enough evidence is available to make an ideologue—though not perhaps a Minister—think that a smart move in this case would be to have a pilot, because we are talking about a precious asset, the probation service of this country, and we need to handle it carefully. One way of doing that is to pilot things first and then, when we are totally satisfied that everything is working, to put it in place nationally, if need be.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I wish to speak briefly to new clauses 1 and 4, both of which I have co-signed with Her Majesty’s official Opposition. The Government do not want new clause 1 in the Bill because they are concerned that, in due course, they will not win the vote in either House of Parliament because, frankly, what they are proposing does not add up to much. At the end of last year, the official Opposition held a debate on the Government’s plans to restructure probation work and, until that point, the Justice Secretary had refused to answer for his plans on the Floor of the House. During that debate, many of us outlined why we thought it baffling that the Government should want to target the probation service, a service that is so high performing and where the numbers speak for themselves.

The Ministry of Justice’s own figures show that none of the 35 probation trusts is currently showing cause for “serious concern” and none “require development”; and that 31 of the trusts are “showing good performance” and four are “performing exceptionally”. In 2011-12, victim feedback was positive in 98% of cases; 80% of orders or licences were completed successfully; and 49% of offenders were in employment at the end of their orders and 89% were in accommodation. Reoffending rates were better than predicted in both England and Wales, and the probation service met all its targets in 2012. The service achieved a successful completion rate of 81% for participants of sex offender treatment programmes and exceeded its completion targets on domestic violence interventions. In October 2011, the probation service became the only public sector organisation to be awarded the British Quality Foundation award. The board said that the service was

“on the right path to achieving and sustaining excellence and essentially to being the best providers of these essential services.”

The reoffending rate among those sentenced to more than 12 months but less than four years is 36.2%, while among those serving between four and 10 years it is 30.7%. As we know, the reoffending rate for individuals sentenced to less than 12 months—the cohort that currently, by and large, receives no supervision, despite some probation trusts asking for the authority to take control of them—stands much higher, at 58.5%. That takes us to the crux of the argument. Everybody in this Chamber agrees that something has to be done, but we disagree about how it should be done, because what the Government have proposed is untried, untested and downright dangerous.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I endorse everything the right hon. Gentleman is saying about the excellent service that the current probation service provides. Is not part of the problem that the Government are failing to address a major problem, which is the reoffending by people with mental health conditions? If we tackled mental health and mental health services rather than imprisoned people, we could cut some of that reoffending more dramatically than we could by privatising the service.

[Mr Llwyd]

The hon. Lady, who has taken an interest in this subject for many years, as have I, is absolutely correct. I would go a bit further and say that if we dealt with mental health problems and drug addiction, we could empty about 40% of prisoners from prisons tomorrow without any danger—had we got the safety net out in the community.

The Government are taking a drastic step without having any proven record of any possible success. Unlike with some services that are privatised, there is an inherent danger to the public in all this. I agree fully with the Opposition when they say that we want the thing tried and tested. That is not a political scam to try to stop it. I would like it stopped, but let us also be honest and say that we are where we are and we should at least see whether these plans will work. That surely is a common-sense thing to do, but time and time again, in the Public Bill Committee and in all the other debates, we have been unable to persuade the Government to pause and to think carefully about why they initiated their two pilots previously. Why did they do that if they were that unconcerned and the pilots were bound to succeed?

The Secretary of State, who drifted in and out here today, in typical fashion, has said in some debates, “You do things sometimes because they are right.” I am sure that is right, but it is a bit risky to have a messianic view of life and say, “Because they are new and are being tried now, they have got to be right. What’s right is right.” That is absolute balderdash and I am afraid he will eat those words in the next two or three years. I hope not, but there will be a danger in this system.

As we are all aware, what will be left of the public sector probation service will work with victims, hostels and offenders who pose a high risk of harm. The remaining 70% of cases—the low-risk and medium-risk offenders—will be managed by the private sector under the model that we are talking about. The point has already been made that such risks vary—they can vary from day to day or from week to week. I do not know how the system will be managed, but co-location has been mentioned. I am not sure whether that will work, but, again, it is a matter of crossing one’s fingers and hoping for the best.

There are serious concerns about the payment-by-results model, most of which I will briefly outline with regard to another amendment that would compel the Government to pilot the plans before implementing them across the board. To some relief, we find that G4S and Serco will not be coming in on this, although they do know a lot about criminality.

Under the proposals, private companies will be responsible for the majority of cases involving domestic violence, sexual offences, burglary, robbery, violence against the person and gang-related crimes. That is highly sensitive work, which clearly requires trained professionals with experience of how to deal with victims and perpetrators of such complex crimes. It is highly unlikely that the private sector will prioritise holistic initiatives such as work with victims of crime. I am afraid that it will be driven by profit rather than levels of care. Many individuals who come into contact with the probation service have one or more mental health problems. They may have suffered abuse, have substance misuse issues, literacy problems and poor educational attainment. Such people need to be signposted to the proper avenues for care and support. They are highly damaged individuals and require special attention.

The proposals will compromise public protection and provide a perverse incentive for private companies not to put resources into decreasing offending behaviour. There are also numerous possibilities for conflicts of interest, the tackling of which is the aim of another amendment that I have co-signed.

The Social Market Foundation has argued that payment by results incentivises an increase in offending. To understand that, it is important to note that the Government have decided that a private company will neither be penalised nor rewarded for an increase or decrease in offending of 3% either way. Ostensibly, that is to take account of the fact that external factors can have an impact on offending rates. In practice, however, it would mean that private companies would have to achieve a 4% decrease in offending before being rewarded. They will simply not invest that amount of money when there is no guarantee of a return on their investment. Unfortunately, it is far more likely that the companies will make a profit by delivering court orders in the cheapest way possible by opening call centres. Understandably, the National Association of Probation Officers—the experts on this—is worried, and legitimately I would say.

The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) referred to the GMB union. It is a question not of union versus anybody else but of what works and what does not work. NAPO has had experience over many years, and I have already referred to its successes.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

rose—

[Mr Llwyd]

Yes, of course I shall give way, but let me make this point. Time and again, I have heard NAPO say, “If it is inevitable that we have to go down this path, let us see whether it works.” Let us pilot this system. Let it come before Parliament before the changes are effected, because, although NAPO refers to its jobs, its main concern is the safety of the public it serves.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

The right hon. Gentleman and I have many mutual friends who are members of NAPO. Harry Fletcher is a former assistant general-secretary whom we both know and respect. My point was quietly to tease the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) who happened to say in a parliamentary reference book that she was a member of the GMB, but she tells me that that is not the case. I was not making a substantive point but—

[Jenny Chapman]

rose—

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I do not think that we need to divert into other areas. The short point I am making is that of course there are political differences between my party and Labour over the influence of trade unions. Essentially what I want to get across is that this needs to be done because the victims and the prisoners in question need to be assisted.

14:45

[Mr Llwyd]

I agree entirely with the hon. and learned Gentleman on that. We all agree that we need to deal with these prisoners. If the model works, that is fine, but if it does not, it will be a disaster. Pausing a bit would have been a good idea. There were two pilots that were cancelled halfway through. If they had carried on, we would have had some evidence to consider. Even people like me who need some persuasion about the system would see that it works and that there is no danger to the public. Instead, we rush headlong into the dark.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there has been too much social experimentation between the private sector and some public sector organisations, such as the probation service? In industry, for example, if a company were bringing in an innovation, it would have a pilot scheme either to silence the doubters or to answer them. I agree that we should have a pilot scheme on this. It is far too dangerous to deal with it in the abstract.

[Mr Llwyd]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. That feeling is held widely across the House, and not just on these Benches. The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) referred to ideology. The Bill is a victory for ideology over common sense. That by itself is ridiculous enough, but the inherent dangers of it make it even more insidious.

To avoid treading over old ground, I will not talk about the risk register. None the less, it still alarms me that the risks were seen as so high at the commencement of this exercise, and I have no reason to believe that they have changed for the better since.

Briefly, let me refer to new clause 4. The impetus behind it is to ensure that we do not rush headlong into implementing these reforms without first having a pilot, which would be independently evaluated and reported on to both Houses of Parliament. I notice that the esteemed Chair of the Justice Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), is in his place, so I must be careful about what I say. Over the past few weeks, we have taken evidence from many sectors involved in probation and rehabilitation. A considerable amount of it was from people who had been involved in previous Government privatisations. Surprisingly, they were saying, “Don’t do it. Don’t rush in. It is not proven. It may not be cost-effective and it could cause huge problems.” Such people are surely aware of the risks involved and they came before the Committee to give their opinion. It is not simply a matter of one political divide against the other. Some of those people presented as being more in sympathy with the Government than with anybody else, but they said not to do it because it is unproven and could be dangerous.

The probation service has prior experience of the damage that can result from privatisation. Building management, for example, has been contracted out to the private sector, which has resulted in a great deal of waste and inefficiency. I have heard of an engineer being sent from Liverpool to Cardiff to fit a carpet tile even though, ironically, there is a carpet shop opposite the Cardiff probation office—you could not make it up.

In 2007, the running of bail beds was outsourced to a company called ClearSprings, which had no experience in the criminal justice sector. Numerous complaints were made about antisocial behaviour and drunkenness and the contract had to be removed. We know about Serco and G4S, so I will not go there again. Clearly, there is a significant prospect of disorder and possible dangers if the plans do not prove to be sensible. As for the Government’s risk assessment, time is short so I will not go there.

The restructuring will mean that there will have to be an entirely new operating model with 21 new government companies; that staff will have to be allocated to new roles in community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service; that no fewer than 18,000 staff members will be transferred to new employers; and that up to 250,000 offender cases will be reallocated. It would be foolhardy indeed to proceed without some guarantee of success.

It would not be unheard of for new measures being introduced to the justice system to be piloted nationally. Recently, pilots on payment by results have been held at HMP Peterborough and Doncaster, albeit voluntarily, while in recent years Governments have held pilots on satellite tracking, the domestic violence 28-day prevention order and drug reduction schemes. Piloting is not unheard of.

This is not a question of reputational risk for the MOJ. We are all concerned about the safety of the public more than anything else. A further risk register produced by the probation employers last November of last year warned of a high risk of

“a failure of the programme to be delivered either in scope or within the timescale set by ministers”.

At this eleventh hour, I plead with the Minister and his colleagues to give the scheme a chance and to give us all a chance to evaluate it. We might come back one day saying, “Yes, it was right,” or, “No, it was not.” If the answer is no, many people will suffer. Those members of the public are the people whom it is our duty to protect.

[John McDonnell]

I apologise to the House for the fact that I will leave after my brief remarks, because at 3 o’clock I have a meeting, which I have been seeking for a couple of months, with the Secretary of State for Education, about a school in my constituency. I hope that I will be back in time for the Minister’s response.

Let me pick up on the point made by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier). We have all been pressing for some time, under the previous Government and this Government, for the supervision of offenders with sentences of less than 12 months, but we all expected that to proceed normally—that is, with a proposal being made with a budgetary paper attached that the existing system would be challenged to meet—so that we could plan the development of the probation service. If there were to be additional funds, some of us would have lobbied the Treasury while others would have argued that the service should swallow its own smoke and keep the budget within its existing budgets. That was what we expected.

I think that clause 1 was inserted in the Bill in the other place because none of us expected the use of the previous legislation to introduce proposals for the wholesale privatisation of the probation service—that is what this means for 70% of the service going forward. When that legislation was going through, I opposed it and I warned those on my Front Bench that it could be abused in such a way. I was assured that the legislation, which was supported on both sides of the House if I remember rightly, would ensure that the third sector, voluntary sector organisations and others could participate in rehabilitation, and that it would introduce flexibility to the system. A number of organisations lobbied for that, particularly in the drugs rehabilitation field. That is why I think that this is an abuse of process. It is an abuse of the previous legislation, which was never intended to be used in this way, and I think that is why the other place inserted the clause.

I have been angry and have shouted about the subject in this House, and it is not good for my health. This is, however, a leap in the dark, and I am fearful for my constituents. As with other privatisations, there is a financial risk, but that is nothing in comparison with the risk to life and limb. As a result of this leap in the dark, there could be safety problems that will bear down on Ministers in the future.

I warn the House that if we allow this Bill to go through and any of our constituents suffer and are harmed in some way as a result of an offender not being properly supervised, we will, quite properly, be held responsible. The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh), my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) have made exactly this point: why not ensure that the alternatives proposed by the Government are properly tested? Setting up pilots and then ending them without taking any account of them seems extraordinary and completely illogical.

In previous debates, we seized on the risk register because advisers to the Government were saying that there were risks. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd has said, there is an 80% risk of failure in some instances. The Secretary of State argued that the risk registers are only there at the beginning to point out a range of issues that will then be addressed, so we asked, “Why not publish the risk register and make it completely public, and why not publish those mechanisms you have put in place to address the specific risks? At least then we could be assured that they have been properly addressed and, perhaps, overcome.” As my right hon. Friend has said, we are walking into the dark and putting our constituents at risk as a result.

As other Members have explained, the experience of privatisation in the justice service has given us sufficient warnings that we need to tread very carefully. I do not want to go over those again, but many of us have had experience of the justice system over the years and I have never seen the system so vulnerable as a result of private interventions. There are riots almost monthly, and concerns expressed within our prison system. The introduction of the Serious Fraud Office into investigations of companies that provide services within the justice system is ironic, to say the least.

I support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, which are supported by the chair of the justice unions parliamentary group and by the group overall. We have also tabled a number of other proposals that are somewhat bureaucratic but, I think, important: new clauses 10, 9, 11 and 13, which are all in my name. They are simple suggestions. First, if the Government are going down this path let us have full and open transparency. The new clauses suggest that the contracts should be fully published. The Minister has said that the draft contracts should be published, but I think that it is important that the full contract should be published so that we can all see it, in particular the elements of the contract that include the requirements and expectations of the providers’ performance. It is important that in future the National Audit Office can investigate and assess the effectiveness, economy and efficiency of the implementation of the contracts.

One change that I have suggested is just common sense: no company that has been investigated for fraud should be able to bid for the contract. I do not wish to see sleight of hand, with the suggestion that such companies will not be the primary providers but can be part of a consortium. They will play a key role within those consortia because of the resources they have.

New clause 9 suggests that companies that are the prime contractors for the Work programme in an area should not be able to bid, and I say that because there is a potential conflict of interest. If one company is implementing the Work programme at the same time as the new probation system for those with sentences of less than 12 months and there is a sanction, the Work programme will lose out. That introduces a conflict of interest within the system. What worries me is that a number of companies will bid for a range of contracts in an area, across the piece, with the result that mini-monopolies will be built up in particular geographical areas.

My new clauses are simply administrative amendments. New clause 13 says that we need an annual report to Parliament and I know that that is a standard amendment that we table for a range of legislation, but in this instance it is vital. I want to know from an annual report from the Government exactly how the contracts are being performed against, how safe my constituents are, how safe the offenders are and how successful the implementation of the new system is.

I do not want to go over everything I have said before. I am extremely worried and I will hold Ministers to account if any of my constituents are injured as a result of the Bill. I have said that twice before. In fact, the late Paul Goggins advised me that I was threatening Ministers and I said, “Yes, I am actually, because they are threatening my constituents with this legislation.” I hope that today we will be able to defeat it or at least pass some amendments that will stabilise the system and enable us to gain some accountability. If not, I hope that the other place will say no and introduce an element of common sense to the debate.

15:00

[Meg Hillier]

I rise to support new clauses 1 and 4. I will not repeat the excellent arguments that my hon. Friends have made, but I am concerned about the impact that this big and sudden change to the probation service will have in my community and on offender rehabilitation, both of which are central to the aims of the Bill, which is why elements of it enjoy cross-party support.

I am not opposed to having specialist providers in the probation service. For example, there is a high incidence of mental health problems in my constituency, and in Hackney as a whole, and many of the people affected, if they get caught up in the criminal justice system, would benefit from more specialised services, so I am not opposed to the private sector or voluntary bodies coming in to provide certain aspects of probation.

However, the scale of this outsourcing, particularly when it is being done in such a hurry, poses a real risk. I believe that it will reduce standards. People will be taken on by large companies that have no track record in probation, and will be paid at much lower levels, as probation assistants, rather than full-blown and experienced probation officers. I call it probation-lite. Those people will be making very important decisions. They will decide, for instance, whether someone is a high-risk offender who needs to be transferred to a probation officer. There is a risk there.

[Jeremy Wright]

It might help the hon. Lady if I clarified two points relating to what she has just said. First, in all contracts we will expect those taking on the work to employ properly skilled staff—not to do so will not be permitted. Secondly, those who decide whether someone is a high, medium or low-risk offender will be public sector national probation service employees, not contractors.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank the Minister for that clarification, particularly the first point, which is indeed good news. I was not a member of the Public Bill Committee and so might have missed some changes that have been made.

[Mrs Moon]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Meg Hillier]

Yes, but I will just finish responding to the Minister’s intervention.

On the Minister’s second point, I hear what he says, but there is always a risk that someone might be miscategorised and dealt with by an employee who is of a lower grade. The Minister says that they will be qualified, but they will be of a lower grade than fully qualified probation officers, and that decision might need to be made in the other direction. Perhaps he can reassure us on that point when he responds.

[Mrs Moon]

I should have waited for my hon. Friend to finish responding to the Minister before seeking to intervene, because she has just covered the point I wanted to make. It is not about the level of skills, but the qualification, because the qualification provides a background of knowledge that enforces and informs the way in which a probation officer acts. Someone who is deemed to be skilled might actually be unqualified, so it is important to have the qualification and the experience and skills.

[Meg Hillier]

I thank my hon. Friend for her comments.

I am also worried about some of the companies that might come into this. I serve on the Public Accounts Committee, and I challenged the big public sector providers that appeared before us recently on whether they would bid for contracts in areas where they had no experience. They all denied that they would, but we have seen, in the Public Accounts Committee, in other Committees and on the Floor of the House, example after example of companies that bid for contracts because they are good at bidding but that do not actually have a background in delivering the relevant service. They then have to backfill by recruiting people to take on those jobs. I have dealt with the Minister on constituency matters and know him to be assiduous, and I am sure that he will bear that point in mind, but I think that it is worth reiterating that it is a very serious matter. Companies should not be bidding for huge contracts in areas where they have no experience because that fragments the service.

Fragmentation can be good where there is specialism, where there are smaller contracts, perhaps run by specialist voluntary sector groups, or indeed by private companies if they have the necessary level of expertise, but they have to work together. We are in danger of seeing another approach whereby the MOJ and the Government put out big contracts and the smaller specialist providers simply do not get a look in. They might get the odd crumb from the big contractors’ table, but they will be squeezed out. That is particularly true in mental health, one of the local concerns in my constituency.

There is an important concern about local accountability. I am a great supporter of extending freedom of information in the first instance, even with limitations, to private sector companies that deliver public contracts paid for by the taxpayer. It should be the tax pound that determines whether there is freedom of information, not the nature of the delivery body. Most parties in the House support some degree of contracting out, but we need to ensure that transparency is built in. Companies have told the Public Accounts Committee that they are in favour of a much greater degree of transparency, so perhaps the Minister will take this opportunity to challenge them to stand up for what they say and make that part of the bidding process.

New clause 4 is important—I will not repeat all the arguments Members have made—because we need proper scrutiny. If we look at reoffending as a whole, we see that there are other ways of looking at it, for example by looking at mental health support or the Work programme. We know that offenders who come out of prison with a job are less likely to reoffend, but does the Work programme, which is provided by another Government Department, go into prisons to ensure that offenders have jobs for when they leave? Perhaps we should be challenging them to step up to the mark and provide job opportunities as a major plank of what we all want to see: less reoffending, particularly by offenders given short-term sentences.

In summary, the Public Accounts Committee has seen far too many poorly managed large Government contracts. The Cabinet Office is pushing hard to see that procurement is done in a different way that allows smaller companies a bite of the Government contract cherry and to stop the big companies being able to snaffle public money without being held properly to account. This is an opportunity for the Minister to consider, even at this late stage, allowing something in the contract to ensure that the big companies are required to work effectively with the small companies and not, as many of them do, to dodge their responsibilities later by saying, “Actually, we can’t quite deliver what we promised, so we’ll do it differently, but we’ve taken it all on.” That is often how they get around that. That will need constant monitoring and an audit of what happens with the contract. If this is to go ahead, I urge the Minister to tell us how the Government plan to audit the impact and the delivery of the service.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I begin by echoing the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) about our late colleague Paul Goggins. I followed him as a Justice Minister, doing the job he did when he was in the Home Office and had responsibility for probation, and I know how well respected he was in the sector, by officials and the community at large. I also had the pleasure of sharing time with him as a Northern Ireland Minister, where he was also well respected. This is my first opportunity to put that on the record in the House. I will attend his funeral on Thursday, along with many colleagues across the House, to pay my final respects to Paul for all his work.

I wanted to speak in this debate for several reasons. Nobody disagrees with the Government’s general premise for dealing with offenders sentenced to 12 months or less in prison. They are often prolific offenders who go on to reoffend. They are often tomorrow’s serious offenders. It was an aspiration we had when I served in the Ministry of Justice to try to reduce their reoffending. We need to involve the voluntary and private sectors in supporting rehabilitation work for individuals who go to prison and come out within 12 months. Housing associations, voluntary providers and employers all have a role to play. That can be done in a positive way by the voluntary and private sectors.

Let us therefore not have a debate today on the difference between the Government and the Opposition on the need to involve some elements of the voluntary and private sectors. Instead, I want to raise my concerns about the issues addressed by new clauses 1 and 4. New clause 1 would ensure that we put a parliamentary brake on reorganisation, pending proper parliamentary scrutiny, and new clause 4 would put in place a pilot to test some difficult and serious matters in relation to which mistakes—they will be made, because that is the nature of the business the Minister deals with—will have a real impact on the community at large.

New clause 1, which I fully support, would prevent the Government from selling off or restructuring the probation service unless the proposals had first been laid before, and approved by, both Houses of Parliament. It is no secret that if the Government did that this year, they could put a Bill before Parliament and get it through before the general election. They could have it scrutinised and probably, because of the votes they have in this House, get their way. I object to the Government using the Offender Management Act 2007 to achieve that objective. I declare an interest, because I was the Minister who took that Act through the House. At the time I was pressed strongly by many Members on my own side, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), on whether it meant the privatisation and break-up of the probation service. I was pressed very hard about whether it meant, in practice, the abolition, ultimately, of probation trusts.

I gave assurances during the Bill’s passage through the House and I want to repeat them today, not because they have not been heard here before, but because they support what my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington says in new clause 1 and are worthy of repetition. On 18 July 2007, I, as the Minister, said from the Dispatch Box:

“There will be a mixture of commissioning. Some will be at national level, because in certain cases and with certain contracts that will be the best way of securing a strong and efficient service. There will also be a strong role for those commissioning work at regional level. As my hon. Friend surely accepts, economies of scale will sometimes be necessary, and some services will be best purchased and commissioned at that level. However, there will also be a need for local probation trusts to act not just as service deliverers but as commissioners of services from the voluntary sector, or from others, providing a proper service to help prevent reoffending at local level.”—[Official Report, 18 July 2007; Vol. 463, c. 352-53.]

I said that in support of what my noble Friend Baroness Scotland and the then Lord Chancellor, my noble Friend Lord Falconer, said in another place when introducing the Offender Management Bill. I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that. I am very pleased that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) is present, because I said it in response to a Lords amendment that he supported and that sought to do exactly what the Minister is seeking to do now to the probation service. We rejected it and I put it on record that the Offender Management Bill would not be used for that purpose.

I would be grateful if the Minister reflected on Pepper v. Hart from 1992. Legislation can be interpreted according to what a Minister said at the Dispatch Box about what they thought about a particular interpretation of a Bill. My assessment is that during our deliberations on the Offender Management Act, I, on behalf of the then Government, rejected from the Dispatch Box an amendment that sought to do what the Minister is now doing; supported the aspirations of my noble Friends Lord Falconer and Baroness Scotland; and spoke in support of retaining probation trusts to commission at a national, regional and local level. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington has said, it is an abuse of this House for the Minister to try to use that legislation to secure his objective.

Will the Minister—just for me, so I can sleep easy in my bed—put on public record the legal advice he has received that says that he can do what he is doing, so that we can test his interpretation against the potential interpretation of lawyers outside the House under the terms of Pepper v. Hart?

[Jeremy Wright]

I am not sure I will be able to help the right hon. Gentleman sleep easier in his bed. Equally, I do not want to pull rank on him, but I have to put to him something that was said by his then boss—the then Home Secretary and the now noble Lord Reid—on Third Reading of the Offender Management Bill in this House:

“I can therefore give an assurance today…that the core offender management tasks of the probation service—for example, offender report writing, offender supervision and breach proceedings—will remain in the public sector for the next three years.”—[Official Report, 28 February 2007; Vol. 457, c. 1024.]

Will the right hon. Gentleman explain why his then boss did not say “for ever” instead of

“for the next three years”?

[Mr Hanson]

I do not wish to upset the Minister, because he is a decent cove, as far as he can be with his brief, but the noble Lord Reid was never my boss. I have never served under him and he never line managed me in any way, shape or form. When I served as a Justice Minister, my noble Friend Lord Falconer and my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) were my bosses. What I said at the Dispatch Box at the time was said on their behalf. We supported a publicly supported probation service.

[Jeremy Wright]

rose—

[Sir Edward Garnier]

rose—

[Mr Hanson]

I give way to my former shadow, the hon. and learned Member for Harborough.

[Sir Edward Garnier]

I think my shadow is rather bigger than it used to be. I want to encourage the right hon. Gentleman with the tedious little point that at least he and I have remained consistent over the past seven years, so why not comfort himself with that and then we can put this to a vote?

[Mr Hanson]

The point I am trying to make is that I support new clause 1 because the Government are trying to use the 2007 Act to take an approach that the then Ministers, in both Houses, rejected. I accept that the Minister believes that he has a legal basis to do this. I simply ask him to publish it, so that we can test it in due course. I am happy for the Minister to intervene, but he will have a chance to respond later. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington and other hon. Members who have spoken, I remain concerned about the proposal, because I believe it is a gamble.

15:15

[Jeremy Wright]

I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point that I will have a chance to respond later and I suspect I will have quite a bit to respond to by then, but I wish to address this specific point. I apologise to him for my misunderstanding of the chain of command back in the days of his time in government. However, unless I misunderstand him, I do not think he is suggesting that the noble Lord Reid was not speaking for the Government on that occasion. On the question of whether I will publish legal advice, I can do better than that by referring the right hon. Gentleman to the Offender Management Act itself. Section 3(2) states:

“The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.”

That is clear authority to do what we are doing, is it not?

[Mr Hanson]

This is the nub of the argument: I accept that the Minister believes he is acting in good faith under the Act, but what I am saying is that the interpretation I gave from the Dispatch Box, and that other Ministers gave in another place and in this House, was that the Act could not to be used for the Minister’s current purposes. My interpretation was that the Act could be used to contract the voluntary and private sector to deliver some services, but not the core probation service, which is what the Minister seeks to do. We can disagree about that—it is a matter of conjecture—and I think that the appropriateness of our comments could be tested under Pepper v. Hart.

If the Minister votes for new clause 1 he will have an opportunity to bring back new proposals and, as has been suggested, to pilot them so that we do not have to take a serious gamble and have an artificial split between public and private providers, or face the risk of cherry-picking and big companies hoovering up contracts. Moreover, we would not have the risk brought to my attention by a probation officer in my own constituency who corresponded with me this very week. She will remain anonymous because of her current status, but she said in her letter:

“This system is not tested. It’s just ideas and assumptions based on political ideologies. Knowing the work as intimately as I do I can’t tell you how risky this is.”

I know from my time in the Ministry of Justice that there will be risks and challenges in the management of offenders. One of the serious cases with which I had to deal as a Minister was when a low-level offender who was being supervised by the then London probation service broke into a property in Lewisham, close to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), undertook a burglary and, in doing so, murdered two individuals, set fire to them and burned the property down. The offender was given sentences of 40 and 35 years respectively and is, as we speak, serving them at Her Majesty’s pleasure. That was a low-level offender who committed a high-level offence. There is always risk.

I accept that that happened under the probation service—mistakes will happen; this is a risky business—but I am worried about the steps the Minister is taking without the pilot proposed by new clause 4 or the brake and proper parliamentary scrutiny proposed by new clause 1. That raises the risk even higher in a system that, by its very nature, is risky.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

On that point, does my right hon. Friend agree that there have been discussions about the difficulties of making judgments about low-risk people left in the private sector? He may recall that I raised in the House the case of Jane Clough who was murdered in the Blackpool Victoria hospital car park by her former abusive partner while he was on bail. The Government accepted the thrust of that campaign when they made changes in relation to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012. Does that not show that the ability to have an artificial division between the two will not work?

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning that case. Given the nature of probation service business, mistakes will be made. My contention is that mistakes that might currently be made could very much be exacerbated by the fragmentation of the service and the potential downgrading of its quality, as well as by the fact that the existing public accountability will not be as clear cut.

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

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very interesting speech. I am sorry that I missed its beginning, but I was at the Backbench Business Committee. Has he dealt with the sifting process? Some of my constituents have expressed concern that it is done at a snapshot in time, as they have been allocated to two different services based on the window of 11 November. Has he tackled that?

[Mr Hanson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that matter, which just exacerbates and adds to our concerns.

The process is never a precise one. I want the Minister to justify—perhaps not today nor by agreeing to new clause 1, but through a proper parliamentary procedure or the evaluation of pilots—how his proposals for a radical change in the probation service will do what he wants, as well as what my hon. Friends and I want, which is to reduce offending and reoffending. My worry is that the Minister’s proposals—in many ways, they are adjacent to the provisions in the Bill—might increase the reoffending that may occur for reasons that have been mentioned.

I urge the Minister to consider new clauses 1 and 4 in particular, and to publish, for the House to scrutinise, the basis on which he has so far made decisions in relation to the 2007 Act.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson). He has great expertise in this matter, given his previous ministerial role. I am not sure that I will trouble the Minister with the same level of detail about the proposals. I want to make a short speech on some of the things I have learned about how the probation service operates in my area and about the need for us in Parliament to have a vote on whether the wholesale privatisation of the probation service should go ahead.

In recent weeks, I have visited Lewisham probation trust and met its staff. The Lewisham trust is very busy. It ranks fourth among London boroughs with respect to the complexity and risk of the cases with which it deals. A quarter of the cases it deals with involve young people aged between 18 and 25.

When I spoke to staff, they expressed very serious concerns about the plans to fragment and break up the probation service and, indeed, to privatise great chunks of it. They believe that the proposals actually endanger some of the important and innovative work they are doing. For example, they recently set up a specialist team to deal with the problem of young offenders, whereby staff time is split between the youth offending service and the probation staff so that the two services join up better. They told me that the proposals the Government wish to force through in the next year will lead to huge upheaval and massive duplication, and will make it less likely that the work that is so important in our community for reducing reoffending is moved forward and can bring about the outcomes we all want.

The management of the trust told me that instead of being externally focused on reducing reoffending and protecting the public, over the next couple of months their priority will be to support staff through the transition and to make sure that they move cases between the split services in a way that ensures that no cases are lost and no mistakes are made. That does not make sense to me. The priority for the management and those with experience should be to ask, “How do we reduce rates of reoffending out there in the community?”

What will happen when the case load is split? As I understand it, 70% of the cases will be dealt with by community rehabilitation companies and others will be left with the new national probation service. How will those really difficult decisions be made about the risk that such young offenders present? The people who work in the probation service tell me that such judgments, particularly those about young people, are very difficult to make.

[Jeremy Wright]

The first point I want to make to the hon. Lady is that the proposals we are discussing do not cover young offenders, but only adults. The second point is one that I made earlier, but I am not sure whether she was in the Chamber at the time. It is that in relation to risk assessments and the judgments she describes—I accept that they are difficult—such judgments will be made by employees of the national probation service, who are public sector employees.

[Heidi Alexander]

I fear that the Minister may have misunderstood me. When I spoke about young people, I meant those between 18 and 25. As I understand it, the proposals in the Bill relate to that age group.

Another point that has been made to me by probation staff in Lewisham is that one key to the reduction of reoffending relates is having stable relationships between probation staff and the individuals with whom they work, so that they can build trust and work together to achieve the things that will put those young adults on to a better path in life. If young people are transferred between different organisations because their risk fluctuates, I wonder how there can be that stability in such relationships that I am told is so crucial to the reduction of reoffending.

Some Government Members, particularly the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), seemed to suggest that the Opposition have some ulterior motive for saying that we want to pilot the schemes and to have a vote in this House before these very significant proposals go ahead. I want to put it on the record that our interest in this debate is public safety, what is effective and what works. They ascribe to us motives that simply do not represent our position. We are advocating what is in the best interests of the public and asking how we can really get to grips with reducing rates of reoffending, which are far too high in our country.

[Jeremy Wright]

May I begin by endorsing entirely what the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) and the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said about Paul Goggins? Paul was the first Minister I went to see as a newly elected Back Bencher. I was struck not only by his command of the brief, but by his inherent kindness, his reaction to somebody who was not of his party and his willingness to give me whatever assistance he could. That continued throughout the time that I knew him in this House. As others have said, he will be missed on a personal level by a great many people on both sides of the Chamber. It is right for us to recognise today that he will be missed in debates such as this. The lack of his warmth and wisdom on these subjects and many others will make our debates all the poorer. I know that we will all miss him in the Chamber more generally.

We have had an interesting and informed debate on this group of new clauses. There is no doubt that the substantial burden of the debate on the Bill has been not about the contents of the Bill, which are broadly uncontroversial, but about the wider reforms that surround the Bill. I understand why that is. It might therefore be helpful if I spend a little time dealing with what is at the heart of the Government’s reforms to probation and why we believe they are so urgent. That will relate to the issue of piloting, which has been raised this afternoon.

15:30

One reason for our belief that this is an urgent matter is that reoffending rates have barely changed over the last decade. That is not true only of offenders who are released from short sentences, whom we all agree get little or no support at the moment after release, but of every group of offenders. For adult offenders who serve community sentences, the reoffending rate in 2011 was 34%. After falling in the early 2000s, that trend has been broadly flat since 2005. For adult offenders who are released from custodial sentences of less than 12 months—the group that we are interested in—the reoffending rate in 2011 was 58%. That trend has been broadly flat since 2002. For adult offenders who are released from custodial sentences of 12 months or more, the reoffending rate in 2011 was 35%. That trend has been broadly flat since 2005.

I recognise that those rates have barely changed despite the considerable efforts and very good work of probation officers up and down the country. It has never been part of my argument that the changes are justified because no good work is being done. In my view, good work is being done. None the less, there is clear justification for a change in approach.

[Jenny Chapman]

If the Minister wants us to accept everything that he has said so far, will he explain why it was a good idea to cancel the trust probation pilots when he did?

[Jeremy Wright]

The pilots that we cancelled were not sufficiently close to the proposals that we are making for us to learn as much as Opposition Members would like us to have learned from their conclusion. That does not mean that we learned nothing from their period of operation. The point has been made from the Opposition Benches that it is possible to learn from pilots even if they are not allowed to run to full term. We certainly have learned from those pilots and from other experiences of payment by results. I will return to that point in a moment.

The Government essentially had two options. We had to decide how to approach the task of tackling reoffending rates within our means. The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) is right that reoffending rates are too high. We could not allow that situation to continue without a response. We could simply have imposed further significant cuts on the 35 probation trusts without targeting our efforts on those with the highest reoffending rates, or we could have brought in innovative approaches to supporting offenders that would also be more efficient and that would allow us to reinvest some of the savings to target support through the gate on the under 12-month group. We chose the latter option. At the heart of our proposals is the aim of opening up the supervision of low and medium-risk offenders to a diverse range of new rehabilitation providers to bring in the best of all sectors to tackle reoffending.

The right hon. Member for Delyn discussed the Offender Management Act 2007. He was here at the time and witnessed the passage of the Act at first hand. He knows that what I have described was the policy of the Government at that time. The Opposition want to forget it now, but they have to be reminded that the powers for which they legislated and to which Parliament agreed in 2007 entirely underpin the reforms that this Government are making. I have explained what Lord Reid said when he was Home Secretary. He made the matter perfectly clear when he said:

“The Secretary of State…will be responsible for ensuring service provision by entering into contracts with the public, private or voluntary sectors. With that burden lifted, the public sector can play to its strengths while others play to theirs.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 593.]

[Mrs Main]

The Minister is making a powerful case for why there needs to be reorganisation. However, will he help the staff who will be involved in the transition process by saying what the new organisations will look like? My constituents have told me that there is uncertainty about the new bodies that they will be obliged to work with and concern about what they will look like. Perhaps that would help to make the transition a little easier.

[Jeremy Wright]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is important to keep existing staff informed about what is going on. We are trying very hard to do that. If there are specific issues in her area, I am happy to look at them. We are keen to ensure that staff are informed. If she will forgive me, I will come back a little later to the pace of the changes that we are making, which has been a substantial issue this afternoon.

Before I do that, I want to make a couple more points about the background to this point, and the issue of further parliamentary approval for what we are suggesting. I have already made the point that section 3(2) of the Offender Management Act 2007 states:

“The Secretary of State may make contractual or other arrangements with any other person for the making of the probation provision.”

In Committee, the Opposition were unable to dispute that the power that they legislated for is clear and unambiguous. The phrase

“contractual or other arrangements with any other person”

does not mean solely with probation trusts or trusts commissioning other providers, or solely with the public sector.

[Mr Hanson]

I do not wish to take up too much time on this point, but the Minister will know that when that debate took place, the intention was that the national probation service and the Ministry of Justice could contract for unpaid work, for example, on a national basis, but that for core probation services the probation service locally would still be responsible for the lead provision under that Act.

[Jeremy Wright]

Again—I made this point earlier when I intervened on the right hon. Gentleman—I do not think that Lord Reid could have been any clearer on Third Reading. No doubt under considerable pressure from Back Benchers in his party, he undertook that those core functions, including two things that we do not propose to move from the public sector—advice to court and breach of proceedings—would remain in the public sector for three years. That was not in perpetuity, not as a matter of principle, but for three years which, conveniently enough, took him up to the date of the general election. I think we can all take from that a pretty clear understanding that the Labour Government were not promising that those functions would stay in the public sector for ever; they did it to take them up to the general election.

[Mr Hanson]

Can we be clear? Lord Reid was not the Minister responsible when the 2007 Act was dealt with in these Houses of Parliament. I was the Minister of State, my boss was Lord Falconer, and the Minister in the other place was Baroness Scotland. Those were the three Ministers dealing with the 2007 Act in June 2007.

[Jeremy Wright]

I understand the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but it is pretty clear that Lord Reid was speaking on Third Reading of that Bill on behalf of the Government. If the right hon. Gentleman thinks that what Lord Reid was saying did not represent the Government’s position, he had better take it up with him. We have to go by what Hansard tells us.

[Mr Sheerman]

As someone who was present at that time, and who would count themselves as a reasonably good friend of Lord Reid, I think there is a different interpretation and that the Minister is taking this out of context. Lord Reid had no experience of the many private sector providers, such as Capita and G4S, that are being sought for this role but that now have a different focus and profile because they have failed. With that experience, do we really want to destabilise a wonderful profession and give it to companies such as those?

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Gentleman is making a slightly different point. I am talking about what authority is given to this Government by the Offender Management Act and, more broadly, what the previous Government thought they were doing when they passed it. The case made by Labour Members is that we have in some way taken that Act and twisted its meaning. It has been taken wholly out of context, and we have a travesty of a representation of what that Act says and means. I have been saying to the right hon. Member for Delyn and his colleagues that what the Act says is very clear, and the Hansard that supports it is also clear. Not only did the previous Government anticipate that such a thing could happen, they chose not to rule out the possibility of its happening. They had every opportunity to do so but they did not take it. That is my point.

More to the point and in connection with further parliamentary approval, the Offender Management Act says nothing about requiring Parliament to approve the exercise of that power. By contrast, section 15 of the Offender Management Act provides that an order repealing or disapplying the restriction of certain functions, including advice to court, to the public sector, must be subject to parliamentary approval. If, when in government, the Opposition had wanted to ensure that the power in section 3 for the Secretary of State to enter into arrangements for probation provision was subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, they could have done so, but they did not.

What is more, the Labour Government were prepared to guarantee that the supervision of offenders more widely would remain in the public sector for only three years, as I have said. Let us be clear: the Labour Government’s position was that the supervision of any offender—not just medium or low-risk offenders—could at some stage be competed for outside the public sector. This Government are not saying that. We say that medium and low-risk offenders should be competed for. Secondly, the Labour Government’s position was that the only element of parliamentary scrutiny of the Secretary of State’s powers to organise the probation service relates to the relatively narrow concept of advice to courts, which this Government do not intend to alter. Thirdly, the previous Government’s position was that the public sector monopoly on providers would be guaranteed for only three years.

