House of Commons

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

Thursday 23 January 2014

The House met at half-past Nine o’clock

Prayers

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to encourage more people to become engineers.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

12. What steps he is taking to encourage more people to become engineers.

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

14. What steps he is taking to encourage more people to become engineers.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The Government are working with employers, professional bodies and higher and further education institutions to implement the Perkins review of engineering skills and boost careers in engineering, particularly for women. In September we announced a £400 million boost for STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—teaching in universities.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

In a recent Science and Technology Committee report “Educating tomorrow’s engineers”, we recommended that

“learned societies, professional engineering institutions and trade bodies put an obligation on their members to systematically engage in promoting engineering and technology as a career through a structured programme of educational engagement.”

What progress, if any, has been made in making that come to fruition?

[Vince Cable]

There is a recognition of the seriousness of the shortage of engineers, and we are trying to address that in a variety of ways. On the particular programmes that my hon. Friend has described, we are working with the professional associations on work experience for students and industrial placements for teachers, because we have to change the perceptions of young people in schools.

[Mr Turner]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s initiatives to encourage more people into engineering. I founded the Isle of Wight Technology Group to help engineering and technology companies work together on training, recruitment and other issues. Will he say how many new engineers are being grown on the island, and will he come to the Isle of Wight to see for himself the good work that technology companies are doing?

[Vince Cable]

I cannot give my hon. Friend a precise number, but I know that a depth of engineering talent is arising from the island’s successful companies, both in the maritime sector and in aerospace. We want to build on that, and I would be absolutely delighted to meet him and his engineers on the Isle of Wight—I always enjoy a walk on Tennyson down.

[Oliver Colvile]

As my right hon. Friend knows, Devonport dockyard is the only naval dockyard in the country that refits and refurbishes our nuclear submarines. How have the Government helped—and how can we help—to make sure that we protect Britain’s nuclear engineering skills base and ensure that the work force are not lured away to Hinkley C, just up the peninsula?

[Vince Cable]

My hon. Friend is right to say that in an environment where there is an acute shortage of professional engineers and craftsmen, there is a tendency to poach skills. We see that happening in other sectors, like the motor car industry, oil and gas and so on. The answer is to produce more engineers, and he will be aware that in his constituency, or certainly in the city of Plymouth, we have the 600-place university technology college, which is growing with support from the Government. That is a very positive step forward, and I am sure he will be pleased with it.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that today’s good news from the automotive sector should encourage more people to become engineers, but that there is still a real issue to address to ensure that the automotive supply chain gets the engineers it needs and that young people are encouraged to go into it? Does that not involve doing more to ensure that training meets the needs of the supply chain and that small businesses in that sector get the investment they need, which requires a different approach from finance houses?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the key challenge now faced by the car industry, which is a great success story, is to progress the success of OEMs—original equipment manufacturers—which are expanding, down through their supply chains, which were hollowed out in earlier years. We are addressing that issue through the Automotive Council and the industry strategy. That is progressing well, but it does need a great deal of support for the training base and the training of engineers, which is what we are doing through our apprenticeship programme.

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

Young people across Plymouth are telling me that they feel as though they are little more than walking pots of money when it comes to careers advice and that schools are almost harassing them at times to keep them in school. That obviously militates against some of them going to do engineering apprenticeships, as my neighbour the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) has pointed out. What more can the Secretary of State do to set up an independent careers advice arrangement, so that these young people can get broader advice, not specific and closed advice from their schools?

[Vince Cable]

Yes indeed. The all-age careers service that we have put in place is now generally acknowledged to be giving successful advice through the age range. On schools, we recognise that there is an issue to address on the career paths of the non-academic—the more vocationally trained. We shall shortly be issuing guidance to schools on how to access independent advice.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The aerospace industry has shown marked improvement in the past few months. Just last week, Magellan Aerospace in Belfast announced a new job contract through the Prime Minister, and jobs and opportunities were created. Is it now time for higher education and for industry, particularly aerospace, to work together to make sure that those jobs are taken by young people from universities and colleges at this time?

[Vince Cable]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I was in Belfast recently and met a combination of Northern Ireland universities and industry. They are working together and realise that a recovery is taking place, despite the problems of the traditional industries around Belfast. Such work requires the kind of collaboration he has described.

[Sir Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State reassure me that he regards the excellent John Perkins review of engineering skills as the irreducible minimum necessary to address the urgent shortages in engineering skills in our country, and that his Department will remain open to ideas better to market engineering to young people, and to address the appalling gender stereotyping that is frustrating so many women’s ambitions to get into engineering?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, it is an exceptionally good report. The challenge is a massive one. There is an acute shortage of engineers, and the problem is particularly serious among women. I believe that something in the order of one in 10 professional engineers is a woman, and about one in 20 in advanced apprenticeships. We are actively seeking to address that with the professional institutions.

[Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

I too wish to ask the Secretary of State about the engineers of the future. The mismanaged free-for-all that gave private students unfettered access to the student loan system has now cost his Department so dear that big cuts are being discussed. On top of the huge cuts for educating 18-year-olds in college, we now hear rumours that the student opportunity fund that helps poorer future engineers will be completely axed. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to promise the House that he will not sacrifice social mobility to pay for the chaos in his Department’s budget?

[Vince Cable]

The right hon. Gentleman could perhaps do a little better than rely on rumours that have very little foundation. The substance of the matter is that in the autumn statement, we were committed to additional investment of £400 million in STEM teaching to provide modern facilities that were neglected during the years he was Financial Secretary to the Treasury.

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

2. What steps he is taking to ensure that apprenticeships respond to employers’ needs.

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

Our apprenticeship reforms are responding to the needs of employers by putting them in the driving seat. Trailblazers, led by employers and professional bodies, is leading the way in developing new standards in a wide range of sectors.

[Sheryll Murray]

Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the 300 in 100 campaign in Cornwall on its aim to get 300 new apprenticeships in 100 days? I participated in the campaign in St Mellion a few weeks ago along with many employers in my constituency.

[Matthew Hancock]

I would love to congratulate my hon. Friend, who has teamed up with other MPs across Cornwall, including my hon. Friends the Members for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) and for St Ives (Andrew George) and many others. Many Members of this House have been part of the 100 in 100 campaigns to get 100 apprentices in 100 days, and Cornwall is taking it just that bit further.

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

The number of apprentices in the 16-to-18 age group is dropping at the moment, with serious implication for our long-term skills base. Will the Minister look again at the proposals of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee to use public procurement contracts to ensure a certain level of recruitment for that age group in the way in which the previous Government did and local authorities are doing?

[Matthew Hancock]

Of course, Crossrail, which is the biggest public construction project in Europe, has in it exactly what the hon. Gentleman describes. He will have seen last week that we announced 2,000 new apprentices as part of High Speed 2. I entirely agree about the need to drive up the number of apprentices. We introduced a rule that every apprenticeship had to be a minimum of a year, and the number of apprenticeships for those aged between 16 to 19 lasting a year or more has gone up sharply. We must be careful to consider the reason for the numbers. Apprenticeships of under a year, in many cases without a job attached, are not really apprenticeships at all.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways of increasing the skills of apprenticeships is the creation of pre-apprenticeship schools, otherwise known as university technical colleges? Will he look at expanding the Government’s programme of 24 UTCs, one of which will be in Harlow, so that there is one in every town across the country?

[Matthew Hancock]

I absolutely support my hon. Friend in his enthusiasm for UTCs, not only the one in Harlow, for which, I know, he is a great campaigner, but those across the country.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

But why have Ministers failed to match their rhetoric with action? Something like what my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) suggests in his Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill would create thousands of new quality apprenticeship opportunities by requiring all major suppliers on large public projects to offer apprenticeships.

[Matthew Hancock]

As I said, we do that on some of the largest procurements. If we are talking about action, the fact that a record number of people are in apprenticeships is action that we should support, and the fact that 1.5 million people across the country have started apprenticeships since 2010 is also action we should all be proud of.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

3. What recent assessment he has made of the level of UK exports.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics, released on 9 January, show that UK exports totalled more than £494 billion in 2012, the highest level on record. Exports in the first 11 months of 2013 were in excess of £40 billion a month.

[Stuart Andrew]

I am grateful for that answer. It has been very encouraging to hear a number of businesses in my constituency, including the Hainsworth mill in Stanningley, reporting increased exports in recent months. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the performance of UK exports in some of the newer growth markets?

[Michael Fallon]

In spite of tough trading conditions, British exports of goods have increased under this Government—to China by 98%, India by 56%, Russia by 110% and Brazil by 45%.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The Minister will be aware of the importance of Airbus to UK exports. Is he as concerned as I am about the billions of pounds of subsidy to Boeing that has been announced by Washington state and sanctioned by the US Government?

[Michael Fallon]

These are issues I discuss with Airbus from time to time. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of action under the World Trade Organisation on two cases, one involving subsidies to Boeing and the other involving alleged subsidies to Airbus. I hope that some of those issues can be resolved in discussions on the transatlantic trade partnership.

[Mr Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

In Germany, the Mittelstand leads the way in exports. What steps are the Government taking to target our mid-sized businesses, particularly for emerging markets?