The hon. Member for Darlington now proposes a new version of the new clause. I am not convinced that new clause 1 does exactly what the Opposition want, because the word “national” next to the word “restructure”, which is designed to avoid the need for any small change of probation to be debated in the House, does not necessarily apply to the word “reform”. Therefore, we might end up being asked to discuss very minor changes to the probation service. Beyond that, the basic point is that the Labour Government were given the opportunity to ask for a further check in Parliament for the provision but did not do so. It is a little odd that Labour Members now say that they want one.

On the substance of the reforms, we have spoken about the establishment of 21 new community rehabilitation companies in England and Wales. In the first instance, they will be publicly owned for a number of months before we consider whether to transfer ownership to other organisations. It is open to organisations from the private, voluntary and community sectors, as well as organisations currently working in probation trusts, to bid for those first-tier contracts. Part of the payment of those organisations will be based on results, so that we incentivise a greater focus on tackling reoffending and achieving better value for the taxpayer.

A number of the proposals tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell)—he has tabled new clauses 9, 10 and 11—remain flawed, as they were in Committee. As drafted, they would apply only after a competition has concluded, and would not prevent organisations from bidding, which is what I believe he wants to do.

[Jenny Chapman]

The Minister unsurprisingly comes up with technical reasons why those proposals are deficient, but he knows what my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) is getting at. Will the Minister therefore confirm that he will not accept bids from any consortium that has, as a partner, G4S or any other organisation that is under criminal investigation by the Serious Fraud Office?

[Jeremy Wright]

I entirely understand what the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is getting at, but I am afraid that I do not dismiss as lightly as the hon. Lady flaws in the proposals that we are being asked to support. If they are flawed, the House should not support them.

Let me reiterate the Government’s commitment to publishing contracts for the delivery of services to low and medium-risk offenders. That includes not just draft contracts, as I have said, but final versions of the future contracts for probation services. I hope that that is some reassurance to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington. Likewise, I reassure him that the Government will include within the contracts for rehabilitation services a provision that enables the National Audit Office to access private providers’ records and documents for audit purposes. Of course, the NAO might require access to the community rehabilitation companies’ financial systems when there is a need for public assurance. That will be reflected in the contracts. That also answers the point made by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier).

The new clauses seek to limit who can bid for contracts by excluding certain organisations. For example, prime providers for the Work programme could be excluded. I am afraid that that would simply reduce the diversity of the market of rehabilitation providers. Many organisations are doing important work within the Work programme, including voluntary organisations working with disabled and disadvantaged people.

The hon. Member for Darlington made a point on fraud, which the new clauses tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington address. Let me be clear that the Justice Secretary and I are determined to ensure the integrity of future contracts to deliver value for money for the taxpayer. The Ministry of Justice is currently following a proper procurement process and will do so in future competitions. It is that process that should rightly be used to determine who can bid for contracts and who the future providers of services should be. Procurement law permits consideration of issues that affect a bidder’s eligibility, such as fraud, only at the initial prequalification stage, and not after that stage unless a bidder’s circumstances have changed.

In respect of the current competition to identify the future owners of the 21 CRCs, the prequalification stage was completed in December. Even at that stage, we would not have been legally allowed to exclude a bidder on the grounds that they were under investigation for fraud. The grounds for mandatory exclusion under procurement law are that the bidder has, or any of its directors have, been convicted of fraud. The ongoing investigation by the Serious Fraud Office into the conduct of G4S and Serco—which, I remind the House, this Secretary of State initiated—in delivering the Government’s electronic monitoring contracts would not have provided a legal basis for excluding those organisations from the current competition.

15:45

[Jenny Chapman]

I just want to be clear about this, so that colleagues on both sides of the House can be clear. Despite all the assurances that the Minister has given here in the past, he is saying that companies under criminal investigation by the SFO will be able to be partners in bidding for provision of services to monitor offenders in the community.

[Jeremy Wright]

The point I am making is that the rules, which pre-existed this Government by the way, are very clear: investigation is not the same thing as conviction. We have made it very clear, however, that we have initiated our own investigations. I have warned the hon. Lady before that she is sitting in a very large glass house and that she should think before throwing stones. This is a contract negotiated by her Government and substantially abused, it would seem, during her Government’s term in office. That abuse was discovered by this Government and acted on by this Government. She is hardly in a position to suggest that we have behaved in any way improperly. In any event, I remind the House that both organisations, Serco and G4S, are not on the list of lead providers.

The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington raised the question of whether those organisations could act in a supporting role. The answer is that we will want to look very carefully not just at the process of corporate renewal those companies are undergoing at the moment but at the specific bids they are making. However, they are not on the list of lead providers. I remind Opposition Members that we were told not so very long ago that the proposals could never work without G4S and Serco, that no one would be interested in bidding. We have a list of 30 different bidders, comprising 50 different organisations at lead bidder level. The Opposition are simply wrong about the level of interest.

[John McDonnell]

I just want to get this absolutely clear and on the record. What the Minister is saying is that the two organisations that the Serious Fraud Office is investigating will be allowed to bid as part of a consortium for some of these contracts. In addition, I see that also on the list are A4E, which, if I remember rightly, was forced to hand back money to the Government as a result of its failure on contracts—in fact, some fraudulent activity on contracts—for the Department for Work and Pensions. We are opening up this whole network to a group of villains.

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Gentleman needs to be very careful with his language. He needs to understand that someone being investigated is not the same thing as someone being found responsible for poor conduct. It is important for a Justice Minister, in particular, to recognise that distinction. I assure him that in relation to each and every bid we receive we will look very carefully not just at the bid but at the organisations making the bid. He has heard me say on many occasions that we will not be awarding contracts to any organisation we think unfit to hold them.

Let me make the point, because it has been raised, that all the bidders on our list have experience of either working with offenders or across the wider criminal justice system. This is exactly the broad market that we want to see deliver these services. Below the community rehabilitation company level, we want to ensure that smaller organisations from the voluntary community and social enterprise sectors are able to play a key role in delivering rehabilitation.

[Mr Marsden]

I am grateful to the Minister for being generous in giving way, but does he not understand that the Secretary of State introducing these proposals is the same Secretary of State who did the same thing with the Work programme, from which those voluntary and third sector organisations are, more or less, entirely absent?

[Jeremy Wright]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s characterisation of the Work programme, and anyway, as he might have heard me say more than once, this proposal is not a clone of that programme. It is a different proposal, as it must be, because the criminal justice system is a different entity. It is important to recognise that.

On smaller voluntary organisations, about which people have understandable concerns, the House might be interested to know that along with the 30 lead providers that have passed the competition’s first stage, a further 800 organisations have expressed an interest in playing a role as part of the wider supply chain, with more than 550 voluntary sector organisations among them. In the process of contract management, we will want to manage properly the relationships between the larger and smaller players to ensure that those relationships are sustainable in the long term.

[John McDonnell]

Let me explain to the Minister why some of us feel strongly about this matter and why some of our language is strong. The Government awarded the contract for unpaid work in Greater London—so this affects our constituencies—to Serco. I will briefly set out some of the problems that have occurred: works shops have been closed, shutting down placements for women high-risk offenders; offenders recently complained to a probation officer in north-west London—my area—that no supervisors were available onsite; and rival gang members have been placed on the same scheme and transported in the same way. In addition, a known sex offender was alleged to be on the same placement as a victim. That is why we are angry.

[Jeremy Wright]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern, but I do not agree with his characterisation of Serco’s contract. As he would expect, we have looked closely at its performance under the contract and, again, I assure him that we will look closely at all those who bid for this work. As with all competitions, the decision to award each contract depends on our being satisfied that bidders can meet our standards in respect of quality of service and price and, in this case too, on our being satisfied about the financial risk being taken to reduce reoffending and ensuring good value for the taxpayer. If we are not satisfied that overall bidders can meet our requirements, we will not award them contracts.

Hon. Members have raised the issue of the management of high-risk offenders, so let me make it clear exactly what will be involved. We are creating a new national probation service to manage directly all offenders who pose a high risk of serious harm and any sexual or violent offenders subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements. After an offender has been sentenced, the NPS will make an initial assessment of an offender’s risk of causing harm, and all offenders assessed as posing a high risk of serious harm will be the responsibility of the NPS. For low and medium-risk offenders, CRCs will be required to manage any risk of serious harm that the offender might present and to have appropriately trained staff and robust procedures in place for the management of cases where the risk of serious harm escalates to high during the offender’s supervision. They will also be contractually required to refer cases back to the NPS if they consider that the risk of serious harm might be escalating. In the end, the decision will be taken by the NPS.

New clauses 5 and 13 deal with reports by the Secretary of State to Parliament and the public on the impact of the reforms we intend to make. I want to reassure the House that the Government are already committed to acting in the spirit of those amendments. We are already considering how we can provide information about reoffending rates broken down by CRCs and the NPS. As Members will know, the MOJ already publishes reoffending statistics, not just annually but every three months, broken down by probation trust, prison and upper and lower-tier local authorities. I am happy to commit to the House that, in the future, the reports will break down reoffending rates for the different CRCs and the NPS. Indeed, as a first step, we have already published on the MOJ website a set of indicative figures to show what reoffending rates and cohort sizes in each contract package area would have looked like had the new structure been in place for the 2005-10 period. We are also piloting the justice data lab, about which I have spoken before, which will give providers the opportunity to match the performance of their cohort with something comparable.

On freedom of information, CRCs will be required in contracts to assist the MOJ in discharging its obligations under the Freedom of Information Act—very much along the lines of what my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chairman of the Select Committee, outlined earlier, and in accordance with his Committee’s reports and conclusions.

On penalties, we are developing a performance framework that will include financial penalties for services not delivered to time or to quality. Contracts for CRCs will reflect that and, as I have said, the House will be able to see that this is the case when we publish those contracts in draft. I do not want to lose sight—nor should the House—of the major prizes here: first, expanding support for offenders released from short sentences and, secondly, developing a through-the-gate system for offenders released from prison. I think that that commands a broad measure of support.

That brings me to new clause 6, tabled by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). I want to reassure him that as part of our reforms there will be a new resettlement service provided in custody for all offenders before their release. This will be tailored to the individual’s needs, but is likely to include support in finding accommodation, family support, mentoring and financial advice. Services in custody will be underpinned by the changes to the way in which the prison estate is organised. That will mean that, in most cases, the same professional can work with offenders in custody and continue their rehabilitation work in the community.

As the right hon. Gentleman would expect, the Ministry of Justice and the National Offender Management Service are working closely together to ensure that the Prison Service is well prepared to implement these proposals. Right from the outset of these reforms, we established a joint working group on this topic that reports to senior officials and ultimately to Ministers. The working group has commissioned an analytical model of prisoner flows through the prison estate. That allows us to test the impact on prisoner flows and locations from implementing the resettlement prison allocation model. Furthermore, I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the Prison Service is undertaking a full review of facilities and staffing levels at all proposed resettlement prisons. Together all these things will ensure that the changes we are proposing are deliverable and sustainable, which I think is exactly his concern.

On new clause 4, I understand that the case of Opposition Members is that this is a huge leap in the dark and that no testing of what we are doing is or will be going on. That is not the case. Let me set out to the House the key elements that make up our reforms, what we are doing to test them and the steps we have built in to assess how effectively they are working at key stages of implementation.

First, there are the reforms at the heart of the Bill: the extension of licence and supervision to offenders released from short custodial sentences. There are lawyers among Opposition Members, and they will know, and ought to appreciate, that with a change to the sentencing framework of this magnitude, it cannot be desirable to introduce it one part of the country but not another. To do so would risk postcode justice, with some offenders getting different sentences from others.

To expand supervision to the under-12-month group, as we all say we want to do, we need to make the changes at a national level. That means funding those changes at a national level. The savings to fund the changes come from two sources; first, the efficiencies generated by competing supervision of low and medium-risk offenders and, secondly, the back office savings from moving to 21 from 35 CRCs, along with a single national probation service. Competing services in only one area of the country, if that is what is being proposed—I have heard little detail as to what sort of piloting is being proposed here—would extend supervision to short-sentenced offenders but, in every other respect, we are carrying out extensive local testing of the reforms in no fewer than 14 probation trusts. There is also the testing we are carrying out on the new operating model for the CRCs and the NPS. Those tests will enable us to inform how the new processes will operate once implemented. The first round of tests has already started and will continue over the coming months.

Secondly, there is the important fact that the 21 CRCs that we are creating will remain in public sector ownership for some months after their creation until the conclusion of the competition. This gives us further opportunities to carry on testing and to refine the system. Caseloads will not all necessarily transfer at the point the NPS and CRCs come into being, and we have made it clear to trusts that where there is a case for doing so, we will give greater latitude to allow for caseload transfer to operate more slowly than the people transfer process. That will avoid disruption and the type of dangers that that might create, which Opposition members have described.

Thirdly, there is the testing that we are carrying out of our approach to payment by results. We have consulted extensively on this and there are also pilots under way to test different approaches to payment by results. Opposition members would have us believe that there has been no piloting and that there is no piloting. Neither of those two things is true.

[Jenny Chapman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jeremy Wright]

In just a moment. The pilots that we are already undertaking—HMP Peterborough and Doncaster—are providing significant lessons for our wider reforms. Not only that, but they are engaged in another aspect of the reforms—the move to a through-the-gate system supporting the transition from custody to the community. The difference between them and the other pilots referred to is that these are much closer to the model we seek to pursue.

[Jenny Chapman]

I have a feeling that the Minister knows what I am going to ask him about payment by results. If he has done so much piloting and testing and has such confidence in this system, why has he repeatedly refused to tell us what percentage of a contract will be paid regardless of performance, and what percentage the reward element will be? We suspect that it would be very little.

16:00

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady keeps asking the same question and she is going to keep getting the same answer: that is called consistency. Let me tell her once again that she will have to wait until she sees the documentation on the invitation to negotiate. What she will see from it is that we are very interested not just in the initial figure, but in how those bidding for this work will develop the amount they are prepared to put at risk over time. That will assist precisely the type of organisations that Labour Members claim they are interesting in helping—voluntary sector organisations that might not be able to put a great deal at risk to start with, but might be able to build on it in the future. We think that is important, and I very much hope that the hon. Lady will support it.

Let me deal with the Peterborough pilot and what it does. It is worth making the point that the interim figures from the pilot—we have been told often this afternoon that there is no evidence for the changes we are making, so let me offer some up—show an 8% fall in reconvictions among offenders released from Peterborough between September 2010 and June 2012 as compared with the preceding period. Similarly in the Doncaster pilot, the sixth-month reoffending rate fell 5.7 percentage points compared with the preceding period. That clearly demonstrates that with targeted support and help aimed at the right people at the right time, we can divert more offenders from a return to crime.

We have built into our plans a set of our own business and system readiness tests, which will be carried out throughout the implementation process. There are therefore a number of things that we are doing to test these reforms—completely contrary to the characterisation of Opposition Members—and we are determined to implement them in a measured and orderly way to ensure that public safety is in no way impacted. That is why we are taking a structured approach to implementation, as I have set out.

[Mr Llwyd]

There is no clear read-across from Doncaster and Peterborough because those are voluntary schemes and what the Minister proposes is not voluntary. Those who know better than I do—and, with great respect, as much as he does—will tell him that the figures do not correlate precisely.

[Jeremy Wright]

I would say two things to the right hon. Gentleman on that. First, he and his colleagues have busily argued that we should have had more pilots, while some of the pilots we cancelled were less comparable to our reforms than were Peterborough and Doncaster, so he needs to be careful what he is arguing for. Secondly, he is absolutely right to say that the Peterborough and Doncaster pilots were conducted on a voluntary basis. That is because the law does not allow us to impose them on a compulsory basis. That is the law I am inviting the right hon. Gentleman to vote in favour of today, and I very much hope he will do so. Unless we have that law, we will never be able to impose those kinds of provisions on a compulsory basis.

Finally, on the issue of the pace of the reforms—an issue of which others have made much—I want to say two things. First, it is important that those who are employed by probation trusts—my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) made this point—understand where they stand. It does not benefit them for us to drag our feet at this point. We need to get on with it so that those people can understand what their own futures hold. Secondly, to reiterate a point made by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier), I make no apologies for the urgency of these reforms: as long as we wait, there will be further cases of reoffending and further victims created. Some 600,000 offences are committed every year by those who are reoffending. That is the problem that everyone here has identified correctly and everyone says they want to do something about. The difference between the Government and Opposition Members is that we know how we are going to do it and they do not have the faintest idea. They do not know how they would pay for it, either. We know that the last Government set out to achieve this, but could not afford to do it within existing budgets. That option is out. We know how we will pay for this; they do not. They have not told us; they should certainly support what we propose.

[Jenny Chapman]

The Minister talks of paying for the reform. We worked out that we could not afford it at the time, but he has not presented a single bit of evidence to show that he can afford it: we have been presented with no costings whatsoever.

[Jeremy Wright]

I have already explained to the hon. Lady that one of the commercial realities is that we do not disclose such information to those who we hope will bid under the amount concerned, because we want a better deal for the taxpayer. We are very interested in getting a good deal for the taxpayer, and we think that this is the way in which to do it.

The last Government intended to introduce these measures within existing budgets and without contracting out. The hon. Lady opposes contracting out, but we say that that is the way to pay for it. What does the hon. Lady say is the way to pay for it? Or is this, once again, the sort of opportunistic opposition that says “We like the idea, but we do not really want to do it”? I remember—and perhaps the hon. Lady does as well— that on Second Reading the shadow Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), said that if we will the ends, it is very important to will the means. It does not seem to me that the Labour party has done any of that since his Second Reading speech.

By my count, we have engaged in 21 hours of parliamentary debate, and there have been three votes on the principle of our reforms. Opposition Members lost every one of those votes, and they still ask for more parliamentary debate. I wonder how much more of it they feel that they need in order to be persuaded of something that they supported, and legislated for, when they were in government. Now, for reasons of sheer opportunism, they wish to walk away from, and leave abandoned, the victims and potential victims of crime whom our proposals would help.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

16:06

Division 176

Ayes: 247

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Labour: 229
Liberal Democrat: 7
Democratic Unionist Party: 5
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Independent: 2
Plaid Cymru: 1
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 313

---

Conservative: 269
Liberal Democrat: 42
Independent: 1

New Clause 2

Rehabilitation of ex-service personnel

‘The Secretary of State must consult on measures to improve rehabilitation services for ex-service personnel who have been convicted of a criminal offence, and must lay a report on the findings of such a consultation before both Houses of Parliament within nine months of this Act being passed.’.—(Jenny Chapman.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Jenny Chapman]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 3—Veterans’ rehabilitation requirement—

‘(1) The Secretary of State must by order establish a pilot scheme enabling courts to include a veterans’ rehabilitation requirement in a community order.

(2) A veterans’ rehabilitation requirement may only be used where an offender was previously a member of HM Armed Forces.

(3) A veterans’ rehabilitation requirement must provide for the offender to be referred to a veterans’ rehabilitation panel at the start of a community order, which will put in place a rehabilitation plan for the offender.

(4) An order under subsection (1) must make provision—

(a) about the membership of veterans’ rehabilitation panels; and

(b) to allow for the requirement to be reviewed periodically by the veterans’ rehabilitation panel at intervals of not less than one month.

(5) An order under this section—

(a) shall be made by Statutory Instrument; and

(b) may not be made unless a draft has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.’.

New clause 12—Building better relationships programmes—

‘It shall be the responsibility of the National Probation Service to provide all Building better relationships rehabilitation programmes for male perpetrators of domestic violence where a court makes an order for participation. It shall also be the responsibility of the National Probation Service to provide any programmes that are deemed necessary for short-term prisoners who have been involved in domestic violence.’.

Amendment 7, page 9, line 41, leave out clause 10.

Government amendment 5.

[Jenny Chapman]

To begin with, I shall briefly mention Government amendment 5. This welcome proposal deals with the provision of restorative justice as part of a community sentence. I observed in Committee that it had become something of a tradition in justice Bills for the Government to show support for restorative justice and for the Opposition to try to push them a little further. We duly tabled an amendment in Committee that would add restorative justice explicitly to the Bill, with the aim of encouraging its use. The Minister was supportive, assuring the Committee that he would go away and consider the amendment. On this occasion, he has not disappointed us.

There is much cross-party support for the use of restorative justice, not least because of the high satisfaction rates it has received from victims who have been offered it. We know the Government intended that restorative justice would be able to be used as part of a rehabilitation activity requirement, and the Minister has now taken care to add that explicitly to the Bill. I know that Paul Goggins, who spoke in Committee in support of this, would have been very pleased that the Minister has done so. We welcome the amendment and I thank the Minister for the care with which he considered the issue.

New clauses 2 and 3 concern the involvement of veterans in the criminal justice system and stand in the names of hon. Members from both sides of the House. These provisions deal specifically with the rehabilitation of armed forces veterans who become involved with the criminal justice system, aiming to improve the support we are able to give them. The new clauses were tabled last week, since when there has been a flurry of activity from the Government, which I will discuss shortly. I thank all hon. Members who added their names in support of these new clauses, and I am sure they will join me in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for his work in raising awareness of the issue.

Most of us, and especially me, can hardly imagine the experiences that some of our servicemen and women deal with on a day-to-day basis, but we all know, and can appreciate, that the transition back into civilian life is not always easy. Happily, most of those who return from service will never need the particular support we are discussing today, but some will. The purpose of our proposals is to ensure that all our veterans are properly supported when they come home. Those making the move back into civilian life can face problems that include homelessness; drug and alcohol addiction; family breakdown; and mental health difficulties.

The north-east, where my constituency is, has a proportionately higher level of recruitment to the armed forces than any other region. A collaborative review of the mental health of veterans by north-east councils found that in the younger population—the under-45s—members of the ex-service community were three times more likely to suffer a mental health disorder than the general population. Some of those who fall on tough times upon their return will, unfortunately, become involved in crime or offending behaviour. As Lord Ramsbotham, president of the Veterans in Prison Association, has said, we are often talking about

“the person who has fallen on hard times through trying to come to terms with civilian life and needs particular help to enable them to re-engage.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 June 2013; Vol. 745, c. 1562.]

The intention of our proposal is not to let people off the hook or turn a blind eye to serious offences, but where adjustment does prove difficult, and an individual’s criminal behaviour could be linked to their military experience, we believe that those underlying problems need to be addressed to prevent further offending. The military covenant recognises that members of the armed forces, and their loved ones, can be left disadvantaged because of their service, and veterans have made a unique contribution to our country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central recently put it, the support we offer in return needs to extend to every area of a veteran’s life.

There are varying estimates as to the number of ex-service personnel who are in the criminal justice system. The Ministry of Defence estimates that veterans make up about 3.5% of the prison population, with a similar percentage under supervision in the community. Unfortunately, we have only estimates and unreliable data rather than a detailed understanding of the veteran population, which is an indication of how far we have to go to support those ex-service personnel who break the law.

[Alison Seabeck]

Does my hon. Friend accept that there was a similar problem in the GP service? People with mental health issues turned up at surgeries but were not identified as former service personnel. Clearly, ensuring that that information is available at some point in the process is important.

[Jenny Chapman]

It is difficult to develop policy sensibly without having the information to inform decisions. One thing we want to achieve in this debate is a commitment to gather the data that we need to make those decisions in a more structured fashion. The specific issue of rehabilitative services for veterans was first raised in debate on this Bill last summer by Members in another place. Noble Lords had taken inspiration from the United States, from which we have a lot to learn on this issue, and laid down amendments calling on the Government to establish a pilot of a so-called veterans court. Veterans courts are now quite well known in the United States, but, as yet, we have not used them here.

A veterans court is staffed entirely by ex-servicemen and women, and deals with veterans charged with non-serious offences. As it was explained in the other place, a veteran who has committed an offence can be referred from the trial court to the veterans court. Under the system, the court assigns a fellow veteran as a mentor and systematic efforts are made to help the offender deal with a range of problems with which they are struggling to cope, such as substance misuse, mental health issues, lack of housing, anger management, skills, jobs and family breakdown. Other problems can be addressed in that way. The veteran is expected to attend monthly hearings so that progress can be assessed. Failure to co-operate leads to recall by the trial court and the possibility of a custodial sentence being imposed. The reported results of the courts are extremely impressive. The state supreme court in Pennsylvania reports an average reoffending rate for courts in its counties of just 1%. In other reports, rates vary from 10% to 30%, which is substantially lower than rates for custodial sentences.

[Mr Llwyd]

I am interested in what the hon. Lady has to say. In 2008, I went out, as an adviser to the Howard League, to see the courts in action. The first such court in the United States was in Buffalo, New York state. Currently, eight years down the road, it still has a 0% reoffending rate, which is absolutely incredible.

[Jenny Chapman]

The right hon. Gentleman clearly has a great deal of experience and expertise in this area. I am heartened by what he has said, which makes the idea of veterans courts all the more compelling. Since the first court was opened, the programme has been replicated across the country, and a number of states have passed legislation providing for the state-wide establishment of such courts. One has introduced changes to allow veterans to be diverted, where appropriate, into treatment rather than prison. That is the mark of simple, systematic support that can make a life-changing difference to an individual.

New clauses 2 and 3 are the starting steps. They aim to start our catch-up with the US and other nations. New clause 3 provides for a pilot of a variation of the veterans court to be trialled in the UK. New clause 2 requires a wide-ranging consultation on the issue as a whole. Both new clauses are reasonably small asks and, if passed, would offer the chance to learn more about the particular needs of veterans and how best we can support individuals to prevent future offences.

16:29

New clause 2 would provide that the Secretary of State must consult on measures to improve rehabilitation services for ex-service personnel and must lay a report on the findings before both Houses of Parliament within nine months of the Act’s being passed. The benefits of a consultation are quite clear. It will allow us to get the data, to think about the best ways of screening for veteran status and to consider the international comparisons for best practice—the list goes on. It will also give us a platform to consider some of the less straightforward issues. I do not deny that such issues exist, and we will not press either new clause to a vote this afternoon as they are complex. However, such issues include the questions of who we consider to be a veteran and how we define a veteran. A veteran can be anyone ranging from a 23-year-old injured in Afghanistan to a 90-year-old honoured for world war operations, and there are certainly differences that should be considered between a recruit who dropped out of basic training early on and a soldier who served for years. We should be more clear in our minds about exactly what a veteran is.

Pre-empting the support that I am sure such a measure would have received from both sides of the House, the Justice Secretary chose to show his support early by announcing over the weekend a review, to be led by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), that will consider the reasons that lead to some veterans ending up in the criminal justice system. That is clearly a welcome announcement, although I cannot help thinking that we are a bit light on detail. Does the Minister plan to make a statement as well as issuing a press release? We would be interested in a bit more detail. Notwithstanding the fact that it was the press rather than this House that was briefed on the terms of the Government’s review, I hope that the Minister will be happy to offer some assurances and a little information about the detail this afternoon.

Will the Minister assure the House that the review will consider how best to support veterans who come into contact with the criminal justice system as well as the reasons they become involved? Will he also assure the House that his review will consider international comparisons and how other nations support those who have served? Furthermore, will he tell the House how long he expects the review to last and when we can expect to hear its findings?

As new clause 2 asks no more of the Government than they are apparently already planning, am I right to think that they might be happy to accept new clause 2 and fulfil a statutory duty to consult on this specific issue through their review? I suspect, looking at the Minister, that that might be a step too far for him.

New clause 3 would provide for a veterans rehabilitation requirement to be piloted as part of a community sentence. That would act as a simple variation of a veterans court. I sometimes think that calling it a veterans court is a bit misleading, as it could just as well be called a veterans panel. The new clause would provide for a veteran who received a community sentence to be immediately referred to a veterans panel that included representatives of probation services as well as experts on veterans’ health, resettlement and rehabilitation. The panel would put in place a programme of rehabilitative support for the offender and would request to see him or her at regular intervals to check on progress. We are keen that a pilot should take place, which would not only signal a commitment to act on the issue but would begin to build up an evidence base—we like evidence bases on the Labour Benches—and experience of what works with our armed forces.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the experience in the United States shows that when such cases go through the courts the judge dictates how the person should be helped? The judge makes the point to the other key agencies that they have responsibilities to the person. For example, if the housing people or health people are failing, the judge can have a go at them. That makes things work much more effectively than saying, “Let’s just sit down and talk about this,” as it provides some direction.

[Jenny Chapman]

I agree with my hon. Friend, who has knowledge and expertise in this area. What he says could apply to any offender, as many of us are concerned that judges are not always as aware of the outcomes of the decisions they make as they could be. This particular idea would also help in that regard.

That might also start to make a world of difference for servicemen and women struggling to find their feet after their service to the rest of us. The Minister’s consultation is welcome, but we would like a commitment from the Government that action will be taken to trial and improve services for veterans who enter the system. As the noble Lord Beecham put it eloquently in another place,

“we should… not allow another situation to develop in which sentiments are pronounced but nothing much happens.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 11 June 2013; Vol. 745, c. 1565.]

I thank the House once again for the wide-ranging support on the matter and look forward to the Minister’s reply. We will not press these new clauses to the vote, but I would like him to respond carefully to what we have said and give us more assurances than he has given so far on the review he has begun.

[Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I wish to speak to new clauses 2 and 3. As the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) has just pointed out, the Secretary of State has asked me to lead a review of these matters. I would like to pay huge tribute to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for the work they have done on that. There has been a very good cross-party focus on the matter over the past few years, and I have a huge amount to learn.

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

Is my hon. Friend aware that the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee visited Washington last summer and saw at first hand some of the stuff we are talking about? Is he willing to take evidence from some of the Members who were on that trip to ensure that it is included as well?

[Rory Stewart]

I would be delighted to do that. My hon. Friend’s intervention reminds me just how much expertise there is in the House. I see that there is an enormous amount of expertise on the Opposition side of the House. He has a great deal of expertise on the matter, as do many other Members in the Chamber this afternoon.

We need to focus on this for three reasons: first, we have an obligation towards individuals in the criminal justice system as a whole; secondly, we have a huge obligation specifically to those who have served in the armed forces; and thirdly, we have an obligation to society as a whole. The US experience suggests that there is something we can do. It is unusual in such a situation to find that we have concrete levers that might be able to improve our relationship to reoffending.

There already exists enormous expertise, for example in the Howard League for Penal Reform, Combat Stress and the Royal British Legion, and in the work that has been done by all the forces charities—29 different forces charities are currently working on the issue. There is also deep expertise in our universities. For example, King’s College London has done an enormous amount of work on some of the trauma elements, and in the past 24 hours I have been contacted by seven doctoral students doing theses on these issues. I hope not to try to reinvent the wheel, but to learn an enormous amount, including from Opposition Members, to make this as much of a cross-party enterprise as possible and to bring in the expertise that is here.

[Alison Seabeck]

I look forward to the results of the work that the hon. Gentleman is undertaking, which I know he will do with a great deal of care and intelligence. We are talking a lot about trauma and front-line experience being among the key issues, but surely the institutionalisation of young men in particular has an impact on how they behave when they come out. That must also be part of his review.

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very important intervention. First, essentially we need to be looking at the base data. We need to understand what exactly is happening because, as hon. Members have pointed out, we do not yet have enough data on that. Secondly, we need to look at the causes of the incidence of offending and reoffending by people who have formerly been in the armed forces. Thirdly, we need to look at our response. In doing that, we need to be absolutely sure that we are not stigmatising. We must make it absolutely clear that we are not trying somehow to portray people who have been in the armed forces as more likely to offend. In fact, a lot of the data suggest that they might be less likely to offend than those from similar socio-economic backgrounds. We need to get that clear. It is important in terms of the recruitment and employability of people leaving the armed forces.

On the specific issue of causes, most of the research, according to my preliminary reading, suggests that the hon. Lady is absolutely right that there are different elements, one of which may be experiences before people join the military. For example, people who join the infantry tend, comparatively, to come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. A second element is experiences in the military, such as combat stress, and another is that raised by the hon. Lady, namely the question of what happens when individuals leave the military and go from what for many of them may be a very fulfilling institutional framework in which they feel a strong amount of team work and esprit de corps, to suddenly finding themselves in an environment in which perhaps less support exists.

That said, people coming out of the armed forces already benefit enormously from the forces charities and even from individual regimental associations, so we should not underestimate the amount of support that exists or try to reinvent the wheel.

[Oliver Colvile]

rose—

[Rory Stewart]

I will give way for a final time.

[Oliver Colvile]

Will my hon. Friend also recognise that in the United States of America all veterans are given a mobile phone when they leave the military and receive a couple of telephone calls during the following six months to a year, which means that there is permanent contact?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a good point on which to conclude.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

rose—

[Rory Stewart]

I can see that the hon. Lady wishes to intervene and I will let her do so.

[Lady Hermon]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for taking an intervention from me as a Member who represents a constituency in Northern Ireland. I know that he will be very sensitive to the role of the British Army in Northern Ireland, which has in the past been very divisive for some sections of the community. May I urge the hon. Gentleman to bear it in mind, when he does his research in Northern Ireland, that former members of the Royal Irish Regiment and the Ulster Defence Regiment are very reluctant to raise their profile, because they are anxious not to be targeted by dissident republicans? I would be keen to meet the hon. Gentleman when he comes to Northern Ireland to do his research and to be as helpful as I possibly can be. I am sure I speak for all Members who usually sit on these Benches.

[Rory Stewart]

I thank the hon. Lady very much for her offer and I would love to take it up.

On the penultimate intervention, the provision of mobile phones is a simple example of a very important point that every Member has raised so far: what we do know about veterans who offend and reoffend is that the military provides a very powerful possible support network. Unlike other sectors of society, it provides an instrument or lever that could be incredibly helpful and supportive to backing people in their recovery process. Trying to make sure that we get the very best out of institutions that already exist will be the key. We have an obligation to the individuals who offend and reoffend; we have a particular obligation towards the military; and we have an obligation towards society as a whole.

[John McDonnell]

I add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and, in particular, to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd). I attended the first session he held in Portcullis House about two and a half years ago, which was also supported, I think, by the ubiquitous Harry Fletcher, and we were shocked at the scale of the numbers of ex-military who were in prison and at the scale of the trauma they were experiencing. I welcome the review. It will be useful to get clarity on time scales and on how the recommendations will be dealt with by the Government at a later stage. I appreciate that.

I want to speak to new clause 12, which stands in my name and relates to domestic abuse. The scale of domestic abuse and the figures involved are always shocking. Last year, 7% of women reported some form of domestic violence or abuse against them. Two women a week are killed by partners or lovers, and the number of sexual assaults is about 70,000.

The existing probation service established national programmes in response to the issue. There is a 30-week programme in which perpetrators are placed, but there are concerns that it will be lost as this privatisation rolls out. I therefore suggest in my new clause 12 that programmes for tackling domestic abuse on which offenders are placed should remain with the national probation service. That would give the assurance that such work will continue and that there is consistency of approach. It would also allay several fears. I do not want to make this a contentious point, but one of the fears that has been excited relates to the unpaid work programme that Serco has taken over, in that some women’s workshops have been closed as a result of that privatisation. We do not want that to be experienced by such important programmes as those currently provided by the probation service, but they would be laid waste if privatisation took place.

The new clause is fairly straightforward. It would ensure consistency of approach, as well as the maintenance of such programmes, and the best way to do that is to retain those programmes within the state sector.

16:45

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I apologised to you in advance, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I apologise to you again for missing the beginning of the debate on this group of amendments. I extend my apology to all hon. Members. I had an important meeting with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and I got here as soon as I could. I did not intend any discourtesy, and I hope that no one will think that I have been discourteous.

I want to speak briefly about my amendment 7, which would delete clause 10. I do not want you to remind me that today is not a Friday, Mr Deputy Speaker, so I intend to be as brief as possible. Therefore, I will not read out exactly what is in clause 10, save to say that it makes special provision for the arrangements for supervision and rehabilitation of female offenders. As far as I am aware, the clause did not appear in the original draft, but was added to the Bill at some stage in the other place. Perhaps the Minister will expand on the reasoning behind the Government’s keenness to accept the clause, given that they do not appear to have been keen to introduce it in the first place.

The reason I object to clause 10 and therefore seek to delete it is that it is absolutely unnecessary. I suspect that it was put in—I hope that the Minister can help us here—to appease those whose whole mission in life is to keep virtually everybody, but female offenders in particular, out of prison. They have perpetuated a myth, which has built up a head of steam over recent years, that—bizarrely—women are treated more unfairly than men in the criminal justice system.

I pressed the Minister during Justice questions not long ago—I think it was just before Christmas—on whether he accepted, agreed with and stood by the figures produced by his Department on rates of offending, reoffending, sentencing and all the rest of it in relation to male and female offenders. I got the impression that he was prepared to stand by the Ministry of Justice figures. If so, and he still stands by them, he should clearly know that not this bizarre claim that women are treated more harshly in the criminal justice system but the exact opposite is the truth.

As it happens, as I am sure that the Minister knows, for every single category of crime, men are more likely than women to be sentenced to prison, to be given longer custodial sentences and to serve longer proportions of their sentence in prison. Yet clauses are still introduced to Bills to try to give even more preferential treatment to women in the criminal justice system, which is totally and utterly unjustifiable. There is this sort of politically correct myth that women offenders are currently hard done by and need special protection.

I am not a big fan of the equality agenda. In the previous Parliament, not only did I introduce an awful lot of amendments to the then Equality Bill, but I voted against it. This clause is a perfect example of why the equality agenda is such a sham. It should not really be called the equality agenda. It should be called the “equality but only when it suits us agenda”. All the people who campaign so vehemently on these issues argue, quite rightly, that men and women should be treated the same. There should be no difference in their pay, the way they are treated in the workplace and so on. I agree with the premise that we should be gender blind in all matters. That, to me, is true equality. It should not matter what somebody’s gender is. It should not matter what their colour is, what religion they are or what their sexual orientation is. Those are all irrelevances when it comes to anything, whether it is what they are paid or what opportunities they are given.

It therefore seems to me that gender should also be irrelevant in how the criminal justice system treats offenders. It should not matter whether the offender is male or female—they should be dealt with on the basis of the crime they committed, the seriousness of the crime, the persistence of their offending and their likelihood of reoffending. I do not see what on earth their gender has to do with any of those factors. Their treatment should be gender blind.

I believe that the view I have set out, which is that everybody should be treated the same, irrespective of their gender, is what most people would sign up to. If that is the case, perhaps the Minister and the other Members who support clause 10 will explain—because for the life of me I cannot see it—why they believe that everybody should be treated the same, apart from when it comes to sentencing and the treatment of offenders. Perhaps when he winds up, the Minister will explain why he thinks that women should be treated far more preferentially in the criminal justice system. If anybody doubts that, I have all the figures to hand. In the interests of time, I will not bandy them about the Chamber, but I have them here and am happy to share them with anybody. They are the figures from the Ministry of Justice itself and the evidence is striking.

Women are treated more favourably than men not only when it comes to being sentenced to prison, although that is particularly stark, but in the recommendations of the probation service. In a recent parliamentary question, I asked on how many occasions the probation service makes a recommendation of immediate custody for sentencing in the Crown court, which considers the most serious offences, for men and for women. The probation service recommends immediate custody for 24% of men who are up before the Crown court, but only 11% of women.

People would be forgiven for thinking, on the basis of that statistic, that the probation service is already bending over backwards to treat women more favourably than men in the criminal justice system. It recommends prison twice as often for men as it does for women. And yet there is a clause that seeks to make the probation service go even further in giving preferential treatment to women. That seems to me to be completely unnecessary.

The Minister might have been better served finding a way to ensure that men are treated more fairly in the criminal justice system, because that is where the problem lies at the moment. The figures on that are stark, and yet the Minister wants to go further in the opposite direction. The argument I have heard is that women should be a special case because they are often more vulnerable, but that ignores the fact that there are plenty of men who come from vulnerable backgrounds as well. Why are we not interested in those people? Why are we not giving them a fair lick of the sauce bottle, as they say in Australia? Why is it only vulnerable women offenders that we are bothered about?

Not only is what I have said about prison sentencing true, but men are more likely than women to be given the highest level of community order. More men than women go to prison, so we might therefore expect women to get more higher level community sentences than men because of the shortage of numbers going to prison. Even at that level, however, more men are sentenced to the highest level community orders than women—10% of women compared with 16% of men. At every possible level in the criminal justice system, men are already treated far more harshly.

So that the Minister is aware of this I will quote the latest report from the Ministry of Justice, “Statistics on Women and the Criminal Justice System 2011”, which makes it clear that on average, women receive shorter and less onerous community sentences:

“The average length of a community order and Suspended Sentence Order for women (12.9 and 17.8 months) was shorter than for men (at 15.0 and 18.3 months respectively). The average length of both orders was also shorter for women in each of the four preceding years.

Women beginning the most common types of supervision orders in 2011 generally had fewer requirements with which to comply than men. For community orders, 43 per cent of women and 51 per cent of men were given more than one requirement with which to comply. For Suspended Sentence Orders, the corresponding proportions were 55 per cent for women and 63 per cent for men.”

Women were also more likely than men to be given supervision as a requirement, and regarded as a lower risk category when being assessed.

There are already sentences run by probation services that women cannot be given, even if they fit into the offending type. The hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) referred to his new clause 12, and the sad thing about that is that it perpetuates the problem I am trying to highlight. It states:

“It shall be the responsibility of the National Probation Service to provide all Building better relationships rehabilitations programmes for male perpetrators of domestic violence”.

As it happens, there are an awful lot of female perpetrators of domestic violence. They may not be a majority, but there are an awful lot of them and in some age groups I think they are the majority of offenders. The new clause states that only male offenders are required to go on treatment programmes, and there is nothing about female offenders. I would have supported the new clause if it also included a requirement for female perpetrators of domestic violence to go on those courses, but the hon. Gentleman has spectacularly failed to mention that, for reasons best known to himself.

[Lady Hermon]

I have listened patiently to the hon. Gentleman, but with increasing exasperation. Has he made equal efforts to obtain statistics from the Department of Health about the impact on the mental health of women who have been sent to prison or had custody orders imposed on them and—just as importantly—on the welfare and health of the children of women who have been sent to prison? I would be interested if the hon. Gentleman read out those statistics to the House.

[Philip Davies]

I am delighted; I am trying not to go off the scent, so to speak, but perhaps you will allow me, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am sure these facts are a terrible irritation to the hon. Lady and may not suit her particular agenda and the world she would like to portray, but I am merely stating the facts as produced by the Ministry of Justice. If she does not agree with the statistics, she should feel free to contact the Minister. I can do no more than ask questions and get the answers.

The hon. Lady asks about children, and there may well be a case there. I would not mind so much if people said to me, “Well, of course women are treated more favourably in the criminal justice system, but there is good reason for that because they might have to look after children.” If somebody wanted to go down that line of argument I would at least have some respect for that; the point may or may not be valid, but that is not the argument that is made. The argument is that women are treated more harshly in the criminal justice system, but—quite frankly—they are not. It is no good people pretending they are when the facts are perfectly stark: they are not.

As the hon. Lady mentioned children she might want to bear it in mind—again, the Ministry of Justice made this clear—that two-thirds of mothers who are sent to prison are not even looking after their children at the time. In two-thirds of cases the children have already been taken off those mothers because they are not deemed fit to look after them. The people we are talking about are hardly great role models for their children. In fact, some prisoner organisations have made it clear that it is actually a relief when the mother is sent to prison—in one case they described those mothers as causing “merry hell” in their families. Therefore, the idea that it is to everybody’s advantage, including the children, to keep persistent and serious offenders out of prison to look after children is a bizarre one by anybody’s standards.

[Lady Hermon]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for taking a second intervention so promptly. When did he last visit a women’s prison? Will he do me the great courtesy of accepting an invitation to Northern Ireland to see the conditions in which women prisoners in Northern Ireland exist? I would be grateful for a response on both points.

[Philip Davies]

I would be delighted to visit Northern Ireland. As it happens, I have been a regular visitor to prisons around the country, including women’s prisons. I have visited 12 or 13 prisons in the UK, including two female prisons. I have also visited prisons in America and Denmark to see how they treat offenders. My point is that there is no justification for the new clause and no evidence to justify it.

17:00

[Mrs Moon]

I, too, have listened with great patience to the hon. Gentleman and have considered whether it is worth bothering to intervene. However, I must reiterate the point on community sentences and the selective passage he has read out. The fact is that eight out of 10 women who receive prison sentences have committed non-violent offences. That is why they have less onerous conditions in their community sentences. I draw his attention to the Corston report and the Prison Reform Trust report, “Lacking Conviction”. Instead of getting out more, he needs to stay in and read more.

[Philip Davies]

To be perfectly honest—I am trying to think of the polite way to describe that—what the hon. Lady says is utter garbage. It is utter rot. The idea that women are sent to prison for short sentences and non-violent offences is a myth—it is a big myth, but it is a myth. At any one time, there are about 3,700 women in prison. Perhaps she will tell the House which ones she believes should not be there. Perhaps it is the 211 who are in prison for murder; the 135 in for manslaughter or attempted homicide; the 352 in for wounding; the 142 in for serious assaults or other violence against the person; or the 58 in for cruelty to children. Perhaps she means the 58 who are in there for cruelty to children; or the 83 who are in for rape, gross indecency with children or other sexual offences. Perhaps she means the 272 women in prison for violent robbery. Perhaps she means the 151 who are in there for burglary. Perhaps she thinks the 398 drug dealers should not be in prison. Perhaps she means the 91 arsonists; the 24 convicted of violent disorder; the 45 in there for kidnapping and blackmail; or the 192 in there for serious fraud and forgeries. Perhaps she means the 320 in prison for importing drugs into the country, which end up being sold on our streets. She might mean the 111 others serving time for other serious drug offences. The hon. Lady might believe those people should not be in prison, but they are not non-violent, minor offences. It is a disgrace for her to suggest to the victims of those crimes that they are the victims of minor, non-violent offences. She should be absolutely, utterly ashamed of herself for suggesting that. That is the type of nonsense we have had to deal with in the debate for many years. I am delighted that I can shine a light on the utter rot that people like her have spouted year after year.

[Rory Stewart]

I am interested in what my hon. Friend says, but some of those figures on female offending seem relatively low. Does he have comparative figures for men in those categories?

[Philip Davies]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is making my point for me. Some 95% of people in prison are men. If 95% of either men or women were treated in what we might call a harsh manner in any other walk of life one would think there would be uproar on behalf of the 95%, but, would you believe it, all the uproar is that 5% is too many women prisoners. It is a nonsensical argument to suggest that women are treated more harshly than men. My hon. Friend is quite right that a lot more men are in prison for those same offences. My point is that men and women should be treated the same, irrespective of their offence. For the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) to suggest that they are non-violent, non-serious offences is utterly disgraceful. Perhaps she would like to go to each of those victims of crime and tell them that they are the victims of non-violent and non-serious offences.

In conclusion, clause 10 is unnecessary because the facts are already stark: women are treated more favourably than men when it comes to sentencing. Men are more likely to be sent to prison, more likely to be given a longer sentence and more likely to serve more of that sentence in prison than women for every single category of crime. For every single category of crime, men are also more likely to be given a serious community order and a longer community order, and are more likely to have more requirements made. Why is it, then, that the Government are not satisfied with that and want to go further to make the criminal justice system even more imbalanced and even more in favour of female offenders?

[Mr Llwyd]

The previous speaker should not read anything into the silence in the Chamber. It was not acquiescence; we were stunned into silence.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on being the driving force in bringing forward new clauses 2 and 3 on veterans to which I would like to speak briefly. I also welcome Government amendment 5 on the extension of restorative justice, which is a positive step. We had a debate on that in Committee. The Minister said that he would go away and consider the matter and he obviously has done so. I am sure we are very grateful for that.

I was glad to read in the papers over the weekend that there will be a Government review of how to improve the rehabilitation of ex-service personnel who are in prison, and that it will be led by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). I wish him well in that work. I have a feeling that it will be done consensually and that we will all be able to muck in, as it were, and do our best to come up with some good answers for the Government, because the work is long overdue.

As the House may be aware, I have campaigned for a number of years for greater recognition of the welfare needs of veterans of the armed forces, and I have raised the issue in this place and elsewhere since 2008. In January 2010, I published a paper that contained detailed recommendations for increasing the support available to veterans, in particular to those who come into contact with the criminal justice system. I have also had the privilege since 2010 of chairing the veterans in the criminal justice system parliamentary group, which meets under the auspices of the justice unions parliamentary group. The group comprises parliamentarians and representatives from criminal justice trade unions and charities, including the National Association of Probation Officers, the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Prison Officers Association, the Royal British Legion and several military charities. The group is able to disseminate good practice to ensure that it is available throughout the British isles, and I think that that is coming together and is working. I hope that at some point the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border might care to attend, to contribute and to perhaps pick up on a few points.

[Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)]

May I draw attention to what is happening in Midlothian, where Police Scotland has been giving out leaflets to local pubs, clubs and voluntary organisations? When an arrest takes place, the police now ask directly whether the person arrested is an ex-member of the armed forces, which helps quite a bit. We should replicate such things and learn from each other.

[Mr Llwyd]

That is precisely the point of the joint group, and I am proud to say that the police force where I live, north Wales, have been doing that for more than 12 months, as have others. It is difficult, though, because some ex-military personnel are not prepared to admit to having been in the forces; they feel they would be letting the regiment down. Then there are others—we have all met them; they always seem to be former leading members of the SAS—who have not served a day any more than I have. It is not simple—we need to be doing a complex set of things—but I am pleased that we now have something to concentrate our energies upon.

I first became aware of the disproportionate number of veterans in the system when appearing as a barrister in Chester and north Wales Crown courts one particular week some years ago. I noticed that increasing numbers of people who were appearing in court for serious crimes professed to have a military background, and often the distinguishing feature was that their crimes were inexplicable, or at least difficult for a person who had not served in theatre to explain. I remember one case vividly of a young man who had come back from Iraq and was standing in a fish and chip queue when the lad behind him who had had too much to drink bumped into him. He knocked the hell out of the young lad in no time at all. He was trained to look after himself—almost by reflex he would do it—and he ended up doing three years for assault.

When people come back from theatre, they need to be decompressed and brought back into society. Heaven knows how I would be affected, had I been out with the forces in theatre. It is natural to presume that many people will suffer mental scars as a result of service, and we owe it to them to do something about it.

[Rory Stewart]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that there is a particular issue with the reserves? For those in the regular forces, there is more of a framework for returning from operational theatre to battalion, whereas for the reserves we have a very specific challenge.

[Mr Llwyd]

Yes, and actually, as one who follows these things, I know that, interestingly, an increasing number of reservists are appearing in court, having left their work for a period and gone into the eye of the storm. On coming out again, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, they are expected to go back to civvy street as normal, but it is clearly extremely difficult. That is a big problem, and the amendments would be a step forward.

Almost by instinct, as a lawyer I have something at the back of my mind saying, “Why should any class of society have a court set up especially for them?” In this case, the answer is simple: because these people have been through extraordinary situations that we cannot even imagine. Of those who would wish to argue along the lines I previously argued, I would ask: why do we have specialist drug courts in the UK? They have worked well. The Liverpool drug court was a great success when it was in full swing, as these courts, or disposals, could be—we are talking about disposals for veterans, to begin with, which is perfectly sensible.

[Mr Anderson]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the American experience shows not only that such courts are effective, but that they are economically viable? People are not going to prison, so there are not the problems of family breakdown, and the huge array of things put in place when people keep going back to crime are no longer there, so there is an economic as well as a social case.

[Mr Llwyd]

Yes, there is. In addition, ex-service personnel are not used to paying regular bills and so on, and sometimes they do not balance their monthly income and outgoings, they end up in debt and everything spirals from there. I remember speaking with SSAFA in south Wales some time ago, and it told me that about 60% of its work was to do with debt, the handling of money and so on. That is another issue that has rightly been identified.

17:15

In March 2008, I tabled a number of questions to the Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, asking how many inmates in UK prisons there were from service backgrounds. I was told that that figure was not available. In the summer of that year, together with NAPO and the redoubtable Harry Fletcher—[Interruption.] He must be mentioned more often than the Queen in this place, although we are not supposed to mention the Queen. NAPO estimated that the figure was about 9% of the prison population; at that time, that amounted to roughly 8,000 people. I know that the official figure is 3.5% but I will not split hairs now. It is a very big problem and my view is that much of it is avoidable if we offer treatment early enough. In other words, everybody leaving the services should go through a period of decompression to enable them, yes, to have medical checks, but also assistance with things such as balancing budgets, holding down jobs and all the things that people not in the services have. We need to assist personnel to adjust to civilian life.

I readily accept that the majority of returnees will be perfectly fine and happy, but a large percentage will experience acute social rupture, become homeless, be cut off from mainstream welfare services and be isolated, and unless something is done they will fall into a downward spiral. It is likely that, at the end of the day, they will fall into the criminal justice system. Abuse of alcohol and drugs and mental health problems are catalysts, of course.

That is why I think it essential that the Government invest in the rehabilitation of veterans when they leave the criminal justice system as well as when they leave the services, as new clause 2 calls for. The services available to Army personnel when they leave the forces should be improved. I have it on good authority—from when I was an adviser to the Howard League on this subject—that how well someone is reintegrated in society depends on the senior officer in their regiment and whether they take an interest or not. I hate to put it in that way but that is what came through from the evidence we took.

Psychological assessments should be made mandatory for all service leavers. Post-traumatic stress disorder will not be spotted immediately; it could manifest itself today or 12 years from now. That is a complex matter as well. We need to put in place strategies to ensure that the maximum help is available to all veterans and returnees. We must look at substance misuse, mental health, housing, employment, money management, violent behaviour and all the other problems that are typical.

I am also very supportive of the aim of new clause 3, which provides for veterans rehabilitation panels based on the courts in the United States to be piloted. In 2010, I sat on the advisory panel to the Nutting inquiry into veterans in prison, which was sponsored by the Howard League for Penal Reform. As part of our research, we travelled to the United States, where we visited the veterans court in Buffalo, New York State and saw at first hand how it worked. It was described very ably from the Labour Front Bench earlier, although I have one slight correction: individuals referred to the veterans courts would normally expect to spend between 12 and 18 months in prison.

Initially, the federal courts were completely against the idea. My understanding is that now, following the brilliant court that has been in operation in Buffalo, there are about 47 throughout the United States, and they are regularly receiving referrals from federal courts and even, in some instances, from higher appellate courts as well. It is working, but I add a word of caution: getting good mentors who speak the same language as the individuals and who are trusted, because typically they have been through the same thing in the services, is highly labour-intensive. A bond develops, and the individuals do not want to let down their mentor. That is how it works, and it has led to 0% reoffending in Buffalo—an absolutely incredible success. I gave a full dossier of my findings to the then Justice Minister, Lord McNally, so the Government are fully aware of the whole workings. I hope we can look forward to some real progress. There is a great deal to be learned, so I commend the findings to the Government.

I conclude by mentioning one important military motto: “Leave no man behind”. Unless we do something, we will be leaving very many behind. That concerns me and, I am sure, all of us.

Briefly, I fully support new clause 12, to which the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) has spoken. It provides an important step forward. We must ensure that victims of domestic violence are not punished as collateral damage in the implementation of the Government’s proposals to reform probation. I shall not dwell on that any further other than to say that I fully accept what the hon. Gentleman said. I commend that new clause, too.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

I shall speak briefly to new clauses 2 and 3. I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) on their work. I have no personal experience in the matters raised, but I am aware of some of the issues and problems of ex-military ex-offenders from a particular project run in my constituency, so I shall speak briefly about that.

As the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) said, this is a hugely complex issue, and other Members have made it clear that there are multiple needs when people end up leaving the services and going into prison. It is clear that, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd said, we are not supporting those people adequately when they leave the services and go back to civvy street. Perhaps that should be the starting point. When they end up entering the criminal justice system, we need to ensure that their very specific needs for exiting prison are dealt with properly, too. That is why we need a joined-up approach.

We need to ensure that people coming out of the services do not find themselves misusing various substances, that their financial and housing needs are dealt with and that they are given support into employment. If they find themselves in the criminal justice system, they need to be given similar support. As we know from other aspects of people’s experience of leaving prison, something as simple as not having a bank account can be crucial. If they do not have a bank account, they might not get paid for the work they are doing and they might end up entering the criminal justice system much more quickly than those who do have a bank account. We need to think of this issue from an incredibly wide perspective.

It is good news that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) has been appointed to look at these issues. I hope he will notice the degree of party consensus and the wide and varied expertise that exist; he will, of course, take submissions from all parties and all those who have taken an interest in the matter for some time.

Let me focus specifically on people’s employment needs and on how the third or voluntary sector can help. I have seen this for myself in my constituency. Chatham and Aylesford are very different parts of the constituency and have very different needs, but on this particular project, they have combined and are working as one. Chatham has a long history and association with the military, while Aylesford is home to the Royal British Legion Industries. The RBLI has done a fantastic job over the last couple of years in trying to support ex-military ex-offenders into employment, which we know is a key part of successful rehabilitation from a custodial sentence.

The Victor project is a small-scale employment programme that assists ex-military ex-offenders into sustainable employment. The Secretary of State came to Chatham to meet people involved in the project, and I think that he thoroughly enjoyed himself and found the experience fascinating. I extend an invitation to any other Members who may wish to come down and see the work—especially my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border, who could include it in his review.

Victor began as a partnership between the RBLI, Blue Sky and Medway council, with funding from Forces in Mind. It has been co-ordinated brilliantly by the Shaw Partnership. The project, which has been operating for nearly a year, has provided six placements for ex-military ex-offenders undertaking grounds maintenance work at Medway council’s main offices in Chatham, and eight others with Veolia Environmental Services in Kent, Surrey and Essex. The grounds maintenance work would normally be undertaken by the council’s own contractor, Quadron, but Quadron has agreed to give part of the contract to the project, which is absolutely fantastic. Most of the participants are from the local prison at Elmley. This is the first initiative involving the partnership, and I believe that it is a pump primer for wider work for that group.

I think that there are initiatives out there that can really help ex-military ex-offenders to return to sustainable employment. Those whom I have met in connection with the project have described it as life-changing. They are getting up every day, and they have a routine. People are saying to them, “What you have done is fantastic: the grounds look amazing.” They are receiving the positive feedback that they need—something that they may have had when they were in the Army, or in other parts of the services—and they are being given support by a wider section of the community. I think that that is absolutely essential. If we are not giving such people the initial support that they need when they are coming out of the services, we must ensure that we give them support when they come out of prison. Very few former members of the armed forces go to prison, but they are an important few.

I am proud that the Victor project is operating in my constituency, and I hope that it will go on to greater things. I know that the Ministry of Justice is well aware of it, but I should like others to come and see it, and to think about whether it could be helpful to other initiatives. I think that, while we need to review this issue regularly, we can draw on the work of the voluntary sector.

[Meg Hillier]

I rise to speak with far less authority and experience than has been displayed by those who have spoken so far, but I am delighted to have added my name to new clauses 2 and 3, which were tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis). I speak with some experience, as someone who, as a schoolgirl, grew up in Portsmouth in the 1970s. I saw at first hand how little support was often given to people leaving the armed forces in those days. I also saw the aftermath of the Falklands conflict, when those returning from it were having to readjust to life.

I want to tell the House a story. In September, I had the privilege of meeting Harold. Harold served in the Australian air force during the second world war, and saw action in the Pacific. Harold is 90 years old. Ten years ago, he began to receive support and counselling for the experiences that he had had in the 1940s. One of my main reasons for adding my name to the new clauses is that I remember speaking to Harold and being very impressed by him, and impressed by the service that the Australians provide their armed forces. They recognised that, even so many years later, Harold still needed support.

Harold has no criminal record. He has been an upstanding member of his community throughout his life, both in the armed forces and since. However, if people like Harold are still facing problems, that explains a great deal about why ex-members of the armed forces form such a large proportion of the prison population, and why my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central and other members—I welcome the Government’s review, which is to be led by the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart)—want to ensure that these problems are nipped in the bud in the case of other veterans.

17:29

[Mr Anderson]

I want to speak in support of new clauses 2 and 3 and in support of veterans.

About five years ago I was approached by an ex-colleague who asked me to meet a group he was working with. Tony Wright was that colleague and he is an ex-Marine. He had to leave the Marines as a young man because of an injury and he went into the social services, ending up in the probation service. Everywhere he went he bumped into people who had gone through experiences similar to his. They had left the forces, sometimes under a shadow and sometimes not, and they had lost their way. He had become increasingly concerned about their well-being and eventually decided to do something about it, and five years ago he set up a group called About Turn, which has now become the charity Forward Assist. Tony asked me to become a patron of the charity. After sitting down with some of the people he works with, I said I would be very pleased to help them.

Three years ago, Tony won a Winston Churchill scholarship to travel to America. One of the first places he went to was Buffalo. He went to some courts that had been spoken about, and he was blown away by his experience there. The whole thing was based on comradeship. People who had gone the wrong way in life were being pulled back by the people in those courts. Everybody from the judge downwards was ex-service personnel and their determination that nobody would fail was what made things succeed. As we have heard already today, so far, in five years, not one person has gone back to crime—not one person. We should compare that with any other form of justice system.

As a result of that visit, Tony asked me if I would go with him to Arkansas to try to develop a link between Tyneside and Arkansas. The intention was not only to develop a civic link, but to develop a veterans exchange project. I went with him last December. While we were there, we were invited to go and meet Judge Mary McGowan, who runs one of the courts in Little Rock in Arkansas. She originally ran the drugs court, but after a discussion about drugs courts she decided—along with a gentleman called Rob McDonald, who was a prosecutor at the time—to set up the veterans treatment court. We sat in and listened to the court in action and spoke to people who were going through the system and we realised that this was something that could really work.

One issue we have not got our heads around was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd): are we saying that these people are a special case? I think the answer to that has got to be yes. They are a special case because of what Members in this Chamber ask of them. We ask them to go around the world and to be prepared to die for us and to be prepared to kill for us, and if they refuse to kill for us, they will do time in jail. That is the complete opposite to the norm. We ask these people to do abnormal things. If somebody fires a gun at us, we run away. When somebody fires a gun at service personnel, they run towards them. When these people come out of the forces, what happens to them?

I will describe some experiences. A meeting was hosted by Mr Speaker in the House of Lords last year. There were about 10 to 12 men ranging from guys in their 20s to a gentleman who was 92 and who had been a tail-gunner in world war two. One of these guys told a story about when he came out of the services. He sat down with his wife and said, “Whatever you do, don’t ever leave me alone with the children, because I’m not sure I can cope with them.” Is that not really, really frightening? At least the man had the nous to accept his potential shortcomings. Another one told his story. Everything was normal in his life except that every time he went to bed, he got a panic attack. When he thought it through, he realised the cause was the simple act of turning the bedroom light off, because the switch reminded him of the time he was walking along with a friend who was killed by a booby-trap that was triggered by an electrical switch. That was put right by putting dimmer switches into his home. These are the sorts of situations that we, as ordinary people who send those guys out there, would never ever think about.

I talked with another guy who for 10 years had been given the wrong medication because nobody had realised that he had been in the forces. When that fact came out and people started trying to work out the causes of his problems, it was discovered that they stemmed from the fact that he was the only man who jumped out of a burning tank that still had his friends inside. After that discussion had taken place, the way in which he was looked after completely changed, and he is now on the right track and working towards a normal life.

When we came back from Arkansas, I was proud to invite people from the US to Newcastle to develop a link, and to discuss the Buffalo veterans treatment court. We held a seminar in Newcastle in May, which was addressed by Prosecutor Rob MacDonald who had come across from the United States. Lord Beecham was also there. He is a former leader of Newcastle city council, and a gentleman with whom I have had the privilege of working for more than a quarter of a century. He had never heard about the courts before, but he was instantly able to see how important they were. I asked him whether they could work in Britain and he said, “There’s no reason why they can’t work, Dave. We have the models; we already have family courts. We could adapt that model and we could make this work if we really wanted to.” He came back here, and he and Lord Ramsbotham tabled amendments in the House of Lords. Unfortunately, none has been accepted so far, but I am glad that progress is being made.

We are talking about giving people a purpose in life and a reason to get out of bed in the morning. We are not talking about people who have committed really serious crimes. This is about men and women who have committed crimes almost as a cry for help because they have no money or because they do not understand the chaotic world that we live in today. They have had a structured life and, all of a sudden, that life has been pulled away from them. This is about helping them to make a difference.

As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) mentioned, we went to Washington with the Northern Ireland Committee last year to meet prosecutors and others involved with the veterans treatment courts. Some members of the Committee were, to put it mildly, cynical about them. Some, unlike myself, have a legal background. No one pretended that the courts provided a magic wand, but when it was explained how they worked, those Committee members agreed that this was something we should pursue. The veterans treatment court in Buffalo was the first, and more than 100 are now up and running. I think that two have been given up on, but the rest are reporting really positive results. They also link into the work being done on drugs, because the link between drugs and the activities that the veterans get involved in is hugely relevant.

I am often loth to push the American experience, but the way in which the Veterans Administration was set up can teach us some lessons. For example, it can teach us about the horrible experiences that came out of Vietnam. Vietnam veterans were treated disgracefully in America, but somewhere along the line, the light went on and the Americans realised that that was wrong, and that they should not blame those men and women for the mistakes made by the politicians. The work that has been done since is a great example to us all. It covers a huge range of things, and it shows us how we can learn to treat people properly.

I am a great advocate of the national health service. People in this country tend to think that if someone has a problem, the NHS can put it right. Well, it can be put right if people happen to put all the pieces together. As I have said, one of the biggest pieces is the ability to realise that a man is where he is because of his experiences —not because he is inherently violent or because he has a mental or physical problem but because of what he has gone through, and what we have put him through.

There is a raft of information available from America on how big this problem can be. A recent seminar held there under the auspices of Justice for Vets estimated that, in 2010, about 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, and that almost 50% of the people who had been in those theatres of war were seen to be suffering from traumatic brain injury. The numbers are huge compared with those we have seen in previous wars. This is about the changing nature of war, and about being exposed to the real world of modern-day warfare 24 hours a day. That is very different from what people experienced before.

That does not mean that veterans from earlier wars do not have the same problems. The group I work with in Newcastle has a guy from world war two and people who went through the situation in Aden. Those events are still as live to them today as they were 50 years ago or more. They lost friends there, for example. Those who served in Northern Ireland also played their part in trying to put things right over there. There are huge issues involved in how we deal with those people, and we need to be aware of how we can help them.

A psychiatrist we met in Little Rock said, “You need to understand that a tsunami of mental health problems is going to hit this nation in the same way as it hit ours.” We know that the number who went from these shores was small compared with those who left America, but the number who are coming back with problems is big. I am not saying, and I would not like to be portrayed as saying, that everybody who goes to war and everybody in the services will have these problems, because they will not, as we know. Lots of people make a good new life for themselves and move forward, but the ones who are not able to do that deserve special care from us in this House.

One of the real issues was touched on by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd—the numbers. Some of us from a group in Tyneside met one of the Justice Ministers just before Christmas, and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport talked through this issue. What is clear is that nobody really knows how many people from the forces are in jail. A gentleman called Colin Back works on rehabilitating the forces to get them back into work, and he has done work in the south-east of England. He reckons that we could be talking about almost 12% of this population, which is hugely more than the official figures suggest. So as part of the review and the ongoing work, we need to get these figures to see how big the problem is. If we can get a fraction of those people out of that situation, that would be the right thing to do, not only for them and for us, but for the economy. If these people are in work, if their families do not need special support and if there is no family break-up, we will not have probation on the side and prisons that are too full—everybody will win, and that is the great beauty of it.

I am really pleased that the commission has been set up. The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) is exactly the right man to lead on it, and I ask him to come over the Pennines as quickly as he can. He will be made to feel welcome in the north-east, because people there have lived through this, and although I am telling their story, I can never relate to it in the way they can. These people have been given a lifeline and they want us to help them, and we should do so. Part of that is about supporting these provisions. If the Government decide not to support them, I ask them to do the work regardless.

[Mrs Moon]

I will be as brief as I can, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I am aware that the Minister needs to wind up. I give credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for tabling the new clause, to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) for the work he has done and to the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). On the work the hon. Gentleman is going to undertake, may I urge him to ensure that whatever we bring forward and whatever is recommended, appropriate research is done and data collected to sit alongside it? What will be important is to learn a huge amount from this, not just about the number of people who will need the support of the veterans courts, but about the effectiveness of having specialist courts that will advise on the most appropriate way to prevent reoffending.

One question that has been raised was how we are going to define “a veteran”. The importance of reservists has been mentioned, so I will not go back over that in the way that I had planned. We have to recognise that post-traumatic stress disorder and mental health conditions relating to service do not necessarily happen on return. I know that the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border is very aware of that, but we must ensure that we clearly identify who will be eligible for veterans courts. We must not just discount people because their service took place years ago. It was suggested that an 18-year-old who had joined the services but not completed basic training might not be suitable. May I ask the hon. Gentleman to look at the research on suicide carried out by Professor Nav Kapur at Manchester university, because it shows that the highest number of people who have served in the armed forces and are likely to go on to take their own life are found among exactly that group? Often that is because they have been failed by society because they have gone through the care system and, yet again, they feel that they have been failed.

In collecting that data, can we please look at how many of those people who go on to reoffend have gone through the care system? That is critical information, because we know for a fact that many people who end up in the criminal justice system have served time in our care system and have already been failed by society. Let us use this opportunity constructively and creatively to look at how we can tackle reoffending and to ensure that we offer the best way forward to reducing it. We have an opportunity to be not punitive or negative but constructive and creative. I look forward to the work that will come forward. If I can help in any way, I look forward to doing so.

17:45

[Jeremy Wright]

I apologise in advance to those who have participated in this interesting and useful debate, because I will not have the chance in the time that is available to go into the issues in the detail that I would ideally like.

Let me begin with new clause 2. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) for what she has said about the nature of the amendments, and I hope that will curtail what I need to say about them. I pay tribute not just to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) but to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) and many others across the House for the extensive interest they have shown in this matter. I know that they will want to interact with my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) and express their expertise to him.

I agree that our armed forces do a difficult and dangerous job. We should also be clear—I know that no one has suggested otherwise in the course of this debate—that service in the armed forces does not inevitably lead to a life of crime following a return to civilian status. Undoubtedly, however, there are those who struggle with the transition, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border said, it is also true that those with a service background are less likely to commit offences than those who do not have such a background. We should also recognise the considerable support that the armed forces, as an employer, offer to those who are returning to civilian life.

The prison and probation services already work with ex-service personnel, and my hon. Friend will want to look at that and perhaps suggest further improvements. We are doing more in prisons to identify veterans as early as possible, and all prisons should now have a veterans-in-custody support officer to co-ordinate and assist in that task. The proposed probation reforms offer an opportunity to do better in that regard, and to encourage all sectors to work together to identify service personnel and offer the assistance that we can. I recognise entirely, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd and my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) have said, that a variety of organisations already do good work with offenders, but there is always an opportunity to do more. The review that my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border has been invited to lead will, I hope, give us that opportunity.

[Alison Seabeck]

rose—

[Jeremy Wright]

The hon. Lady will have to be brief.

[Alison Seabeck]

What I have to say is very pertinent. If there is no enabling clause in this Bill to bring forward any suggestions that come from the hon. Gentleman’s review, how long will it take for the necessary changes to be put in place, and is that something we should be considering?

[Jeremy Wright]

I want to come to the timetable. Without wishing to get into too much detail on these probing amendments, there are deficiencies within them that would require further legislation in any event. I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but I want to answer the question of the hon. Member for Darlington about what my hon. Friend’s review will be covering. First, we will ask him to consider the rehabilitation needs of ex-service personnel convicted of criminal offences and sentenced to a custodial or community sentence, and the current rehabilitation available to them. Secondly, we want him to consider the process whereby ex-service personnel are identified following conviction, and that goes very much to the point that the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) was making. Thirdly, we want him to consider best practice relating to the rehabilitation of ex-service personnel offenders, including evidence of effective interventions in other countries. Fourthly, he should consult with the cross-government military reference group, which already exists, and report to the Secretary of State within six months. That is an important time frame, because we want to ensure that our reforms are informed by what my hon. Friend and those working with him can tell us. We will publish my hon. Friend’s report and place it in the Library of both Houses so that it is available for all to see. If we were to wait for the conclusion of the Bill process, as the new clauses suggest, that would delay the beginning of the review. We do not want to do that as we want to get going as soon as possible and I hope that that will meet with the approval of the House.

In view of what the hon. Member for Darlington has helpfully said, I do not think that I need to go through the deficiencies we believe that there are in new clause 3. I recognise the intent behind it and we very much support that. We want to ensure that the review produced by my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border can assist us in producing solutions and suggestions that we can make use of in the course of our broader reforms.

Let me say something about new clause 12, tabled by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). He is right that it is hugely important to ensure that domestic violence is treated seriously and that the programmes he has described are implemented effectively. He knows that those at highest risk of serious harm will in any event be the responsibility of the national probation service, and the NPS will also manage all offenders who are subject to multi-agency public protection arrangements. That will include all offenders convicted of sexual and violent offences attracting a sentence of more than a year and all those whose offending leads them to become registered sex offenders.

On the specifics of the programmes that the hon. Gentleman described, I entirely agree with his enthusiasm for a consistency of approach. I hope I can offer him some reassurance, as such programmes would have to be accredited. Accreditation is overseen, as he will know, by the National Offender Management Service, which ensures that the programmes are evidence-based and have therefore demonstrated their effectiveness in reducing reoffending. The programme requirement will continue to be available to sentencers, and the NPS will have a key role in assessing offenders and providing advice to courts on their suitability for such programmes. CRCs will be mandated to deliver the sentence imposed by the court, and that will include the provision of accredited programmes. All offenders, whether they are managed by the NPS or CRCs, will be able to access accredited programmes and other interventions provided by CRCs.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman is reassured by those points. I understand that he would prefer all those programmes to be delivered by the public sector, but I think that he and I would agree that what is crucial is that the standards and quality of those programmes are maintained. We will achieve that by virtue of accreditation and, of course, the accreditation process will still take place within the public sector.

I am grateful for what the hon. Member for Darlington and others have said about Government amendment 5, which I will move at the appropriate time. I am also grateful to the hon. Lady for raising the issue initially in Committee. I also want to take the opportunity to pay tribute, as she did, to Paul Goggins and the contribution he made not only to the amendment but to the restorative justice agenda over a considerable period of time. There are few who can say that they have contributed more to the agenda than he did. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her support, and I hope that there will support on both sides of the House for amendment 5.

The final amendment in the group is amendment 7, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). As he has outlined, the amendment would remove clause 10, which was added in the other place, rightly, by the Government. I am sorry to disappoint him, but it would not be right to remove the clause at this stage. I know that he has a healthy disrespect for consensus, but the fact that almost everybody disagrees with him does not automatically mean that they are all wrong. In this case, I do not think that they are. We should recognise that this is not a sentencing question, as he says that it is—I agree that there is no justification for treating female offenders per se more leniently than male offenders. We are discussing not the sentencing process but the process of rehabilitation that takes place after sentencing. It seems to me that the evidence is clear that how one approaches rehabilitation for female offenders must be materially different, if one expects it to be successful, from how one approaches it for male offenders. That is what clause 10 sets out.

The experience of female offenders is different in a number of ways, whether that concerns the abuse that they might have suffered before committing offences or the rate at which anxiety and depression are suffered. As my hon. Friend said, female offenders have different rates of child care responsibilities from male offenders, so a one-size-fits-all approach will not, in all likelihood, be successful. Let me be clear again that this is not about advocating preferential treatment for women in the criminal justice system or a different sentencing regime for female offenders; it is about ensuring that our reforms remain responsive to offenders’ needs in order to ensure that we turn their lives around and end reoffending.

On that basis, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley will see fit not to press his amendment and that Opposition Members will see fit to withdraw new clause 2 and not press their other amendments.

[Jenny Chapman]

I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 4

Piloting of probation reform

‘The Secretary of State may not undertake a national restructure of the provision of probation services until the proposals have first been subject to an independently evaluated pilot scheme, and the results of that evaluation laid before both Houses of Parliament.’.—(Jenny Chapman.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

17:56

Division 177

Ayes: 244

---

Labour: 225
Liberal Democrat: 7
Democratic Unionist Party: 5
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Independent: 2
Plaid Cymru: 2
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 315

---

Conservative: 268
Liberal Democrat: 44
Independent: 2

18:09

Proceedings interrupted (Programme Order, 11 November 2013).

The Deputy Speaker put forthwith the Questions necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded at that time (Standing Order No. 83E).

New Clause 5

Provision of probation services: report to Parliament

‘(1) The Secretary of State must lay before both Houses of Parliament a report on the performance of all providers contracted to provide officers to perform the duties of supervisor or responsible officer as described in this Act after one year of this Act coming into force.

(2) The report must include—

(a) an assessment of the information made available by each provider to the public, and their assistance to the Ministry of Justice in its performance of duties under the Freedom of Information Act 2000; and

(b) an update on what measures were included in each contract to allow the Secretary of State to penalise a provider that fails to perform to national standards or fulfil its contractual obligations, and on what occasions these measures have been brought into force.’.—(Jenny Chapman.)

Brought up.

Question put, That the clause be added to the Bill.

18:10

Division 178

Ayes: 239

---

Labour: 225
Democratic Unionist Party: 5
Liberal Democrat: 3
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 2
Plaid Cymru: 2
Independent: 1
Alliance: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 318

---

Conservative: 268
Liberal Democrat: 47
Independent: 2

Clause 2

Supervision after end of sentence

Amendments made: 1, page 2, line 39, leave out

‘an officer of a provider of probation services’

and insert ‘a person’.

Amendment 2, page 2, line 42, at end insert—

‘( ) In relation to a person subject to supervision requirements under this section following a sentence of detention under section 91 of the Sentencing Act, the supervisor must be—

(a) an officer of a provider of probation services, or

(b) a member of the youth offending team established by the local authority in whose area the offender resides for the time being.

( ) In relation to any other person, the supervisor must be an officer of a provider of probation services.’.—(Jeremy Wright.)

Clause 4

Supervision of certain young offenders after release from detention

Amendment made: 3, page 5, line 6, at end insert—

‘( ) In subsection (2)(c), omit “if the offender is under the age of 18 years at the date of release,”.’.—(Jeremy Wright.)

Clause 6

Supervision of certain young offenders after detention and training order

Amendment made: 4, page 7, leave out lines 42 and 43 and insert—

‘(4) “The supervisor”, in relation to the offender, must be—’.—(Jeremy Wright.)

Clause 15

Rehabilitation activity requirement

Amendment made: 5, page 14, line 12, at end insert—

‘, such as restorative justice activities.

‘(4) For the purposes of subsection (7)(b) an activity is a restorative justice activity if —

(a) the participants consist of, or include, the offender and one or more of the victims,

(b) the aim of the activity is to maximise the offender’s awareness of the impact of the offending concerned on the victims, and

(c) the activity gives a victim or victims an opportunity to talk about, or by other means express experience of, the offending and its impact.

(5) In subsection (7A) “victim” means a victim of, or other person affected by, the offending concerned.’.—(Jeremy Wright.)

Schedule 3

Release and supervision: minor and consequential provision

Amendment made: 6, page 34, leave out lines 28 to 30 and insert—

‘(1) For paragraph (i) substitute—

(a) post-release supervision in accordance with a licence under section 31 of the Crime (Sentences) Act 1997 or section 250 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 of a person sentenced to detention under section 90 or 91 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000, section 226, 226B or 228 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 or section 209, 218, 221, 221A or 222 of the Armed Forces Act 2006;

(b) post-release supervision under section 256B of the Criminal Justice Act 2003;

(c) supervision under section 256AA of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 of a person sentenced to detention under section 91 of the Powers of Criminal Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000 or section 209 of the Armed Forces Act 2006;”.’.—(Jeremy Wright.)

Third Reading

18:20

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Third time.

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who served in Committee and those who have spoken on Report. The Bill contained many excellent measures when it was introduced in the other place last May, but following the House’s scrutiny it returns there with important improvements.

Before I set out the detail of the Bill as it is now, and although words have already been said in the House on this, it would be appropriate to refer to the tragic loss of the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East, who played an active role in the debate on the Bill. The news we heard at Christmas time was distressing for hon. Members on both sides of the House. He will be much missed. All involved in the Bill send our best wishes to his family.

On restorative justice, the Bill gives many more victims the means to bring home the impact that crime has had on them. On drug testing, the Bill provides for testing after release for a wider range of offenders whose drug abuse contributes to their offending. For offenders who enter the justice system as juveniles but leave as adults, the Bill gives the support they need, either from an adult probation provider or a youth offending team, whichever is best suited to their needs.

I commend the excellent work in Committee of the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), who has responsibility for prisons and rehabilitation, and who has done a fine job of leading on the Bill to this stage. I pay tribute to those on the Opposition Front Bench for engaging in lively and constructive debate. We may not always agree on the detail, but this has been a constructive debate of the kind that does credit to the House. I also thank the Clerks and the Bill team in the Ministry of Justice for their advice and support.

For too long, the criminal justice system’s efforts to reduce reoffending have been hampered by a major gap in the law—the lack of any statutory supervision for offenders released from short prison sentences. As a result, the most prolific offenders have historically received the least support. The Bill will change that. It will put an end to offenders who cause havoc in our constituencies leaving prison with only £46 in their pockets and little or no support. It is not a surprise that about 60% of them go on to reoffend within a year. It is often easier for them to return to a life of crime than to sort their lives out. The Bill begins to address that huge problem.