[Michael Fallon]

I recognise the enormous amount of work my hon. Friend did when he served in the Department before me. We have a target of assisting some 1,500 mid- size businesses by 2015. My noble Friend Lord Livingston yesterday announced a major enhancement of the programme that will see an expanded regional network of advisers in UK Trade & Investment, with some 28 advisers in place across all nine English regions, specifically targeted to drive up the number of mid-sized businesses that might be deciding to export for the first time or to increase their performance.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Given the recent comments from Nissan and other manufacturers about the importance of Britain’s staying in the EU, does the Minister agree that it is vital that Britain stay in the European Union and that the current uncertainty about Britain’s future membership that we see in some quarters is damaging to the future of British job prospects?

[Michael Fallon]

What is important for car manufacturers from overseas, such as Nissan, and for all foreign investors in Britain is that the single market is strengthened and available to them. One of the purposes of our reform programme in Europe is to ensure that the member states that do not wish to become enmeshed in the eurozone can still enjoy the full protection and opportunities of the single market.

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

May I warmly congratulate UK Trade & Investment on its work with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs promoting the food and drink sector and also the GREAT Britain campaign, which is, I think, genuinely great? Will my right hon. Friend set aside a small promotional budget to support our presence at international food fairs? We are outgunned by other countries, and a pavilion that showed off the best of British produce would bring dividends.

[Michael Fallon]

I shall certainly see what more we can do in that regard. I know that food and drink exports will be one of the themes of our commitment to Expo in Milan later this year and I shall be discussing our pavilion in Milan this evening and tomorrow.

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

I detect a real note of complacency in the Minister’s remarks. Let us not crack open the imported champagne just yet. The Secretary of State’s trade and investment White Paper of 2011 stated:

“The UK now needs to rebalance its economy…toward increased exports and investment.”

Yet the value of exports fell in the last quarter and net trade acted as a drag on GDP growth for much of 2013. Given that the trade gap remains persistently high and is growing, manufacturing as a share of our economy has fallen under this Government, and investment has continued to flatline, will the Minister now concede that an export-led recovery has not materialised?

[Michael Fallon]

I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman should talk down British exporting and British manufacturing at precisely the time we see a renaissance not only in our automotive industry but in our aerospace and other industries. Of course trading conditions are tough, not least with problems in the eurozone and elsewhere, but exports are up and we continue to help drive increased export performance through supporting small and medium-sized enterprises and mid-sized businesses.

[Gregg McClymont (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (Lab)]

4. What assessment he has made of the value for money achieved for the public purse through the recent sale of shares in Royal Mail.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I will answer this question together with Question 5.

[Mr Speaker]

Unfortunately not. It is perfectly reasonable for the Minister of State to seek to do so, but the attempted grouping falls because I fear that the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) is not present in the Chamber.

[Michael Fallon]

I was hoping there would be some interest in this question.

We believe that value for money should be assessed over the long term and should consider not merely the proceeds from the initial sale but the value of the taxpayer’s retained stake in Royal Mail and the reduced risk to the taxpayer and the six-day-a-week universal service of a stable company with access now to private capital.

[Gregg McClymont]

Given the botched and imprudent sale of the first tranche of Royal Mail shares by this Government at the expense of taxpayers, the public will be concerned about the emerging reports that the Government intend to sell off the remaining family silver before the next election. Will the Minister confirm whether those reports are accurate?

[Michael Fallon]

I can confirm, first, that the sale of Royal Mail was a success. Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I am delighted that the shares have risen in value, reflecting Royal Mail’s interim trading results and the long-overdue agreement with the union. Any decision on a sale of the remaining stake is still to be taken.

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

One of the hidden values for money is the fact that of the 150,000 eligible hard-working postmen and women who could take up their free allocation, only 368 said no. That means that as the company goes from strength to strength, those who directly work for Royal Mail will now financially benefit from that. Is not that a very good thing?

[Michael Fallon]

Yes. I would have thought that Labour Members would welcome this extension of employee share ownership. I am delighted that 99% of Royal Mail’s employees took up the offer and now have a stake in the success of that company as it moves forward.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Gregg McClymont) said, the fire sale of Royal Mail has cost the taxpayer in excess of £750 million, but it has not taken it long to enjoy its new privatised status. Reports in the media suggest that the board of Royal Mail is about to propose a significant pay increase for the chief executive to bring her in line with those in other FTSE 100 companies. The Business Secretary says that he will use the Government’s remaining stake as the largest stakeholder to veto the proposals. Does the Minister agree with the Secretary of State, his boss, or is this just froth?

[Michael Fallon]

If this were a fire sale, it would certainly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) has said, be one of the longest fire sales in history, given that Governments have been trying to sell Royal Mail for over 20 years. I think we should salute Moya Greene’s achievement in transforming a loss-making public corporation into one of Britain’s top 100 companies and congratulate her, as one of all too few female chief executives, on her award as business person of the year. We have yet to receive any proposal from the remuneration committee.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

When I last visited Stroud sorting office just before Christmas, I noticed that the much-needed modernisation programme was being started. Does the Minister agree that that has been made possible by the sale of shares and that it represents a Government success?

[Michael Fallon]

Yes. The purpose of the sale was to enable Royal Mail to have access to private capital so that it would not be dependent on the taxpayer for ensuring the successful delivery of the six-day-a-week universal service on which we and all our constituents rely.

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

6. What steps he is taking to support women in business.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jenny Willott)]

This Government want to see as many women as possible going into and progressing in business. We commissioned the Women’s Business Council to look at what barriers prevent women from reaching their potential and how to maximise their contribution to economic growth. We work closely with Lord Davies to increase the number of women on boards. Women now account for 20.4% of board members in FTSE 100 companies, up from 12.5% in February 2011.

[Seema Malhotra]

Last week I met a woman called Adele who has set up a child care business. A few years ago her bank refused to lend to her because, in her view, it just did not understand her business plan. Such was her belief in her business that she remortgaged her home and her business has now expanded to look after 300 children. Given the lower levels of finance being offered to British female entrepreneurs compared with their European counterparts, does the Minister support Labour’s proposal for regional banks, which could be better placed to understand and support local small and medium-sized enterprises?

[Jenny Willott]

The Government are doing quite a lot to ensure that women entrepreneurs have access to finance, and it sounds as though the hon. Lady’s constituent is a very good example of that. The Government Equalities Office offers child care grants to men and women, but primarily to women, who want to set up businesses in that particular area. The Government also support the Aspire fund, which aims to get equity into businesses run by women. The Start-Up Loans Company has offered 12,500 start-up loans and well over a third of them have gone to women to help them set up businesses that I hope will be as successful as that run by the hon. Lady’s constituent.

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

Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating those women in rural businesses, primarily farms? Women are the backbone of the farming community and have taken the opportunity to diversify locally. Examples include Shepherds Purse cheese makers, Get Ahead Hats and countless other business opportunities for women.

[Jenny Willott]

The hon. Lady highlights some extremely important businesses, and similar examples can be found across the whole of the UK and in a lot of our rural areas. Women are extremely good at identifying new opportunities to diversify businesses in more remote areas. They are often incredibly business savvy and can make a real success of it.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

17. Many women see their careers stall when they become pregnant. The Equality and Human Rights Commission is carrying out a welcome, if belated, inquiry into pregnancy discrimination, but it will be many months before we have the findings. In the meantime, is the Equality Advisory Support Service monitoring the number and nature of pregnancy and maternity-related queries so that the Minister can take early action on systemic patterns of discrimination?

[Jenny Willott]

As the hon. Lady undoubtedly knows, it is about 10 years since the last research was done to look properly at the rate of discrimination against women as a result of pregnancy. That 2005 report showed that about 30,000 women had lost their jobs as a result of pregnancy. As the hon. Lady has said, the Government have commissioned the EHRC to do a proper piece of research to identify what the situation is now, and we hope that will give us a good idea of what needs to be done. It is clear that discrimination against women on the basis of pregnancy is completely illegal, and it also makes terribly bad business sense for businesses across the country. This Government want to do something to ensure that we get rid of that type of discrimination.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Will the Minister join me in congratulating a constituent of mine, Jennifer Davies, who has set up a small company called Get Customised, which produces a range of customised products? She is going from strength to strength, not simply because of her determination and dedication, but because of the benefits she has received from a Government-backed start-up loan.

[Jenny Willott]

I am very glad to hear of the success of some of the start-up loans provided by this Government, and that the right hon. Gentleman has been able to identify an example in his constituency. Businesses across the country are going extremely well as a result of support from this Government. Another scheme that the Government are doing to help women in particular is the Get Mentoring scheme, into which we have put nearly £2 million. More than 40% of the mentors already trained are women. The scheme is designed to try to get more women to start up businesses and to be as successful as his constituent.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister set out how, in her quest to have more women on boards, she intends to ensure that we do not just see the same women on more boards or, indeed, more women on fewer boards?

[Jenny Willott]

I am sure that the hon. Lady will join me in rejoicing at the fact that the FTSE 100 now has only two companies with all-male boards. A couple of years ago, the figure was 24 boards, so there has been significant progress. To increase the number of women going on to boards, we are doing everything we can to improve the pipeline, which means that more women below board level can get the support, mentoring and advice that they need to make themselves ready for and to get into board positions. We are doing what we can to increase the number of women on boards and to increase the flow of women, so that we can bring new blood on to the boards of Britain’s businesses.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

7. Whether net lending to businesses by banks has risen in any of the last 24 months.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The answer is yes. The most recent data from the Bank of England show that net lending to small and medium-sized enterprises was positive in March, June and November, and the Bank of England’s most recent “Trends in Lending” and “Credit Conditions” reports show that confidence is beginning to return, helped by interventions such as the British business bank.

[Alex Cunningham]

According to the chamber of commerce, unemployment in the north-east has gone up by 1,000 in the past quarter and by 16,000 in the past year, of whom 13,000 are women. We agree that small and medium-sized businesses should be driving the economy up and unemployment down, but I am told that many in my region see confusing Government schemes and the banks as failing to give them the help and resources they need. What specific things will the Secretary of State do to help people in the north-east and let our people share in the so-called upturn?

[Vince Cable]

Anybody who looks at yesterday’s employment figures will realise that we are in a very positive trend on employment—far in excess of what was predicted. Specifically in relation to the north-east, the hon. Gentleman will know that the main mechanism the Government use to support jobs and companies is the regional growth fund, and I think that the north-east has received more regional growth fund support than almost any other part of the country.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that as businesses expand and get more sales, they generate more cash, so we would not necessarily expect net lending to go up?

[Vince Cable]

That is certainly a factor. Indeed, many individual companies—quite apart from the banks—have become highly risk-averse, but I do not doubt that the supply of credit is a serious problem. That is why we have made interventions, such as the British business bank, that are already making a significant difference.

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

19. May I tell the Secretary of State that in Yorkshire, too, small and medium-sized businesses in particular find it difficult to borrow money from conventional banks, which is why they increasingly look to crowdfunding for finance? Has he seen that Nicola Horlick has set up a new organisation to get into the crowdfunding market, because she too believes that conventional banks do not respond fast enough or efficiently enough?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right. Indeed, one of the more encouraging signs over the past year is that unconventional forms of lending, such as crowdfunding, are becoming increasingly common. The Government are supporting two of the main schemes that operate on a peer-to-peer lending basis. Lending is expanding very rapidly in that sector for the small and medium-sized companies that need it.

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

8. What support he is providing to the life sciences sector.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

We are supporting this key sector through our life sciences and agri-tech strategies, which back research and development and promote manufacturing. Since the Prime Minister launched our strategy two years ago, industry has announced investment of £2 billion, which is a vote of confidence in what we are doing.

[Julian Sturdy]

I welcome the Government’s commitment to encouraging the nation’s agri-tech industry and to recognising the importance of food security. The Minister and the Secretary of State will no doubt be aware of York and north Yorkshire’s huge potential to become a global leader in food manufacturing, agri-tech and biorenewables industries. As such, will the Minister clarify whether there are any plans to announce further catapult centres in this field?

[Mr Willetts]

There is a lot of interest in our new centres for agricultural innovation. We expect to announce the bidding process for the first one in the spring and we will consult on themes for the other centres. I congratulate my hon. Friend on reminding us of the case for York as a possible centre. Of course, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was brought up there, but we will try not to allow that to affect our decision.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

9. What steps he is taking to support small businesses.

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

We are passionate supporters of small businesses. More than 12,000 start-up loans have been approved; over the past year, UK Trade & Investment has helped more than 30,000 businesses to export; and, in April this year, a new employer allowance will cut £2,000 from the national insurance bill of every company in the country.

[Mark Pawsey]

Located at the crossroads of the UK motorway network, Rugby is a great place to do business. Our excellent small businesses can benefit from the initiatives that the Minister has outlined. What would he say to small businesses that want to grow as the economy expands, but are unable to find larger premises because many of the older buildings have been demolished and speculative development of the type they need has not taken place?

[Matthew Hancock]

Ensuring that the commercial property market works effectively is an important part of reforming the banking system and getting it back on its feet after the crisis. That market is one of the main routes through which we can open up more development and ensure that there is more capacity, so that when small businesses want to expand, they have the physical space in which to do so.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Small businesses on Worcester’s high street are looking forward to the employment allowance and to the generous rebate on business rates that was announced in the autumn statement. Will the Minister join me in urging Worcester’s Labour-led city council not to put up parking charges by 10%, which would be a kick in the teeth for the high street?

[Matthew Hancock]

Ensuring that any agency of Government or any council can live within its means is a crucial part of good governance in these difficult times. The approach that the Government have taken is to do that through making savings, difficult as it is. That is clearly working and I recommend it to the Labour-led council in Worcester.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

10. What assessment he has made of innovation in the UK manufacturing sector.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Manufacturing businesses are among the most innovative in the UK. In 2012, they spent £12 billion on research and development. We are investing in R and D alongside them. In particular, we are backing eight great technologies that are shaping the industries of the future.

[Laura Sandys]

The Government focus a lot on labour productivity, but what support are they giving to innovation in resource productivity, which accounts for two thirds of the costs in manufacturing?

[Mr Willetts]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the interesting and imaginative work she is doing on this subject with other hon. Friends. Through our support for R and D—notably but not solely through our catapult centres—we are rewarding innovation that ensures that businesses operate with lower overheads.

[Andrew Griffiths (Burton) (Con)]

11. What his policy is on the national minimum wage.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

15. What his policy is on the national minimum wage.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

Our aim is to maximise the wages of the low paid without damaging their employment prospects. We fully support the work of the independent Low Pay Commission in framing the pay rate recommendations for 2014. I have also asked it to consider the conditions that would be needed for faster, above inflation, increases in the national minimum wage.

[Andrew Griffiths]

I warmly welcome the Chancellor’s announcement of his support for raising the national minimum wage, which would be of huge benefit to the lowest paid in Burton and Uttoxeter, and across the country. Does the Secretary of State accept that it would also place extra costs on business, particularly on small business? Will he consider what could be done to reduce business taxes and regulatory burdens to help those businesses pay for an increase in the minimum wage?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, of course we are conscious of the extra cost that would fall on business. That is why the Low Pay Commission tries to make a balanced judgment between the impact on employment and the increase in earnings for workers. It must be left to make its judgments and its independence must be respected. On the tax implications, given that the Chancellor is now heavily involved in this proposal and supportive of it, I am sure that he will be helpful on that front as well.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Some 14 million people are on the minimum wage, most of whom work in retail, hospitality or cleaning. They earn just over £12,000 a year and are hard-working people. It is rightly the ambition of the coalition to make work pay more than benefit. Does my right hon. Friend imagine that anyone thinks that an above-inflation increase in the minimum wage would not pay for itself and should not be available to help those who are working hard?

[Vince Cable]

My right hon. Friend reflects the thinking that framed the advice I gave to the Low Pay Commission. Indeed, such thinking is not merely attractive in that it gives an incentive for people to work and improve their earnings, but it has positive implications for public finances.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

The Government would have us believe that they are now great supporters of the national minimum wage, yet we know that many sitting on the Government Benches today voted against it in 1997. If the national minimum wage is so important to the coalition, why have the Government allowed its value to fall by 5% since the election?

[Vince Cable]

The real value of the minimum wage started to fall under my predecessors in the wake of the financial crisis, and on each occasion, I, like my Labour predecessor, have followed the advice of the Low Pay Commission. The levels that have been set reflect that independent advice.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

13. What recent estimate he has made of the number of female entrepreneurs.

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

There are now a record 4.9 million businesses in the UK, and we estimate that 880,000 of them are led by women, which is 18% of the total. That demonstrates the opportunity for this country, should we manage to get that proportion up.

[Lyn Brown]

Evidence shows that companies with more women in positions of power outperform their rivals. Does the Minister agree that we cannot afford not to make progress in securing more women in positions of power? If so, what will he do about it if companies do not hear him asking them nicely?

[Matthew Hancock]

I, too, have seen the research showing that companies with women at the top tend to perform better than those that have only men. That balance in the boardroom is vital, and I am a strong supporter of the agenda the hon. Lady promotes. More than 4,000 start-up loans have gone to women, and we are bringing in a new partner directed precisely at people who are returning to work after having children. For the bigger picture, ensuring that we have more women on boards is a campaign we are working on across the Government.

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

The start-up loans scheme has been the most monumental success, but many female entrepreneurs ask me for more focused sectoral mentoring as part of that scheme. May I encourage the Minister to promote that as he develops the scheme further?

[Matthew Hancock]

A scheme exactly like the one my hon. Friend calls for is coming his way very soon.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

16. What recent estimate he has made of the number of apprentices being paid at a rate below the apprenticeship minimum wage.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jenny Willott)]

The Government have zero tolerance for employers who break the law, which is why we have introduced a range of enhanced enforcement measures to crack down on rogue employers. HMRC prioritises apprentice enforcement cases, and the Government have overseen one of the most successful expansions of apprenticeships with around 1.5 million apprenticeship starts in England since 2010.

[Julie Hilling]

Does the Minister agree it is worrying that the proportion of apprentices who are not being paid the apprentice minimum wage has increased to more than one in four? What action is she taking to clamp down on rising non-compliance of employers with the apprentice national minimum wage, which is increasing under her watch?