The human cost of not providing support for that group is enormously high: 85,000 crimes every year, including hundreds of serious sexual and violent offences. The Bill will significantly reduce the terrible harm that that group of offenders currently causes to victims and communities. It will also help those people to turn their lives around.

The Bill will give 12 months of licence and supervision after release to every offender who is given a short sentence. That will give those working with them the time and professional discretion to deliver the rehabilitation necessary to provide proper mentoring support after offenders leave prison to help them turn their lives around. It will create a light-touch framework for dealing with breach of supervision that allows for sanctions in the community or a warning, as well as a return to custody. It will expand the group of offenders who can be tested for drugs after release from prison to tackle what is a major cause of reoffending, and it will make reforms to the community sentencing framework to create equivalent flexibility and discretion to what we are creating for post-release supervision and mentoring. All of those are sensible and long-overdue reforms. They will, I believe, make major inroads into the current reoffending rate of nearly 60% for short sentence offenders. They should command the unanimous support of this House.

It has been disappointing to see a long list of flawed wrecking amendments from the Opposition to our wider reforms to probation that are the polar opposite of policies that only three years ago they supported, and which they seek to undo even though they emanate from their own Offender Management Act 2007. What they have tried to undo are reforms to the supervision of offenders that will harness all sectors, bringing in the right expertise from the voluntary, community and private sectors to reinforce the work of the public sector. The reforms will bring new ideas and new approaches to rehabilitation and will deliver more for less for the taxpayer. Crucially, they will finally deliver a proper through-the-gate resettlement service for offenders leaving custody, so that support starts well before people leave prison and follows them through the gate in a seamless way. They will create a new, single national probation service dedicated to managing offenders who pose the highest risk to the public, working alongside 21 community rehabilitation companies drawing on the best of other sectors.

I am happy to say, too, that following intensive negotiations before Christmas, in principle an agreement has been reached with the trade unions on the terms and conditions for staff transferring to the new organisations. We are currently awaiting ratification by the formal probation collective negotiating machinery later this month. The unions have written to all their branches, making it clear that local trade disputes are suspended pending ratification, after which the disputes will be formally withdrawn.

The great irony of all this is that the Opposition’s approach to reducing reoffending when in government was very similar, recognising that organisations from a range of sectors have something to offer offenders. I remind the House once more of what Lord Reid said on this topic when Home Secretary:

“The Secretary of State, not the probation boards,”—

as they were then—

“will be responsible for ensuring service provision by entering into contracts with the public, private or voluntary sectors. With that burden lifted, the public sector can play to its strengths while others play to theirs.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2006; Vol. 454, c. 593.]

That is precisely what these reforms do. I could not agree more with him. That is why the Offender Management Act gave wide powers to commission probation services from across all sectors, yet only a few years on it is disappointing to see that the Opposition have returned to many of their roots and want to forget that they ever passed the 2007 Act.

In spite of that, the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said on Second Reading:

“we agree with the broad objectives of the Bill.”—[Official Report, 11 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 671.]

I very much hope that this remains his position, and that right hon. and hon. Members on the Opposition Benches will join us in giving the Bill a Third Reading tonight. It is a Bill about giving rehabilitation to a group of offenders who desperately need it. It is about reducing the 85,000 crimes committed against individuals and communities across the country. It is about giving those working with offenders much greater freedom to pursue what works in stopping offenders, without all the constraints that can often exist within the public sector and without central diktat. It is about taking action for the victims of the 85,000 crimes committed by those short sentence offenders every year. Last but not least, it is a long overdue offer of rehabilitation to offenders who have been let down by the rest of society.

The Bill is designed, no more and no less, to fill a gap that is wholly unjustifiable in our criminal justice system. We cannot go on for year after year with people who are most likely to reoffend released from prison with £46 in their pocket, and with nowhere to go and no one to support and mentor them. More often than not, they simply return to the same streets and the same people, and reoffend all over again. The Opposition might not like our approach to these reforms, but in government they looked themselves at trying to do the same, and decided they could not. If they understand the importance of the step we are taking, they should at least give us credit for following a line that we believe could make the difference we have all sought for so long, and I urge the House to give the Bill its Third Reading tonight.

18:30

[Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I intend to keep my comments short. The Bill has many worthy objectives that we support, although I will have to mention those things that are missing. First, however, I want to begin by thanking colleagues in both Houses and on both sides who have worked hard to refine and revise the Bill, as the Lord Chancellor has just explained.

I would also like to pay tribute to Paul Goggins and express on behalf of both sides of the House our particular thanks to him. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) and the probation services Minister began their contributions on Report with kind, moving words about this decent, conscientious and kind man, and the Lord Chancellor did the same just now. Paul brought to the House his enormous experience of criminal justice, as a passionate advocate for the excellent work done by our probation service. His contributions to the Bill’s Second Reading, a previous Opposition day debate and the Bill Committee were of the highest quality. He spoke with a depth of knowledge, and the House will be the poorer without him. Many of us will miss him enormously.

I have previously outlined how the Bill is controversial more for what is not in it than for what is. I am pleased about the provisions on drug testing and rehabilitative support for women offenders. We have sought to include provisions to address rehabilitation for former members of the military services, and late in the day, to be fair, the Government have partly come round to the importance of this, although they have not gone as far as we would have liked. In winding up, the Minister was going to give time scales for the review, but he ran out of time. Will he write to me about that?

[Jeremy Wright]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that time was short, but I got the chance to say that it would take six months for my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) to report back to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

[Sadiq Khan]

I am grateful to the Minister for setting out the six-month time scale.

No one can disagree with the objective of extending supervision and the accompanying help to all those released from prison. In this regard, I want to place on record our admiration for the massively important work that professional probation staff around the country do to rehabilitate some of the most troubled individuals while keeping the public safe. Much of the public do not realise the work of the probation service, and it is a sign of its success that the Government will leave to it the most high-risk offenders. It is welcome that offenders released from sentences of less than two years will be subject to at least 12 months of mandatory supervision in the community, but it is multi-national companies with no track record in this area that will be responsible for this, rather than the probation service, which we know can do the job very well.

It has always been an anomaly that short-sentence prisoners—the group with the highest risk of reoffending —are the ones left to their own devices when released from prison. As has been mentioned and the House knows, the previous Labour Government tried to address this with custody plus, but financial constraints prevented it from being implemented. The House also knows, from Paul Goggins’ Second Reading contribution, that by contrast the Government have no idea how much the extension of supervision to those serving 12 months or less will cost. Their impact assessment skirts around this, saying that

“the cost will be dependent on the outcome of competition”.

The Government have done nothing to update the House on this and so the plans remain uncosted.

The Justice Secretary and the Minister with responsibility for probation say that extending supervision will be paid for by privatising probation. But if that is the case, one would assume that the Justice Secretary and his officials must have figures to support it. It is hardly surprising that experts and others are suspicious about why the Government will not come clean on the numbers. The Justice Secretary has linked the cost of extended supervision to savings delivered by privatising probation, so the Bill is directly related to the wider probation privatisation plans. The two issues simply cannot be separated, which is one of the reasons new clause 1 was inserted by the other place.

The changes that flow from the Bill are untried and untested and will see supervision of serious and violent offenders fragmented. I must give credit to the Justice Secretary, whose plans have created an impressive coalition of those opposed to them: probation officers, chief executives and chairs of probation trusts, The Economist, his own officials and, most recently, the chief inspectors of both probation and of prisons, who questioned the system’s ability to cope with his plans. The chief inspector of probation warned that the plans would lead to

“an increased risk to the public.”

The Economist called the plans “half-baked.” The Ministry of Justice’s own risk register warns that there is an 80 per cent. risk of an unacceptable drop in operational performance, which when dealing with offenders can only lead to higher risks to public safety.

But still the Justice Secretary pushes ahead, with the same arrogance and dismissal of expert advice that led to the disaster that is the Work programme—a Work programme so bad that someone has more chance of still being in work after six months if they do not go on it.

[Chris Grayling]

We may be going slightly off track, Mr Speaker, but may I just point out that the Work programme is doing about twice as well as the predecessor programme that we inherited from the last Government?

[Mr Speaker]

That is totally irrelevant to the Third Reading of the Bill.

[Sadiq Khan]

I wish the Justice Secretary was right, but he is not.

Imagine that shambolic record being repeated in a privatised probation service, with someone’s chances of being rehabilitated being better if left to their own devices than if they go through £600 million of supervision by the likes of G4S, Serco, A4E and Capita. By the way, for those who believe that G4S and Serco will have nothing to do with the privatised probation service, that is not necessarily the case. On 19 December, the Justice Secretary said that the Government had left open the possibility of either supplier playing a supporting role, working with smaller business or voluntary sector providers to support their objective of achieving a diverse market. Once more, there is smoke and mirrors from the Ministry of Justice, more hiding the real facts. G4S and Serco could still be involved in the probation service.

The best way to pursue plans that lead to massive changes of this kind and affect public safety are through piloting and testing to see if something works before rolling it out, rather than a big bang. Perhaps the Justice Secretary should also consider asking probation trusts to take on the extra supervision rather than ignoring them and opting for big private company involvement instead. That is precisely the kind of piloting and testing that his predecessor planned and which the Justice Secretary cancelled in his first week in his job in a fit of pique, when he announced that his own gut instinct trumped evidence and statistics. Does the House really think, without any evidence whatever, that a privatised and fragmented probation service will be able to deliver the provisions in this Bill? The Justice Secretary has nothing to point towards to support this—not the Peterborough scheme, as he claims, which is a totally different model. That is comparing apples with pears.

It is a double risk because at the same time as supervision is extended the institutional landscape responsible for supervision will be radically overhauled. This will see the Government abolishing local probation trusts, commissioning services on behalf of local areas direct from Whitehall, splitting responsibility for offenders based on a non-static risk level between public and private organisations and handing over to big multinational companies supervision of serious and violent offenders, and all at breakneck speed without any evidential base: a monumental gamble with public safety.

Of course we support attempts to reduce reoffending; we support extended supervision of those in custody for fewer than 10 months; we support attempts to provide through-the-gate support for those leaving prison; we support attempts to get more charities, voluntary groups and small and large businesses involved—but we do not support reckless, half-baked plans without any evidence that they will not put public safety at risk. We cannot support something that undermines public confidence in the criminal justice system, and we will not support ideologically driven leaps in the dark.

It is simply wrong for the Justice Secretary to argue that those who are concerned about his plans are against reducing reoffending just because we are against his particular half-baked and reckless proposals. We happen to believe that his plans are precisely that, and those concerns are shared by experts, staff, the chief inspector and even his own officials.

The Bill will now return to the other place. I hope colleagues there will insist that their clause—to ensure that probation privatisation should not happen without both Houses having the opportunity properly to scrutinise the Government’s detailed plans to change the structure of the probation service—is reinserted in the Bill. I see no reason why the other place should back down. The concerns reflected in the clause it inserted are as important now—if not even more so—than they were last summer. Scandals involving private companies have increased, and more evidence has come to light about concerns from the chief inspector of probation and from the Ministry’s own internal assessment of the risks. It is thus only right and proper for the Government to submit their full and detailed plans to proper parliamentary scrutiny, and not rush things through. We cannot afford to take reckless gambles where public safety is concerned. The Government’s plans risk doing exactly that, which is why we cannot support them.

18:41

[Lorely Burt]

I originally intended to make a full contribution at this stage, but a great deal has been said and I shall not detain the House by going over ground that has already been covered.

Let me make a point about the pilots in Peterborough and Southampton, which have had encouraging interim results. The hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) suggested that pilots had been concluded and stopped, but the pilots for Peterborough and Doncaster have not been cut, and as I say the interim findings have presented encouraging results, although we will have to wait and see the full results. The right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) asked whether the pilots were precisely comparable; notwithstanding that, it looks good.

I am not content to wait another four or five years to get the full results; we need to make progress now. I understand that the Opposition believe that there are flaws in the Bill, but I believe it will bring about a great improvement. I regret the fact that when in government, Labour made provision for a Bill but did not bring it into practice when it had the opportunity. We have wasted too much time already. The previous Government facilitated the legislation eight years ago, and now is the time to get on with the job. I am delighted to support my coalition colleagues in doing that.

[Mr Speaker]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady’s stoicism and fortitude in not allowing matters beyond her control to divert her from the content of her remarks. I feel sure that the sex change made by the Annunciator will now be corrected.

18:44

[Mr Llwyd]

I hope I do not suffer a sex change, which with this moustache would be awful to see!

When we enter the legislative processes, we usually start with a lot of unanswered questions. What distinguishes the process for this Bill is that we have almost as many such questions now as we had at the very beginning. The Justice Committee took evidence very recently, and experts in the field are asking some fundamental questions about how the procedure will work and how safe it will be. I do not know; obviously, I do not profess to know all the answers.

We have had an interesting debate or two during the Bill’s passage so far. I pay particular tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright)—he is the man steering the Bill through the House—for attempting to engage constructively with the process at all times. I am sure that, on occasion, that has been as difficult for him, as it has been for Opposition Members.

Let me also associate myself, warmly and sincerely, with the tributes that have been paid to our friend and colleague Paul Goggins. He played a large part in the Bill’s progress, speaking as he did with great knowledge.

I welcome the provisions for the rehabilitation of female offenders and for the extension of restorative justice. I also welcome the parallel process—if I may call it that—of over the weekend appointing the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) to prepare a report on veterans. That is all to the good. Overall, however, I still feel uneasy, because there are a great many unanswered questions. I do not pose the following question in expectation of an answer today, but I should be pleased if the Lord Chancellor could respond to it in due course.

During our debates, including those that have taken place today, the Government have prayed in aid the Peterborough social impact bond pilot. The original published figure for crime reduction was 6%. The Under-Secretary of State said on Radio 5 Live that it was 12%. In Committee, the Justice Secretary said that it was 20%, and today, in the Chamber, the Under-Secretary of State said that it was 8%. All four figures cannot be right. It would not be a bad idea for us to be given a single figure, because that disparity underlines my unease about some of the facts and figures that have been cited. I do not think that we should be prodding around in the dark when it comes to such a potentially dangerous area of law.

[Chris Grayling]

I hope that I can help the right hon. Gentleman. Two sets of statistics have been published. The comparators are between the absolutely numerical reduction at Peterborough and the reduction among a comparable group at a prison elsewhere in the country. The 20% figure, which is the highest, refers to the number of further crimes committed by the cohort, while the lower figures show the overall reduction in the absolute rate of reoffending—the binary rate. I should be happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman and set out the figures in detail, but I can tell him now that the experience of mentoring at Peterborough has been very encouraging indeed.

[Mr Llwyd]

I thank the Justice Secretary for his response, and I am sure that he is right about mentoring. I think he will find in due course, when the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border reports to him, that it is key to any improvement in dealing with the rehabilitation of ex-service people, and I am sure that that experience will translate into other forms of rehabilitation.

I do not want to elaborate on the position that I have taken, or, indeed, on the position that anyone else has taken. We have had a good-natured tussle over the past few weeks; I only hope that some of our worst fears are misplaced, for the sake of the British people.

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

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. With the leave of the House. [Laughter.]

I am given to understand that I recently made a speech. Even more unusually, I cannot remember what I said. I know that that happens to all of us sometimes, but what concerns me is that, as far as I am aware, it is a very rare occurrence.

I wanted to give my full support to the speech that was given in my name by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt), but also to suggest that, if anything unfortunate was said, you might refer it to my hologram, who may have been speaking instead of me at the time. I am grateful for the opportunity to set the record straight, and to make clear it that I was somewhere else at the time. That excuse is given commonly enough in politics, but on this occasion it is actually true.

[Mr Speaker]

All is now clear. I think that the House is grateful to the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for his sense of humour, and not least to the hon. Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) for hers.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with amendments.

Business without Debate

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

European Union documents

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 119(11)),

European Union External Action Service

That this House takes note of Unnumbered Explanatory Memorandum dated 27 August 2013, submitted by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, on the European External Action Service; and supports the Government’s approach of working to ensure the EEAS supports and complements UK international objectives.—(Karen Bradley.)

Question agreed to.

Speaker’s Absence

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 9(6)),

That the Speaker have leave of absence on Thursday 16 January to attend the funeral of the Right honourable Paul Goggins, late Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East.—(Mr. Lansley.)

Question agreed to.

Beth Schlesinger (Custody of Children)

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Karen Bradley.)

18:50

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

I am grateful to have the opportunity of this Adjournment debate to bring the case of Beth Schlesinger to the attention of the House and, hopefully beyond this House, to the whole country. I believe the injustice that has happened to Beth Schlesinger deserves a wider audience and wider understanding than has been the case so far, although the case has already attracted international attention if my inbox is anything to go by. I have had e-mails from the United States, Italy and Israel as well as Austria, thanking me for bringing the case of Beth Schlesinger to this House’s attention.

I request that the Government take some action on this case, although I am under no illusion that that is very difficult for the Government, even with the best will in the world. Austria is a modern European country with a judicial system that follows the rules of natural justice and it is very difficult for any Minister from that country, let alone this country, to comment on, or interfere in, the process. However, such is the scale of the injustice that has happened to Beth Schlesinger that I hope the Minister can in some way approach the Austrian ambassador to the United Kingdom or the Austrian Government to express the concerns that many of my constituents have on this matter. Beth Schlesinger lives in Vienna at present, but her parents are my constituents.

This case is Kafkaesque. That is an overused word, but what has happened to Beth Schlesinger defies normal understanding. Authorities have taken decisions about her life and her children’s lives which are inexplicable and certainly unjust.

The best way to explain to the House what has happened is to go through the chronology of the events. Beth Schlesinger—her maiden name was Alexander—married Mr Schlesinger in October 2006. On 24 May 2009 the twins Samuel and Benjamin were born to the couple. Unfortunately the marriage then deteriorated and Mr Schlesinger, became violent and abusive towards Beth Schlesinger, and on 15 February 2010 Mr Schlesinger tried to have Beth committed to a mental hospital in Austria. Because there had been violence against Beth, however, the police were called and they removed Mr Schlesinger from the family home. He was given five minutes to pack his bags, and a restraining order was placed on him. He was subsequently given limited access to the children. Full custody was given to Beth Schlesinger; he was given two hours’ supervised access, three times a week.

So far, so understandable, unfortunately. It is not an uncommon arrangement for married couples, in this country and elsewhere in Europe, for the mother to end up with custody and for the father to have supervised access because of his violent activities. Mr Schlesinger had been violent and abusive not only towards Beth but towards her father and her father-in-law.

Then, things took a turn for the worse. Mr Schlesinger requested a friend of his, Konstanze Thau, a high court judge in Austria, to contact Susanne Göttlicher, the judge in charge of the case. It is highly irregular for a high court judge to intervene in another court on behalf of a father who has shown himself to be violent. However, after that meeting, Beth’s custody rights were reduced. The judge also ordered that the children were not to leave Austria.

In January 2011, the father was given further, unsupervised, access to the children. I am told that that happened through a legal technicality. Let us remember that, after the violent episode, Mr Schlesinger had tried to have Beth committed. I suppose we would call it “sectioned” in this country. A doctor, Ulrike Willinger, then produced a psychiatric report on Beth, in which she recommended, without having fully examined all the people involved in the case, that the children should be returned to Mr Schlesinger’s control. That report was considered by the judge on 17 June 2011.

A further report was produced by Dr Sinko-Sanz, a qualified psychiatrist, which informed the court that there was nothing wrong with Beth and that the children were developing normally. Social services put in a similar report. Unfortunately, however, Judge Susanne Göttlicher —who had previously been visited by the friend of Mr Schlesinger—decided to give full custody to the father. That was an extraordinary decision, and no details were given in the order of how the handover should happen.

In October 2011—this is a crucial point, because these decisions were never carried out—Beth brought an appeal and the father’s rights were reduced; he was granted only temporary custody. Crucially, the higher court asked for a further investigation, and that reports should be drawn up on the children, the father and the mother. That instruction from the higher court was never carried out, however, and the only reports that were ever produced for Judge Göttlicher’s court were those relating to Beth. The father was told by the courts—there is a specific word for this, as is often the case with the German language—to give as much information to the children’s mother as he could so that she could understand all the needs—

19:00

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Karen Bradley.)

[Graham Stringer]

The father was basically asked to tell the mother what the children’s needs were and what was happening, but what actually happened was that he cancelled 50 of Beth’s visits. Rather than him looking after the children, Filipino nannies were hired to do that for 12 hours a day and at weekends, and to take them to and from the nursery. Beth became more and more worried about the children; Samuel had four teeth taken out without any medical reasons given and Benjamin had two teeth removed. Beth was not only worried about what was happening, as the visits were cancelled and the children were upset, but it became clear that in the court’s previous decision Judge Göttlicher had suppressed a report from the nursery which had shown, and expressed the view, that when the children were seeing the father they had been crying and screaming, and had been extremely distressed. Clearly, Judge Göttlicher had had that report but it was not used. Things went from bad to worse, in terms not only of access to the children, but finance. Mr Schlesinger stopped paying maintenance and, indeed, tried to demand that Beth paid maintenance. She was now given access only on two afternoons a week and three hours every second Sunday, which represents an extraordinary turnaround from the original situation.

In July 2013, the judge awarded full custody to the father. At this time, crucially, no assessment of the father, or of the father with the children, had taken place. Beth had been examined in German for the psychiatrist’s report that had recommended against her. She is not fluent in the language, and so her answers had been slow, which was counted as a mark towards her being considered mentally unstable. Some of the relationships involving Judge Konstanze Thau became clear, and not only the one with Mr Schlesinger; her husband worked in the same hospital as Dr Willinger. I do not usually believe in conspiracies, but in this case the decisions that were taken were so strange that one has to suspect that undue influence and conspiracy were taking place.

Beth has asked me to draw to the House’s attention a case of a similar custody issue, although much more extreme in many ways, that has been before the higher Austrian courts in the past week or so. It involved a neglected and filthy child—not the same as in the Schlesinger family’s case—that had been taken away from the mother, who was deemed to be inadequate. The higher courts in Austria said, in giving the child back to the mother, that a loving child’s bond is of “paramount consideration”. I agree with that, and that Austrian court got it right in a much more difficult case than this one. Court cases are always difficult to compare because they involve details that one does not know, but I think that that case highlights what has gone wrong in Beth’s case.

I want to thank a few people before I come to my conclusion on this case. I have been to see the Austrian ambassador about this matter. He was courteous and listened carefully before explaining the situation to me. The Minister has received a delegation consisting of me and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis), and I am grateful to him for that. I know that he is familiar with the case and sympathetic, and I hope that he will listen to what are outrageous decisions from the Austrian courts and, even with all the difficulties that I have explained, take action on them.

I have great respect for the Austrian state. As a Minister I had regular meetings with Austrian Ministers. I like Austria, but the decision in Beth Alexander’s case is a blight on the Austrian judicial system and I hope that it will be put right. Brought to its bare bones, this case is about a violent father who has been violent towards the mother of his children and other members of the family and who has been given custody of two children. The children are clearly unhappy. They do not speak very well, and they are still in nappies beyond the age of four. He was given custody after exerting undue influence on the courts over a mother who is completely blameless. As a Member of this House for 16 years and a councillor for many years before, I have rarely come across a case of such injustice. Despite all those difficulties, I hope that the Minister, who has shown that he is interested and sympathetic, can be of help.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I want to put it formally on the record that I thank the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) for bringing this case to the House’s attention. I also speak on behalf of my constituent, Adrian Alexander, who is the brother of Beth Schlesinger. Adrian and I had cause to visit the ambassador at the Austrian embassy and we discussed the case with him. I came away with the feeling that even the ambassador was confused about some of the details, particularly about the recent judgment in which there was no recitation of the facts of the case. If we could at least establish what we are dealing with, we could seek some kind of resolution. As I have said, I want to place it formally on the record, on behalf of Beth’s family, that we thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this matter to the House tonight.

[Graham Stringer]

As I explained to the House, we are not just talking about Beth’s family. There has been concern throughout the world. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his thanks.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

This case has caused considerable concern among my constituents. At the start of the hon. Gentleman’s very fine comments, he talked about the Austrian judicial system following the rules of natural justice. Is he aware that in the judgments handed down by the judges there has been no explanation as to why Mr Schlesinger was favoured over Mrs Schlesinger? They simply issued a judgment with no explanation. That surely cannot be in line with natural justice.

[Graham Stringer]

I am grateful for that intervention. I am aware that justice was denied in that last judgment without any explanation. There is a great deal that mystifies me about the case—how a higher court’s decisions are not carried through, and the inadequate decision of the lower court. Even though we have slightly longer than the normal half-hour Adjournment debate, one could have taken an hour going through the technical details of the case, but I wanted to get to the heart of the subject and show the basic injustice that has happened in this case. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention.

19:09

[Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) for securing the debate and for the compelling way in which he has explained this incredibly complex case in a truncated fashion. I also thank other hon. Members for their concern about a case that puzzles those of us who have been involved in it over a long period of time.

We should begin by saying that the only thing that matters is the best interests of the children, Benji and Sammy Schlesinger. After two and a half years in the care of their father, they are suffering from seriously impaired development and appear traumatised. The decision to award custody to the father, Dr Schlesinger, is one of the worst miscarriages of justice I have ever experienced during my long period as an elected representative. Beth Schlesinger has been falsely and cruelly labelled mentally ill and an unfit mother, labels both disproved by independent professionals. She is a mother, by the way, who is still allowed unsupervised access to her children. If this woman were an unfit mother and suffered from serious mental health problems, surely the norm would be supervised access at the very least. As my hon. Friend has said, the father’s documented history of abusive behaviour has not even been considered by the relevant court. A senior Austrian judge, Konstanze Thau, a friend of the father’s family, sought to influence the judge hearing the case on behalf of the father.

There is an element of the case that my hon. Friend did not mention. A senior social worker, Dr Kindlehoffer, who testified to the mother’s positive parenting skills and expressed serious concern about the integrity of the legal process, has been intimidated and threatened with the loss of her job. As a consequence, she is no longer willing to express an opinion on the case. As my hon. Friend has said, the final decision made by the Austrian court was that the father should be awarded custody without any independent professional assessment of the father, the children or the interaction of the father with the children, despite the fact—this is not generally known—that one of the children has been referred for professional help because they are self-harming, at such a tender age, and despite the fact that child protection agencies have been called to the father’s home following reports of children crying endlessly, in an unusual way, in distress. Despite all that the court’s final decision was one word: “refused”. It refused the appeal.

As my hon. Friend has said, it is ordinarily incredibly difficult for any Government to intervene in the justice system of another country. I can testify to that as a former Foreign Office Minister. The default position of the civil service in the Foreign Office—I hope that people will take this in a good natured manner—is not to get involved in civil disputes of any nature. That is the default position and I am almost certain that that is the advice that the Minister will have been given.

The Minister has been incredibly sensitive in how he has previously dealt with the case and he has offered to provide an element of assistance on behalf of the Foreign Office. At that time, the solicitor for Beth Schlesinger advised that that would not necessarily be helpful, but we are long past that point now. The family and their current legal representative are very clear that any assistance that the UK Government could give would be welcome and could make a difference. We are asking the Minister to raise the case, as my hon. Friend said, with the Austrian ambassador to the UK, to raise it, through the relevant channels, with the Austrian Justice Ministry and to ensure that there is a comprehensive review so that, if possible and where appropriate, the case can be reopened. We are realistic enough to realise that it would be entirely inappropriate for the UK Government to instruct the Austrian Justice Ministry or the Austrian courts on the decision they ultimately make, but there is no question but that there are serious issues to be addressed about a flawed process and, as my hon. Friend said—I will go even further—about corruption. The Austrian justice system is not renowned for corruption—it is viewed as modern and transparent—but in this case there are so many questions to answer that it would be entirely appropriate for the UK Government to ask the Austrian Justice Ministry to look at all the elements of the case and reopen it as a matter of urgency.

I have one final point to make. The earliest years of a child’s life are the most important, as you, Mr Speaker, know better than most, having done a tremendous amount of work in recognising that in a different context. We make the greatest difference in the earliest years of a child’s life. That is why there is no time to waste. Anyone who has met those children and observed them will be extremely concerned about their lack of development and their apparent traumatisation. In those circumstances, I think that we all have a duty to act.

19:15

[The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) on securing the debate and on speaking with such clarity and passion in the case he has put forward on behalf of Ms Beth Schlesinger. I also acknowledge the long-standing interest of the hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) in the case and the interest of my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon (Dr Offord) and for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), who intervened earlier in this evening’s proceedings.

It is a sad fact that international custody cases are becoming more frequent, as in today’s world more parents of different nationalities marry and bring up children, and marriages and relationships sadly sometimes collapse. Although in many cases arguments about the care and custody of the children can be settled amicably, in an increasing number of such cases we see parents going before the courts to argue about who should have custody or in which country the children should reside. In more extreme but increasingly common cases, one parent absconds with the child without permission, an action that can quickly escalate into charges of abduction, and arrest warrants being issued.

This case is different. In cases of child abduction, it is our standard practice in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to urge parents to look to The Hague convention to provide them with the way forward. The Hague convention, as the House knows, provides a mechanism by which to determine, in an international dispute over custody, in which country’s courts the children’s future should be decided.

Let me turn to the case we are debating this evening. Ms Schlesinger is a British national and her husband is an Austrian national. They both currently live in Austria. Their children were born in that country in 2009 and have lived there ever since. That is why this custody case has been heard by the Austrian courts, rather than the United Kingdom courts. Ms Schlesinger contacted my office only this week to outline her concerns about the welfare of her children—concerns that the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton described in some detail. I was somewhat reassured to see that she has the support of her family and friends and specialist non-governmental organisations, such as the Twins and Multiple Births Association, but I am the first to acknowledge that her separation from her children and her consuming anxieties about their welfare make this an incredibly difficult time for her.

I want to explain the Government’s involvement in supporting Ms Schlesinger to date and then move on to how we see the case today. In February 2010, Ms Schlesinger’s father visited the British embassy in Vienna to discuss his daughter’s situation. Divorce and child custody proceedings were taking place in the Austrian courts at the time and Ms Schlesinger was clearly concerned that her husband might prevent her from returning permanently to the UK with the children, following the breakdown of their relationship.

At that time, the embassy was able to help by providing our list of English-speaking lawyers in Austria and information on local women’s support organisations and international organisations with relevant experience. Our consular staff explained that, in cases where families could not agree custody arrangements for the children on their own, it would be for the courts to decide which parent should retain custody and where the children should be resident.

Our staff also explained that both the UK and Austria are party to the 1980 Hague convention on international parental child abduction. That means that both countries have agreed that, where there is an international dimension to custody disputes, it is the court in the country where the children usually live that is best placed to make a custody decision in the best interests of the child. In this case, for the reasons I have described—the children were born in Austria and have always lived there—that is the Austrian court. In July 2011, as the hon. Gentleman has explained, the Austrian courts awarded custody of the children to their father, Michael Schlesinger.

When parental relationships break down and they cannot agree where a child should live, the resulting custody case inevitably causes untold distress to everybody involved—from the children themselves and both parents, to the extended family. That distress can only be amplified when large geographical distances separate, or threaten to separate, one parent from their children. However, as I explained when I met the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Bury South last year, while there is no doubt that this is a deeply distressing case for Ms Schlesinger and her family, there is limited scope for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to intervene.

Our staff are not legally trained, and therefore cannot offer legal advice. Instead, we help to put British nationals in contact with reputable and, where possible, English-speaking local lawyers who are familiar with local laws and procedures and best placed to offer professional advice and support on the case and to identify any procedural irregularities with the court process in the country concerned. Nor can the United Kingdom—the hon. Member for Bury South was right about this—interfere in the independent judicial process in another country, just as we would not stand for another country interfering in our own independent judicial proceedings.

When I met the two hon. Gentlemen last July to discuss the case, I explained the background and the fact that custody disputes are private legal matters. If parents cannot agree on arrangements for children, the decision on what is in the children’s best interests must be made by the courts in the country where the children are habitually resident.

It is very clear from what the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton has said that he and Ms Schlesinger have deep concerns about the integrity of the legal process that has taken place in Austria and believe that some of the information and evidence presented to the Austrian courts may have been seriously flawed. Ms Schlesinger needs to address those concerns with her legal team and consider what options there are to pursue them through the Austrian and, potentially, the European legal system.

Although the Foreign and Commonwealth Office cannot become involved in the competent judicial process of another country, if Ms Schlesinger’s legal team were to approach us with significant and substantiated—I stress that word—concerns about the process involved in the case, we would certainly be prepared to consider such representations and raise them with the Austrian authorities.

Our embassy in Vienna has provided some assistance to Ms Schlesinger and her family since the initial contact in 2010. As well as providing the lists of lawyers, support organisations and international bodies such as Reunite, the embassy has, during the course of this case, contacted the judge on some practical questions about timings and provided a statement to Ms Schlesinger’s lawyer at the lawyer’s request. There has been no direct contact between Ms Schlesinger and our consular staff between May 2012 and now, but in all our contact we have consistently advised the family that this has to be a matter for the courts to determine. I gave that advice to several hon. Members and other interested parties in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

Ms Schlesinger and her family have asked for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to intervene to raise concerns about the court process, and to lobby the Austrian authorities for her to be given custody of her children. I must be clear that we can intervene only if there are sufficient grounds, particularly substantiated grounds about the process, and that we cannot simply take sides regarding custody of the children, any more than Ministers can take sides in such disputes that are handled by United Kingdom courts.

Ms Schlesinger’s lawyers’ concerns have previously been dismissed by the appropriate judicial authorities. When I met the hon. Members for Blackley and Broughton and for Bury South, I agreed that our officials should again contact Ms Schlesinger’s legal team. We took that step and the lawyers’ clear advice was that any form of diplomatic intervention could prove detrimental to their case, which was then at the appeal stage. We therefore stepped back from making any representation and considered instead whether we could do anything to expedite progress at a hearing. If the lawyers have changed their view and can bring forward substantiated evidence of something having gone seriously wrong in the process, we will examine such representations.

Since then, Ms Schlesinger has taken her appeal to the Austrian Supreme Court, which has said that it is inadmissible. Having listened to the two hon. Gentlemen, I can understand that the Austrian Supreme Court’s somewhat terse language must have upset Ms Schlesinger deeply. The absence of any detailed explanation must also have made that decision even more difficult for her to bear. I am aware that no words that I or anybody else could say tonight will console her, given the huge emotional burden—as well as the enormous financial one—that this case will inevitably carry.

It is now crucial, however, that Ms Schlesinger discuss with her new lawyers how best to proceed, and whether there are any further avenues within the Austrian legal system, or whether she needs to consider the European courts, especially the European Court of Human Rights. The UK ambassador to Austria has agreed to meet her this week to look at whether there is anything more that he and his team can do beyond what they have already undertaken.

At the root of the dispute are allegations of irregularity in the court process. Any evidence of procedural irregularity should be pursued by legal means in Austria. I cannot emphasise too strongly our view that, following recent decisions by the courts, Ms Schlesinger should seek immediate legal advice. If her lawyers advise that there are grounds for a diplomatic intervention that might be beneficial and could be substantiated by sufficient evidence, her legal team and/or the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton are welcome to put their representations to us again.

Like any parent, I feel nothing but heartfelt sympathy for Ms Schlesinger in the plight she faces. I am sure that every Member of the House hopes that this case can be resolved swiftly, amicably and, above all, in the best interests of the children.

Question put and agreed to.

19:29

House adjourned.

Ministerial Corrections

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Ministerial Corrections

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Advertising: The Guardian

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Ministerial Corrections

[Julian Smith]

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how much his Department spent on advertising with (a) The Guardian newspaper, (b) The Guardian website and (c) The Guardian Media Group in (i) 2009-10, (ii) 2010-11, (iii) 2011-12 and (iv) 2012-13.

[Official Report, 29 October 2013, Vol. 569, c. 417W.]

Letter of correction from Shailesh Vara:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) on 29 October 2013.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Mr Vara]

The information requested is set out in the following table:

[Mr Vara]

The information requested is set out in the following table:

Reserve Forces

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Ministerial Corrections

[Mr McKenzie]

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what support his Department provides to employers to assist employees who are army reservists; and how their skills will enhance the employer's company.

[Official Report, 6 January 2014, Vol. 573, c. 15-16W.]

Letter of correction from Anna Soubry:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Iain McKenzie) on 6 January 2014.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Anna Soubry]

SaBRE-Supporting Britain’s Reservists and Employers-is an organisation supported by the Ministry of Defence which is positioned to provide support to both reservists and employers. It maintains a website

www.sabre.mod.uk

that provides information for employers including detailed advice on the benefits of employing reservists and examples for companies of HR policies tailored to reservist employees. SaBRE also operates a telephone helpline that is available for both reservists and employers to address specific inquires. Further, each of the 13 Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations (RFCAs) has a Regional SaBRE Campaign Director able to provide a personal, face-to-face service for employers at a local and regional level.

In the White Paper ‘Reserves in the Future Force 2020: Valued and Valuable’ (Cm 8655) the Government pledged to improve the relationship between Defence and employers. Financial support is given to assist employers to recruit staff or to cover overtime to fill an absence left by a mobilised employee. An incentive payment of £500 per employer per month is also available to some small and medium enterprises. Under our fresh approach to the Reserves, employers will have greater awareness and predictability of when their staff may be mobilised.

Reserve Service will benefit different employers in different ways. For some, the improved skills, experience and training of the individual reservist will be beneficial. For some, where the reservist’s military role is close to their civilian one, there will be more benefit from transferable skills.

For some companies and sectors, Reserve Service suits and supports their business models. Reserve Service might support corporate social responsibility objectives and be part of their social action plans, alongside any wider volunteering policies.

The correct answer should have been:

[Anna Soubry]

SaBRE-Supporting Britain’s Reservists and Employers-is an organisation supported by the Ministry of Defence which is positioned to provide support to both reservists and employers. It maintains a website

www.sabre.mod.uk

that provides information for employers including detailed advice on the benefits of employing reservists and examples for companies of HR policies tailored to reservist employees. SaBRE also operates a telephone helpline that is available for both reservists and employers to address specific inquires. Further, each of the 13 Reserve Forces’ and Cadets’ Associations (RFCAs) has a Regional SaBRE Campaign Director able to provide a personal, face-to-face service for employers at a local and regional level.

In the White Paper ‘Reserves in the Future Force 2020: Valued and Valuable’ (Cm 8655) the Government pledged to improve the relationship between Defence and employers. Financial support is given to assist employers to recruit staff or to cover overtime to fill an absence left by a mobilised employee. An incentive payment of £500 per mobilised employee per month is also planned to be made available to some small and medium-sized enterprises. Under our fresh approach to the Reserves, employers will have greater awareness and predictability of when their staff may be mobilised.

Reserve Service will benefit different employers in different ways. For some, the improved skills, experience and training of the individual reservist will be beneficial. For some, where the reservist’s military role is close to their civilian one, there will be more benefit from transferable skills.

For some companies and sectors, Reserve Service suits and supports their business models. Reserve Service might support corporate social responsibility objectives and be part of their social action plans, alongside any wider volunteering policies.

Westminster Hall

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 14 January 2014

[Sir Edward Leigh in the Chair]

High Speed 2

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

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

09:30

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate, which I think is the first to be held under the new arrangement whereby this debate in Westminster Hall is allocated by that Committee rather than through the mysterious balloting that normally takes place. I am grateful to the Committee for listening to and granting my request.

I also thank the large number of people who have raised this issue with me since the debate was announced. All did so in polite and civilised terms, even if they disagreed with the perspective they thought I was going to take. I would not like to suggest that I have read every one of the more than 400 e-mails that I have received on this subject down to the very last detail, but I have reflected on the key points that people raised and hope that they will appreciate that I have attempted to do so. It is important to look at this subject as calmly and respectfully as we can, because these sorts of plans and projects always arouse strong emotions. Those who are in favour of the development need to be as robust in our defence of it as those who oppose it are in their arguments.

When phase 1 is complete the journey time from Scotland to London could be cut by half an hour—that might not sound a lot, but it is an important reduction—because trains will be travelling at a higher speed for the first part of the journey before connecting on to conventional lines. When phase 2 is complete, journey time could be reduced to around three and a half hours, which would be a significant gain. However, my support for HS2 is not simply about cutting journey times from Scotland. I think that the project is in the national interest. The fundamental underpinning of that view is the need to grow our economy throughout the United Kingdom, and improved connectivity is a crucial part of achieving that. It is particularly important for the midlands, the north and Scotland: we need to distribute our centres of manufacturing and service industries throughout the country, and improved connectivity is the key to doing that.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful case. Does she accept that, however important the increased improvement in journey times is, the most crucial justification for high-speed rail in this country is capacity?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman and will be coming on to that issue. The underlying purpose, I would argue, is to be able to distribute our investment in our economy more generally, and connectivity is important to that. We have seen, for example, what has happened in Salford with the development of Media City and the BBC’s sometimes apparently painful move up there, which some people obviously felt meant going to the end of the world. That development led not merely to one large company moving part of its operations out of the south-east, but to supporting media industries locating in Salford deliberately because of the bigger pool there.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I apologise, Sir Edward, that I will have to leave before the debate ends, but I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing this important subject to the House for debate this morning. Although the debate is predominantly about the economic benefits of HS2, does she accept that there are also environmental benefits? If as a result it means that, for further-flung destinations in Scotland and the north of England people are less likely to use air travel, and for areas nearer to London people are less likely to use the roads, there will be green benefits for our economy too.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I accept my hon. Friend’s point about green benefits in the long term, certainly in terms of air travel, although that will not necessarily be the case in the short term, as people will constantly argue.