[Jenny Willott]

The hon. Lady is right and the Government are also concerned about the level of non-compliance. Since 1 July, HMRC has been prioritising complaints from apprentices about non-payment of the national minimum wage, and we are ensuring that every single case is investigated. We also started an awareness campaign in November that targets schools, colleges, jobcentres and so on, so that those starting apprenticeships are aware of what they are entitled to. From 1 October the skills Minister has been writing to all apprentices starting a Government-funded scheme to ensure that they know what they are entitled to and that businesses know what they must pay, so that we reduce non-compliance.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

18. What assessment he has made of the potential for reshoring and import substitution in the UK economy.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

There is great potential for business reshoring to Britain. We surveyed manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises and found that 11% have reshored some production to the UK in the past 12 months. The Automotive Council has identified £3 billion of additional sourcing opportunities. Businesses are bringing activities back to Britain as we become a more flexible and competitive economy.

[Richard Graham]

I believe there is more we can do to help reshoring, for example by making cash contributions to regional growth funds, cutting business rates locally for manufacturers bringing back jobs and adding reshoring to the UK Trade & Investment job description. Does the Minister agree that on import substitution there is a real opportunity to encourage supply chains to get local suppliers to compete for business? For example, Gloucestershire-based ADEY Professional Heating Solutions recently gave a £1.5 million contract to Future Advanced Manufacture, business that was previously being done in China.

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are, of course, an open economy and we export and welcome companies from abroad that invest here, but we can do more to support our supply chains so that more prime manufacturers in Britain also purchase from SMEs across the country. Indeed, I remember visiting the company to which he refers. It is an excellent example of what we are talking about.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

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

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

My Department is concerned with the promotion of growth, recovery and a rebalanced economy.

[Karen Lumley]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Bee Design Consultancy, which I visited last Friday in my constituency? In the past few years, it has gone from having two employees to 19, and it now exports its skills all over the world, recently to Lamborghini in Italy. I invite him to come to Redditch to visit the company next time he is in the west midlands.

[Vince Cable]

I would be delighted to come to my hon. Friend’s constituency and share that success. It is not just about mainstream car producers, but specialists, as she describes.

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State talked about the importance of strengthening the national minimum wage, which Labour established in office to secure a fairer deal for workers. With that in mind, does he agree that for an employer to mislead workers into purchasing personal accident insurance, the charges for which would take workers’ pay under the minimum and the purchase of which is not necessary given employers’ own insurance cover, would be completely indefensible and possibly unlawful?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, I agree that that would be indefensible and I think it is unlawful. I have been advised that this practice has happened. The relevant body, the employment agency standards inspectorate, is investigating individual cases and will take enforcement action. If it proves to be a widespread practice, there will clearly be a case for a broadly based inquiry.

[Mr Umunna]

I asked the question because it is precisely what employment agencies employing workers on, or close to, the minimum wage appear to have been doing. I have been passed evidence that suggests Blue Arrow, Staffline, Acorn, Taskmaster, Randstad and Meridian, employment agencies employing more than 100,000 workers, have been mis-selling personal accident insurance to workers which they arguably do not need and from which those agencies have been profiteering. There is even a company, Gee 7 Group, which specialises in putting together these dubious arrangements for agencies. Further to my questions on this topic since October last year, will the Secretary of State now commit to holding a full inquiry into this shabby practice?

[Vince Cable]

I will commit to ensuring that we have proper enforcement procedure. The hon. Gentleman has listed more companies today. We will investigate them and that may well merit a more broadly based inquiry. I will say that the information he has made available, which I think has already been publicised, depends on the information that has been obtained from a whistleblower in a company. The Government’s reforms will strengthen the rights of whistleblowers and put them and others in a stronger position. The hon. Gentleman has identified a legitimate case of abuse and I recognise that we have to deal with it.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

T2. Will the Minister outline the work the Government are doing to increase the number of engineers who will be needed to work in the energy sector in Suffolk and Norfolk, and to build on the excellent work being done by Lowestoft college?

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

Yes, I am a great supporter of Lowestoft college, which it was a pleasure to visit last year with my hon. Friend. It has a centre for the promotion of engineering and training in the offshore industry, which is so important to the town, and I will do everything I can to support it.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

T4. Blacklisting is a scourge of any civilised society. Will the Secretary of State guarantee to the House that the confidential documents currently being withheld by the Government relating to the Shrewsbury 24 dispute in 1973 do not include extensive details relating to individuals who have been blacklisted and the companies operating this very sharp practice?

[Vince Cable]

We have debated this issue in the House before—I think the hon. Gentleman spoke on it, and I responded—and we take it very seriously. I have had conversations with the Information Commissioner to ensure that the injustices of the past are properly dealt with, and as I have said to the hon. Gentleman and the Opposition spokesman, if Members have more concrete evidence that has not been properly investigated, they should bring it directly to me.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

T3. Suppliers to top-tier Government contractors still complain that payments made under the prompt payment code are not forthcoming. What more can the Government do to improve the situation and release billions of pounds back into the economy to support our long-term economic plan?

[Matthew Hancock]

The problems of people failing either to make prompt payments or to honour payment terms—two related, but slightly different points—need to be addressed. They are largely problems that negatively affect small companies, and we are currently consulting on how radical we need to be to get the balance right and address them.

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

T7. Will the Secretary of State confirm that business investment has flatlined over the last year and that this is one of the major causes of Britain’s worsening productivity problem? What are he and the Government going to do about it?

[Vince Cable]

As everybody acknowledges, business investment has been badly hit since the financial crisis, but with the economy rapidly recovering, I think we all expect—and the surveys suggest—that there will be a movement forward in terms of business investment, once capacity has been fully utilised.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

T5. The number of students coming from India has dropped by 25% since the new restrictions were introduced, which means we have fallen below the United States as destination of choice. What is my right hon. Friend doing to ensure that we attract the brightest and the best to our universities for the best education in the world?

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

There are of course no caps on the number of legitimate, properly qualified students who can come to study in Britain, and I take every opportunity to visit India, as does the Prime Minister, to communicate that message there. Properly qualified Indian students are welcome here.

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

T8. The Financial Times this morning quotes a Treasury spokesman as saying that an interest rate rise is “not something we are worried about” and a “sign of success”. Does the Secretary of State concur with that view?

[Vince Cable]

Fortunately, my many responsibilities do not include the setting of interest rates. I am happy to leave that to the Governor of the Bank of England, who has made an admirable impression.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

T6. Did the science Minister hear the excellent Radio 4 programme about Malvern’s cyber-security hub, and will he clear his diary to come and open the private sector-led national cyber-skills centre in Malvern?

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is a great advocate for the Malvern cyber-security hub, and I do indeed very much hope to visit it. I am sure it is well worth a visit.

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

T9. Is the Secretary of State aware that all the new oil and gas platform construction projects for this year have been either cancelled or postponed, which will have a devastating effect on employment in my constituency and others in the north-east, as well as those in Scotland? Will he, together with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, take immediate steps to address this matter?

[Vince Cable]

There is an enormous amount of investment in the North sea—about £13 billion last year, which was a big increase. One of my and my colleagues’ objectives, through the industrial strategy, is to ensure that as much of the supply chain as possible originates in the UK, and we are working with the industry on that. I frequently meet oil companies and fabricators to try to progress that.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I wholly support the Government’s move to increase the education leaving age to 18, but while the Department for Education budget is protected, the further education budget, which comes under the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and which will now be educating far more people up to 18 than schools, is not. This will put a huge strain on FE budgets. Will the responsible BIS Minister talk to the Secretary of State for Education to ask for assistance?

[Matthew Hancock]

I frequently talk to the Secretary of State for Education. The change to funding for 18 year olds was not one made lightly; dealing with the deficit requires difficult decisions. We published the impact assessment on the consequences, which show that disadvantaged students are not affected disproportionately. If we did not have a budget deficit of £100 billion, life would undoubtedly be easier.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Queen Victoria was on the throne when the Dunlop Motorsport factory first produced wooden wheels and then rubber tyres in Erdington. Now, 125 years of history and 300 highly skilled jobs are at risk. Jaguar Land Rover needs the land for its welcome expansion. Birmingham city council has identified an alternative site about three miles away. But the global board, based in Ohio, has yet to commit to Birmingham and Britain—with only nine months left before the lease runs out. In thanking the Secretary of State for the welcome steps he has already taken, may I ask whether he will convene a top-level meeting with Goodyear Dunlop, involving both him and me, so that we can get a decision made that a great piece of our manufacturing history remains part of a great manufacturing future in this country?

[Vince Cable]

I am well aware of this issue and its importance to British manufacturing, and, indeed, to Birmingham. I would be happy, as I am sure would the Minister of State, to meet the key people in order to make sure that we get the right decision.

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

Given the enthusiasm of both the public and employees for buying shares in Royal Mail, will the Secretary of State look at what other assets in the public sector could be successfully transferred to the private sector?

[Vince Cable]

Asset sales are an important part of Government economic policy. They have been very successful in raising cash and enabling the Government to invest more than would otherwise be the case. We approach this on a practical basis, aiming to get value for money for the taxpayer.

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

Will the Secretary of State update us on his latest decision on article 7 of the proposed EU consumer products safety regulations on origin marking, which, if agreed, would mean that quality ceramics made in Stoke-on-Trent would be labelled “Made in the UK”? Is it not time that we put an end to misleading consumer product marking?