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

I am not going to attack the hon. Lady aggressively on this matter, but she is making the point that she wants to see economic benefits spread throughout the country, so does she not agree that it would have been more sensible to look at connectivity between northern cities and with Scotland well in advance of running yet another line between Birmingham and London, especially as we do not even know yet whether that line will connect well or properly with HS1, or with Heathrow, Gatwick or wherever it is decided that our future airport capacity will be in the south-east? Does she agree that the project would have been better started in the north?

[Sheila Gilmore]

The right hon. Lady will not be surprised that I do not entirely agree with her view. We have to remember, for example, that the lines between cities across the north are already being electrified, quite separately from HS2.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I will shortly, but I want to complete my argument about why, if we want to grow regional economies, we need to improve connectivity and why that is not possible within the existing rail network. There has been a huge growth in rail over the past 20 years, and there is limited spare capacity. Investment in existing lines has been increased and, we acknowledge, that investment is continuing under this Government, but—this is perhaps the point that the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) wished to make—the ability to make further improvements is decreasing because of the limits on capacity. If we decide that we are going to build new lines in various places, we may as well think about the high-speed line now.

[Mr MacNeil]

Did I understand the hon. Lady’s response to the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) correctly as implying that, as a Scottish Member, she would prefer to have high-speed rail starting in London rather than in Scotland?

[Sheila Gilmore]

Personally, I would like to see it starting at both ends. I would be interested to learn the proposals of the Scottish Government to assist in achieving that within the powers that they have.

A number of objections are made to the arguments about capacity. Some people argue that the high rate of growth in long-distance travel—it has been about 4.8% a year—will not continue, but that is unlikely, given the patterns we have seen. The factors that are pushing people away from their cars and on to trains—high petrol prices and congested roads—are unlikely to change any time soon. Any type of sustained economic growth, which we all say we want, is likely to push demand for long-distance travel up further, not reduce it. On top of that, there are the predictions for growth in our population, which are now well established.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Since the hon. Lady agrees that High Speed 2 is about capacity not speed, what assessment has she made of the difference in cost between going at high speed across floodplains, with tunnelling and the like through and across environmentally sensitive areas, versus the cost of going at a slightly lower speed around the problematic natural areas within England and Scotland that the HS2 link will have to go through?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I understand the hon. Lady’s concerns, but if we are to make a serious step change in our rail investment, this scheme is the appropriate route to take.

The other point that some people have raised about capacity is that some inter-city trains operating at peak times—those operating in and out of Euston, for example—are not actually full and we should use that capacity before building a new line. However, on present patterns, it is likely that that capacity will be used up by the time the new line is built. London Midland trains, for example, which serve many commuter towns on the west coast main line, are already full to bursting and room must be created for trains to serve those destinations. Upgrading the west coast main line would be difficult and disruptive and would not provide the other benefits.

Some people have argued that HS2 would not release useful capacity around Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. Existing services will still be needed in some places, but those trains will be able to stop at intermediate stations. The lines will remain and the trains will be able to stop at more intermediate stations without holding up longer-distance travellers, giving a substantial boost to regional connectivity. For example, stations between Coventry and Birmingham New Street would stand to gain more services.

We could tackle commuter demand at the southern end of the west coast main line by building more cross-rails. One is being built at the moment and another is planned. I am not saying that those schemes are not helpful, but if such an approach continues it will exacerbate many of the problems created by London’s dominance and would not help economic growth in other parts of the country. People often suggest that other schemes could achieve that, but no one has come up with firm proposals in which we can have confidence. The main transport corridor between Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool—the trans-Pennine route—is already being electrified and will provide that greater connectivity, which is good. This is not a matter of either/or.

The other argument that is often raised is that the business case is not sufficiently strong. Perhaps one of the biggest arguments is about the use of time and the value that is placed on that. People say that in the modern age people can work on trains so there is not the same value to be gained from speeding up journey times, but that does not make up for the fact that it is even more valuable if staff can arrive at their destination and return in a shorter time. Although the cost-benefit ratio is low compared with smaller projects—some people have suggested that road bypasses have a much higher cost-benefit ratio—we cannot build a whole network with small projects. As large projects go, HS2 is relatively good value for money.

There are wider economic benefits that are not always captured in the business case. One argument that I have already addressed but want to talk about a bit more is that HS2 will be a disbenefit to the midlands, the north and other parts of the UK. Examples sometimes cited from Europe are that high-speed rail there has not benefited the places to which it goes. What matters is whether the project connects significant population centres.

[Mr Simon Burns]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s generosity in giving way. I suggest that she does not need to go overseas to Europe to see the benefits of high-speed rail. All she needs to do is to look at the benefits that HS1 has brought to Kent and London.

[Sheila Gilmore]

The right hon. Gentleman’s experience and knowledge is valuable to this debate. Not all examples are of linking large conurbations with others. In some, the benefits may be spread around the country.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend’s speech is extremely welcome. I have never accepted the argument that building HS2 will somehow be a disadvantage to the north or the midlands. By that logic, if we tore up our motorways and existing rail lines, we would be more prosperous. The central point that I am interested in is the economic benefits of HS2—this responds to the point that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) made and that the Scottish National party tries to make—and the need for HS2 to go to London because of decentralisation. This country is the most centralised in the western world and decentralisation will come from London. That is why the route must be built as suggested. London’s property prices show that the country cannot sustain that level of centralisation. That is the crucial benefit of HS2.

[Sheila Gilmore]

There is no doubt about current centralisation and the pull factors. Some opponents of HS2 say that it would increase centralisation in London, but I argue the opposite. The pull factors towards the south-east exist despite the disadvantages of London—high property prices, lack of land for development, long travel times to work from not far away, and so on. I am seriously worried that we are seeing more of that than we have for some time. As the population is pulled in that direction, it increases even more as people who move to work in the financial services sector and other sectors require other public and private services to support them, so London’s population becomes more and more dense. If we genuinely want to decentralise our economy, we must think about that seriously.

Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Scotland have competitive advantages over London in terms of population, availability of land to develop, relatively cheap housing and a lower cost of living. The service sectors that are already in many of those places and are powerful there would benefit from better access and could grow and develop to the advantage of all of us in the UK.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the Labour leaders of our great northern cities cannot all be wrong in that regard?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I certainly agree that their views should be listened to and that they have their cities’ best interests at heart. They want them to develop and widen. Of course there will be an environmental impact and I understand people’s concern about that. It is never easy to develop such projects. It would be foolish to say that there will be no disruption or environmental damage, but on balance the country must weigh up the benefits. We must accept, as we have done and will continue to do, that enabling the country to develop as we want and in a much more balanced way means that we must take that on board, while always trying to mitigate the environmental problems.

[Mrs Gillan]

Is the hon. Lady telling the Chamber that sacrificing homes, businesses, ancient woodland and the area of outstanding natural beauty in my constituency is a price worth paying for HS2?

[Sheila Gilmore]

I certainly hope that there will be as much mitigation as possible. Any other option, and even expanding some existing rail lines, would also cause damage and loss of housing, because when lines were built there was development around them, so it is difficult to expand them.

If we are serious about expanding our economy, we must find a way to improve capacity because I firmly believe that it will increase. We have to move forward with the project as quickly as possible. There would be regret if in future we looked back and asked, “Why did we not do it 10 or 20 years ago?” This is our opportunity to grow and distribute our economy throughout the UK.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I have the right to impose a time limit, but I think we should be all right for the time being, if Members are aware of the clock. I shall start by calling Cheryl Gillan, who, I am sure, will be considerate to other people.

09:50

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

I will try to be considerate, Sir Edward, but as you know, this project has a very deleterious effect on my constituency. I am grateful to be called by you, first of all, and to have the opportunity to put some points from the position of Chesham and Amersham.

I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on obtaining the debate. She has shown interest in this railway for some time, although I have to say that I am not sure it is a priority for her constituents, as 92% of all Scottish rail journeys begin and end in Scotland. As I understand it, some flagship improvements to the Edinburgh-Glasgow route have already been cut by £350 million. I have to say that if she is interested in the issue, she has failed to acknowledge that her constituents and anybody else travelling from Scotland will have years of disruption at Euston station. If she looks carefully at the plans for Euston station and where the long-distance trains from Scotland arrive, she will see that there will be fewer platforms and reduced services for many years, so her constituents and many people in Scotland will face a lot of disruption at the end of their journey if the project goes ahead.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Perhaps I should just point out that most of my constituents—although not necessarily all the people from Scotland—will be travelling to Kings Cross.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am sure that most of the hon. Lady’s constituents will be travelling to Kings Cross, but plenty of people from Scotland travel to Euston. As she does not appear to want the route built to Scotland immediately, nor to want the northern routes to be constructed first, she can rest assured that there will be a lot of disruption right across the network as the project develops. I was surprised that she did not ask for the line to be built from Scotland to England, because there is to be a referendum in Scotland and, as I have always said, if we want Scotland to remain as part of the United Kingdom, connectivity to the rest of the United Kingdom is really important. Despite any differing views about HS2, I think that most people in the Chamber would agree that we want Scotland to remain part of the United Kingdom.

[Mr MacNeil]

Does it not show London’s priorities that, rather than building high-speed lines to the north, it built high-speed lines to the south and towards the continent—indeed, to countries that were not in political union with London?

[Mrs Gillan]

No, I do not at all agree with the hon. Gentleman on that, and he knows it. If that is a mischievous way of pushing the SNP’s message, I have to say that I believe that we are better off together and that the people and economy of Scotland will be a lot better off if it remains firmly as part of the United Kingdom.

Today we have a fightback from HS2, because Sir David Higgins takes up his appointment; we have already had the PR charm offensive from HS2 this morning, conducted from Old Oak Common. We heard that we will have a new further education college to train the 2,000 engineers that we do not currently have to complete the build over the next 20 years of HS2. The Government are constantly trying to talk up the project. We have had more fightbacks and comebacks on HS2 than we can possibly imagine. More alarmingly, we heard this morning that over the next six weeks, Sir David will prove that he can produce HS2 cheaper and quicker. That is what he has been charged to do. That will be interesting; it means that the past four years and the work by the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd is obviously not good enough, and that a great rescuer can come in and show us, over the next six weeks, how we can do it quicker and cheaper. I wish him the best of luck, but it makes me wonder what we have paid nearly £1 billion for in terms of the work that has been carried out so far.

[Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)]

Is it not always a good idea constantly to make savings and improve delivery? Is that not what every businessman would do every day of his life? To say that that is not a good idea is very strange.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am not saying that it is not a good idea; I am asking what the hundreds of people who have been working on the project have been doing over the past four years. Surely—

[Mr Simon Burns]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Gillan]

The former Minister here is responsible. When we have a project for which the Secretary of State has had to come to the House and announce that the figures are wrong and that the cost has gone up by £10 billion, surely it is amazing that we now have a new chairman coming in who is already charged with trying to reduce that cost. What is going on with the costings for the project? Neither the Department nor HS2 Ltd have got a grip. I give way to the former Minister.

[Mr Burns]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. I can certainly say that people have been working, over the past four years, on fine-tuning and improving the line of route and the delivery of it, and on mitigation, which, for example, directly benefits my right hon. Friend. She knows as well as I do that 19 km of HS2 go through her constituency; 14.5 km are in a tunnel and the other 4 km are in a cutting.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am so glad that my right hon. Friend can remember his brief from when he was a Minister. I am grateful for the tunnel, as are my constituents and the environment, but the fact remains that the area of outstanding natural beauty will be drastically affected by the project. If the issue is about connectivity and capacity, there is no reason why alternative routes cannot be found. The reason why it goes straight through my constituency is speed. There are alternative strategies—I am sure that he remembers the 51m alternative strategy that was produced. There are ways of achieving the connectivity and economic renewal of the country other than HS2.

The business case, which the hon. Member for Edinburgh East mentioned, is dreadful. At the end of October, the Government released yet another version of it, which confirmed the shrinking benefit. The benefit-cost ratio for phase 1 is now estimated to be 1.4, excluding the wider economic benefits. However, experts working on the figures—particularly those in HS2 Action Alliance, which includes some great experts on transport and economics—have estimated that the real figure could be under 0.5. That is less than 50p back for every £1 spent. Even the official figures now beg the question whether the project is value for money.

In order to deal with the bad publicity that HS2 was getting about the benefit-cost ratio and the project’s value for money, which is a shrinking benefit, a report from KPMG was commissioned. That was supposed to build a positive view of the railway, as we all now know. It claimed that the economy would be boosted by £15 billion a year. Within days of that report being published, that claim was challenged from many angles. In September, Robert Peston, the BBC’s business editor, drove a coach and horses through the report. He rightly pointed out that many of the gains that KPMG had calculated were based on a reasonable notion that companies would be established in places where there were better transport links, but the report took no account of whether those regions contain available land to site new or bigger companies, or actually have the people with the relevant skills to employ. As those two features are the fundamental causes of poor growth in many parts of the UK, it is amazing to me that the report even stated:

“The methodology employed makes the implicit assumption that transport connectivity is the only supply-side constraint to business location.”

That was a coach and horses through the report.

[Kate Green]

I recognise how strongly the right hon. Lady feels about the matter and on behalf of her constituents. She referred to the KPMG report and the criticisms that were levelled at it. I also point out—and invite her comments on this—that aspects of economic gain were not referred to in the report. For example, it did not take account of the added economic benefits to us in Greater Manchester of investment in a station and of bringing the line through Manchester airport.

[Mrs Gillan]

The hon. Lady could be right. An awful lot was missed out of the report. It was in September that Robert Peston came up with the criticism. In October, a freedom of information request from “Newsnight” revealed the bad economic news that was missed out in detail from the report. The potential losses to some of our regional economies from this rail link will cause real problems. The negative impact on the north-east of Scotland, for example, was described as “significant to say the least” by the Aberdeen chamber of commerce. Areas from Cardiff to Kettering have been identified as ones that will lose millions of pounds from their annual GDP. I agree—that was missed out of the report. There was a nice little map that was supposed to disguise the figures behind, but a freedom of information request from “Newsnight” flushed out that important detail.

By November, the Select Committees were getting their teeth into the HS2 project, and so they should, although one cannot help feeling that the Select Committee on Transport is really an extension of the Department for Transport, given its latest thin and rather inadequate report.

[Mr Simon Burns]

Can my right hon. Friend answer a very simple question? Why is it that anyone who expresses any criticism of HS2 is 100% accurate, but anyone who sees any benefits in HS2 is either an appendage of the Department for Transport or just downright wrong?

[Mrs Gillan]

We could turn that question around to the former Minister, because he seems to think that everyone connected with HS2 is absolutely right, that this is the project that will solve all our economic problems and woes and that anyone who opposes it is not worth listening to. He is on dangerous ground with me, because he knows that I have been—

[Mr Burns]

So there is no answer to the question.

[Mrs Gillan]

There is an answer to the question. We could easily be wrong on some points, but that is not to say that HS2 is not totally wrong. Besides, they have been set off in a certain—

[Mr Goodwill]

rose—

[Mrs Gillan]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Minister in a minute.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. We are in danger of going round in circles now, so perhaps the right hon. Lady could get on with her speech. Perhaps if she gives way to the Minister, we can get on and hear from other people.

[Mrs Gillan]

I give way to the Minister of course.

[Mr Goodwill]

I understand that my right hon. Friend is entitled to her own opinions, but I do not accept that she is entitled to her own facts.

[Mrs Gillan]

Perhaps the Minister will intervene and give me the facts that I should have. Would the Minister like me to give way? How are my facts wrong?

[Mr Goodwill]

There will be plenty of facts when I make my concluding remarks.

[Mrs Gillan]

I will be grateful for a reply from the Minister then, of course. He knows that what I am doing is talking common sense and repeating what has happened, as opposed to making anything up. If this project is so good, perhaps the Minister will also, when he replies, let us know why the Government have still not published the Major Projects Authority reports, which highlight the risk. I believe that they have been classified as amber and red. If the Government are so convinced that this is such a wonderful project, it is important that those reports are made public. After all, we came into government saying that we would be the most transparent Government ever.

The hybrid Bill, which has been deposited, has also proved to be contentious. I think that tomorrow the Standing Orders Committee will meet for the first time since 2008 to examine the 14 Standing Orders that it may have transgressed. Alongside the hybrid Bill was deposited an environmental statement of nearly 50,000 pages, from which, as the Minister told me in answer to a question, some 877 pages were omitted. That and the fact that 56 days is the shortest period that has been given for any consultation on HS2 matters reflect the fact that the Government are not wanting to listen in detail to people who are raising valid and very worrying concerns about where we are going with this project.

It is widely known that Buckinghamshire gets all the pain and none of the gain. I am not sure whether the new college that is being promoted by my colleagues in government will be dangled in front of Buckinghamshire —whether it could come to Buckinghamshire. If that were considered, at least it would be something more than we are getting at the moment, because if people start to look in detail at what is proposed and the impact on Buckinghamshire, they will see that it is very worrying.

I talked to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington) before this debate. We were talking about the effects on the local economy and particularly on tourism in Wendover and beyond, and also in Great Missenden in my constituency. But also, more worryingly—my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford, who is also a former Health Minister, will know about this—concern has been expressed, because of what is proposed in changing the transport architecture locally, that even blue-light services could be affected during the construction phase of the project.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way; she has been very generous. She is painting a truly frightening picture of high-speed rail. I just wonder where high-speed rail has been constructed whether she would advocate digging it up and taking it away, because it does seem to be a very frightening project indeed.

[Mrs Gillan]

I think that I understood what the hon. Gentleman just said to me. We all know that we need to have a balanced economy and that we need to get growth across the country, but there are alternative ways of doing that. It always seems to me that HS2 was a project dreamt up by politicians—by Andrew Adonis in opposition—and adopted by the coalition when it came in and that no one really and truthfully sat down and said, “How do we get an integrated transport system? How do we join up our roads, railways and airports?” We do not appear to have done what I consider to be the overarching work to deliver an integrated transport system. [Interruption.] It is not yet going ahead. As we know, the hybrid Bill must pass through this House and the other House, so it has not got the final stamp of approval.

[Mr MacNeil]

Which ones would the right hon. Lady dig up?

[Mrs Gillan]

I am not digging up anything. The project has not got the final stamp of approval. There is still the option of pursuing other ways in which we could improve our economy.

Let me get back to my local picture, because I think that it is only fair to my constituents that some of their grievances are aired. The agricultural holdings in Chesham and Amersham will be severely impacted. Several farms will be badly affected by the construction, to such an extent that they will probably be put out of business. People cannot run an equestrian business next to a major construction site; nor can they use ground that has been submerged in 50 feet of soil. Will the Minister, although he is rightly going to defend his position, as he must, let me know what detailed work he had done on the losses that will be sustained by the businesses and particularly the farming and agricultural holdings in my neck of the woods? HS2 Ltd estimates that, across the whole route between Birmingham and London, about 300 existing businesses will be required to relocate to new premises, but people cannot relocate a farm and people cannot relocate a family business, when its land has been divided into two or part of its land has been appropriated.

I referred briefly to roads that will have to be closed, realigned or diverted during the construction phase. The impact on communities and local facilities will alter people’s travelling patterns and shopping habits, perhaps even for life. That is a great threat to the local economy. If people start to read through the detail of the environmental assessment, they can see some of the estimates of traffic congestion at the junctions of School lane and the A413, the Amersham bypass and the A404, and Chesham road and Bottrells lane—I could go on, but people will have got the idea. But I want to know what estimates the Department has made of the losses to our local economy from the delays, traffic congestion and disruption that years of construction will bring to Chesham and Amersham.

I believe that some of the claims made by consultants are not correct. There will be a lot of substitution in the economy. Yes, businesses will be attracted to the high-speed rail line and may move, as they did when the BBC, which the hon. Member for Edinburgh East referred to, went to Salford. That move has attracted many production companies and media companies to that area. However, that is substitution, because the businesses have been drawn from other parts; hence one of the very important things that was highlighted in the KPMG report was the disinvestment and the permanent loss to GDP of other regions as businesses are attracted falsely to the line.

This will be a distorting project. Many MPs around the country do not realise that there will be an effect on their constituency, which will suffer disinvestment as businesses move closer to new conurbations, for example into buildings created with Chinese investment, as we have heard, for the Manchester airport area and in other centres where they intend to build buildings that will accommodate businesses or shops.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. The right hon. Lady has been speaking for 20 minutes, so I think she might bring her remarks to a close now.

[Mrs Gillan]

That is exactly what I intend to do, Sir Edward, and I am grateful for your latitude. I think everybody understands how badly Chesham and Amersham will be affected and how strongly people feel about the matter.

I do not believe that HS2 will deliver all the benefits that have been laid out, but I can see at first hand the terrible effect that it will have on my locality and the businesses there. Many commentators, including the Institute of Directors, the New Economics Foundation and the Institute of Economic Affairs, have said that the project is not the answer to economic growth. I urge the Minister to be sympathetic to my constituents and what they are going through, and to question hard whether the project is the right one. It is still not too late to look at the alternatives.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. The wind-ups will start at 20 minutes to 11.

10:11

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore), on securing the debate, because it is important that we continue to advance the economic case for High Speed 2 as part of the wider case. I assure the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) that I am not speaking as part of any lobby, and I have not been asked by anybody else to come here. I have simply come to express what I think is important for my constituents, for my city and for Scotland and Great Britain as a whole.

From a Scottish perspective, support for high-speed rail continues to be almost universal. One or two people oppose it, but the vast majority of interest groups across different sectors support it. The Scottish Government are united with the other political parties in Scotland in supporting HS2. The Scottish partnership group for high-speed rail has a wide range of supporters, including the major local authorities in Edinburgh and Glasgow, CBI Scotland, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce, Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish TUC, Transform Scotland—an environmentally focused transport organisation—and the local transport networks. There is wide public support as well.

Those organisations clearly set out the case for high-speed rail in the UK and the benefits that it will provide to Scotland. To me, those seem self-evident, although others do not agree. There are numerous arguments, and it is not right to single out one issue as the priority, whether it be speed, capacity or modal shift, because they are all important. HS2 will provide faster journey times, increase capacity and promote modal shift from air and road to rail, and it will support and benefit businesses not only in Scotland but in the rest of the UK. All those factors together make a powerful case for HS2.

We have heard the argument that instead of spreading economic benefits throughout the country, HS2 will suck economic activity into London. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) has pointed out, if we took that argument to its logical extreme, we would have to tear up all the existing roads and railways. Presumably, if we were to return to the days of toll roads with a turnpike every few miles and highwaymen along the road to stop us getting anywhere, it would lead to wonderful economic benefits for the rest of the country. I take that argument to its extreme to highlight the folly of the suggestion that HS2 will suck economic activity into London. Supporters of HS2 cannot simply assert that, however; we must give examples of the economic benefits that will result from the project, and recognise that some cities and some parts of the country might lose out from HS2 if it were not done in the right way. The answer is not to say “No HS2”, but to address the problems of areas that might suffer genuine negative economic consequences if high-speed rail is not introduced in the right way.

Let me outline the powerful case for HS2 from a Scottish perspective. Scotland has an important tourist industry, and many tourists come to Scotland not only by rail connections, but by road and air. Anyone who travels regularly on the routes from Scotland to the south will know that the passenger trains are already pretty busy, so tourism might be further enhanced by better, faster trains with improved capacity. Again, it is a question of people’s choices. London is and always will be a major tourist hub, and visitors to London increasingly go on to visit other places. They have to decide whether to go on, for example, to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester or somewhere on the continent of Europe. If the choice is between travelling to other destinations in the UK on relatively slow routes, and travelling in Europe using better rail routes or improved air connections, visitors may well choose not to travel within the UK but to go elsewhere. The tourist industry, therefore, strongly supports HS2.

HS2 also has business consequences. It is not simply a question of speed, because modern technology allows people to work together without necessarily all being in the same place at the same time. Nevertheless, we still need to produce things that must be transported, and we still need to have business meetings, so people make choices based on the accessibility of locations to head offices and other sites of economic activity. A business that is well connected to a major economic hub—in reality, that will often be London—has a much better chance of being successful than one that is not easily accessible.

In addition to improving connections to London, it is important to improve connectivity between other cities and regions in the UK. We have heard about the benefits of faster links between cities such as Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham, and I have another example of how regional economies might benefit from high-speed rail. In Edinburgh and the south-east and east of Scotland, the strong renewables sector is an important and growing part of the economy. There is also a strong renewables cluster around the north-east of England, but although there are some connections between the two, I get the impression that they do not work together as much as they could to achieve maximum benefit. Who knows where high-speed rail might go in the future? Increased connectivity between the east of Scotland and the north-east of England would benefit that potential regional economy.

Edinburgh, in particular, has an international, outward-based economy, which depends on good air links as well as rail links. HS2 would allow travellers the option of using airports further south by providing direct links to Scotland.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Does my hon. Friend agree that even after the recession, the financial services sector remains an important part of Edinburgh’s economy, accounting for 11% of employment in the city? Does he agree that good connectivity is essential to sustain that industry and ensure that headquarters and major offices are retained in Edinburgh, rather than being drawn to other places?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was about to come to that important point, so I will not repeat what she has said. As I suggested, high-speed rail stations can be important hubs and promoters of economic activity, and it will be up to local governments, communities and businesses to make the most of the opportunities that those connections offer. They will have to choose whether to view high-speed rail as a benefit, or as something that will suck prosperity away from their economy.

At the start of the railway age, towns reacted in all sorts of ways to new railway lines. Some towns chose deliberately to keep the railways away and avoid building stations, but they soon started to campaign for branch lines to reach their communities. I believe that some communities close to the route of HS1 regret choosing not to have a station and reap the benefits that we now see. That emphasises the fact that communities across the country must take the opportunities that arise from HS2, because if they do not, they will not get the benefits.

There is a question about whether HS2 could damage the economic position of certain parts of the country. If HS2 does not go from London to the midlands, the north and Scotland, those parts of the country are in great danger of becoming worse off as a result of economic developments elsewhere. If there are improved transport links from London to elsewhere in Europe and the world, but no such links going further north, those of us from communities further north will be relatively worse off. In addition to the high-speed services from London to Brussels and Paris, operators are planning direct high-speed services all the way from London to Cologne and Frankfurt, for example. If people and businesses in London have access to that high-speed link, but we are relatively worse off further north, our economic position is likely to be damaged. That is why I strongly support the argument for high-speed routes reaching Scotland as early as possible.

It would be damaging if we had the development of high speed to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and York, but did not take further the benefits of those connections and faster services. That is why I welcomed the announcement from the UK and Scottish Governments a few months ago of a study to look at ways to ensure that high-speed rail reaches further north to Glasgow and the rest of Scotland. I understand that the parameters for the study laid out by the Department for Transport state that all options should be considered. That could include new lines, upgrading existing lines or a combination of both. I am interested in hearing from the Minister an update on that study of the lines and connections from the end of HS2, as currently planned, on to Edinburgh and Glasgow.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would agree that it is important to take a wider perspective on how to ensure that HS1 and HS2 interact with each other seamlessly, so that we can travel from Scotland into the wider European market without hitting the buffers in London and having to change trains there.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

That is part of the argument, and that leads me on to the issue of where work on HS2 should start. Should it be from the north or the south, or somewhere in between? I am sure that the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham would like it to start as far north from her as possible and never actually make it to her constituency. That might be a bit unfair, but some people do seem to have put forward the argument for starting as far north as possible so that work does not start in the south.

To me, those options do not seem to be in opposition. Work obviously cannot start everywhere at the same time, but the idea that the line must start from the south and meander until it eventually reaches the north is the wrong approach. There are no economic or technical reasons why starts on the line could not be made at more than one location. I understand that part of the difficulty has more to do with politics. I understand the wish of the Government not to have to deal with the difficulties of the HS2 route from London to Birmingham alongside the difficulties of planning the route from Birmingham to Manchester, or from Manchester to further north. It would be great if Members on both Front Benches made it clear that time would be made available to allow planning for HS2 to go further north from Birmingham, and perhaps for work to be started in Scotland and the north at the same time as in the south. That option should be back on the political agenda, and I urge the Government to consider it.

[Mr MacNeil]

It is a political reality that we probably instinctively feel to be true that if the work started in the north, it would be more likely that a bridge between the two high-speed lines would be completed than that High Speed 2 would be extended further north via High Speed 3. The pressing political and physical reality would make it more likely that a gap would be filled than an extension completed.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I recognise that there is a strong case for work to start as soon as possible on the London to Birmingham section. There are particular capacity issues there, so I do not think that that should be left until the end. At the same time, I feel that we should be discussing trying to do more work much earlier on in the process to benefit parts of the country that are further north as well.

I have taken longer than I intended, Sir Edward, so I will try to make my last few comments as brief as possible.

[Mrs Gillan]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the only thing really stopping HS2 from being started in the north, and therefore from achieving the connectivity between the northern cities that they so dearly require, is the legislative timetable? It would simply be a case of stopping what we are doing on the hybrid Bill on the line between Birmingham and London, and progressing quickly with the northern connectivity. We could, for example, bring in a Bill at the back end of the year for the northern stages, which could go through Parliament first. It is a shame that we are not doing it the right way round, for the sake of a few months. We could meanwhile discover, for example, what we are going to do about airport capacity in the south.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I do not know whether the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), who is commenting quietly at the right hon. Lady’s side, wants to intervene, but it is not my position that we should stop what we are doing with HS2; we should be developing and bringing forward plans for the next stages of the line.

[Mr Simon Burns]

I will be brief. The fact is that one cannot do that and gain time, because there are so many set procedures to follow before we could produce a hybrid Bill. For example, all the environmental impact assessments must be carried out, as well as consultations, and time must be taken over coming to conclusions. It is pie in the sky to think that we could wave a wand and reverse the process without losing about four years.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am not suggesting that the process should be reversed. Others are obviously much more expert on the issue, but my point is that I do not see why we have to wait until 2033 for the lines to reach Manchester and York, and then perhaps 10 or 15 years beyond that for them to reach Edinburgh and Glasgow. The Government and Ministers should address that point, as should politicians from all parties who support HS2; we should try to make things happen as soon as possible.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I will give way, but it has to be the last time.

[Mr MacNeil]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Given the time scale he mentioned—up to 2033—and the wait, does he agree that Barnett consequentials are also important to the debate?

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I will have to leave that point.

I will make some final points as briefly as possible. First, one strong argument for committing to high-speed routes as well as high-speed trains going to Scotland is that the economic case for the entire line is improved if Scotland is linked into the process at an early stage. That point has been made by other people, and I strongly endorse it.

My second point is about the economic benefits of the line, not just in the long term, but in the construction phase, as a direct consequence of engineering and construction. The Government must assure people like me that they are making every effort to ensure that the benefits are spread as far as possible throughout the country. A document on HS2 was recently produced, I think by the Department for Transport, that emphasised how Crossrail had brought a wide range of job benefits to large parts of the country. If one looks at the chart in that document, the vast majority of the benefits, perhaps unsurprisingly, were focused around the Crossrail route and south-east England. Hardly any benefits from construction, engineering and knock-on consequences reached further north. The Government must ensure that a major effort is made to make sure that the indirect benefits from the construction phase—jobs and employment—reach the entire country.

Finally, I have a question for the Minister about the further education college that has been proposed to provide trained workers for the high-speed line. I recognise that the college must be based somewhere, but all its activities need not be based around one location; nor must they take place at just one physical college. That initiative should be aimed at ensuring that the job benefits from the construction phase of HS2 are spread as far as possible throughout the country. I suggest to the Minister that it would be worth while to enter into discussions with the Scottish Government at an early stage, so that there could perhaps be a linked initiative in Scotland to provide similar benefits to the section of the HS2 line that I hope will be promoted by both the UK and Scottish Governments at a relatively early stage. In that way, we too can see the jobs benefits, as well as the longer-term economic benefits, of HS2, for which I think the case is very strong.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

The three speeches so far have lasted 20 minutes, 20 minutes and 17 minutes. I am afraid that Members’ speeches are going to have to be a bit more high-speed.

10:29

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

I certainly will be more high-speed, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing this important debate. It is refreshing to have the opportunity to discuss the positive impacts of High Speed 2 and the benefits that it will bring to many areas of the country. I have considerable sympathy for my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), because I appreciate that there is tremendous pressure against the scheme in Buckinghamshire. However, benefits will also come to her constituency, although not in the same way as to Manchester, Birmingham or other areas along the line of route.

The most important thing about High Speed 2 is that high-speed rail is the future. We already have an example of high-speed rail in this country in High Speed 1, which runs through Kent and London. The benefits that it has brought to the economy of Kent in particular have been immeasurable, so it is not that we are talking about this while looking at a completely blank canvas; we know the potential benefits and impact of a high-speed rail system in this country.

There is an air of déjà vu about the criticism of High Speed 2. Like you, Sir Edward, I was in the House in 1987, 1988 and 1989, when legislation for High Speed 1 was going through Parliament. I vividly remember colleagues with constituencies in Kent talking about how it would be the end of the world and would destroy Kent and its economy while bringing it no benefits. Of course, since then, High Speed 1 has been built and is up and running. It has brought considerable benefits to Kent, particularly around Ashford and Ebbsfleet, where the stations are, to the point that Kent county council, which, along with Kent’s MPs, was opposed root and branch to High Speed 1, is offering to talk to county councils along the line of route of High Speed 2 to explain to them why it was wrong in its opposition, and what benefits high-speed rail brings.

Unfortunately, the county of Buckinghamshire does not wish to participate in any discussions with Kent. I am sure that if my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham tried to persuade Kent county council, it would benefit by having some of its fears allayed.

[Mrs Gillan]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Burns]

I will, briefly, but then I will not give way again, due to the shortness of time.

[Mrs Gillan]

I would be grateful if my right hon. Friend confirmed who made that offer to whom and when, and what meeting was turned down. I happen to know that the chairman of Buckinghamshire county council, Councillor Martin Tett, has put tremendous effort into considering HS2 and all the alternatives. Indeed, “Better than HS2” is a strategy produced by 51m, which is headed by Buckinghamshire county council. I cannot believe that he would refuse to talk to anybody.

[Mr Burns]

I suggest that my right hon. Friend has a word with Councillor Tett; as he is a constituent of hers, it should not be difficult for her to contact him. Certainly, when I talked to officials at Kent county council as a Minister, they made it quite clear that they were more than happy to talk to county councils, and officials there told me that Buckinghamshire was reluctant to engage in any meetings with them on the subject.

On the economic benefits, the most important thing is capacity. Faster speeds for the rail network are important, but so is capacity. The west coast main line will reach its full capacity by 2024-25. Given that it is the spine of the country up to Scotland, and that we need those communications for passengers and freight, it is crucial that we relieve that capacity. People in Buckinghamshire and parts of London will say, “It brings no benefit to us.” Of course it will bring benefit to them as well. Although High Speed 2 will not stop in Buckinghamshire, the released capacity on the conventional west coast line that goes through Buckinghamshire and other related conventional lines will ensure that passengers using those lines to commute to London will have more capacity and a better journey experience, because others who might otherwise have been on those conventional trains travelling to London will be using the high-speed line.

High Speed 2 will also give eight of the 10 largest cities in England far greater connectivity, as was said by the hon. Members for Edinburgh East, and for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). That is crucial. As the experience of Kent has shown, it will also create jobs through the actual building of the railways and through increased business activity, particularly around stations, whether at Birmingham, outside Sheffield, at Manchester, or elsewhere where there might be stations. The figures that I have seen, which some people would say are on the conservative side, suggest that 100,000 extra jobs will be created, although a conglomeration of local authorities has come up with the bolder suggestion of 400,000 jobs. Equally importantly, 70% of the economic benefits of the project are expected to be seen outside London, although obviously parts of London will benefit from the project.

I would like to mention the KPMG report. I know that people who do not support High Speed 2 rubbish it, but people like me who do support the project have a more open and reasonable approach to it. According to the report, when High Speed 2 is up and running to Leeds and Manchester, the annual benefit to the economy is anticipated to be in the region of £15 billion a year. Of course, as was said, some businesses and jobs may well be pulled away from other areas. That is part of economic life, but it does not mean that we should not allow a project that will bring a potential £15 billion a year in improvement to the economy once it is up and running. People must be careful about rubbishing a report that shows the potential for job creation, increased and enhanced economic development and growth, and an improvement in the growth abilities of our economy as a whole.

I believe also that we must embrace high-speed rail beyond Leeds and Manchester. That is why I am so pleased that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, along with the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), set up a project in October 2012 to examine the benefits of extending a phase 3 into Scotland, to Glasgow and Edinburgh. Personally, freed from ministerial responsibility, I believe that that is an important next stage for High Speed 2. I also see HS2 as a spine. In time, when there is a business case and financial resources available, it should have spurs to other parts of the country that could benefit economically. The areas that come to mind as potential candidates for a continuation of High Speed 2 are Liverpool, south Wales and the south-west of England.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Burns]

I will, but very briefly, as my time is almost up.

[Mr MacNeil]

May I add to that a plea for Inverness and Aberdeen, and for the integration of Scotland into the high-speed European network as well?

[Mr Burns]

The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely valid point. That is what is so exciting about the project’s potential throughout the whole United Kingdom. In conclusion—

[Mark Lazarowicz]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Burns]

No, because I really must allow the shadow Minister and the Minister to begin their winding-up speeches.

There are people who oppose the project root and branch because it will be built in or near their communities; I have considerable sympathy for them, because the building phases are difficult and can be upsetting in cases where people’s property is affected. I hope that once the Government conclude their consultations and consideration, the compensation scheme will be fair and generous. With any project on this scale, there will be difficulties, and some properties and some areas will be adversely affected. One has to balance those problems with the national interest, and to my mind, the benefit to the nation—the economic benefits that will be brought to the nation, and to people, business and commerce in this country—is so overwhelming that we cannot afford not to move forward on this project.

10:39

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Sir Edward.

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on securing this important debate. A constant champion of the railways in this Parliament, her speech this morning exemplified both the passion and the attention to detail that she brings to discussions of rail issues.

I think that all right hon. and hon. Members would agree that the exponential growth in passenger demand now poses a serious challenge for our railways. We have debated the causes of that growth at length before and I do not propose to revisit those arguments today, but it is a fact that passenger demand has doubled in the last 20 years and we are now accommodating the same number of passengers as there were in the 1920s on a network less than half the size it was then. That growth has continued through periods of infrastructure disruption and even through recession. Technology is making it easier for people to travel and young people are now the group who are most predisposed to travel by rail.

Passenger numbers grew by 7.3% at the start of last year compared with the first quarter of 2012, and across the network conflicts between inter-city, commuter and freight trains are common as competing grades of traffic jostle for scarce paths. As my hon. Friend spelled out, some sections are already approaching the limits of their capacity, especially on the west coast main line, where the number of trains being run has doubled during the past 15 years, leading Network Rail to warn that the line will effectively be full by 2024. All this has happened despite the west coast route modernisation project, which cost £9 billion and caused enormous disruption over a period of 12 years without delivering the long-term capacity benefits that we as a country need.

I have full sympathy with right hon. and hon. Members and local authorities who represent communities served by the west coast main line, and they have made it clear that they have no wish to relive the experience. Unfortunately, the heavy demands on the line mean that expensive periods of disruption continue. In 2014, there are three planned closures of the line in the Watford area alone, which means that the southern end of the line will be closed for most of August as track and signalling is replaced. Such closures require sizeable compensation payments to train operators—Network Rail puts the cost for such works on the west coast main line at 18% of its overall budget—and cause delays and inconvenience to businesses and individual passengers, the costs of which are much more difficult to quantify.

Consequently, before I talk about the economic case for HS2, we should consider the economic impacts of inaction. Commuter trains could be cut as train paths are reassigned to more profitable long-distance trains—a process familiar to transport planners and passengers in the west midlands. In the most extreme cases, some smaller stations in Staffordshire were closed while the west coast main line was being modernised, and they have not reopened. Thousands of passengers are already being left standing on their morning commute, not only on routes into London but on the approaches to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield. In addition, growing congestion on the lines hits resilience and reliability, undermining rail’s traditional advantage over other modes of travel. A consequence of the growing number of services provided is that journey times have not improved on most of the main lines, and in many cases have got worse in the past 20 years. Even after the intercity express programme trains are introduced on the east coast main line, a number of important long-distance journeys will still take the same time as they did in 1991.