[Vince Cable]

I thank the hon. Lady and her colleagues from the potteries who have been to see me about this specific issue. Apparently, there was a meeting of what I think is called COREPER on Monday, but no agreement was reached. There is a divided view on the role of mandatory regulation to deal with this problem. I take a close interest in this matter, and I will follow it up.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

For the 150,000 posties who are now shareholders in Royal Mail, will the Secretary of State or the Post Office Minister tell us what the average value of their individual shareholdings was at flotation and what their average value is now?

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

It has undoubtedly increased, and we should all welcome that, particularly the commitment of Royal Mail employees to the future success of the company. Perhaps I shall write to my hon. Friend with the exact information he requests.

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

The Minister confirmed just a few minutes ago that women who become pregnant can and do face discrimination at work. Why, then, are the Government going to charge those women £1,200 to go to an industrial tribunal?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jenny Willott)]

I am disappointed that this figure is being bandied around yet again. It does not cost women more than £1,000 to go to a tribunal. It costs only £250 to start a claim, and most cases are finalised well before a hearing. For those who end up going to a hearing, fee remission applies in many cases, and if the women win their case, costs are often awarded against their former employers. It does not cost what the hon. Gentleman suggests, it is scaremongering by Labour Members, and I am concerned that this will put women off taking cases against their employers when they have been unfairly discriminated against.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

On the Secretary of State’s undoubtedly enjoyable trip to meet my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley), will he break his journey in Wellingborough so that I can show him the success of local businesses? More importantly, this would not cost the taxpayer a penny because both Wellingborough council and East Northamptonshire council have free car parking, which encourages local business. If possible, I look forward to seeing him soon.

[Vince Cable]

I should be delighted to go to Wellingborough. Indeed, I should like to make the visit a political one as well, and, on behalf of my Department, to express my appreciation of someone who has given so much support to the coalition. [Laughter.]

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Last year, Sheffield Hallam university received £6.9 million as part of its share of the student opportunity fund. That not only helped it to recruit 30% of its undergraduate intake from low-income households—a commendable achievement—but to engage in critical retention work with the most disadvantaged learners. Yesterday, in the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, the Secretary of State agreed with me that the fund’s work would be damaged if its resources were cut. Can the Minister reassure the House that that will not happen?

[Mr Willetts]

We certainly understand the value of the work of the student opportunity fund. Indeed, I have visited Sheffield Hallam university and have seen the excellent work that it does.

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

As the Prime Minister’s recent excellent trip to China has shown, there are phenomenal opportunities for Britain to trade with the Chinese. May I urge the Department to continue to lobby for the simplification of visas for Chinese visitors and entrepreneurs?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, and we will do so. I understand that my colleague the Home Secretary has already introduced a revamped system which is much faster and which gives those who have secured British visas speedy access to the Schengen countries. We are very conscious of the importance of Chinese visitors, and we will do our best to make it clear that they are welcome.

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

Two able pupils at a Hackney secondary school in one of the most deprived parts of my constituency have been offered a place at a good university on condition that they secure two As and a B in their A-levels. The university is willing to negotiate on those grades, but will not discuss their C grades in GCSE maths: they will need B grades. If they were foreign students, they would be given coaching by the university. Will the Minister meet me, and some of the people in Hackney who are concerned about the matter, to discuss how we can tackle it and ensure that there is proper social mobility in this country?

[Mr Willetts]

I should be happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss the matter, but let me make two things clear. First, universities decide their own admissions criteria, which is right, and secondly, as we increase the number of students and remove artificial caps, it will be possible for universities to recruit all the students who are qualified to benefit from going to university.

Petition

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)

- Hansard - - Excerpts

I rise to present a Rural Fair Share petition on behalf of hundreds of my constituents and supported also by a further 590 online signatures gathered through my website. The East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire contain not only the finest people, but two very well-performing councils that are sadly underfunded. Before I read out the petition, I want to thank Hatty’s teashop in Epworth and Rob McArthur at Snaith chippy, who, while people were buying their pattie and chips, encouraged them to sign the petition.

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of Brigg and Goole constituency,

Declares that the Petitioners believe that the Local Government Finance Settlement is unfair to rural communities; notes that the Rural Penalty sees urban areas receive 50% more support per head than rural areas despite higher costs in rural service delivery; and opposes the planned freezing of this inequity in the 2013–14 settlement for six years until 2020.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to reduce the Rural Penalty in staged steps by at least 10% by 2020.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001316]

Business of the House

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

10:32

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House please give us the suddenly changed business for next week?

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

The business for next week will be as follows:

Monday 27 January—Consideration in Committee and remaining stages of the European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords], followed by a general debate on the law on dangerous driving. The subject of the general debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Tuesday 28 January—Second Reading of the Consumer Rights Bill.

Wednesday 29 January—Opposition Day (19th allotted day). There will be a debate on the UNHCR Syrian refugee programme, followed by a debate on teacher qualifications. Both debates will arise on an official Opposition motion, and will be followed by, if necessary, consideration of Lords amendments.

Thursday 30 January—Remaining stages of the Immigration Bill.

Friday 31 January—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the following week will include the following:

Monday 3 February—Second Reading of the Deregulation Bill.

Tuesday 4 February—Consideration of Lords amendments, followed by business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Wednesday 5 February—Opposition Day (20th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion; subject to be announced.

Thursday 6 February—A general debate on Scotland’s place in the UK, followed by a general debate on international wildlife crime. The subjects of both debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 7 February—The House will not be sitting.

I should also inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 30 January and 6 February will be as follows:

Thursday 30 January—A debate on the manifesto “The 1001 Critical Days” and early childhood development.

Thursday 6 February—A debate on the third report of the Communities and Local Government Committee, “Community Budgets”, and the Government’s response, followed by a debate on fire sprinkler week.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing yet another agenda that is jam-packed with thrilling Government business. I wonder what on earth he will do with all the endless spare time when the Backbench Business Committee has used up its allocation of 35 days.

I note that the elusive Immigration Bill has made a sudden and dramatic reappearance this morning. After nine weeks of radio silence, we now have an eleventh-hour change to Government business, which The Spectator seems to have managed to find out about before anyone else. I know the Leader of the House is an expert at pausing and rewriting Bills, so the House could be forgiven for thinking the Immigration Bill will look very different when it finally reappears in the Chamber next week. I hear that rebel amendments are already being tabled, and the Government’s highly unusual decision to table the Bill on a Thursday means a maximum of only four and a half hours will be available for that crucial debate. Will the Leader of the House confirm that that is the case, and tell us whether the amendments mean that they have done a behind-the-scenes deal with their rebels? Will he also guarantee that Labour’s important amendments and new clauses on private landlords, on the minimum wage and on abolition of appeals tribunals will have time to be heard in that shortened debate?

Last week the Leader of the House refused to rule out scheduling the Queen’s Speech during pre-election purdah, giving the impression that the Government are still considering ignoring conventions and politicising the Queen’s Speech. Is the Leader of the House finally willing to rule that out, or is there another reason for him being so coy? Some reports have suggested the state opening might be delayed until well into June because the coalition parties have no idea what their legislative programme will be for the final year of this Parliament. Could the Leader of the House tell us what is actually going on? Does he now regret the Government’s rush to legislate for a five-year Parliament, and why did the Government settle on five years as the appropriate length for a fixed term given that it is obvious that they have nothing to do in the final year but fight and fall out?

This feels increasingly like a zombie Government marking time to the next general election. We all know this coalition of convenience is heading rapidly towards an inevitable and messy divorce. After all if they are not fighting each other, they are fighting among themselves. Last week 95 Tory Back Benchers signed a letter demanding that the Prime Minister deliver an impossible veto on all EU legislation. This week they were denounced as “thick” by an unnamed Tory Minister, and The Times claimed to have uncovered a fifth column of Tory MPs who want the Prime Minister to lose the election. On top of that, the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), a Treasury Minister, complained that the Tory message was far too negative, confirming what we all know already: the nasty party is well and truly back.

By comparison, the Liberal Democrats have been having a quiet time. The Deputy Prime Minister has been denounced by one of his most eminent colleagues for acting like a mixture of Henry VIII, Thomas Cromwell and North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un rolled into one, and Liberal Democrat peers seem to think the party is in need of a truth and reconciliation process similar to that used in post-apartheid South Africa. It is clear that the Deputy Prime Minister has no authority over his own party, so can we have a debate on whether he is capable of helping to run the country?

Not only have this Government run out of ideas for future business, they are running out of ways of hiding their record, too. This week alone we have learned that they are sitting on a report on EU migration because it does not support the nasty caricatures demanded by Lynton Crosby to fit in with his nasty election campaign plans. We have had to correct their misleading figures on flood defence spending. The crime figures have lost their kite mark because they cannot be trusted. This morning the National Audit Office has said the NHS waiting list figures cannot be trusted either, and there is still no sign of the reports on food banks, on garden cities and the risk assessment for Help to Buy. This Government have been ticked off for fiddling the figures more times than the Chancellor has had to amend his plans to balance the books. They have sat on more reports than the Liberal Democrats have sat on fences, and they have flip-flopped so many times that I keep thinking summer has come early—although if I listen to UKIP’s flood warnings I now realise why summer will never come for me.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader for her response. I am sure that the sun shines in many places in this country, contrary to the views of at least one member of UKIP.

It is curious—the shadow Leader asked me last week and the week before to bring forward the remaining stages of the Immigration Bill; this week I have done it and she complains. We are just bringing forward Government business. I explained previously that we have been dealing with other Bills and now we are proceeding with the Immigration Bill. I am afraid she chose rather a bad day to make a speech written in advance saying that the Government lacked ideas for future business when today we are publishing the Consumer Rights Bill and the Deregulation Bill and I have announced that we will debate those two Bills and the Immigration Bill next week. I am afraid that her prior argument has been thoroughly disproved.

The hon. Lady asked about the Queen’s Speech—

[Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)]

What about the rebel amendments?

[Mr Lansley]

I thought I had answered the point on the Immigration Bill. We have a running commentary from the silent one. Sometimes on days when we have remaining stages we lose time as a consequence of urgent questions or statements, but we will endeavour to do whatever we can to avoid any additional statements beyond the business question next Thursday. Of course, there will be opportunity through the usual channels to discuss the timing of debates. As the Opposition will know, we always attempt to ensure that subjects can be debated properly.

I told the shadow Leader of the House last week that last year I announced the date of the Queen’s Speech on 7 March. We are still in January; we are before the point at which on recent precedent the date of the Queen’s Speech is announced. When I can, I will tell the House the date of the Queen’s Speech. All this speculation is literally nothing more than that.

The shadow Leader of the House will understand that I will not comment on her points about the Liberal Democrats. I do not know whether she was commending Thomas Cromwell. Having read “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies”, we have not reached the point yet at which Thomas Cromwell became the Lord Privy Seal and, speaking as the Lord Privy Seal, I am quite looking forward to that moment for a little potential guidance. It might give me some forewarning of the point at which I might be the subject of what we might term my own Henry VIII clause.

The shadow Leader of the House did not tell us anything much about the recent good news. She might have asked me for a debate on some of the forecasting issues. It is quite interesting. We have heard the IMF forecast that Britain will be the fastest-growing major European economy this year. The OECD forecasts likewise. Business confidence, according to a Lloyds TSB survey this month, has reached its strongest level since January 1994. British Chambers of Commerce referred to manufacturing confidence and intentions being at their highest for several years. This week we had the unemployment data: unemployment is down to 7.1%, down 0.8 points since the election. The employment level is above 30 million. It would have been interesting for the shadow Leader of the House at least to have suggested a debate about forecasting since it contrasts with the forecast of the Leader of the Opposition that our economic plan would lead to the disappearance of a million jobs. On the contrary, we can see that it has led to the success of our economic plan and of enterprise in this country.

The shadow Leader of the House asked about crime stats and NHS waiting data. The crime stats this morning show that crime levels are down to the lowest level for 32 years. The shadow Leader knows perfectly well that in addition to those crime statistics, the British crime survey shows a similar substantial reduction in crime, which shows that our police reforms are working and crime is falling. As for NHS waiting times, she will recall that at the time of the last election 18,458 people had waited over a year for their treatment. Now that number has come down to 218. We have dealt with the people who are waiting the longest. We have reduced by 35,000 the number waiting beyond 18 weeks, and the average time that people wait is still low and stable.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

The Secretary of State for Transport has not made a statement today on the outcome of the Supreme Court judgment relating to HS2, which many people will find surprising. An important aspect of that judgment pertains to the legislative supremacy of Parliament, which is being carefully examined at the moment. In that context, will the Leader of the House consider giving time to my own Bill, the United Kingdom Parliament (Sovereignty) Bill, in order to resolve those questions?

[Mr Lansley]

The Supreme Court handed down its judgment on those cases yesterday. It found unanimously in favour of the Government and rejected the challenges to HS2, both in relation to the strategic environmental assessment directive and on the question whether the Bill process breached the environmental impact assessment directive. So the Government won both those cases.

[Natascha Engel (North East Derbyshire) (Lab)]

Given that next week’s Back-Bench business has been moved at extremely short notice, will the Leader of the House work closely with the Members affected to ensure that their debates can take place as soon as possible, and perhaps look into giving them time on a day other than a Thursday as compensation?

[Mr Lansley]

I am very happy to discuss that matter further with the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, although I am sure she is aware that we have made a day available for Back-Bench business each week recently. We are also increasingly adopting the approach of trying to identify occasions on which there is scope for holding a Back-Bench-led debate on other days in the week, even though it is not the principal business on that day. That has been quite successful in recent weeks.

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

The Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee recently reported on rural communities and highlighted the importance of bus travel in those areas. May we have a debate at the earliest opportunity on any legislative changes that might be required to allow bus travellers—especially concessionary fare travellers—in rural areas to contribute to the cost of their bus service rather than losing it completely following the withdrawal of the bus subsidy?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot offer an immediate opportunity for a debate on that subject, although I recognise that it is an important one. We have recently had a more general debate on rural communities, in which my hon. Friend was involved. I will none the less raise the issue with my colleagues at the Department for Transport, in the hope that they will be able to discuss it further with her.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

Many people were shocked by the recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which showed that the majority of the people living in poverty in Britain were in working families—6.7 million people. Is it not time we had a debate on the need for real action on low pay, as Labour is proposing, given that, under this Government, employment no longer appears to be a route out of poverty?

[Mr Lansley]

I think we all agree that the principal route out of poverty is through work. The number of workless households has gone down to its lowest ever level, and the number of people in work is now above 30 million. People who are in work but low paid are increasingly seeing their tax burden coming down, because the personal tax allowance is now taking some 3 million people out of tax altogether.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

The Leader of the House will know of the importance of rural broadband. May we have a debate on that issue? Also, does he share my surprise that Labour-led Telford and Wrekin council has rejected the Government’s proposed co-funding for broadband in the area, given that Conservative-led Shropshire council has embraced it, helping local residents and businesses?

[Mr Lansley]

I completely concur with my hon. Friend on the importance of rural broadband, and I am surprised by what he says about the attitude of Telford and Wrekin council. In my own constituency and elsewhere in Cambridgeshire, the Connecting Cambridgeshire campaign has a contract and is aiming for 98% superfast broadband coverage by the end of 2015 or early 2016. Such coverage is tremendously important in rural areas, particularly for supporting the new enterprises that are setting up there.

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

Two weeks ago, I asked the Leader of the House to make a statement on when the Government would publish their report on food banks. Given the fact that it has still not been published, may we have an urgent statement to tell us when the report will be made public?

[Mr Lansley]

I confess that I do not have a publication date, but I will, of course, speak to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, and if he can update the House, I am sure he will.

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

May we have a debate on the housing targets used by local authorities? The housing targets used by Leeds city council are being challenged, including by Dr Rachael Unsworth at Leeds university and Wharfedale and Airedale Review Development. May we debate whether the targets are accurate before we see huge swathes of north Leeds and Wharfedale being built on?

[Mr Lansley]

What my hon. Friend says is interesting. I will ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to look at it. One of the essential things for local authorities to do, as part of the national planning policy framework, is to ensure that they meet five years’ demand for housing in their areas. So what that demand is and what the targets ought to be are important questions, but of course, they can be challenged on appeal to the inspectorate if someone thinks that a local plan is inaccurate.

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

Just before the Offender Rehabilitation Bill was considered on Report, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), met the Liberal Democrat group and warned them not to vote for any piloting of the procedures because they were too far advanced. At the end of last week, he slipped out a written statement to say that the timeline has been set back two months. May we now have a debate in Government time on the Government’s lack of candour and complete incompetence with regard to the Bill?

[Mr Lansley]

The House has just debated the Offender Rehabilitation Bill and these issues were discussed. My recollection is that, in particular, the issue was not a lack of time, but that the related piloting—for example, in Peterborough—has illustrated the benefits of the approach taken by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend find time in the programme for a discussion on provision for young people with dyslexia? The Government have gone a long way, and we are publishing a new code of practice, but the issue is how things are working in schools and getting early intervention to help those with dyslexia to be able to perform adequately in schools.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that these are important issues. Indeed, there are often opportunities—I hope that they will continue—through the Backbench Business Committee to discuss them. Of course, in the wider sense for children with special educational needs, the Children and Families Bill contains important new provisions. It is in the House of Lords now, so to that extent, we have debated it here. Some amendments might come from the House of Lords in due course that will afford an opportunity to debate some of the issues that my hon. Friend raises, and I hope that he has that chance.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

May we have an urgent debate on the complete failure of Capita in relation to personal independence payments? Many people have been waiting six or seven months for their assessments to get from Capita to the Department for Work and Pensions. The DWP helpline for MPs is in despair. The Capita website, contact e-mail and telephone numbers do not respond. What is happening to desperately ill people is awful. The Secretary of State has said that his policies are about changing lives, not just saving money. They are changing lives, but not for the better, and he is certainly saving a lot of money from desperately ill people.

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot offer an immediate debate on that, and the hon. Lady will know that questions to the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions are—

[Mrs Moon]

I asked a question during DWP questions.

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, exactly. Therefore, the next questions are some way off. To be as helpful as I can to the hon. Lady, I will ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to address her specifically on the points that she raises.