There is a clear need for capacity improvements, and as the British Chambers of Commerce has said:

“Future business success depends on infrastructure networks that meet demand. Rail is no exception. The UK rail network must have the capacity to meet rocketing business demand - for long-distance services, for commuter rail services, and for the transport of freight.”

That was why Lord Adonis, when he was Transport Secretary in the last Labour Government, developed proposals for a new north-south line.

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Lilian Greenwood]

No. I will not take an intervention at the moment.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) said on Third Reading of the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill:

“High Speed 2 is a project that is in the national interest.”—[Official Report, 31 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 1179.]

That is why Labour supports HS2 to meet our north-south capacity requirements and provide the connections between the core cities that our regional economies need to thrive.

In that respect, I am happy to declare an interest as an east midlands MP. There are relatively good links from Nottingham to London, which are due to be strengthened by electrification of the midland main line, but our inadequate rail connections to Birmingham and Leeds hold back growth. As the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns) said, increasing capacity is vital, but so are connectivity and journey time improvements. It can take two hours to travel from Nottingham to Leeds by rail, but with HS2 that journey time would be cut by two thirds. Although it is important that we continue to invest in our existing network—the budgets published up to 2020-21 show that investment is not being diverted from conventional lines—high-speed rail will bring real improvements for journeys between cities outside London.

It is important to stress that communities away from the high-speed rail stations also stand to benefit, as more local services can be run on the conventional network. The right hon. Gentleman drew attention to people’s experience of HS1 in Kent. Similarly, compatible trains will run off the new high-speed rail line, enabling faster journey times and direct connections to the new network. I draw hon. Members’ attention to Network Rail’s “Better Connections” report, which examined how additional services can be provided. We need to see more of this sort of work from both Network Rail and local bodies, who should be emboldened as they plan how to maximise the benefits of HS2 as part of the transport devolution agenda.

When the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill was in Committee, we took evidence from two academics who both agreed that regional benefits would depend on the quality of the local plans that were put in place, so my first question to the Minister is: what steps is he taking to encourage transport authorities that are not on the immediate high-speed rail route to plan for HS2? We have already seen how high-speed rail can be a catalyst for regeneration in west London. Plans have been outlined by Queens Park Rangers football club to relocate to Old Oak Common in order to create a new 40,000-seat stadium, a project that the developers say will support 24,000 new houses. In Birmingham, the city council has said that the arrival of HS2

“presents a huge opportunity to breathe new life”

into the Eastside area. The new station is planned to be at Curzon Street, which was the original terminus of the first London to Birmingham railway and which last saw long-distance services in the 1850s. If the planners get the design and the connections right, the reborn Curzon Street station promises to be the jewel in the crown of Birmingham Eastside’s rejuvenation. Centro, the west midlands transport authority, has developed a wide-ranging plan for integrating high-speed rail with its Metro system, commuter rail lines and bus services.

My hon. Friends the Members for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) and for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) have touched on the importance of the HS2 line for Edinburgh and Manchester, and as an east midlands MP I can point to other examples of how HS2 can act as a spur to investment. A recent report by consultants Volterra found that development in the immediate vicinity of the planned station at Toton could build 650 to 875 houses and support up to 1,500 administrative jobs. However, more can be done to promote jobs and skills. Can the Minister update us on how many apprenticeships have now been created by HS2, both directly and indirectly? Also, will he commit to the target of creating an apprenticeship for every £1 million spent on the project, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has called for?

[Mr MacNeil]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Lilian Greenwood]

I will not give way as I have very limited time to speak.

We heard this morning that the Business Secretary has announced plans for a new further education college to educate the work force we need to build HS2. That is welcome news, but we want a proper jobs and skills strategy. Last year, during the evidence sessions for the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill, we were told that that document was being prepared. Can the Minister tell us when it will be published? As he knows, the current Crossrail project has begun to train a new generation of highly skilled workers, and a plan must be in place for the HS2 project too.

Labour successfully amended the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Bill to make the Government account for the number of vocational qualifications gained each year. Another Labour amendment that was accepted will compel the Government to account for any underspending or overspending in the project’s annual budget. I note that the Minister’s colleague in the Lords, Baroness Kramer, described the process that we put in place as

“a very vigorous reporting process under which the Government must report back annually and record any deviation from budget, and the consequences of that…which has put in place a very intense scrutiny process around the budget.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 19 November 2013; Vol. 749, c. 949.]

I am glad that Labour successfully wrote a “vigorous reporting process” into the primary legislation, but the truth is that the Government should have got a grip on escalating costs since the election.

The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) rightly raised concerns on behalf of her constituents about the uncertainty about compensation after the Government’s initial consultation was deemed to be unfair—

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Lady bring her speech to a conclusion?

[Lilian Greenwood]

Certainly, Sir Edward. It is in the interests of the wider rail network, regional economies and the nation as a whole for the project to succeed. That is why I am proud to support it and why Labour wants to see HS2 delivered on time and within budget.

10:50

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

As ever, it is a joy to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) for securing this morning’s debate and everyone else for their most useful contributions. I will try to address some of the large number of questions asked.

To respond to the speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), we are well aware that there are real concerns about not only the environment, but people’s property and businesses, in the areas through which the line will be driven. We have done as much as is reasonably possible to avoid or reduce environmental impacts. We will, for example, provide more than 150 miles of tunnels and cuttings, make extensive use of sound barriers and plant a total of 4 million trees along the line of route. In my right hon. Friend’s constituency, 77% of the line will be tunnelled and the rest will be in a cutting, which is a great achievement that she has managed to secure for her constituents, who will understand how she campaigned to secure it.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am grateful for the Minister’s kind acknowledgement of the work that I and others have put in. Will he assure me that he will not rule out at this stage looking at mole tunnelling further to protect the area of outstanding natural beauty, which environmental organisations in my constituency have forcefully proposed?

[Mr Goodwill]

The hybrid Bill process, which we hope to commence this year, will provide an opportunity for those who want to make representations. As I say, however, 77% of the line in my right hon. Friend’s constituency will already be in a tunnel.

My right hon. Friend also referred to the KPMG report. HS2 will of course not serve all areas of the UK, which is reflected in the figures, and the benefits will naturally be greater in the places directly served by the line. Of course, the analysis does not include the benefits of other investments to boost the transport system. Indeed, the Government will invest £73 billion in the next Parliament, of which only £17 billion will be spent on HS2 and which will help the places not being served by HS2, particularly those in the north of England.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Does the Minister accept the Select Committee on Transport’s recommendation that the Department, HS2 Ltd and Network Rail work together on identifying potential high-speed Britain projects that might be included in the next control period for transport spending?

[Mr Goodwill]

It is vital that other investment happens in both rail and road infrastructure and that account is taken of how that will dovetail with High Speed 2. HS2 will also free up capacity on the existing classic network to allow services to places such as Blackpool or Shrewsbury and, most importantly, for more freight, which many people have missed. Moving freight off the roads and on to rail will free up capacity on our roads.

The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned apprenticeships. It is envisaged that HS2 will create up to 2,000 apprenticeships during its construction. I was pleased to be with Sir David Higgins and other Ministers at Old Oak Common this morning, when the further education college that will focus on the skills necessary for HS2 was announced. Several locations have been proposed, and I will take on board the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz).

I believe passionately in a successful Britain and in a country that can compete and thrive in the global economy. To achieve that, we need infrastructure that is fit for the 21st century and beyond. Nowhere is that truer than in the context of transport, which is a key enabler of economic growth. Good transport equals good economic conditions. An important way to support British business, to power up the recovery and to put people back in work is to invest in and modernise our transport networks. Growth and prosperity are created by businesses and people having ideas, taking risks, innovating, working hard and creating jobs. A balanced and successful economy requires modern and efficient infrastructure. The Government’s role is to help create the conditions for success by fostering the security, skills and infrastructure that support our economy. By delivering additional capacity and enhanced connectivity, transport infrastructure allows businesses to grow and work together and to access a wide range of customers, suppliers and skilled labour. Business investment is encouraged by the quality of transport links, influencing the decisions of international companies on where to locate and, in turn, increasing investment in the UK.

Transport infrastructure has particular economic significance for UK cities. In 2009, London and the core cities of Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield, together with their wider urban areas, contributed almost 50% of UK GDP. The core cities deliver 27% of the UK’s GDP and need to be better connected to thrive and achieve higher levels of growth if they are to close the performance gap between the south-east and the rest of the country—the so-called north-south divide.

Major infrastructure investments like HS2 stand apart from many other decisions made by the public and private sector. They affect the lives of generations of citizens and last centuries, not decades, which makes it important that we make the right decision. In proposing HS2, the Government are firmly convinced that we are investing in a solution that is right for the future economic development of the country, and I am pleased that we have such widespread cross-party support.

HS2 is a transformational project that will enhance rail capacity, connectivity and reliability, helping to underpin economic growth. It will provide the spine for a truly national network, connecting seamlessly to the existing rail network, serving destinations not directly on the high-speed line, releasing capacity on the existing main north-south lines to enable additional commuter, regional or freight services to use the line and freeing up more space on existing trains. It will provide a step change in the capacity of the rail network to accommodate the growing demand for long-distance travel. Our transport system is already under strain, as we have heard today, and will only get worse as demand continues to grow. Alongside the £73 billion that the Government will invest in all forms of transport by 2021, HS2 will help us get ahead of current demand on our core transport network.

HS2 will slash journey times for passengers between our key cities and regions: London to Birmingham will take just 49 minutes, London to Manchester just 1 hour 8 minutes, and London to Leeds just 1 hour 23 minutes. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East knows the current journey times between Edinburgh and London all too well. Scotland will benefit from high-speed services from the moment that HS2 opens. The Y network allows for the seamless transition of trains on to the east and west coast main lines and is expected to slash the journey times between Edinburgh and Glasgow to London by up to an hour, which will benefit the Scottish economy by some £3 billion.

Scotland is an important part of the United Kingdom, and we must not be swayed by those who propose dangerous alternatives. In November last year, the Secretary of State for Transport announced further work into rail capacity and connectivity in Scotland and between Scotland and England. The study’s objective is to identify the broad options available and to provide the evidence base for any future decisions. Work is ongoing and a draft report will be ready in time for the summer recess.

We have taken steps to ensure that the economic opportunities presented by a scheme as transformational as HS2 are fully exploited. The HS2 growth taskforce, ably led by Lord Deighton, has a relentless focus on maximising the economic growth potential of HS2. Lord Deighton was also at Old Oak Common today to see the potential in that part of London. HS2 will be the biggest infrastructure project in Europe and will have a significant direct impact on local jobs, particularly in engineering and construction. Independent research predicts that HS2 is capable of directly generating up to 22,000 jobs in the next five years, rising to a maximum of 50,000 jobs by the late 2020s. In addition, HS2 will support over 100,000 jobs. Phase 1 will create 40,000 jobs in the midlands and London and phase 2 will create at least 60,000 jobs in the midlands and the north. We recognise that the benefits will not just fall into our lap, and the role of the growth taskforce is to identify the work that must be done in advance to ensure that we capture the full potential of this investment for the UK.

In conclusion, HS2, coupled with the record investments we are making in existing transport, is the right solution to the transport challenges that we face. It is about a step change in capacity and connectivity for passengers. It is about unlocking the potential of our major cities and regions, supporting jobs and driving growth. It is about building a dynamic society, a thriving economy and a successful Britain. HS2 is not just a viable proposition for a new railway; it is so much more than a piece of transport infrastructure.

South Sudan

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

11:00

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once again, Sir Edward, and to have secured this important debate on the humanitarian tragedy that is continuing to unfold in the world’s newest state, South Sudan. I am grateful to members of the associate all-party group for the Republic of Sudan and South Sudan, which I chair, who have supported this debate and are present.

In less than two years of statehood, South Sudan has experienced an unprecedented shock to its national income; its gross domestic product fell by nearly 250% in 2012, at the height of the dispute between South Sudan and Sudan over oil charges and compensation. There has been some progress since then on what have been generally dismal indicators on health, maternal mortality rates, mortality during childbirth and education. In that respect, the past four weeks have been a tragic and massive step backwards.

When members of the associate all-party group, including me, visited Juba and Lakes state in April 2012, we saw at first hand the challenges and the great opportunities before the new state of South Sudan. We heard of the problems in bringing together a cross-tribal, cross-community Government able to function efficiently in order to alleviate hunger and educate the country’s children. We heard of the need to adopt a genuinely pluralist constitution that provides for the accountability of the state to its citizens and of the Government to Parliament. We listened to the complex issues regarding the future of Abyei state and the need to resolve the continuing border problems with Khartoum.

We witnessed the positive effects that investment by the Department for International Development and its partners in the United States and France, through the UN, is having on the economic empowerment of women and the attempts to rebalance the economy in favour of agricultural production, which the rich foliage, particularly in the southern parts of the country, strongly promotes. We experienced for ourselves the problems of a country that has only 60 km of paved roads and, in many respects, a very weak—in many states, non-existent—infrastructure. We saw the intense difficulty that that causes to farmers in getting their goods to market and in distributing seeds and other agricultural products from the capital out to the other states. We also met farmers who had fled to Uganda during the earlier civil war and were making painstaking efforts to rebuild their businesses and their lives on land that had been returned to them after that civil war ended.

I will not forget the huge numbers of female fruit and vegetable growers north of Rumbek, in Lakes state, who greeted us when we visited their UN World Food Programme-supported plantation. They were all wearing T-shirts proclaiming: “Marriage can wait, women’s right to education first.” I asked one of them how many children she had, and she told me 12. She was determined to make a success of the agricultural co-operative, so that her children would have something that she had been denied: the right to an education. It is tragic that the avoidable humanitarian situation is putting at risk all that essential work in one of the poorest countries on earth. The avoidable political instability, the internal displacement and the tribal conflict that is being stoked up for political ends, or to settle old scores, mean that the extraordinary work of many such women, who are empowered in South Sudan’s economy for the first time, and of the UN and the United Kingdom in carefully supporting such programmes, runs the risk of being lost.

The conflict could not have come at a worse time. The planting of crops is due to take place next month. The rainy season in South Sudan is due to begin in April and May. In that period, 60% of the country will be inaccessible by road, and many parts will be accessible only by air. The country struggled to cope with spiralling food security problems in 2011 and 2012—nearly 4 million people were threatened by hunger in that period—and the risk is that the situation will get worse in the spring if agreement cannot be reached between the Government and their Opposition.

Nearly two years ago, the biggest humanitarian challenge in South Sudan was the returning refugees who had spent many years in Sudan and were returning to their former homeland in the south without jobs to go to or the means of ensuring a livelihood in the future. Additionally, the current conflict means that there are up to 400,000 displaced South Sudanese nationals, with some 50,000 having fled into neighbouring states. The UN estimates that between 3,000 and 4,000 people a day are fleeing South Sudan into neighbouring Uganda. The violence is having a tragic and serious impact on the region.

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of this morning’s news reports that more than 200 people appear to have perished in a ferry accident while fleeing the fighting? Does that not show the absolute desperation of the terrible situation that the South Sudanese face?

[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is right to draw the House’s attention to the growing disaster. The UN’s best estimate is that 10,000 people have lost their lives in the conflict in the past month alone. As we know, the impact of conflict is always felt most profoundly by the most vulnerable. Women and children in South Sudan are bearing a particularly harsh burden in a conflict that is not of their making. The UN has also said that health facilities in many states of South Sudan are already beginning to creak at the margins. There are shortages of blood and transfusion supplies. There is one hospital at which 192 patients are awaiting surgery pending blood becoming available. That is the scale of the crisis that the violence is beginning to produce among the weakest in South Sudanese society.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is not a serious development the fact that refugees are now moving to surrounding countries, such as Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia and, of course, Sudan? That is putting further pressure on those countries, and further exacerbating the difficulty of getting humanitarian support to people who are now dispersed over a wide area.

[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is entirely correct that that is making the job of the UN Mission in South Sudan even harder. An added burden is also being placed on the mission, as a number of refugees are fleeing into neighbouring states.

The conflict has exacted a deadly toll. The International Crisis Group estimates that some 10,000 people have already perished in the conflict. Mass graves are being discovered, and humanitarian access is limited in conflict areas, with battle having spread to seven of South Sudan’s 10 states. The very real prospect is that the final number of deceased may be even higher.

The source of the renewed political instability in South Sudan is the aftermath of President Kiir’s Cabinet reshuffle last July, when Vice-President Machar was removed from his posts—along with the secretary-general of the governing Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Pagan Amum, and others—after Riek Machar issued a public challenge to President Kiir and indicated his desire for a leadership contest. The President then announced the dissolution of all internal Sudan People’s Liberation Movement party structures in November. That step was described by his internal critics as unconstitutional. There was a walk-out by the Opposition at the national liberation council on 15 December, and fighting began later that day between factions of the presidential guard in Juba, spreading to other parts of the armed forces in the following days. That violence has now become ethnic in nature, and has led to as many as 60,000 people seeking refuge in the South Sudanese compounds of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan, particularly those in the capital, Juba.

The conflict has spread to the other states in South Sudan, with former Vice-President Machar declaring it an armed rebellion. There is now evidence that the armed forces are splitting along ethnic and tribal lines. There has been prolonged fighting over the city of Bor, with control switching between the forces loyal to the President and those loyal to Machar. There have been harrowing accounts of ethnic killings in Jonglei, along with the deaths of two UN peacekeepers. The obvious consequences of that are that non-governmental organisations’ staff and others have had to be evacuated from the country, making an already difficult humanitarian situation even worse and reducing access.

Some of the international responses have been welcome. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development has dispatched a delegation of Foreign Ministers to Juba. The African Union is now engaged, and talks are continuing in Addis Ababa to try to find a resolution. While that happens, people continue to die and women and children are facing a terrible humanitarian position. Can the Minister update the House on how many areas of South Sudan are open to humanitarian access? We need to ensure that the South Sudan crisis response plan is fulfilled, and that the shortfall of $106 million to meet the immediate needs in the crisis is contributed to by supportive Governments. I welcome the fact that DFID has allocated a further £12.5 million to help deal with the crisis, but can she say what representations have been made to other Governments to help to meet our collective responsibilities as an international community to the many hundreds of thousands of people at risk?

There is a wider question about the UNMISS mandate. After the UN Security Council passed a resolution in late December, extra troops were promised to provide a peacekeeping function in South Sudan. Will the Minister state what the latest intelligence is on when those troops will be deployed, in which states and with what remit? Will it be to support food supply lines? Will it be to support hospitals and schools? What will be the function of those additional troops?

A wider question has to be asked on the future of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. Questions have been asked about its capacity to provide security in that country. When we visited in 2012, there was already tension between dealing with the day-to-day alleviation of hunger and deprivation, and longer-term development objectives. Is it the view of the Minister and the Government that those two functions are still compatible, or does the crisis mean that a review of UNMISS’s mandate in South Sudan should be considered? There are also issues with the perceptions that some in South Sudan have of UNMISS. How can the international community act to overcome that, and to ensure cross-community, cross-tribal confidence in what UNMISS is doing?

My sense is of a state that has had an enormously difficult start in its birth and early years. My sense in visiting the country was of a state that has enormous capacity to supply economic benefits and be the bread basket of central Africa, but it badly needs support from the rest of the world to establish an effective system of governance that gives proper democratic rights under a permanent constitution, that observes the normal relationship between the armed forces and the people, that allows democracy to come to the fore, and that has a mechanism to resolve the territorial disputes between South Sudan and Sudan.

My other strong sense is that a process of reconciliation has to happen. It was necessary before the conflict, and it will be even more necessary now. I wonder what our country, with its hugely important diplomatic heritage in Sudan, South Sudan and the entire region, can do together with other countries, such as the United States, China and our other partners, to ensure that a proper process of reconciliation can take place once this conflict has been resolved.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

In exactly that regard, and in the current terrible context, does my hon. Friend agree that it is important that as humanitarian aid is directed into South Sudan, Governments and foreign donors make a point of trying to ensure continuing engagement and support for national civil society organisations and faith networks, so that they can maintain their fabric and ethics and underpin that course for reconciliation?

[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct, because the sense of anyone visiting Juba and the outlying states in South Sudan is that civic society—non-governmental organisations—largely constitutes the means of delivering health, education and other services to the people in those areas. Those groups are critical in rebuilding the country, particularly after this hugely devastating conflict, and in securing the international community’s development goals for the area.

It is clear that we have to document the human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian law committed in the past few weeks. Those responsible for any violations have to be held to account. What is the Government’s view on dealing with that situation when the conflict comes to an end? Will the Government be prepared to call for the reinvigoration of the national peace and reconciliation committee to bring people together? That committee should reflect the diversity of South Sudan society and encourage further nation-building initiatives.

In conclusion, South Sudan has had a tragic first two years of its life. We have a strong history in the area: this country has contributed enormously to the improvement of the diplomatic situation in Sudan and what is now South Sudan over the past few decades. We and the rest of the international community cannot walk away from this issue; people look to us for leadership. I hope that in replying to the debate, the Minister will show that the United Kingdom is prepared to offer that leadership on a devastating and tragic situation.

11:18

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)]

It is a pleasure, Sir Edward, to serve under your chairmanship. I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) for securing this extremely important debate. As chair of the associate all-party group for the Republic of Sudan and South Sudan, his experience and knowledge is huge. His was a powerful exposition of the situation in South Sudan, and I thank him for that.

The UK is deeply concerned—I am deeply concerned—by the terrible violence in South Sudan that began on 15 December 2013. We have been at the forefront of humanitarian and political efforts. Conflict is continuing in parts of the country and there are large numbers of reported deaths. The ethnic dimension, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, of some attacks is deeply worrying. We have been calling on all sides to ensure protection of civilians and respect for human rights. We are urging the leaders on both sides to remain engaged in the talks led by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and to agree on the immediate cessation of hostilities while pursuing a sustainable political solution to the crisis, rather than continuing to seek resolution through military means.

South Sudan is close to my heart. It was the first country that I visited when I took up my post. I saw an 18 month-old country full of optimism, hope, possibility and potential. It was undeveloped and there were huge needs and challenges—but it was all there. It is heartbreaking to think how much of a setback the current situation will be and to wonder how any good things can continue. Even before the crisis, as the hon. Gentleman said, South Sudan had one of the largest humanitarian emergencies in the world, with a complex mix of needs, including refugees—more than 225,000 are Sudanese. I went to the camps on the border of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, and refugees were pouring across the border. As the hon. Gentleman said, there are no roads, and we had to go by helicopter. It is a logistical nightmare, particularly in the rainy season, when everything becomes inaccessible.

South Sudan, a poor, young and vulnerable country, already faced immense challenges, and now it has deep difficulties, including internal displacement of people, populations affected by floods, returnees from Sudan and a large population affected by chronic, severe food insecurity. Those pre-existing issues have not gone away, but the response is being disrupted directly in areas affected by the current crisis, and indirectly elsewhere, as a result of disruption of supply routes and markets, and the evacuation of humanitarian agency staff. In addition, the humanitarian situation that has developed as a direct result of the conflict is extremely urgent. We estimate that there are more than 350,000 displaced people within South Sudan, with large numbers in UN bases, and an additional 50,000 people have been displaced to bordering countries—the majority to Uganda. Many are in acute need of food, health care, shelter, clean water, sanitation and protection, and we are concerned about reports of the conditions in which some displaced people are living, including in UN camps. Thousands of people are yet to receive any humanitarian assistance, and remain fearful for their safety and that of their families.

The hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) spoke about the people who were on a boat on the Nile and, sadly, drowned. People are swimming across the Nile trying to escape their dreadful situation, because it is better than staying. Aid agencies are doing a tremendous job in reaching those in need, where security allows. The ability to provide assistance remains severely constrained because of the fragile security situation and subsequent lack of humanitarian actors on the ground. Without progress on the security front, aid efforts will remain inadequate, especially in the areas worst affected by conflict, such as the town of Bor in Jonglei state.

The humanitarian crisis remains our priority and the focus of our efforts. Our existing significant humanitarian programme—more than £60 million in 2013—has put us on the front foot in responding to the crisis with the redeployment of funds to ensure a rapid response. DFID is supporting the efforts of aid agencies through direct funding and by supporting logistics. On 30 December the Secretary of State announced a further £12.5 million commitment to provide immediate supplies and support to key organisations operating in South Sudan, including the International Committee of the Red Cross and UN agencies. That package of support will provide emergency medical treatment for thousands of people, clean water to 5,000 people and tents for 7,500 people who have fled their homes, including family-sized tents which provide women, girls and young children with some privacy and a safe space. That issue was raised, rightly, and it is a priority for DFID. The support package will also support the logistics of the humanitarian effort, through support to the UN’s humanitarian air service, which airlifts aid workers and humanitarian supplies to those in need across the country. On 5 January a UK-funded emergency relief flight carrying life-saving water and sanitation equipment landed in South Sudan to avert a potential health crisis that was emerging from the conflict. Via trusted partners, we are closely monitoring the situation on the ground and we stand ready to provide further assistance as required.

The facilitation and provision of humanitarian assistance, on the basis of need alone, must be allowed. We have called on all parties to ensure safe, secure access for humanitarian agencies and respect their neutrality, and to meet their own obligations to avoid civilian casualties and direct attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure.

As I have said, before the current crisis, South Sudan was already one of the poorest countries in the world and more than half of its population were below the poverty line. Alongside our emergency humanitarian funding, the Department for International Development has a long-term development programme. However, that has been completely disrupted—I cannot put it any other way—because so many of our staff have had to leave, as have our implementing partners. Our priority at this point is to assess and respond to the immediate humanitarian situation. In the UN Security Council the UK was quick to agree to an emergency troop uplift of 5,500 to the UN mission in South Sudan, almost doubling existing numbers. We are now considering how to give more support to UNMISS through airlifts and by helping to fill gaps.

As to the specifics on what representations have been made, we are co-ordinating closely with other donor agencies and development actors and we know that further pledges are coming down the line, and are likely to be confirmed in the coming days, to contribute to the immediate funding shortfall that the hon. Member for Glasgow North East raised. As I have said, we have already contributed an extra £12.5 million. On the matter of UNMISS, I heard criticisms of the UN operation when I was in the country, and particularly in Jonglei. The need for regular review of all peacekeeping missions is built into the system, and clearly the latest events will have to be taken into full consideration at the next review.

The UN has been gathering disturbing reports of human rights abuses, and we are deeply concerned, as everyone must be. We welcome efforts by the UN Mission in South Sudan to investigate reports of abuses and ensure that civilians are protected. The UN Security Council agreed on 24 December to strengthen the UNMISS human rights component. We of course welcome the Sudan People’s Liberation Army’s announcement that it will investigate the involvement of organised forces in the killings in Juba. The UK is currently in discussion with international partners on how best an independent review can be taken forward. We welcome the UN Secretary-General’s announcement on Friday that he would send the assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Simonovic, to South Sudan.

On 10 January the UN Security Council statement gave a clear welcome to the African Union Peace and Security Council’s decision to establish a commission of investigation to ensure accountability, reconciliation and healing among all South Sudanese communities. The hon. Gentleman raised those issues and they are at the core of the matter. The situation may have started with political machinations, but the people were living side by side perfectly peacefully and they have now been drawn completely unnecessarily into ethnic divisions. The immediate focus is obviously on the cessation of hostilities, but I agree about the way forward in the longer term.

Humanitarian access is severely constrained. UN agencies and NGOs are on the ground and providing support where they can. I do not have the full breakdown of the uses to which new UNMISS troops will be put. DFID is still in the process of assessing needs, and therefore the deployment will presumably follow the needs that are expressed.

I will touch on the political side, and the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Foreign Secretary has been in touch with both Kiir and Machar and is trying to bring all sides together. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development is the mechanism for taking those matters forward, but we are urging President Kiir to ensure that the issue of detainees will not prevent constructive discussions from progressing. We are working closely with our Troika partners, the US and Norway, and the EU and regional players, to support the political process.

I thank all hon. Members who have attended the debate for their interest in and concern about a matter that is close to my heart. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East gave an excellent exposition of the situation. My Department, working hand in hand with the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, will continue to focus our efforts on ensuring that we are responding to the humanitarian situation and continuing efforts to support the political process.

11:30

Sitting suspended.

Strengthening Couple Relationships

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gary Streeter in the Chair]

14:30

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I am most encouraged to see so many of my hon. Friends joining me for this debate this afternoon. It is also good to see some of our friends from Northern Ireland here, too. It is a pity that there is only one Labour Member present, but there we go; I shall not be saying something positive about the Labour party. As you can probably gather from my voice, Mr Streeter, I am suffering from the lurgy that afflicts most of us at this time of year. I was not going to come in, but I was told that the debate would not happen unless I was here and as so many of my hon. Friends want to take part, I was not going to deny them this opportunity.

I also offer a warm welcome to the Minister. He may or may not be aware that, when we announced this debate, we received a call from his Department to ask who should be responsible for replying. I know that the Minister is robust, and I hope that the slight uncertainty between his Department and the Cabinet Office does not reveal some lack of co-ordination in Government on this hugely important issue. Research has consistently shown that stable families are the foundation for a strong society. In 2008, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said that

“there’s nothing more important to families than the strength of their relationships”,

yet the United Kingdom has one of the highest rates of family breakdown in the western world, with less than 70% of children living with both their parents. It is for that reason that I am leading this debate on strengthening couple relationships today.

In 2000, I helped to produce the Family Matters Institute report on the cost of family breakdown, which we then identified was costing this country £30 billion a year. According to the Marriage Foundation, last year that figure had risen to no less than £46 billion, which is more than the entire defence and overseas aid budgets combined and some £1,500 for every single taxpayer. It is a substantial burden. Just yesterday, the Daily Mail carried a two-page spread about a man who has apparently fathered 15 children by six different women, with seven more children by unnamed women, and who is said to have cost the taxpayer in excess of £1 million. One son is a convicted murderer and three others have served jail sentences, all of which cost the taxpayer a further £150,000 a year.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for securing the debate and to his courage in leading it despite his ill health. The doubling of family breakdown over the past 30 years is plainly a huge issue, but there are heroes. I pay tribute to Harry Benson of the Marriage Foundation, who will no doubt be referred to later, for helping to deliver practical support on the ground to help keep couples together. He says:

“We value commitment and faithfulness ever more. But we have lost confidence in marriage. The tide will turn when we realise once more that marriage is the best way to achieve both.”

Does my hon. Friend have any practical proposals to make to the Minister on how to achieve that?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to set the scene first, because the problem is of such magnitude that it is important to put the facts on the record. I will admit to him that I am light in the department of what the solutions are, but he will not be surprised to hear that I have some advice for the bishops. I know, however, that my hon. Friends are doing good work in this field.

I was drawing attention to an article in yesterday’s Daily Mail. Some people will say that it refers to an extreme example, which it may be, but it reflects on a smaller scale what is going on right across the nation. I regularly deal with broken family cases at my surgeries. One constituent recently told me that the father of her child walked out the day she went into labour and has not been seen since, although he boasts on Facebook that he has paid hundreds of thousands of pounds in cash for a London flat. Another told me that the father, who smokes a lot of weed, has not seen the children for two years; he has a child by another woman and is now with a third woman. A third constituent told me that she is expecting a child by a man who is not interested and has no job; he himself was placed in care as a child. This is going on all over the country. I am not talking about a deprived inner-city area. This is Aldershot, Hampshire. If it is happening there, imagine what else is happening in some of our inner cities.

The men who father these children seem to have absolutely no interest in bringing them up, let alone paying for them. It is important that we recognise that we cannot afford to continue to subsidise people who live such dysfunctional lifestyles. We do not have the money. It is immoral, it is wrong and it has to stop. Am I being judgmental in an age when such an approach is deemed inappropriate? Of course I am being judgmental. For the sake of our country, we need to be judgmental. Besides, plenty of people never cease to be judgmental about Members of Parliament.

Let me move from the particular to the general. Let us consider the data. According to the Centre for Social Justice—an excellent organisation—more than 3 million children are growing up in a lone parent household, 92% headed by the mother. Does that matter? I submit that it does matter because the evidence shows that

“marriage provides the most reliable framework for raising children.”

Those are not my words, but those of the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Home Secretary, in his 1998 consultation document entitled “Supporting Families”. That view was essentially reiterated by this Government when, in their social justice strategy paper published in March 2012, they said that

“this Government believes marriage often provides an excellent environment in which to bring up children. So the Government is clear that marriage should be supported and encouraged.”

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. His point about dadlessness is important. The lifelong impact on dadless children’s educational achievement and job prospects, among other things, is immense, but does he accept that children sometimes grow up in dadless households because dads who want to be there have been excluded? The purpose of the presumption of shared parenting in the Children and Families Bill, which is going through Parliament now, is to ensure that, wherever possible, those dads who are unable to live with their children because of an acrimonious split continue to have whatever meaningful and valuable contact they have with their children because of the huge value that it brings to the experience of the children.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point. It is not one that I intended to cover in my speech, but I am glad that he has put that on the record, because it is clear that there are fathers who do want access to their children and who do want to play an important role in bringing up their children, but they are denied. I hope that the Children and Families Bill will be a move in the right direction to rectify that wrong.

Let me be clear that the problem is not just about the financial cost, massive though that is. As all right hon. and hon. Members are only too aware from their surgeries, there is a massive social cost in human misery, which has an undeniably detrimental effect on children, as my hon. Friend has just illustrated. Statistics show that children of separated parents are more likely to have physical and mental health problems in childhood and to fall into crime or substance abuse in later life. The Centre for Social Justice observes that lone parents are two and a half times more likely to be in poverty than couple families, and children from broken homes are statistically less likely to be able to establish stable relationships themselves, thereby continuing the cycle.

Research by the Office for National Statistics on “The mental health of children and adolescents in Great Britain”, published in 2000, found twice the incidence of disorders in boys aged 11 to 15 in lone-parent households as in married households. Even more interesting, the incidence in cohabiting households was similar not to that in married households, but rather to that in lone-parent households. I shall have more to say on cohabitation in a moment, but clearly one has to recognise that although not all children brought up in such conditions will necessarily struggle in those ways, we cannot ignore the facts if we are to tackle the issue. According to Relate, another excellent organisation, the number of families with dependent children increased by 5% between 1996 and 2012. The number of married-couple families with dependent children fell by 12%, however, and the number of lone-parent families rose by 22% and the number of cohabiting couples doubled. One million fathers do not live with their children.

Marriage, which for the majority of Conservative Members of Parliament can be only between a man and a woman, remains the core of a stable family. Only in this environment do children have both male and female role models for guidance and support. However, the number of marriages has fallen from about 415,000 in 1970 to about 240,000 in 2010, a near 100-year low. The number of single-parent households has risen from 8% of the total in 1970 to 22% in 2010. Since the late 1970s, there has been a steady increase in the rise of cohabitation, with nearly half of all children today born outside marriage, but cohabitation is a relatively unstable substitute for marriage. Figures from the Centre for Social Justice show that fewer than one in 10 married couples separate by their child’s fifth birthday, compared with one in three cohabiting couples.

Many of us welcomed the Government’s acknowledgement of the contribution that marriage makes to a strong society when the Chancellor included a tax break for married couples in his autumn statement. At this point, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who led the campaign on that front, but it can only be the start. I agree wholeheartedly with the Christian Institute that

“most marriages last for life… Children need a father and a mother to nurture them... Children need parents who love them and love each other just as much. That love must be a permanent and not a temporary commitment… The best environment for raising children is marriage because the spouses have committed themselves to each other, and thus their children, for life. No other kind of relationship provides this environment of stability and permanence for children. Social science confirms that lifelong and loving marriage is the ideal context in which to raise children.”

Some say that in a free society, people should be entitled to live any lifestyle that they want and to an extent that is unquestionably true. I am conscious that I am trespassing on delicate territory, as we are all touched in one way or another by such trends, even at the highest levels in our land, but overwhelmingly it is the taxpayer who is picking up the tab for the current state of affairs, so the state cannot be an idle bystander.

[Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. His comments thus far have rightly centred on the importance for children of having a stable family background, but does he also agree that marriage is important for looking after more elderly family members as well, and increasingly so? My own family has had experience of this. People need a solid family life to look after elderly parents or grandparents who might need care, even if not at a level that requires them to go into a home.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I could not agree more. My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point—one that is not often made but needs to be, particularly as our elderly population continues to grow. The importance of families sustaining that elderly generation will increase. My own children never cease to remind me that I need to be kind and generous to them, because they will be choosing my old folks’ home. I do not know quite what they mean, but there we go.

The statistics I have quoted provide sound reasons why the state should encourage marriage. International studies have found that couple counselling has been effective in improving the quality of relationships. Relationship guidance and support from organisations such as Relate should be at couples’ disposal. I am pleased that the Government have pledged £30 million to support these initiatives, although I understand that only 2% of those eligible are able to access the facilities, because of a lack of resources. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) has been doing hugely important work in the field of providing counselling to those whose relationships are in difficulty.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that those who wish to stay at home, whether the father or the mother, should be encouraged to do so, if that is what they wish? Government policy should not push them out.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Again, I agree with my hon. Friend. Our friends always say how nice our children are, and perhaps it is all down to me, but actually it is not; it is down to my wife, because she gave up her job and spent the early years of our children’s lives looking after them. At dinner parties, people would say to my wife, “What do you do?” and she would say that she looked after the children, to which they would reply, “Oh, so you don’t do anything else.” Well, seeing all of my hon. Friends here who are male—[Interruption.] They are not all male, but many are, although sitting in front of me is my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), the mother of three children. Those men who have been asked to look after our children in the way that mothers do find it extremely demanding. The idea of the full-time mother staying at home has been belittled for far too long and the role should be properly recognised.

Many others beyond Relate seek to provide support to those whose relationships are challenged, and I salute all of them. The churches individually do a tremendous job in seeking to heal the wounds, but I wish that the bishops would be more vocal in their condemnation of dysfunctional lifestyles. Like the Bishop of Manchester, they seem to have no shortage of views on the iniquity of the Chancellor’s proposals on welfare, despite the overwhelming public support for them, but they seem reluctant to pronounce on the value and the virtue of fidelity.

I have been much encouraged by reading about Sir Paul Coleridge, a High Court judge who seems to have been eased out of his place for having trenchant and principled views on the importance of traditional marriage. He recently warned of the “yawning public ignorance” about the mental effects on children of conflict between parents, even from birth. He believes that the Government have spent too much time pushing through the same-sex marriage legislation rather than tackling a crisis of family breakdown.

The cost to the taxpayer, the cost in human misery and the damage to children serve to prove why it is time that Parliament took the issue more seriously. I hope that the Government will push it much higher up the agenda than they have been able to do up until now.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Colleagues, about five people have caught my eye and we have about 50 minutes remaining. If we self-regulate at about nine minutes each, we should all get there, but I will let you know how we get on.

14:48

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) on securing this important debate.

I speak from the perspective that supporting stronger relationships is a public health issue. The importance of relationships in preventing disease and in prolonging life, health and well-being is becoming increasingly recognised, not only for partners in a relationship, but for their children, their wider family and the community at large.

The scale of the problem of relationship breakdown is such that we cannot put it into the “too difficult” category. Government have to act and treat it as a public health issue. The public health outcomes framework should make explicit mention of family and relationship factors. In particular, we need to be concerned about the impact of family breakdown on those in more deprived households. Relationship breakdown affects them more than others, and the outcome for the children can be disproportionately serious.

According to a recent YouGov survey for the Prince’s Trust of 2,161 young people aged 16 to 25, 21% of the children in poor homes said that no one had ever told them, “I love you.” Those results show that young people from deprived homes where there are not necessarily functioning and strong relationship standards are significantly more likely to face symptoms of mental illness, including suicidal thoughts, feelings of self-loathing and panic attacks. Young people who grow up in poverty are also twice as likely to believe that no one cares about them—22% expressed such a view compared with a figure of 10% for the wider youth population. The tragedy is that many young people are growing up today in households where they have no role models for strong relationships.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

My constituency of Belfast North, which is one of the most deprived in the United Kingdom, bears testimony to what the hon. Lady is saying. Great work is being done by local groups on relationship support, but does she agree that part of this issue is the need to take away the stigma attached to going for help about relationships? There needs to be more education to ensure that people feel comfortable about coming forward.

[Fiona Bruce]

I agree entirely and hope to come on to that issue.

Professor Scott Stanley has talked about the perfect storm that is brewing with

“an ever greater amount of family instability”

and has said that for young people the problems are going to be pronounced. He says:

“Attachment is an unalterable, important human need and reality, and how attachment systems form in individuals really matters”

for their future health and well-being. He also argues that:

“The cultural systems and structures that always have helped couples clarify, form, and maintain strong commitments have been steadily eroding”—

most notably, the sense that marriage and childbearing inherently belong together, which makes ongoing stability more likely than not.