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

Yesterday, we had a debate in Westminster Hall about the situation in Somerset. People are now looking at setting up gold command, which is one stage below a major incident. Surely, the time has come to have a debate in the House on the Environment Agency and flooding throughout the United Kingdom. We cannot go on, year on year, having a situation where emergency services are stretched and local councils are getting more stretched, yet we cannot get them to dredge rivers and live up to the job that they should be doing.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend rightly raised this issue last week, and I was glad that the business gave him the opportunity to raise it in Westminster Hall, as he says. I cannot offer him an immediate prospect of a debate, but I know that we will discuss this matter with the Backbench Business Committee, because, as I said last week, Members from across the House will want to debate it in the light of the exceptional weather conditions. I should say that in many cases they will want to do so not least to express their appreciation of the success of the Environment Agency and emergency services, as well as to identify where more needs to be done.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

May we have a debate in Government time on the operation of, and criteria for inclusion in, the rural fuel rebate scheme, because, amazingly, despite Northern Ireland having the highest petrol and diesel prices in the UK—prices are the highest in Europe in some parts of the Province—no part of Northern Ireland qualifies under the scheme? It would be worth exploring that, if the Leader of the House could see his way to having a debate on the matter.

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot immediately promise a debate, but the right hon. Gentleman raises an interesting issue. I know that my Treasury colleagues will always be willing to discuss it with him, and I will encourage them to respond to him on that subject.

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

As the number of people in employment rises and the number of claimants falls—such progress has been made in my constituency that it now has just 95 young people claiming jobseeker’s allowance—may we have a debate about how we further target the benefits system to support people in getting back into work?

[Mr Lansley]

I would welcome such a debate, and my hon. Friend is right to seek one. It would give us an opportunity to examine how the Work programme has, according to industry figures, brought 444,000 people into work; to look at how the youth claimant count has been reduced by 114,000 since the election; and to celebrate the one and two-thirds million more private sector jobs created in this country since the last election.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

We warned what the consequences would be of cutting more than 10,000 front-line police officers. Today’s figures show that theft was up in 24 of the 43 force areas, shoplifting was up in 28 and sexual crime was up in 40. Given those disturbing trends, taken together with today’s revelations that last year half a million crimes were screened out and not even investigated, will the Leader of the House agree to a debate on the growing consequences of the Government’s actions, as the thin blue line is stretched ever thinner?

[Mr Lansley]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is just in denial, as his party so often is on so many subjects. Both the crime statistics and the crime survey show that crime has fallen by more than 10% under this Government, which makes us the safest we have been for decades. It shows that the Government’s reforms are working and that police forces are rising to the challenge of delivering savings while reducing crime.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Empire, Golcar, Hand Drawn Monkey, Magic Rock, Milltown, Nook, Riverhead and Summer Wine are all microbreweries in my constituency. They employ dozens of people, and export to Australia and eastern Europe. We had a debate earlier this week on pubcos, but may we please have a debate on the role that microbreweries are playing in our booming food and drink exports?

[Mr Lansley]

It would be a joy to have a further debate; it seems that the Opposition day debate on pubcos the other day, for which we are grateful, has not assuaged the thirst for such discussion in this House. My hon. Friend makes a good point, because microbreweries are doing a fantastic thing in bringing innovation into an industry and really responding to customer preference. It is now such a joy for beer drinkers as compared with the time when I was but a lad; I recall taking Watneys Red Barrel to a party, but that was a day in the past.

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I very much welcome today’s short Backbench Business Committee debate on Holocaust memorial day. However, given continuing holocaust denial and increasing anti-Semitic discourse, including the Anelka incident, may we have a debate on these issues in Government time?

[Mr Lansley]

The House is grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for scheduling a debate this afternoon. As I said last week, the recent European report highlighting the number of anti-Semitic incidents across Europe does give rise for concern, and it is something that we should continue to debate. However, although one incident is one too many, we can take some comfort from the fact that there is a relatively low number of such incidents in this country. That means that communities here can feel relatively confident compared with those in other European countries.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I have been contacted by several constituents who were the victims of theft, so will a Minister come to the Dispatch Box to make a statement on whether the Government will consider the introduction of digital monitoring of blue badges as part of a drive to tackle misuse and assist genuine users?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. He will recall that the Disabled Persons' Parking Badges Act 2013, which was piloted through this House by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Simon Kirby), secured its Royal Assent about this time last year. The reforms to the blue badge scheme are now delivering some comprehensive changes, which will include a national shared database of all blue badge holders. That will enable enforcement officers anywhere in the country to use handheld devices to check badge details in real time against that nationwide database. I hope that will help in the issues my hon. Friend raises.

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

Now that both coalition parties are in favour of new nuclear and offshore wind, may we have a debate in Government time on transmission and the national grid, so that the new connections can be looked at fairly and objectively when we are considering subsea, underground and overground proposals? That is a serious issue to which the Government have not given much time or attention.

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, it is an important matter. It should be noted that this Government are now making progress on the new nuclear build. About 10 years ago, the Trade and Industry Committee, of which I was a member, asked the previous Government for such a debate, but it did not happen. They kept saying then that they were keeping the door open, but skills, opportunity and investment were leaving the country. Now they are coming back. It is an important matter, especially at Wylfa in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I will, if I may, discuss it with my colleagues. Of course the grid and planning are partly an issue for the Welsh Assembly Government as well. None the less, I will raise it because I know how important it is to his constituents.

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

May we have a debate on the state of Britain’s roads because they appear to be getting worse, especially in Lancashire and the Ribble Valley? Annually, local authorities pay £30 million in compensation to motorists, so motorists themselves end up paying £2.8 billion in repairs because of the number of potholes and craters in the roads. A debate would enable us to focus on how much money is spent on the roads and to ensure that the money is spent equally in counties such as Lancashire, including in rural areas such as the Ribble Valley.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend knows that this Government have made available additional resources to assist highways authorities to deal with potholes, and I hope that that is making a difference. None the less, it is a constant effort, not least because of some of the exceptional weather conditions we have experienced this winter and the previous one.

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House may recall that during the recent industrial dispute at the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland, the Prime Minister, from the Dispatch Box, described as a rogue the then Unite union convenor, Stevie Dean. Since then, and following a police investigation, Mr Dean has been cleared of all the allegations levelled against him. Will the Leader of the House arrange for the Prime Minister to come back to the Dispatch Box and apologise to Mr Dean and his family?

[Mr Lansley]

Perhaps in the first instance the Labour party would like to publish its own internal report relating to the events in Falkirk and then we will see where we go from there.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Tomorrow, stakeholders from across the south-west are meeting to discuss once again the future of the A303. Will my right hon. Friend allow time for a statement to confirm that the work will expedite a solution as quickly as possible, take advantage of the studies that have been undertaken over the past 20 years and ensure that Stonehenge and the stretch of the A303 around it will not be forgotten or decoupled from the work?

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this matter with me again. As he says, a meeting is due to take place tomorrow with local authorities and local enterprise partnerships to consider the issue. I can tell him—I will ask my colleagues to follow up on this with him and other interested Members—that we recognise the need to find solutions to the issues on the A303/A30/A358 corridor. We commit to identifying and funding solutions in the future and to ensure that we build on previous and recent work, including that done by Somerset county council and others, rather than starting from scratch.

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

Earlier this year, my local former Scottish National party MSP, Mr Bill Walker, was convicted of 23 counts of domestic abuse and one charge of breaking a frying pan over his stepdaughter’s head. He was sentenced to the maximum sentence available, which was only one year, so the Scottish Parliament did not have the power automatically to expel him. Will the Leader of the House ask the Cabinet Office to consider the outdated rule that someone must have a jail sentence of one year and one day before they can be disqualified from this place or any of the devolved Assemblies and Parliaments?

[Mr Lansley]

Of course, these are matters for me. As regards this House, I would want to proceed on the basis of an understanding of consensus and I will be glad to discuss the question with colleagues, the shadow Leader of the House and others. In this House, we have already seen—I hope that this would be reflected in other Parliaments—that when Members are convicted of serious offences, even if they have not necessarily been given a sentence of more than 12 months, they have either resigned from the House or action has been taken against them on a recommendation from the Standards Committee.

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

Wolverhampton central youth theatre is one of many organisations that will have its funding cut if Wolverhampton council moves £1.6 million from the voluntary sector budget. Given that last night Wolverhampton council deferred the decision, may we use this pause to have a debate on the importance of voluntary sector organisations and wider civil society?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend raises an important point for his constituents, but there is a general point, too. In many cases, local authorities are making effective decisions about how they can reduce costs, increase efficiencies and maintain services for their public, but they should never take the easy route out. They should always look for the opportunity to reduce their costs while maintaining their ability to support the services and expenditure that are of most importance to their constituents.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

There was a deeply disturbing report on the “Today” programme this morning concerning Oakwood prison in Staffordshire, the largest prison in the UK. In my constituency of Wrexham, an even bigger prison is planned by the Government but many major decisions concerning it have not yet been made. May we please have a debate so that we can consider prison capacity and the effectiveness of Oakwood prison and so that we know what the Government have planned for my constituency?