The nature and extent of the problem we are up against have all the hallmarks of a public health emergency. The Office for National Statistics recently found that people’s personal relationships, mental health and overall sense of well-being are all intimately bound up with each other. But the stakes are even higher than that: in many cases it is about life and death. A huge review of 148 studies, with almost one third of a million participants, that looked at how social relationships influence the risk of mortality showed that people with stronger social relationships have an incredible 50% increased likelihood of survival when compared with those with poor or insufficient social relationships.

I want to give credit to Dr Samantha Callan of the Centre for Social Justice for drawing many of these issues to my attention. She argues that the influence of social relationships on risk of mortality is comparable with risk factors such as smoking, and exceeds many well-known risk factors such as obesity and physical inactivity.

Other potential public health issues are isolation and loneliness. The absence of loving relationships of any sort is bad for health and is linked with increased risk of cardio-vascular disease, diabetes, stroke, obesity and death. One of my constituents has written to me to say that it is absolutely critical that the new health and wellbeing boards take into account the issue of loneliness and focus on how they can improve relationship support, bearing in mind the impact that loneliness is having on our older generation.

Studies on the impact of relationship difficulties suggest that improving couple relationships has the potential to reduce alcohol misuse. Recent studies focusing on metabolic syndrome suggest that obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and poor blood sugar metabolism, all of which increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes and stroke, are other mechanisms by which poor marital adjustment increases poor health outcomes for women.

There is also the issue of obesity among children. Children who are raised by parents who have what is called an authoritative—not an authoritarian—parenting style apparently eat more healthily, are more physically active and have a lower body mass index than children raised under other parenting styles, such as authoritarian, permissive, indulgent, uninvolved or neglectful. Reports say that marital dissatisfaction results in more authoritarian and less authoritative parenting. In other words, there is a vicious cycle. The quality of the parental relationship has a significant bearing on children’s health. The sad fact is that disadvantaged children suffer the most.

If a focus on relationships has the potential to deliver significant public health gains, how do we realise those gains? Certainly, building stronger relationships requires encouraging couples to build on good habits and to reduce bad ones. We should encourage and support proposals within plans such as the “Let’s Stick Together” programme developed by Care for the Family, which talks about avoiding negative habits. Often the issue is skills, which can be developed. Such skills include being responsive or even enthusiastic about what a partner is saying, expressing feelings of warmth and affection, managing conflict, communicating well and preserving a friendship, as well as learning how to perceive and demonstrate commitment and deal constructively with misunderstandings. All those skills can be learned, and learning them is critical when people have had no role models.

We also need preventive relationship education, web-based support and specialist counselling and therapeutic services—prevention rather than cure. Could we not move some of the millions of pounds that Relate receives to work at the outset of relationships instead of using the money to deal with the fallout and damage at the end?

The CEO of the Fatherhood Institute, Adrienne Burgess, has said:

“Encouraging parents to both take a lot of responsibility for looking after the child…and earning is a great way to help couples become real team parents. When they do this child rearing brings them together and means they are less likely to split up.”

On maternity services, Adrienne Burgess has argued:

“Increasing the potential for both of them to be involved is a really simple way to help strengthen couple relationships.”

To return to my point about the elderly, loneliness has significant links to a range of chronic conditions, including high blood pressure and depression, and increases the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by over 60%. On average, 10% of the population aged over 65 is chronically lonely, which means that they feel lonely all or most of the time. It is vital that the health implications of this issue are recognised by those making decisions about local health priorities. The proportion of elderly people in our population is increasing. Many of them live alone due to relationship breakdown. Helping them to sustain partner relationships, with the mutual support that such relationships can provide in later life, could carry major personal and public health benefits.

The Relationships Foundation has described strong relationships as a national asset that we should preserve and strengthen. The social capital of families and communities is a sustainable bedrock not only of our national wealth but of our well-being. Stronger relationships between couples mean that those couples can then provide strength and support up and down generations, across families and out into communities. That is a national resource that we must nurture and cultivate, and that we ignore at our peril.

14:57

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) on bringing this matter to the House for support and consideration. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). Perhaps I am a bit biased, but I believe that she always puts forward a good case on these issues. We are both concerned about them and are here to show our support. The Chamber is full of Members who, we were saying before the debate started, are the likely suspects. They are the ones who support what we are about in this debate on strengthening families.

I want to make a few comments in support of marriage in its totality. I do not want to be judgmental in the information that I relay. I am blessed in that I come from a strong family, and my parents are still a tower of strength in my life—my mother is 82 and my dad is 84—but I know that not everybody has the stable background that I had. I also know that there are single-parent families who simply could not do a better job raising their family than the one they are doing. I understand that and want to put that on the record right away. I believe that we have a role in this place in strengthening families and relationships, which is why I congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot on bringing this matter forward.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that if we polled young people about their aspirations, it is unlikely that they would aspire to be a single parent? The reality is that we have to get in early and make sure that we give our young people the infrastructure in their lives so that they are able to make wise decisions and are not at risk of their relationships breaking down.

[Jim Shannon]

Those are wise words from the hon. Gentleman and I agree with him wholeheartedly. It is important that, through this debate, we try to explain why we feel that marriage is important and why it should be an aspiration of all young people. I believe that it is, by the way, but things happen and relationships fall down. That is a fact of life.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

The Library’s debate pack states:

“On current trends, 48% of children born last year”—

2013—

“are likely to see the breakdown of their parents’ relationship.”

That is why some sort of early intervention is needed. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) said that the stigma must be removed. It must be removed because 48% is unacceptable.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. His wise words and heart contribute to this debate.

I have been an advocate of marriage between a man and a woman as the most stable way to raise a child, and I am on the record as saying that during a Bill Committee debate last year. I advocate that not because my parents remain a strong partnership after 60 years of being together, but because it is a fact that those who are married have a more stable relationship than those who cohabit. I base that on information and statistics that have been made available to me, and any social worker or person in that area of expertise will agree. I stress again that some families outside that mode do a great job, and I do not suggest that marriage is the only right way; however, it has proved to be the most stable way.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised that I draw to his attention to the fact that God says, in his precious word, that he put us together in families. Although many people have sought to undermine marriage, does my hon. Friend not agree that the scriptural bond of marriage is still the foundation stone of a strong society, and will be in years to come?

[Jim Shannon]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend’s wise words. Marriage is the bedrock of society. I have been married for 26 years and I have a very understanding wife. I do not say this with pride, but I was not always present while my children were being reared. My wife was a housewife and looked after them. Being a housewife is sometimes a harder job than working in a shop or elsewhere. The way my three boys have come on is a credit to my wife and the guidance she gave them, and I make no bones about that.

A consistent feature of cohabitation has been its relative instability compared with marriage. Some UK and European studies draw attention to the fact that, regardless of socio-economic status and education, cohabiting couples are between two and two and a half times more likely to break up than equivalent married couples. That is a fact; it is not made up. Even the poorest 20% of married couples are more stable than all but the richest 20% of cohabiting couples. The statistics are clear. Three quarters of family breakdown involving children under five arise from the separation of non-married parents. Only 9% of married parents split before their child’s fifth birthday compared with 35% of unmarried parents.

I was just talking to my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds), and we want to put on the record the good work that Relate does. I sometimes refer people to Relate and although its advice may not always have worked as I might have wished, it was always expert and important. I have also referred constituents to friends in their church. No one can speak better about churches’ good work than my hon. Friend the Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea), but I want to put on the record my thanks to them for giving guidance, support, help and advice when it is needed.

CARE has supplied me with information combining new data on family breakdown from Understanding Society with household data from the Office for National Statistics. Research from the Marriage Foundation shows that cohabiting parents now account for 19% of couples with dependent children, but 50% of family breakdowns. We all know that marriages may break down irrevocably. I am no man’s judge and never will be, but every effort should be made to prevent breakdown.

Statistics also show that when a separated couple was married, the children are 60% more likely to have contact with their father than if the parents were unmarried, and that separated fathers are more likely to contribute to their child’s maintenance if the parents were married. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has just left the Chamber, referred to the father’s role and said that even in a broken-down relationship it is important that a father remains in contact with the children as they are growing up.

The prevalence of mental health issues among children of cohabiting parents is more than 75% higher than among those of married parents. Children from broken homes are nine times more likely to become young offenders. I give these statistics with no joy, but they account for 70% of all young offenders. I could continue to give statistics, such as the rise in the cost of family failure, which the hon. Member for Aldershot said was £44 billion. That is a massive amount of money. Failed relationships now cost every UK taxpayer £1,475 a year.

The Centre for Social Justice and the Marriage Foundation make it clear that the Government should strengthen stability and reduce family breakdown by encouraging and promoting marriage. The Democratic Unionist party, of which I am privileged to be a member, supported the married couple’s tax allowance. With my hon. Friend the Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), I have pressed the Chancellor to implement that allowance. I believe that every hon. Member in the Chamber probably supports that.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

Will the hon. Gentleman help me and say whether there is a relationship between membership of the IRA and the extremist Protestant organisations, and the breakdown of families?

[Jim Shannon]

I cannot give the statistics, but I am sure that there has been some impact.

The public policy benefits of marriage are extensive and should be recognised in the UK tax system, as is the case in most OECD countries. Although marriage was recognised in the UK income tax system for many years and continues to be recognised in most OECD countries, that recognition was removed in the UK in 1999. Today, the UK is the only large, developed economy not to recognise marriage in its income tax system. Only 20% of people in OECD countries live in jurisdictions that do not recognise marriage and most of them live in the UK or Mexico. A fully transferable allowance would reduce discrimination against one-earner couples, increase the threshold for low and middle-income families, and reduce the imbalance between one-earner and two-earner families.

In 2010, the Conservatives proposed a transferable allowance of £750 for married couples and civil partners under which a spouse or partner who could not use their personal allowance could pass it to his or her partner if they were a basic rate payer. The Chancellor gave a commitment on that in the House and we have pressed him to ensure that it is introduced before the next election. I understand that he has given a commitment to do so. What discussions has the Minister had on the date of implementation of that allowance? It is time to introduce this encouragement for families. If nothing else is heard in this debate, I hope that that will be heard and that the Government will encourage families and marriage and do what they promised.

14:59

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Streeter, to serve under your chairmanship. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) for securing this important debate, and I look forward to the Minister’s response; I am sure he will bring common sense and sensitivity to it.

It goes without saying that the family is the backbone of our society. As I am sure many hon. Members have experienced, when couple relationships are turbulent, it shows in other aspects of the couple’s lives. Several studies show that those who are married or in stable relationships live longer lives and require medical assistance from the state less frequently. Couple, family and social relationships may act as a shock absorber in supporting people through life changes, such as becoming a parent, retirement or family bereavement, but for many the relationship itself may need support during, after and even before such events. That is why it is vital that when things go wrong in relationships, there are organisations to turn to that offer affordable support and guidance.

One such organisation operating in my constituency is Relate, which offers counselling services to couples, or those in complex relationships, which are now more common, as relationships and family structures are evolving all the time. Without Relate, many in relationships would not be able to afford the appropriate counselling; Relate has been able to subsidise its support, making it accessible to everyone, not just the well-off. Last year, it gave bursaries to more than 1,400 people.

I was alarmed last year when the director of Relate Derby and Southern Derbyshire contacted me to say that Derby city council had told it that it would reduce funding further. It looks as though Derbyshire county council will follow suit. In fact, it is expected that in time there will be no funding whatever from the two councils. The squeeze on funding has resulted in a 30% reduction in Relate staff numbers in the area. That means that the charity is finding it difficult to cope with the increasing demand for all its services.

Local changes to funding structures mean that many central initiatives could be undermined. Relate Derby and Southern Derbyshire is on the precipice of substantial cuts in funding that will mean a reduction in the provision of services, which will be felt by hundreds of vulnerable clients. Without regular grants from Derby city council and Derbyshire county council, funding for Relate services in the area increasingly comes from spot purchasing, which means that the charity experiences peaks in demand without the core funding to ensure that staffing levels are sufficient to meet that demand. The other issue with spot funding is that it generates an increase in administration costs for Relate. That has already had a knock-on effect on its provision of additional services. It is considering no longer accepting further requests. Children and young people in other groups will be all the poorer if they are unable to access the excellent services of our local Relate.

Relate Derby and Southern Derbyshire is well known for its work with people with Asperger’s syndrome and their families. Relate offers live chat, e-mail and webcam counselling, which can be more suitable for different client groups, such as those with Asperger’s. That counselling might well disappear if no money can be found, even though the demand is even greater this year. Last year, Relate helped more than 250 families in the area in which there were people with Asperger’s. It is clear that the withdrawal of funding by Derby city council and the county council, and the change to funding structures for services, will have a profound and negative effect on the number of referrals that Relate can deal with and the ongoing support it can offer to stakeholders.

Jeopardising the provision of subsidised counselling has an impact not only on the relationships of the couples and families who need it, but on the police force, the health service, social services, the school system, the courts and the economy as a whole. As has been said, a report by the Relationships Foundation estimated that the total cost to the economy of relationship breakdown was some £46 billion. That is perhaps not surprising when one considers that those who have experienced the breakdown of a relationship often have poorer employment outcomes and poorer physical and mental health.

The consequences of conflict in the home are even more keenly felt by children; those who experience such situations typically have poorer outcomes in the classroom. Domestic violence is a substantial issue for a number of Relate’s clients. In fact, 23% of all those referred by the two councils are victims of domestic violence, but only 4% of those had reported the abuse and violence to any other agency. Relate is doing an incredibly valuable service that other agencies seem unable to do. It goes without saying that it is in the Government’s interest to ensure that affordable counselling is accessible.

While I am extremely pleased by the Government’s commitment to keeping families together—demonstrated by their £30 million investment in relationship support bodies over the life of this Parliament—there is still more to be done to support organisations such as Relate Derby and Southern Derbyshire, which provides incredible value for money and great expertise for local families. The Government should further promote the importance of relationships by requiring local authorities to recognise family relationships as a core responsibility, and ensure that they do not continue to be overlooked in favour of other priorities in local government funding decisions.

[Fiona Bruce]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does she agree that local authorities should be required to measure levels of family breakdown in their locality? Family breakdown is a recognised index of social deprivation and a key driver of social disadvantage.

[Pauline Latham]

My hon. Friend makes a substantial point. If local authorities did that, they would have more information to go on, instead of just cutting funding without thinking about the consequences. The health and wellbeing boards could help fund some of the work done by organisations such as Relate; that would help. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

15:14

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) has done the House a great service in ensuring that we have this debate. It is such an important debate that it is a matter of regret that we are having it in Back-Bench time in Westminster Hall.

The effects of marital breakdown on society are enormous. It is a modern plague and it is causing not just expense but misery. We have to speak up about it all the time, because there is almost a conspiracy of silence about such issues. Over the past 50 years, a view has grown in our permissive society that people are happiest if they are completely liberated and can do what they want and say, “It is about me.” The Churches, successive Governments, schools, the BBC, national newspapers and we as Members of Parliament are all complicit in that permissive view of society, which has left a trail of despair in its wake.

Sir Paul Coleridge, the family division judge, has been mentioned. He is one of the very few people who have had the courage to speak about this matter. He deals with these issues every day of his working life. He warns of the “yawning public ignorance” of the mental effects on children of conflict between parents, even from birth. He is either retired or about to retire, and The Daily Telegraph said that he

“decided to step down because of opposition from within the judiciary to his support for traditional marriage. He has been placed under investigation and could be officially censured over comments last year criticising the Government for pushing through same-sex marriage legislation rather than tackling a ‘crisis of family breakdown’.”

He is a man who knows what is going on and he should be listened to.

I am grateful to the Library for its work on the briefing papers, but I do not want to quote a load of statistics, because we all know the truth. It is absolutely clear what is going on and there is no argument about it. The decline of traditional marriage has been an unalloyed disaster. People in government, in schools and in Churches are frightened of speaking out about this issue. They think that if they say they support traditional marriage, they are somehow criticising people who are not married or who, for all sorts of reasons that are not their fault, are no longer married, but that is not the case. Surely we can value everyone in society and how they live, while speaking out for what is right in society, which is marriage and people setting out to stay married if they want to bring up children.

Again, we are indebted to the Library for telling us what is going on. These are all statistics and facts. They are not made up by people who come here with a particular point of view. A story in The Daily Telegraph on a National Centre for Social Research study said:

“One in eight divorced or separated fathers has lost all contact with their children”.

Is that not dreadful? Is that not sad?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

It is tragic.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Indeed. One in eight divorced or separated fathers do not see their children at all. The Daily Telegraph story continues:

“Almost a million men in the UK are estimated to have dependent children with whom they do not live. Almost 130,000 of them have no contact at all with their children.”

A story in The Daily Telegraph on the British social attitudes survey said:

“The belief that couples should ideally get married before starting a family has effectively collapsed within a generation, the British Social Attitudes survey, the longest running and most authoritative barometer of public opinion in the UK, shows.

Only a minority of people now view marriage as the starting point for bringing up children, with support for that view almost halving in less than 25 years.”

Do we not have a responsibility for the change in social attitudes? We are told, “Britain has changed. You have to accept it,” but do we not have a right to speak up for what is right?

[Dr McCrea]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that behind the statistics in the briefing papers are many human tragedies and stories? We are talking about people and lives. Does he also agree that the traditional family unit has been constantly under attack in our society? It is about time that the Government did more to encourage and strengthen the marriage bond, rather than airbrushing marriage from family policy documents.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Absolutely right; but it is the people at the bottom of the heap who suffer the most. We are not talking about society divorces in the 1950s. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people living, effectively, a tragic life. The Marriage Foundation has interesting statistics, including:

“45 per cent of young teenagers (aged 13-15 years old) are not living with both parents…Half of all family breakdown takes place during the first two years”;

but—and this is the important point:

“Amongst parents who remain intact, 93 per cent are married…In sharp contrast, of the 47 per cent of children born to unmarried parents today, the report predicts that just 11 per cent will reach the age of 16 with unmarried parents still together.”

Marriage works. It is best for children. Every statistic proves it. Why are not the Churches, schools and Government crying that out from the roof tops?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

My hon. Friend is making a passionate speech. He asks why Churches and schools do not recognise what many people say is the bleeding obvious, which is backed up by all the statistics. It is true that the previous Government had a good document supporting families, and the present Government have one. However, they do not give effect to the means by which we can strengthen marriage and those relationships, and send a clarion call out to people: “This is the way to lead your life—if you want a fulfilled life, you are more likely to have it through this means.”

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The Government are making one effort. They have said that they will bring in a transferable allowance for married couples. It is a matter of regret and has already been noted that the Labour party spokesman is here alone. Fair enough—he will speak in a moment; but it is a matter of regret that the Labour party has continually laughed at the proposal from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Labour viewpoint is “This is rubbish and will not make any difference.” The fact is that if one member—usually the mother—of a married couple who are doing their best to bring up children decides to stay at home, they are uniquely disadvantaged by the tax and benefits system.

There are six key arguments that drive a coach and horses through the arguments against the transferable allowance. First, the UK is out of line with international convention in not recognising marriage in its tax system. We are virtually alone of all big countries. One-earner married couples—those who would benefit from a transferable allowance—are thereby at a serious disadvantage relative to comparable families. The second is the distributional argument: introducing a transferable allowance for married couples will disproportionately benefit those in the lower half of the income distribution. In that way, it is quite unlike the coalition policy of increasing the personal income tax threshold to £10,000.

The third argument is about the married couples allowance, which was dismissed by some as something of an anomaly, but which played a key role in sustaining one-earner families. The fourth argument is that a transferable allowance would help to make work more rewarding for many of the poorest in society. The fifth is that transferable allowances should be introduced as soon as possible to compensate for the attack on one-earner families resulting from the introduction of a higher-income child benefit charge. The sixth and final argument is the stay-at-home spouse argument; most one-earner families do not have the option of becoming two-earner couple families.

The Government are at least doing one small thing. It will not, on its own, persuade anyone to get married or stay married; but at last we have a statement. That is what we want today from the Minister—and from the Prime Minister and all Ministers. We want them to have the courage to stand up for traditional marriage. That is not just because the current situation is a modern plague that costs us £46 billion a year—it is not just about the cost. The point is the human misery that comes in its wake. That is why the debate is so important.

15:24

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) warmly on obtaining the debate. I am extremely grateful to the colleagues who have been here throughout this debate on a matter of important public policy. It is an area where we politicians sometimes fear to tread, thinking that it is an aspect of personal life where we should not intrude, and that we should get back to the building of bridges, bypasses, hospitals and schools. I reject that argument entirely. The issue is one of public policy that affects the amount of tax we pay, how children do in school, the criminal justice system and pretty much every area of life.

In support of my view, I quote the Prime Minister. In a great speech to Relate in June 2008 he said that

“there are some who think politics should stay out of issues like relationships…I just think that’s incredibly superficial and short-sighted”.

He continued:

“For too long, politicians here have been afraid of getting into this territory, for fear of looking old-fashioned or preachy.”

Those of us who support the thrust of his arguments are here with the full and explicit support of the Prime Minister, because he gets it. In his speech he said:

“The number one challenge we’ve got in this country today is to strengthen our society. There is no more important way of doing that than strengthening families, and there’s nothing more important to families than the strength of their relationships.”

I am delighted he said that. He continued by commenting that:

“helping people maintain strong relationships is not some fluffy alternative to reducing budget deficits—it is the way to reduce budget deficits, by reducing the demands on the state caused by family breakdown.”

In December 2010, as Prime Minister, he made another speech reiterating the important commitments he had made as Leader of the Opposition.

The parents of half the children born today will split up by the time the child is 15. By the age of 16, one in six children will not see their father at all. Cohabiting parents are sadly three times more likely than married couples to have separated by the time their child is five. A child whose parents split up is twice as likely to live in poverty as one whose parents stayed together, and has a 75% greater likelihood of underachievement at school. The Youth Justice Board says that 70% of children and young people in custody have an absent father. How much more evidence do we need that the issue is important, and a legitimate area of public policy? That is why those of us who care about it are here today. To me, it is a question of giving people the skills and support to make a success of the most important area of their lives; it is about reinforcing good habits and positive social norms.

The crisis is unfolding slowly and imperceptibly, without dramatic moments and media attention, but that is no excuse for not drawing attention to it. That is why the debate is so important, and why we look forward hugely to the Minister’s response. We want to encourage him to continue the good work begun by the Government. His boss, the Secretary of State for Education, who is charged with the matter, takes the issue seriously, too. He made an important speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research in August 2008 and considered the educational underperformance of children growing up in unstable families, citing important work by James Heckman of the university of Chicago.

We have been around the piece and we agree that we need to do something about the problem, so I want to be practical. I have five practical, positive steps that we could take. The first is to do with relationship support. There are some wonderful programmes today, and I want to give credit to them. My complaint is that often they are too small and piecemeal. I yearn to roll them out across the country so that they can be carried out to scale, to tackle the size and challenge of the problem. The first programme I want to mention is called As 2 Become 3, and is provided by Insights for Life, run by Bob and Jess Read as part of an antenatal package. That is important because dad is almost always there with mum as they go to the hospital for their antenatal courses, and the feedback about it has been tremendously good.

Let me quote what some couples said. Ali and Simone said of the course:

“The course also helped us make sure we share this 24/7 job and still find time for each other which is important as this is why the baby is here in the first place.”

Adrian and Britta, another couple, said:

“We discussed which values are most important to us, and how they could be developed and nurtured. Learning about different ways to manage conflict gave us permission to be more open and honest, and we now try to collaborate rather than merely compromising. It has been worth the extra effort as it has brought us closer.”

Many colleagues here have talked about the importance of giving people the skills and support of early intervention. Why is every single antenatal course in the country not signposting that course? Why is it not being made available in every single NHS hospital? If it is having good results and good outcomes, let us do it everywhere, not only in a few selected places.

The next course I would like to mention is Let’s Stick Together, which is run by Care for the Family. The Minister’s Department is giving funding to the Let’s Stick Together programme. Pilots are being run in different areas across the country, and we look forward to the evaluation of those. It is an hour’s course that is typically done for new parents in children’s centres. The feedback is really positive and people often want to go on and do more courses to keep their marriages and relationships strong. I celebrate that work; we should have more of it.

Another course, which is run by Family Action, is called Parents as Partners. It looks at parenting issues and encourages strong parenting, but all the academic evidence is that, as the relationship between mum and dad is strengthened, where the parents are together, the parenting outcomes are even better. I pay tribute to Family Action and the important work that it is doing.

This morning I had a briefing from Safe Families for Children, which is an excellent project to help vulnerable children. It involves early respite care for children whose parents are in deep difficulties, before the situation gets to the fostering stage. It has been run in the Chicago area very successfully, saving a lot of money there, and it has been rolled out in the north-east. I think the Minister has had an invitation from Sir Peter Vardy to go and see it, and I hope that he may be able to take that up at some point. Parents are most likely to split up just after a child has been born, so if parents can be given some space to deal with difficult issues, that can help the couple to stay together.

Last, but by no means least, I pay huge tribute to the work done by Holy Trinity Brompton, by Nicky and Sila Lee, who are the pioneers of the marriage preparation course, the marriage course, and the restored lives course, for people whose relationships have sadly split up—we must not forget such people, because we want to help them to rebuild their lives, so that they can build stronger relationships and marriages if they get the opportunity to marry again. That work is being looked at around the world. In Shanghai, they are very keen on the work of the marriage course. The Chinese Government get it in a big way and are copying in Shanghai what Nicky and Sila Lee are doing. That is the first area that I wanted to cover—practical things being done around the country. However, let us do them to scale and make sure that there is proper signposting in all those areas.

Secondly, I want those courses, and others which have not yet come to my attention but are no doubt happening, to have a kitemark—a Government seal of approval—so that public authorities such as local authorities, hospitals and others can refer people to them with confidence, knowing that proper provision is made and people’s qualifications and other standards will be acceptable. That would be hugely helpful, so that directors of public health, people running family centres, local authorities and so on could signpost such courses with confidence.

The third area I want to address, which has been mentioned by some colleagues, is local authority and local council engagement. I believe that if we value something, we measure it, and we also measure what we value. It is therefore really important that local authorities know what is going on in terms of relationship health in their areas. If local authorities saw the extent of family breakdown in their area, they would be more determined to do something about it. They have the opportunity to do so through their child poverty strategies, which need to address family breakdown. If they saw that an area was worse than another similar area, they would ask why that was and what that other area was doing better. They would perhaps want providers of some of the courses that I mentioned to come in and do something about it.

In my area, I set up the Bedfordshire Family Trust. We run couple strengthening courses. We get people coming to them and know that the courses work and that people appreciate them. That is the sort of thing that local authorities should be able to refer people to in order to save their budgets on housing, care placements and so on, because, as we know, local authorities have to watch the pennies at the moment. That is the third area where I would like to see action.

The fourth issue is public health, and that shows why family is so important. We have a Minister from the Department for Education here and I do not expect him to be an expert on health issues, but he will have heard colleagues mention health earlier. We know that there are significant implications and health costs, and that poor-quality relationships can lead to increases in alcohol consumption and cardiovascular disease, and linked problems with childhood obesity and diabetes.

As the chair of the all-party group on strengthening couple relationships, I was hugely surprised by one fact. We issued a report earlier this year called “Relationships: the missing link in public health”. Just listen to the data on coronary artery bypass grafting, which is perhaps not something that people would have thought was directly linked to the quality of relationships. The facts are that:

“The quality of couple relationships also has a remarkable impact on survival rates after bypass surgery, with married people being 2.5 times more likely to be alive 15 years after coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) than those who are not married, and those in high-satisfaction marriages being 3.2 times more likely to be alive 15 years after CABG compared with those reporting low marital satisfaction”.

That is a reason to have a strong marriage, if no other.

On that fourth point, the cost to the health service of people with long-term conditions is huge. When couples are together and can support each other in older age, we save a huge amount for the health service. That is another reason why we have to take public health seriously.

15:37

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) on securing the debate, and I thank all those who contributed. There have been some very interesting points made.

I was particularly keen on some of the practical suggestions made by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who is the chair of the all-party group on strengthening couple relationships, as he said. Looking at the group’s minutes, I was struck by some of the issues identified, especially by Dr Lester Coleman of the OnePlusOne charity. He emphasised that those who are more engaged at work enjoy a better quality of relationship. That may be because they are more personally fulfilled and more secure in their personal identity, and therefore are better able to give and share. That would seem to be an argument for making it easier for those who wish to work to do so, and is perhaps also an argument for supporting child care, which is a very important part of the Labour party’s policy, especially at a time when the cost of child care is rising so dramatically.

Apparently, parents, as opposed to non-parents, also experience better-quality relationships, and although I would be the first to accept that many contented couples do not have children, that finding suggests to me that we may need to do all we can to support those who wish to be parents. That might include measures such as those that the Government have embarked on to improve adoption. It might mean working harder to broaden the range of people who can adopt and foster. In some cases, it might mean making fertility treatment available to more couples on the NHS.

I also understand that Dr Coleman says that where there is greater work-family conflict, that can have quite a negative impact on the quality of relationships. Of course, that brings to mind all the arguments about making work flexible, so that it fits in with families, and the issue of the living wage, which we comment on from time to time. I am not sure that all of that has received enough attention in the debate so far.

It is perhaps also worth noting that in the YouGov survey commissioned by Relate, to which the hon. Member for Aldershot referred, 59% of respondents were concerned about the strain that money worries were placing on their relationship, which of course is one reason why we on this side of the House take so much time to emphasise the problems of the cost of living at the moment.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Who is “we”?

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Steve McCabe]

I think that I can speak for my side of the House, Mr Streeter. When it comes to strengthening couple relationships, the hon. Member for Aldershot has been clear. He is talking about heterosexual couples. We learned about his views on this issue during the debate on same-sex marriage. He has repeated them honestly today in this debate and in his ePolitix article, in which he states that marriage

“for the majority of Conservative MPs can only be between a man and a woman”.

I do not think that in this day and age it is possible to make such a narrow distinction, because whatever the views of individuals, the law and society are clear: “couple relationships” can mean married, cohabiting, heterosexual and homosexual relationships, however difficult that is for some people to accept. I acknowledge that many people put great store by traditional marriage, but that does not mean that we can deny the reality of what we see around us.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

What the hon. Gentleman has heard throughout this debate, though, is that all the evidence has shown that cohabiting couple households—I am referring to the statistics relating to family disorder, the breakdown of family life and so on—are much more akin to single-parent households than to married couple households. No one is saying that people have to live that lifestyle, but the facts suggest to us that there is one lifestyle in this country that is likely to produce a happier outcome and is better for children, and that is marriage. His right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), a former Secretary of State for the Home Department, said that himself, so why cannot the hon. Gentleman accept it?

[Steve McCabe]

As a divorcé, I do not feel that my divorce has prevented me from being able to have a further solid relationship; nor has it prevented me from having a strong parental role or from being part of a family.

It is interesting that the Government’s most explicit policy to support marriage, the married couple’s tax allowance—we heard quite a lot about that from the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh)—is available only to one third of married couples. The proposals are really designed for the situation in which one partner does not work outside the home or earns very little. It is really a policy for stay-at-home mums, which is perhaps slightly at odds with some of Dr Coleman’s suggestions. Of course, it is available only for married mums, not for widows, cohabiting mums or anyone like that. Perhaps most astonishingly of all, it is available for the love rat who deserts his wife and family and runs off with someone else’s wife. He can remarry and claim the allowance. That strikes me as a slightly perverse way of strengthening couple relationships.

The other thing that is slightly strange about the policy is that it applies to only 4 million of the 12.3 million married couples, and it is not clear what impact it will have on children, given that pensioner families make up more than one third of the beneficiaries. In fact, only 35% of the 30% of families who gain from the policy have children, and only 17% have children under the age of five. It is hardly a well targeted policy if its aim is to support the concerns raised by the hon. Gentleman.

[Andrew Selous]

I want to draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the international facts. If we look across the OECD, we see that the UK is very much an exception in not recognising marriage at all in the tax system. In fact, it is really just us and Mexico alone among all the OECD countries that do not recognise it; 80% of the population of OECD countries live under a system in which marriage is recognised.

[Steve McCabe]

I was talking about the efficacy of a particular measure. Despite the doom and gloom, if we accept that not all relationships come in the form that the hon. Member for Aldershot would like to see—I accept that that is his view, and I understand that he holds it sincerely—the Relate survey to which I referred has some interesting observations. Let me pay tribute to the comments by the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) about Relate. I agree: I think that it is an excellent organisation that we should protect. The Relate survey paints a slightly rosier picture. It found that 93% of people said that, when times were hard, relationships within their family were important. Although the media sometimes presents our society as one in which family relationships have broken down, Relate could not find evidence that that was the case overall. According to its survey, families—albeit sometimes new families or reconstituted families—remain the backbone of our support systems.

15:47

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) for raising this deeply important subject, and for stoically being here despite his heavy cold.

Like all those who contributed this afternoon, I believe that strong and stable families are the backbone of a strong and stable society—the key to ensuring that children grow up in a loving environment and develop into healthy and fulfilled adults. That is why the Government have invested significantly in supporting families and couple relationships, as well as the institution of marriage—because we understand the crucial role that the family plays in providing a foundation for a child’s development and success in later life. I saw that for myself in my own personal and professional life before coming to Parliament, so I need no persuading of the merits of a strong, stable and loving family environment in bringing about a better society.

Although the view that I have set out is based partly on what we know intrinsically works, and the values that help to improve and enhance lives, we also know from research that happy relationships lead to better physical and emotional well-being for all involved. The fact is that the quality of the relationship between parents is strongly linked to positive parenting and better outcomes for children. Family stability is key for children. Sustained parental relationships are associated with a range of positive childhood, adolescent and adult outcomes, including in respect of cognitive development, education—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State himself said that in his speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research in 2008—better job prospects and less propensity to commit crime, as well as in relation to health. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) raised important points about how health outcomes could be improved with the right support for relationships, and measures that we know help to achieve that. I will take away her comments about the health outcomes framework and the role of the health and wellbeing board, and I will discuss the matter with Ministers in the Department of Health to ensure that it is properly considered as those aspects of the health system develop further.

On attachment, which is a vital part of understanding whether a relationship is positive or not, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence will for the first time produce guidelines on what constitutes a secure attachment, which will be an extremely useful addition. Conflict between parents is detrimental to children’s outcomes, hence the high priority we are giving to supporting all couple relationships, particularly those of people who are married. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot told us, evidence shows us that the children of married parents do better than those of cohabiting parents, particularly on measures of social and emotional development at the ages of three and five. We need to ensure that all under-fives receive the best possible support, so such evidence is important.

Centre for Social Justice reports, which many hon. Members have brought with them, have starkly illustrated the considerable emotional, social and economic costs associated with the breakdown of families. As my hon. Friends the Members for Aldershot and for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) have reminded us, those costs amount to an astonishing £46 billion a year, which is not far off the total annual budget for educating all our children.

Important life events, including the transition to parenthood, relocation or changes in employment, can contribute to relationship stress. We must do what we can to encourage couples to take up support at an earlier stage—the early prevention that hon. Members have mentioned in this debate—to ensure that they get through difficult events in their lives. My time at the family Bar has shown me the devastating consequences of not doing so, not only for adults but, perhaps even more importantly, for any children involved. To bring that about, and by virtue of the strong prime ministerial steer, the Government have committed £30 million over the spending review period from 2011 to 2015, which puts funding for relationship support on a much more stable long-term footing. That gives us greater encouragement that we can get couples to use relationship support services.

The Department is funding a range of providers to deliver relationship support services, including one that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) highlighted: the Parents as Partners evidence-based intervention programme delivered by Family Action, which works with couples who are particularly likely to face relationship stress or be at risk of relationship breakdown. There is also a series of campaigns and culture change messages aimed at employers, new parents and young people to raise awareness and encourage them to seek help on relationships. There is training for early years workers and managers, to help them to encourage positive relationships between parents, and to engage better with fathers, in particular, on relationships and parenting. The public policy agenda is being developed—a point made by my hon. Friend—through the formation of the Relationships Alliance, which I know he has been instrumental in helping to bring together.

I take on board the point that my hon. Friend made about the need to scale up some of those excellent services, and the Relationships Alliance is well placed to help achieve that. In my ongoing discussions with the alliance—I am meeting representatives next week—I am sure that that will be on the agenda. All those valuable services are provided by expert organisations. Many hon. Members have praised the work done by such organisations, which include Relate, Marriage Care, the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships and OnePlusOne. Those four organisations, which launched the Relationships Alliance in the House of Commons in November, will be key in helping to establish a much more coherent and cohesive message on what is available to those who need support.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank the Minister for his constructive personal concern and his comments so far. We have heard today that the issue straddles many different areas: education, local government, the criminal justice system and health and well-being. Would it not be helpful to appoint a dedicated Minister to tackle this issue? Care for the Family has said that it feels as though there is no one in government waking up every morning thinking about this key social policy as a priority. After all that we have heard today, should not there be?

[Mr Timpson]

As the Minister with responsibility for children and families, I have sympathy with the need to raise the issue across Government and to ensure that all Departments play an active role in establishing what works and delivering it, but as my hon. Friend will acknowledge, I am not in a position to start appointing new Ministers or Departments. Forums are available to bring the topic together across Government; in particular, the social justice committee, which is chaired by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has a strong interest in the subject and is well placed to hold such cross-government discussions.

We are doing a significant amount to support families but we must recognise that, sadly, parents separate. When that happens, it can be a difficult time in which families need support on a range of issues. That is why we are improving the information, advice and support available to separated parents outside the court system to help them focus on their children’s needs and to agree workable arrangements for post-separation parenting. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) rightly said, the Children and Families Bill, which is currently in the other place, includes provision to highlight the importance of a child having a relationship with both parents following family breakdown, provided that to do so is safe and in the child’s best interests. The welfare of the individual child must be the court’s paramount consideration, but, subject to that, the parental involvement clause requires courts to presume that the child’s welfare is furthered by the involvement of each parent who can be safely involved. By making clear the basis on which the court makes those decisions, that provision is intended to encourage parents to reach agreement themselves about their child’s care without recourse to the court.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Before my hon. Friend the Minister sits down, may I thank him for the serious attention that he is paying to the issue? We hope that we can support him in raising it up the Government’s agenda. Before we conclude, may I also thank you, Mr Streeter, for all that you have done in this field?

[Mr Timpson]

It is remiss of me not to have directed similar praise to you, Mr Streeter, and I concur with the words that have just come in your direction.

The Government have commissioned two key pieces of work that will inform future policy makers and commissioners, because problems often start with poor commissioning decisions. That will help in areas such as Mid Derbyshire that want to move away from short-term, spot-purchasing solutions towards something more sustainable. Those two key pieces of work are an independent evaluation of relationship support interventions and a cross-government review of the family stability indicator of the social justice strategy.

Although significant evidence points to the importance of the quality of adult couple relationships to child outcomes, we know from various reviews of literature that there is limited evidence from within the UK about which relationship support practice has the most positive impact on adult and child outcomes. My Department has consequently commissioned research to test the effectiveness of several relationship support interventions, some of which we have already heard about—“Let’s Stick Together”, which my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton and for South West Bedfordshire have mentioned, as well as marriage preparation and couple counselling—to evaluate whether they are as effective as we would like. That report is due at the end of the month.

[Steve McCabe]

Does the Minister agree that it would be wrong of us to conclude the debate without acknowledging that figures released today show that the divorce rate in this country is falling, not rising?

[Mr Timpson]

It would be remiss of anyone not to welcome a fall in the divorce rate, but the fact is that it is still far too high. That is why our emphasis is on working with couples at the earliest opportunity so that they never have to reach that stage in their relationship.

The debate has been informative, passionate and serious. Although the Government have done a lot of work in this area, we recognise that there is still work to do, not only on the ground to improve relationship support, but in the messages that come from Government about how we build strong relationships across society. The past 50 years have seen a seismic shift in the structure and composition of families in this country. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot rightly acknowledged, we should respect many of the reasons why that has happened, but we cannot accept the erosion of marriage and the many well evidenced benefits that it brings to society. That is why the Government are committed to supporting marriage. The marriage tax break is a step in the right direction that will help to ensure that all the attributes marriage brings with it flourish and do not wither.

Lower Thames Crossing

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

4 pm

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter, and good to see my hon. Friend the Minister in his place. I have debated these matters a number of times with a number of Ministers over the past three and a half years, but this is the first time that I have had the pleasure to debate with him. I am also grateful for the interest shown by hon. Friends present, which shows the importance of the subject.

The Government are considering where to site a new river crossing in the lower Thames area. As we all know, new Thames crossings do not come along very often. Perhaps, as a result, the debate is all the more challenging when they do, but it is important that we get the location right. That is why we need to have a discussion today.

Some people think that the removal of the toll barriers due to take place next year will alleviate the need for a new crossing, given that it will increase capacity at the existing Dartford crossing. However, I think that they are wrong and that to rely too heavily on that solution is excessively short-termist. We need good infrastructure if we are to make the most of economic growth opportunities. I feel that we have insufficient crossings to the east of Tower bridge. I would like to see two more new crossings in London and a new crossing in the lower Thames area, but much further downstream than is proposed in the options before us.

The Government have consulted on three options. One of those has been ruled out, but we are still looking at two. People are looking for clarity, but perhaps the fact that we still have not reached a decision illustrates how difficult the problem is. I suggest to the Minister that, given the fact that there is no obvious solution to the problem, it is time to look again and perhaps consider other options.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing such an important debate and pay tribute to the work she has put into trying to alleviate the congestion that affects both her constituency and mine. Does she acknowledge the difficulties that would result from putting an extra crossing at so-called option A, next to the existing Dartford crossing? That would not, in fact, create an alternative for motorists. It would give them no choice, so if there was any problem on the M25 at that location, the problems that we see today would only get worse.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend pre-empts much of what I was about to say. I completely agree with him. That is really the mistake in the present options before us—to be honest, they are just lines on a map. They are sticking plaster, informed more by cost than by what is in the best interests of developing a sustainable road infrastructure that will actually meet the needs of our growing economy. We all have great ambitions for the Thames Gateway as a powerhouse of economic regeneration, but they will not be realised unless we have adequate road infrastructure in place. That means developing a new lower Thames crossing much further east so that we open up the whole of south Essex and north Kent to new opportunities.

My hon. Friend the Minister will be aware that the two options still under consideration both go through my constituency, but I must say that my objections are not based on nimbyism. My reasons for opposing them relate entirely to the resilience of the road network, by which I mean both the local and the strategic road network. On the local network, Thurrock is a major logistics hub with substantial port infrastructure, so a functioning road infrastructure is crucial to our continued economic success. I advise the Minister that the problems caused by traffic congestion are without doubt the biggest issue in my postbag. I hear from not just residents, but businesses, and they tell me that it is costing them jobs and business.

I am concerned that although the Highways Agency will advise the Department for Transport about the effect on the national road network, insufficient consideration has hitherto been given to the impact of either option on the local road network. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) agrees with me. The reality is that either option A or C—the two still under consideration—would have a critical impact on Thurrock’s local network.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing such an important debate. She is talking about the resilience of the road network and the economic potential of south Essex. Of the two remaining options on the table, A and C, does my hon. Friend agree that as well as not addressing or helping to deliver the full economic potential of south Essex, option C would also have an incredible environmental effect by dividing an established rural community and wrecking one of the most significant remaining rural parts of south Essex.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend is entirely right to identify that environmental impact of option C, which is perhaps the biggest barrier to that option. In addition, option A would have a significant effect on air quality. Taken together, both of those impacts—we are talking about serious environmental damage—show that we are looking at the wrong options.

I would like to say a little more about option A, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford said, is at the site of the existing Dartford crossing. I understand the Highways Agency’s reasons for recommending option A—I have been down to the control room.

16:06

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

16:17

On resuming—

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I will resume my critique of option A. As I was saying, it is the Highways Agency’s preferred option, due to the current challenges of managing traffic flow into the tunnels. However, as things stand, Thurrock routinely experiences gridlock whenever there is an incident at the Dartford crossing, and that would only get worse if option A was chosen. To give an example, over the Christmas period, the bridge was closed on three occasions due to high winds. Those in my constituency who live inside the M25, including myself, are totally cut off when such incidents take place. The traffic conditions are utterly miserable. On 23 December, it took me 105 minutes to travel two miles between Lakeside shopping centre and my house. Dartford crossing may be part of our strategic road infrastructure, but when things go wrong, it has a great impact on the local road network in Thurrock. To add insult to injury for the local users who crossed via the tunnels, the tolls continued to be levied during the disruption, after many commitments that at times of serious congestion they would be lifted.

The Minister will also recall the security incident that took place last September, when both the bridge and the tunnels at the Dartford crossing were closed. The disruption that that caused illustrated clearly how dependent the road network is on that one crossing, which makes the argument strongly that any new crossing should be not at that location but at a new one. In my view, the interests of the strategic road network would be best served if we considered creating a new outer ring road to complement the M25. That brings me to what is wrong with option C, which would link up on the north side with the M25 and the A13, which is already severely congested.

Another issue with option A that the Minister should reflect on arises from representations made to me by Vopak, which has a fuel terminal sited just east of the Dartford crossing. Vopak has advises me that if option A were to be built, it might require the closure of Vopak’s West Thurrock terminal. That would have serious implications for the resilience of the fuel supply to London and the south-east. That is the final nail in the coffin of option A—I hope.

I am aware that option C has generated considerable support from the local enterprise partnership, not least because it is also supported by Essex and Kent county councils. To be fair to Kent, it has developed its own vision of how the road network should look on the south side, but, unfortunately, that type of thinking has not really been done on the north side. As I have said, the result is that there would be greater burdens on the M25 and the Al3, so, for me option C is not the answer.

I remind the Minister that at the time of the 2009 study, there were two further options, D and E. I believe those options might lead to the creation of a proper new orbital road, which would add significantly to our road transport infrastructure, but it appears that they have been ruled out on the basis of cost. Dare I say to the Minister that that is a false economy? Sooner or later, we will have to build a new outer ring road, particularly if we are to realise the economic potential of the Thames Gateway. It is also worth bearing in mind the additional connectivity of the eastern region that such a road would create. It would add to the connectivity of Stansted airport, which would help us to deal with our aviation capacity challenges. In particular, option D—a crossing at Canvey—would allow connectivity with the Al30, which is a very under-utilised road.

I am very aware that what I am suggesting would slow down the timetable for the new crossing, but it is really important that we get the right solution to this problem and that we do not just apply a sticking plaster.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

My hon. Friend is making some powerful points, particularly about option C. To maximise the potential for future growth in south Essex, does she agree that looking again at options D and E would also allow us to make the most of Southend airport, which is now a growing hub and making great strides in providing additional airport capacity? Now, if someone wants to get to Southend, they have to come all the way to the M25 and then go out along the A13. A new outer ring road might start to address that problem.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that illustrates again the importance of looking at transport issues not just in terms of rail, roads, or airports, but in terms of the whole picture. Let me remind those people just down the river at city hall who talk about a Thames estuary airport that we already have one at Southend. It is very popular with my constituents because going there is almost as nice an experience as going to London City airport—you will know that, Mr Streeter, if you have ever used it. If you are flying short-haul, I recommend that you use Southend. My hon. Friend is entirely right about that.

I am really disappointed about this entire debate. I congratulate Kent county council on the work that it has done. It has taken the 2009 study and used it as a prompt to develop its vision of what it needs for its road network, so it is very disappointing that that type of thinking has not taken place on the north side of the river. Essex county council and Thurrock borough council should hang their heads in shame, because we are now on the back foot as we respond to these proposals. In 2009, the highways engineers of those two authorities should have sat down and come up with a sensible solution. Actually, there is evidence that Southend council is starting to do that—as my hon. Friend pointed out, the council is recognising the opportunities, with its growth strategy based around the airport. Nevertheless, all this shows that communities can be very badly let down by poor leadership of their local authorities. We are now having to respond to decisions that are being made without being at the table, and that is regrettable. However, never say die. Both my hon. Friend and I are loud in being champions for our communities, so we will try to shift the agenda ourselves. Having said that, it is rather difficult, because—as I have said—we are on the back foot.

I make a real pitch to the Minister please to look again at option D, a crossing at Canvey. Look at how that crossing would connect with the A130 and look at the impact that the other options would have on the M25 and A13. I must point out that the A13 is only dual carriageway after Tilbury docks, which again shows the weakness of Essex and Thurrock councils in responding to the road traffic infrastructure challenges facing them, to which they should respond more strongly if we are to maximise our economic competitiveness. I know that what I am suggesting will slow things down, but I implore the Minister to bring to this issue the long-term vision and thinking that the Department for Transport has brought to aviation and particularly to rail, including the development of High Speed 2. I say that because this project is an investment that will bring more bang for the Department’s buck.

In closing, I thank the Minister and the Department for responding positively to the requests that we made locally for investment in junction 30 of the M25, which will go a long way to help tackle the problems affecting the M25. I also thank him for the concessions that he has given the residents of Dartford and Thurrock for use of the Dartford crossing, which are very welcome and have gone down well. The Department has always engaged very openly with representations made to it, and I hope that he will reflect on the representations that have been made to him today in the same spirit.

I will put one last thought into the Minister’s head. The options before us are based on bridges and tunnels, but if we are to take a longer-term view, an interim solution may be needed. I simply point out that the Woolwich ferry carries a million vehicles a year. Perhaps we should look at the potential of ferries to boost crossing capacity on the Thames.

16:25

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

It is a great joy to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) on securing this debate on the options for the new lower Thames crossing. I acknowledge the attendance of my hon. Friends the Members for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) and for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe), who I know have a personal interest in the subject.

I have noted the points that have been made during the debate, which echo issues raised during the public consultation we held last year on options for the location of the new crossing. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock responded to that consultation, taking the opportunity to present formally the views and concerns of her constituents. The Secretary of State for Transport made an initial response to the consultation feedback with his announcement to the House on 12 December. He announced our decision to discard one of the options—option B—and to undertake further analysis to understand better the relative merits of the remaining options. I will therefore respond to this debate with reminders of the challenge facing us and the point the Government have reached in deciding where to locate a new lower Thames crossing.

Options D and E involved locations further east than the other options. Quite aside from the costs and the environmental issues associated with them, they were found by the 2009 study to take relatively little traffic—about 5% or less—away from the existing crossing. Of course, we all know that 50 years ago a tunnel was opened between Dartford and Grays. Today the Dartford-Thurrock crossing comprises two tunnels and one bridge, which carry about 140,000 vehicles daily across the Thames and provide a vital link in the M25 orbital route around London. It is worth reminding ourselves that the Dartford-Thurrock crossing, or the A282, is the only river crossing east of London and the only road link between Kent and Essex. It is also in the Thames Gateway, which is the area identified for major redevelopment and growth. Therefore, whether people are making long journeys from the channel to the rest of the UK or travelling across the area east of London, and whether they are travelling for business or leisure purposes, the crossing provides a critical link.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

I thank my hon. Friend for his remarks. He is getting to the nub of the issue for myself and my hon. Friends who are here today, namely that the crossing is the only link between Kent and Essex and the only link that connects up our ports. As the only crossing east of London, it is the only show in town when there is disruption, and that is why we need something else to build resilience into the system.

[Mr Goodwill]

Well, nobody has come to me with the argument that we do not need to do something to alleviate the congestion, and of course the whole point of the Government’s consultation and the work that we are continuing to do is to ensure that we make the right decision based on environmental, traffic, cost and of course air quality grounds. Air quality is a major issue now, as the vehicles we are using on our road networks are failing to deliver the clean exhaust emissions that had been promised in earlier testing. It is disappointing how the vehicles operate in practice compared with the predictions that were made about them. In fact, in terms of journey time reliability, the crossing is consistently one of the worst performing links in the strategic road network, and it is forecast that the problems will get worse in the future.

A succession of Governments, both at national and local level, commissioned studies on congestion and possible new river crossings. A study for the Department for Transport in 2009 identified short and medium-term measures to improve traffic flows. It concluded that a new crossing was needed in the long term, and shortlisted a number of potential locations: option A at the existing Dartford-Thurrock crossing; option B connecting with the A2, which we have since discarded; option C connecting the M2 with the A13 and the M25 between junctions 29 and 30; and the option C variant that would additionally widen the A229 between the M2 and the M20. The Government have been determined to solve the problem from the outset.

[Gareth Johnson]

I pay tribute to the work of the Department for Transport. Back in 2010 the previous Prime Minister vowed to sell off the Dartford crossing. There was no plan to address the congestion and pollution in the area or to do anything to help small businesses based in Thurrock and Dartford. There is still much to be done, and the crossing still remains a scar on the face of the local area—it is the nemesis of the Thames Gateway—but the Department should be congratulated on its progress thus far.

[Mr Goodwill]

The Government are well aware of the brake on economic development in my hon. Friend’s constituency and others in the area caused by the congestion at Dartford.

At the first spending review in 2010, we promised to introduce measures to tackle congestion at the crossing in the short to medium term. Indeed, autumn this year will see the introduction of free-flow charging on the Dartford-Thurrock crossing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock mentioned: motorists will no longer stop on the crossing to put money into a slot machine or to hand it to an attendant. We also committed to reviewing the options for a new crossing. Subsequently, the national infrastructure plan 2011, which identified a lower Thames crossing as one of the Government’s top 40 infrastructure projects, added a commitment to consult on those options. My Department has fulfilled both those commitments, and following the review of the options shortlisted by the 2009 study, the Department consulted the public from May to July 2013.

Knowing that our decision on the new crossing will affect many different interests, we engaged with the public in a variety of ways. In addition to online communications, both the Minister and officials met interested parties in a series of briefings, meetings and public information events. Numerous members of the public took advantage of opportunities to speak with officials to ask questions or raise concerns. In all, the Department recorded and analysed more than 5,700 responses to the consultation. The consultation feedback has confirmed that opinion is divided both on the need for a new crossing and where to locate it, and that there are serious issues at stake in reaching decisions on where to locate a new crossing and whether it should be a bridge or a tunnel.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving up his valuable time. Has his Department at any point considered the capacity of the M25 as a whole and whether that will need expansion at some point? We have already moved to four lanes in some areas, but if at some point in the next 50 years we need an outer ring road or outer link road, so that people are not all using the M25, regardless of the crossing, would it not be worth reconsidering options D or E, or a variant thereof, and putting in place the most expensive part of the infrastructure of an outer ring road at this point in the investment cycle, rather than waiting to look at it again at some point in the future?

[Mr Goodwill]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point. Indeed, the Department is currently considering what further improvements may be needed on the M25, A282 and A13 to ensure that, when we address the bottleneck at the crossing, we do not push the congestion north and south to other parts of the M25, which is already a very congested road.

A number of consultation responses requested that we reopen other options previously rejected. Some, like my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock, advocated options further east downstream, while others advocated options further west within London. However, given the Government’s objectives for the crossing, as set out in the consultation, 1 am not convinced there are any reasons that would justify reopening previously rejected options. I am sorry to disappoint her. Further information about the consultation feedback is set out in a consultation response summary published online by my Department alongside the Secretary of State’s announcement last December.

That brings us to the point we have reached in determining where to locate a new lower Thames crossing. As I said at the beginning, we have narrowed down the options and are obtaining further advice on points raised during the consultation in order to weigh up the relative merits of the remaining options. In pursuing further advice, I am listening to concerns expressed by respondents to the consultation. Specifically, I am seeking more information, first, on the scale of further improvements that may be required on the M25, A282 and A13. Secondly, I am seeking further information on potential implications for compliance with national and European air quality targets. Many hon. Members will have seen the coverage of our planned improvements to the A1 in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire, where we are having to take measures to reduce the speed of vehicles to reduce the pollution, particularly nitrogen oxides, that puts us in danger of breaching those targets. Thirdly, I am seeking more information on the scale of mitigation that may be needed to avoid impacts on protected habitats.

I make it clear that we have no plans to consult on additional options. The options we are still considering for a new lower Thames crossing are: option A, at the existing Dartford-Thurrock crossing; option C, connecting the M2 with the A13 and the M25 between junctions 29 and 30; and the option C variant that would additionally widen the A229 between the M2 and the M20.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The Minister has confirmed that he is still considering those options, but will he reassure me that there will be a close examination of the exact routes taken when the crossing hits the north bank? We have serious concerns about the impact on the M25 and the A13. Will there be further consultation with the community on those potential impacts?

[Mr Goodwill]

We are looking at the M25 as a whole as part of our route-based strategies, and will look at potential future routes for any outer orbital road, but we are not currently looking at that to tackle the urgent problem we have now.

The decision has far-reaching consequences and is not to be rushed. We will, however, make an announcement on our consideration of the options as soon as possible. My Department and the Highways Agency remain committed to accelerating delivery of infrastructure projects such as the lower Thames crossing. The final location decision need not delay the delivery of the crossing, as development of the remaining options continues.

A new lower Thames crossing represents a unique and challenging opportunity to address serious capacity issues on the strategic road network for the longer term, yet each option raises serious questions to which we are duly giving our full attention. I trust that hon. Friends and hon. Members will maintain their interest in the new lower Thames crossing as the Government progress and refine their proposal, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock and her colleagues will not be backwards in coming forwards to make their views known to me and my departmental colleagues.

Manufacturing in the UK

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Westminster Hall

16:38

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I thank the Minister for taking time out of what must be a busy diary to come to this debate. I am delighted to have secured this debate because I believe that manufacturing plays a very important part in the UK economy, and I wish to see manufacturing encouraged and assisted to grow and prosper in every region of the UK.

Today, the manufacturing industry employs some 2.6 million people in the UK, which is just 8% of all jobs in the country. In 2011, manufacturing accounted for 11% of national economic output, some £145 billion. Still, manufacturing comprises only 12% of the UK’s economy, compared with more than 23% in Germany. As we are only too aware, manufacturing in the UK has underperformed compared with the service sector for many years—one reason being that manufacturing output declined particularly sharply during the recession and, after a short period of growth, again fell in March 2013 compared with March 2012. In the past few months, however, some manufacturers have started to grow and to increase their market share once more. Such businesses have embraced invention, innovation, quality and design, which I will discuss further as I make progress.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and I congratulate him on securing this enormously important debate. It is important to celebrate the success of our leading-edge manufacturers, so will he join me in congratulating MINI, which has its plant in my constituency, on its sales going above 300,000 last year, which is up 6% on the year before? That helps to make my hon. Friend’s point that, with the right investment, the right product, the right work force and partnership between trade unions and management, we can do great things.

[Mr McKenzie]

I could not agree more with my right hon. Friend. That example underlines what I am about to discuss, which are quality, design and improving market share. MINI is a true example of that.

The success of such businesses highlights that, without a strong manufacturing base, there can be no rebalancing of the economy, which we are told is a priority for this Government. Great importance should be placed on invention, quality and design in manufacturing. The importance of development to creating a product cannot be under-stressed. Research and development are essential to build businesses and to dominate markets.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I congratulate him on getting this important debate and must declare an interest in the manufacturing sector. Does he agree that this or any future Government need to remove the bureaucracy that affects companies, in particular SMEs, so that they can concentrate on market research and exports?

[Mr McKenzie]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s comments. SMEs clearly need all the help they can get to close in on markets and to increase their market share.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr McKenzie]

I will make a little progress and will then give way.

I offer as evidence the innovation of a well-loved son of Greenock in my constituency. I dare say that hon. Members have heard of him. His name is James Watt. While his product has been consigned to history, his name lives on as a unit of power, which is testament to his innovative genius. It was the innovation of the steam engine that saw him and his business partner go on to dominate the market for such machinery for over a decade. As James Watt would have put it, research and development are vital to the pursuit of excellence. In technology-based sectors, research is a primary driver of innovation.

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

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. Successive Governments have supported manufacturing in the west midlands, in particular Coventry, through their support for Jaguar Land Rover. The London Taxi Company was recently saved through useful agreements between the company and Jaguar Land Rover, because the trade unions were prepared to negotiate to save the company. We should welcome that and give credit to successive Governments. My hon. Friend mentioned research and development, and the university of Warwick and Coventry university have done a lot in terms of design and research in manufacturing.

[Mr McKenzie]

I note and accept my hon. Friend’s points and will develop them later in my speech.

The town of Greenock was not only the manufacturing birthplace of the personal computer back in the early 1980s but the innovation centre for surface-mounted technology and multi-layered processors, which have led to the powerful hand-held IT devices many of us rely on today. Sadly, that manufacturing base has moved to continents that can offer cheaper labour costs to satisfy the need for ever-reducing product prices, with the short-term justification of the need to maintain a healthy profit margin.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in accepting so many interventions. As he says, innovation is the key to the future of a successful manufacturing industry. Does he agree that by incentivising R and D tax credits we are holding on to British manufacturers that might otherwise have gone overseas?

[Mr McKenzie]

I will go on to describe that as a positive step forward later in my speech.

The manufacturing base moved and was lost when investment and encouragement in research and development stopped, and that is not the first time we have seen this. Indeed, history could be said to be repeating itself. My constituency suffered greatly when shipbuilding manufacturing went into steep decline.

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and apologise for not informing him that I intended to intervene. I congratulate him on securing this important debate. It is vital that we achieve consensus on the role and importance of manufacturing in the UK, and I only wish that more Members from all parties were here to listen to what he has to say.

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of “Making Good”, the report of an inquiry chaired by the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and myself that forms part of the work of the all-party group on manufacturing, which is co-chaired by myself and the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman)?

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions are supposed to be brief, so please conclude.

[Chris White]

Thank you, Mr Streeter. The report makes a number of important recommendations, from developing a long-term strategic fiscal framework to forming closer relationships with trade associations. I recommend the report to the hon. Gentleman and to anyone else who is interested in this debate.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a half-hour debate. The more interventions that Mr McKenzie allows, the less time there will be for the Minister to make his response. I am sure that he will bear that in mind.

[Mr McKenzie]

Where once our shipbuilding industry pushed the boundaries of design and introduced propellers, double-skinned hulls, bulbous bows and countless other improvements, we stopped pushing the boundaries and proclaimed as a nation that anyone could build a ship. Instead, we should have been saying that not everyone can build the ships of tomorrow. We stopped asking, “How can we improve this product?” and stopped challenging the accepted conformity to regulation.

In other sectors, the rapid adoption of technologies is essential to innovation, and has transformed existing industries. The success of our economy depends on the extent to which businesses in all industries and sectors invest in adapting technologies and building capacity in order to get ahead. This is particularly true now. Since the industrial revolution, economic downturns have, on the whole, always been followed by surges of innovation. Manufacturing can have a prosperous future, but only if we prioritise research and development.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr McKenzie]

I will make some progress and then give way.

Innovation and the speed at which innovative ideas are put into action are the keys to success. However, the costs of cutting-edge research and the latest high-tech processes are greater than ever before and are often too large for one company to bear. No competitive economy should leave universities, research laboratories and the private sector’s innovation arms to their own devices. The UK’s competitors understand that a country’s research and innovation capability is a key part of the national infrastructure, yet the UK spends relatively less on pure research development compared with its peers, and a significant part of that 23% is in the pharmaceuticals industry.

[Rehman Chishti]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and congratulate him on securing this important debate, about which I know he is passionate. On research, does he agree that we need to get more students and pupils to study engineering, which would lead to an increase in manufacturing and construction? If so, does he welcome the Government’s initiative of creating university technical colleges around the country, one of which will be in Medway, to help to achieve that aim?

[Mr McKenzie]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will touch on education later in my speech.

The UK’s innovation performance is generally weak, although I concede that there are some exceptions. However, UK manufacturing companies overall spend less of their turnover on innovation than their European peers, while, oddly, the opposite is true for UK service companies. Other countries, notably the Nordic countries, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel, have significantly increased innovation as measured by US patenting. The UK has grown innovation output slowly and from a relatively low base.

[Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and of course congratulate him on securing this important debate. We both represent Scottish constituencies, and my hon. Friend will be aware that some 70% of Scotland’s exports are to England, Wales and Northern Ireland. As we strive to develop the manufacturing base in Scotland and seek to become more innovative, does he agree that it makes no sense whatever to turn our biggest customer into our biggest competitor, which is what would happen if the Scottish Nationalists got their way?

[Mr McKenzie]

I will not try the Chair’s patience by travelling down the route of an independence debate, but I and—I hope—Scotland could not agree more with my hon. Friend.

Current levels of UK innovation are insufficient to drive growth and to close the gap with key competitors. UK business enterprise research and development as a proportion of GDP has remained below that of other leading economies such as Japan, the US, Germany and France. Furthermore, there has been a slight downward trend in the intensity of business enterprise research and development in the UK, unlike in most other advanced economies. We need to combine public and private investment better to ensure that we do not fall behind.

Jason Lippitt, managing director of TMAT, which is an acoustic components manufacturer, argues that even with limited resources, smaller businesses must find a way to use research and development if they want to survive.

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

My hon. Friend is making a fine speech. Would he compare the experience in his constituency with that in mine? I find that many of my manufacturing employers are worried about, first, access to finance—they are increasingly moving towards crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, which the Government are about to regulate and might destroy —and, secondly, the lack of highly skilled technicians. Yes, graduates are good, but technicians are what most of my employers are desperately looking for.

[Mr McKenzie]

I will explore later business demand for graduates and highly educated people to bring into the manufacturing process.

Jason Lippitt said:

“Research and development is of paramount importance. We haven’t yet invented the products we will be making in five years. Research and development is the lifeblood of business.”

How true that there are products we have yet to discover. In five years’ time, we could be dominating markets, but only if we prioritise and plan for the future of manufacturing in the UK. If we look at the phones or tablets in front of us now, could we have imagined them five years ago, or even believed how essential to everyday life they would become? Devices that we are doing without now will make us wonder in five years’ time how on earth we managed without them. With them will come new careers that we also could not imagine.

That vision is shared by Andrew Johnson, senior economist at the manufacturers’ group EEF, who said:

“There are countries on other continents that Britain will never be able to match labour costs with, but they will never be the dominant part of the selling equation if we continue to develop innovative new products and develop new technology.”

How true. What is the position of the Minister and of the Government on forming a partnership with manufacturers to invest in research and development to create new products and to win existing markets and create new markets? Government policies can either make or break a nation’s manufacturing sector.

For example, Germany has an interventionist industrial strategy. Public-private collaboration enables innovation and technology advancement and promotes talent development. Global leaders in innovation, such as the US, Japan, Germany and Sweden, have well-connected systems that enable the public and private sectors to work together to maximise the economic benefits of manufacturing and innovation.

What of the UK? The UK system would seem not to be as well connected or orientated to the needs of business compared with that of, say, the US Government, which plays a major role in shaping innovation. The USA has a systematic and comprehensive approach to driving innovation and to supporting small businesses through its small business innovation research programme. The Dutch Government, too, have introduced a new policy to promote innovation in strategically important economic sectors.

In contrast, the lack of any coherent manufacturing and industrial strategy from the Government can only prove to be a disaster for the UK economy, as highlighted by Lord Heseltine’s report, “No stone unturned”, which received a positive response from industry and the manufacturing unions and was welcomed by the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, the lack of any real Government economic and industrial growth policy and their failure to take urgent action in developing a manufacturing policy are worrying.

On the whole, manufacturing continues to suffer throughout the UK. We need urgently to see the green shoots of recovery spring to life in all parts of the UK. Research and development tax credits are a move in the right direction, as I said, but what else might the Government do? Education and stimulation of the next generation of manufacturers could be a start, and I recognise the focus placed on that by some education providers throughout the country.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that the Scottish Government are hampering manufacturing growth in the UK by cutting severely the budgets of vocational colleges, in particular in the STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and mathematics?

[Mr McKenzie]

I agree fully with my hon. Friend, but I fear that this debate is not the one in which to comment on the failures or otherwise of the Scottish Government to stimulate manufacturing or business.

In the past, universities did basic science, while companies worked separately on applications for commercial use. Today, such boundaries have blurred, and successful research and development often involves co-operation throughout the innovation process. Design and, more importantly, quality in design will also give a manufacturer the edge in competitive markets, as we have heard. We have also witnessed improvement by Jaguar Land Rover in quality and design. That is how important design and recognised quality in design are in improving market share. Furthermore, I dare say that Mr Dyson is not resting on his laurels and will continue to show competitors a clean pair of heels through design improvements.

What of the process of manufacturing itself and the innovation there? I was always told by my previous employer to take inspiration from and look no further for success in process change than the high jumper Dick Fosbury, whose revolutionary approach to high jumping is now the accepted method, or process, by which all athletes approach the bar. Similarly, many of our innovative manufacturing processes, such as constant flow, “just in time” and fully integrated supply chains, are now accepted methods.

That brings me to the importance of manufacturing clusters and supply chains. Clusters such as IT in silicon valley or high-performance cars in southern Germany can be located in a particular region within a larger nation and sometimes even in a single town. Clusters affect competitiveness in three broad ways. They increase the level of productivity at which constituent firms can operate; they increase the capacity for innovation and productivity growth; and they stimulate and enable new business formation that further supports innovation and expands the cluster.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr McKenzie]

I thank the hon. Lady, but I will push on.

What are the Minister’s plans for and position on mounting a sustained programme of cluster development to create a more conducive environment for productivity, growth and innovation? That would of course bring employment opportunities throughout the United Kingdom. More of our large companies should be encouraged to expand the number of UK-based companies in their supply chains. Also, what is the Minister doing to encourage the establishment of manufacturing supply-chain associations throughout the UK?

Labour is committed to implementing a comprehensive industrial strategy to form the cornerstone of how the UK will build competitive businesses in the long term, and that has been welcomed by the CBI and others. We are an industrial nation, a nation that still has much to offer the world through invention and innovation, and a nation that has a future with manufacturing, but only if we plan for manufacturing in the future.

16:49

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

I join in welcoming you to the Chair this evening, Mr Streeter. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Inverclyde (Mr McKenzie) on securing this important debate and on the participation and audience that he has attracted from among both Opposition and Government Members.

A strong manufacturing sector remains crucial to the UK economy, now and in the future. It contributes disproportionately to our overall productivity growth. It drives innovation and business research and development; it accounts for 72% of all our business R and D. Manufacturing accounts for more than half of all our exports, and it provides skilled and well-paid jobs and employment opportunities for people of all educational attainment levels throughout our country, and particularly in the less affluent regions. The recent Foresight report, “The Future of Manufacturing”, pointed out that it is also one of the keys to resilience. It is one of only two sectors able to drive growth right across the economy through cross-sectoral supply chain linkages.

Of course, some manufacturers have not had an easy time during and after the recent financial crisis, but there has been some encouraging news of late. We know from the Office for National Statistics that manufacturing output rose by 0.6% in the three months to November, and industrial production rose by 0.3%. Two weeks ago, an executive survey by the Engineering Employers Federation and Aldermore told us that 2014 looks set to be better for the UK and for manufacturing than each of the past two years. Projected manufacturing expansion of 2.7% will put us top of the European Union growth league. The Deloitte chief financial officer survey, published on 6 January, reported that business optimism was at a three-and-a-half-year high. It is true that macro uncertainty and capital constraints, two of the biggest blocks to business activity, have begun to recede.

[Mr McKenzie]

We welcome the statistics that the Minister is rehearsing. Will he advise us of the spread of manufacturing across the length and breadth of the UK?

[Michael Fallon]

I do not have a figure on that immediately to hand, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman will allow me to write to him to fill in the picture across the regions. We have some statistical knowledge of that through the regional growth fund and our other funding instruments.

We have significant strengths in key manufacturing sectors, including automotive manufacturing, aerospace and pharmaceuticals. We need to make more of those competitive advantages and to sustain them. That is why we have a long-term plan in the shape of our industrial strategy, enabling Government and industry to work together to support the long-term direction that is needed to create more opportunities and jobs and to make this country more competitive. One of the most encouraging things about the industrial strategy has been the consensus that has built up around it, not simply among all parties in this House and in the all-party group on manufacturing, but between the CBI, the TUC, Lord Heseltine and others.

The strategy has five main strands: the sectors themselves, procurement, skills, technologies and access to finance. Through those strands, we are planning 10, 20 or even 30 years ahead. For example, with industry we are jointly funding the Aerospace Technology Institute to enable us to meet the challenges ahead and respond to the demand for up to 27,000 new civil aircraft between now and 2030.

[Mr McKenzie]

The Minister referred to the all-party group on manufacturing. What are his thoughts on that group’s call for a hotline to Government and a go-to man for manufacturing needs?

[Michael Fallon]

I was rather hoping that I was the go-to man and the contact figure within Government. Not only have I had the pleasure of addressing the group in this place, but the group has been to see me at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and although titles vary, if there is a Minister for Manufacturing, I suggest that it is probably me. I am certainly happy to add to that a specific hotline, or an official with whom the group can have contact.

I have already mentioned the Aerospace Technology Institute. Through the construction strategy, we are trying to make the UK the global leader in sustainable construction by 2025, in a market that will grow by 70%. As part of the automotive strategy, we are investing around £1 billion over 10 years in a new advanced propulsion centre to develop, commercialise and manufacture advanced propulsion technologies in the UK. That strategy, too, looks 20 or 30 years ahead.

Hon. Members have referred to the renaissance of our motor manufacturing industry. There is the success of Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan, and also of the MINI plant at Cowley, which I have visited.

[Mr Sheerman]

Very briefly on that point, the big companies such as Rolls-Royce and the companies that the Minister mentioned are wonderful, but does he agree that our real future lies in growing small and medium-sized enterprises into larger companies, as most people who will work in manufacturing will work in SMEs in the future?

[Michael Fallon]

I certainly accept that, but I do not draw a sharp distinction between large and small. Companies need each other, and if I am given the time, I will come on to talk a little about the supply chains. The hon. Gentleman’s point on employment is well made.

On procurement, we have recently published procurement pipelines worth nearly £80 billion, covering a range of sectors. On skills, we are responding to the engineering skills shortage identified by Members by enhancing young people’s engagement through initiatives such as See Inside Manufacturing and Tomorrow’s Engineers. We are also supporting the technologies of the future through the “eight great technologies” strategy, focusing on advanced materials, big data, satellites, robotics, synthetic biology and so on.

I was asked three very specific questions. The first was on supply chains. They are absolutely essential to creating strong, sustainable and balanced growth, but they have weakened or hollowed out in recent years. Our broad objectives there are, first of all, to work with industry to map current supplier capabilities and quantify the opportunity to source more UK content. In each sector—aerospace, automotive manufacturing, marine industry, nuclear and the like—where that mapping finds gaps in supply chain capabilities, the sector will encourage domestic suppliers to expand to fill them, with the support of the manufacturing advisory service.

We are also working to strengthen existing supply chains by encouraging some of the prime producers to adopt a more collaborative and long-term approach to their suppliers. That is part of the answer to the point raised by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). For example, the Rolls-Royce apprentice academy will enable the company to train additional apprentices to work not just for Rolls-Royce, but for other companies in the Rolls-Royce supply chain, as well as other manufacturing firms in the east midlands. We are helping domestic suppliers to build the strength and capabilities that they need to access new opportunities. We underpin that through the advanced manufacturing supply chain initiative, which helps with funding for capital investment for skills and innovation.

Secondly, the hon. Member for Inverclyde quite rightly drew attention to the continuing need for innovation. He was right that it was innovation that drove the first and subsequent industrial revolutions in this country, and when it comes to innovation, the Government have a legitimate and necessary role in ensuring that our future is prosperous. Despite financial pressures, my Department has sought to protect vital investment in future innovation. We have launched seven catapult innovation and technology centres, one of which is focused on high-value manufacturing.

The recent autumn statement pledged a further £600 million of support for the eight great technologies that I referred to, including advanced materials; the Government seek to support investment in innovative materials development and process technologies in manufacturing. For example, this year, the Technology Strategy Board will invest some £7 million in collaborative research and development to help British companies to improve and to enhance manufacturing process through innovation.

Thirdly and finally, the hon. Gentleman mentioned design, but before I come to that, perhaps I should touch on finance, to which several hon. Members referred. Of course it has been difficult for companies large and small in certain sectors, including manufacturing sectors, to access the finance that they need through mainstream lending. Through the business bank and other sources, we are determined to help enhance some of the alternative methods of financing. Again, the hon. Member for Huddersfield made the important point that we do not want to over-regulate the alternative funding streams as they emerge.

On design, which was the hon. Member for Inverclyde’s final point, he is absolutely right to say that it is driving buyers. Last week, it drove buyers to the London boat show to buy high-quality boats and yachts. He referred specifically to the quality of design, and we see time and again that the reason British brands are and will be sought out is the high quality of design.

In conclusion, I think it has been recognised throughout the debate that manufacturing is no longer in decline. I am not over-claiming for its renaissance, but it is no longer in decline. On the contrary, it is recovering hand over foot, and we have seen significant recovery, particularly in sectors such as aerospace, automotives and pharmaceuticals. The Government’s active encouragement is needed on skills, the supply chain and access to finance, and I assure all those who have spoken, including the hon. Member for Inverclyde, that the Government are absolutely committed to ensure that manufacturing continues to recover.

Question put and agreed to.

17:10

Sitting adjourned.

Written Statements

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Written Statements

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Investment Bank Special Administration Regulations 2011

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Written Statements

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

Today, HM Treasury is laying before Parliament the final part of Mr Peter Bloxham’s independent review of the Investment Bank Special Administration Regulations 2011. This report follows on from the interim report laid before Parliament on 23 April 2013.

The special administration regime came into effect in February 2011, following provisions made under the Banking Act 2009 to offer a modified insolvency procedure to investment firms. In accordance with section 236 of the Act, the Treasury were required to review the effect of the regulations within two years of the date that these powers came into force. Mr Peter Bloxham was appointed on 28 November 2012, and reported to the Treasury on 7 February to begin the review.

The Act required a review of the Investment Bank special administration regulations to consider if the regulations are achieving their specified objectives. These specified objectives are:

identifying, protecting, and facilitating the return of client assets;

protecting creditors’ rights;

ensuring certainty for investment banks, creditors, clients, liquidators and administrators;

minimising the disruption of business and markets; and

maximising the efficiency and effectiveness of the financial services industry in the United Kingdom.

Mr Bloxham’s terms of reference set out a two-stage process. The first stage, denoted by his interim report, asked him to address each of the objectives above in turn to determine whether they had been achieved. The second stage asked Peter Bloxham to consider further possible changes to the special administration regime that may improve the operation of the regime, and consider wider changes that may make the regime more robust. The final report being laid before Parliament today represents the completion of the second stage.

After completion of both stages of the terms of reference, Mr Bloxham concludes that the special administration regime stands as a useful provision under the Act and should therefore be kept, subject to change. Mr Bloxham makes extensive and considered recommendations for possible improvements to the regime, which are summarised within the final report.

I am personally very grateful to Mr Bloxham for all his work on this review over the last year, and to those who consulted with him.

The Treasury agrees with Mr Bloxham’s recommendation to retain the investment firm special administration regime. The Treasury also recognises that amendments can be made to the regime to allow it better to fulfil its specific objectives. The Treasury will now consider the rest of Mr Bloxham’s recommendations in full and take suitable steps to enhance the regime in due course.

Flooding and Severe Weather

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Written Statements

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

I would like to update the House on the latest position regarding the severe weather that has affected parts of the country from early December to date.

Since the east coast tidal surge on 5 December 2013, there has been further significant severe weather and flooding throughout Christmas and the new year, including in some areas that had already been affected by the events in December. In the light of these more recent events, we have expanded the remit of the flood recovery group to include all the severe weather events throughout December and January.

At the local level, local authorities and multi-agency partners have been meeting to oversee the recovery effort in their areas, and my Department has convened a number of recovery co-ordinating groups at a national level to engage with local authorities on their issues. Ministers and officials from across Whitehall will be meeting again this week to explore the options available for additional support to local areas. I have already activated a Bellwin scheme for local authorities in England to assist with costs incurred in responding to these events. As of 14 January 2014, my Department has received 27 notifications from local authorities that they intend to make a claim under Bellwin for the recent severe weather events in due course. No council has actually made a formal claim as such. Bellwin scheme compensates councils retrospectively for exceptional expenditure which is incurred. Equivalent funding for Welsh and Scottish local authorities is a matter for the devolved Administrations.

Of course, with events such as these there are always lessons to be learned. The Government will review their response to severe weather, including flooding, to identify what more we can do to mitigate and respond to such events in the future.

I would like to thank all of those emergency responders, local authorities and charitable organisations who have worked to protect and support flood affected communities throughout this time. I will continue to update the House on recovery progress.

Committee on Climate Change (Triennial Review)

Tuesday 14th January 2014 Written Statements

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

On 4 February 2013 as Minister for Energy and Climate Change I announced in Parliament through a written ministerial statement, Official Report, column 3SW, commencement of the triennial review of the Committee on Climate Change and its Adaptation Sub-Committee (the Committee). I am now pleased to announce the completion of the review.

The Committee was established under the 2008 Climate Change Act (32(1)) and is responsible for providing the Government with:



Advice on the level of the 2050 target (section 33);

Advice in connection with carbon budgets (section 34);

Advice on emissions from international aviation and shipping (section 35); and

Reports on progress—i.e. UK progress towards meeting its climate change targets—(section 36).

The review concludes that the functions performed by the Committee are still required and that it should be retained as an NDPB. The review also looked at the governance arrangements for the Committee in line with guidance on good corporate governance set out by the Cabinet Office. The report makes a number of recommendations in this respect which we expect will be implemented shortly.

The full report of the review of the Committee can be found on the DECC website and copies have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.