[Mr Lansley]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman supports the decision made by this Government to establish a large new prison in Wrexham. On the specific question of HMP Oakwood, he knows that the incident there was resolved successfully in the early hours of 6 January. I cannot comment further on that particular issue, but he will know from what my colleagues have said that large category C prisons elsewhere in the prison estate often operate very successfully. The number and type of incidents Oakwood has experienced over the past six months are not notably different from those experienced by other such prisons.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Tomorrow, as the Leader of the House travels to Corby to support the excellent Conservative candidate, Tom Pursglove, he will have to drive through my constituency. As he does, will he reflect on the fact that when Labour left power 2,757 people were unemployed and now fewer than 2,000 are unemployed? Would it be possible to ensure that there is not a debate on the economy next week so that the Opposition are not embarrassed?

[Mr Lansley]

I often drive through my hon. Friend’s constituency, and I look forward to doing so to visit Corby in east Northamptonshire tomorrow evening. Of course, the Opposition had an Opposition day available to them next week but chose not to debate the recent economic good news, so, as he correctly observes, they are not willing or keen to be embarrassed.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

May we have a statement on what plans the Government have to support the north-east economy, in particular? Yesterday we saw that the north-east still has the highest level of unemployment in the country, with too many young people out of work and rising levels of long-term unemployment. I wish Portsmouth well, but who in Government is going to get to grips with the challenge that we face in the north-east?

[Hon. Members]

They do not care.

[Mr Lansley]

I hear the sedentary comments from the Opposition. Let me make it absolutely clear that we do care. That is why we are pursuing a long-term economic plan which, among its many benefits, is getting many more people into work, with 1.68 million private sector jobs. We were left with an enormous deficit and we have had to deal with that. We said at the outset that that would necessitate a reduction in public sector jobs. Labour Members and the Leader of the Opposition said, “It will never happen. Jobs will be lost in the public sector but the private sector could not possibly create equivalent numbers of jobs.” There are now four private sector jobs for every public sector job lost. The hon. Lady and other north-east MPs should be on their feet extolling the successes in the north-east. This week, Nissan, with a new Qashqai model coming off its production lines, is a fantastic example of the potential in this country and in the north-east to produce world-beating manufacturing.

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

Many local residents and members of Medway council have raised concerns about the proposed closure of A block, based at Medway hospital and run by Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, which provides in-patient mental health care facilities. I know that the Government have done a lot on the provision of mental health care facilities across the country, but may I ask the Leader of the House for an urgent debate on such provision across the country, looking at levels of in-patient and community-based treatment?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend asks his question at a good moment, not least because earlier this week my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister published the Government’s update of the mental health strategy, with some important further commitments on the availability of mental health services, especially the ability for services to become more seamless at the point at which young people are treated as adults, which makes a big difference. My hon. Friend raises an important local point. When the Secretary of State for Health decided on 20 November last year to support the Independent Reconfiguration Panel’s recommendation, he made it clear that the matter should be allowed to proceed as soon as possible. Knowing my hon. Friend’s local hospitals, I think that, for example, there is a very good in-patient unit at Darent Valley. I hope his constituents will appreciate that there continue to be high-quality in-patient services locally.

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

Today The Daily Telegraph reports the plight of my former constituent, Mrs Afsana Lachaux, who is stranded in Dubai having being abused by her former husband and who is now threatened with jail by the Dubai police and authorities. I have bid for an Adjournment debate on this matter, and I am seeking a meeting with the relevant Minister at the Foreign Office. In the interim, may we have a statement from the Foreign Office on the outcome of the representations that have been made by our consular officials in Dubai to Foreign Office staff?

[Mr Lansley]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman might have some success in his quest for a debate, because this is clearly a distressing matter for his constituents and their friends and families. I will of course talk to my ministerial colleague at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who will be in contact with the hon. Gentleman. I hope, too, that if there are wider issues the Minister will take whatever opportunity he can to update the House.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Farmers in Staffordshire and other parts of the country who have seen their pedigree herds slaughtered as a result of bovine TB face a double loss: the loss of their herds, into which they put so much effort, and a loss of compensation, because they are compensated at an average level. May we have a debate on fair compensation for farmers who lose their cattle as a result of this terrible disease?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will know that we are doing everything we can to try to reduce the high incidence of bovine TB. This is a very important issue and whenever we debate the mechanisms of the badger cull we should never forget that it meets a very important purpose. I understand my hon. Friend’s point about compensation. I will raise it with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and ask him to respond to my hon. Friend.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

For some time I have been working with the pensions Minister—the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb)—and the Yorkshire Post to bring about a satisfactory conclusion to the Carrington Wire pension fund saga, which affects hundreds of pensioners in Yorkshire, including in my constituency. The case is important because it represents the way in which the Government protect UK pension holders. I believe it is our responsibility to ensure that our laws and regulations properly protect the public, but the longer this particular matter takes to be resolved, the less likely that appears to be the case. Will the Leader of the House ensure that we get the opportunity to debate the matter?

[Mr Lansley]

I will, if I may, talk to my hon. Friend the pensions Minister so that he can update me. I cannot promise a debate, but I will, of course, make sure that if there is anything we can do to assist in the matter that the hon. Gentleman has rightly raised, we will try to do so.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Could we have a long debate in Government time on jobs and growth? It would allow hon. Members on both sides of the House to highlight some of the remarkable statistics in the current numbers, such as the fact that workless households are at a record low, that the number of children in absolute poverty is at a record low, that the number of professional science and technical jobs are growing very fast, that long-term unemployment is coming down and, above all, that, unlike the previous Government, this Government are creating British jobs for British workers.

[Mr Lansley]

I thought that was an excellent application for a debate and I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for it. Without repeating what she has rightly said is the basis for such a debate, it would, if we could find time for it, afford an opportunity to take particular note of her last point that, under the previous Government, in the five years up to the last general election the number of British people in a job dropped by 413,000, while the number of foreign workers in employment in this country went up by 736,000. By contrast, in the three years after the election, the number of British people in a job has risen by 538,000 and the number of foreign workers by 247,000. That trend is, if anything, accelerating. According to the most recent figures from 2012-13, 90% of jobs went to UK nationals, meaning 348,000 more British people in work and 26,000 additional foreign workers.

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

For more than two years I have been meeting Ministers and industry experts to look in detail at the issue of internet trolling. Just this week we have seen further evidence of the inadequate response of social media sites to online racist and misogynist abuse. Will the Leader of the House agree to a debate on internet trolling so that Parliament can send a message to Facebook, Twitter and others that we are watching what they are doing and that thus far we are not impressed?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot immediately offer a debate, but a lot of people have rightly been concerned about the character of internet trolling. I will, if I may, talk to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The House has had some opportunities to discuss the issue. We have focused in the past on the danger to and exploitation of children, but there are wider issues such as balancing freedom of speech with the general legal basis on which people have a right not to be abused.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Has my right hon. Friend seen my early-day motion 974?

[That this House recognises that Harlow Mecca Bingo is one of the biggest bingo clubs in the country, with 54,000 members; notes that their staff are second-to-none; further notes that Harlow Mecca Bingo provides an important role in Harlow’s community; acknowledges that despite being recognised as a soft form of gambling that plays an important social role within many local communities in the UK, bingo is subject to a gross profits tax of 20 per cent, as opposed to the 15 per cent charged on other forms of gambling; and therefore urges the Government to reduce this tax to 15 per cent in line with other forms of gambling, to ensure that Harlow Mecca Bingo continues to have a strong future.]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that Harlow Mecca Bingo club has 54,000 members, that 100,000 people have walked though its doors over the past year and that it has 10,000 active members? Will he do what he can and arrange a debate on the “boost bingo” campaign, so that we can secure a future for bingo clubs such as that in Harlow and ensure that they are on a level playing field and not taxed at 20% when other forms of gambling are taxed at 15%?

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, I have seen early-day motion 974, in which my hon. Friend makes a point about Harlow Mecca Bingo, whose fame has spread far and wide. I suspect that there are probably even people in South Cambridgeshire who go to Harlow to enjoy bingo. Before the 1997 general election, when you and I first entered the House, Mr Speaker, the Bingo Association asked me whether I wanted to call the numbers at a bingo club in my constituency. Unfortunately, there was no bingo club in my constituency, so I lost out on that one, and my hon. Friend therefore has the advantage on me. I note that the fame of Harlow Mecca Bingo is so great that the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) has signed the early-day motion, so the campaign is a national one. The question of duty is of course a matter for the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

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

Government spokesmen now say that they intend to increase economic security for the average household. May we debate that so that I can answer my constituents who are wondering which is the better indicator— 25 people off the claimant count, or the fact that a place such as Birmingham, Selly Oak is now in the top 20% of constituencies for unemployment?

[Mr Lansley]

It is very important to give people a greater sense of security and peace of mind, and that is what we have set out to do. The fact that the number of households in which nobody is in work is at a record low makes an enormous difference. The fact that the latest data show that inflation is at 2%—it has come down to its target level—also gives people a sense of security. The fact that we are dealing with the deficit is not just some debate at a global or national level, but a practical matter: if we stick to the long-term economic plan to bring down the deficit, that will increasingly allow us to do what we have done with the money available, which is to relieve the tax burden, not least on the low-paid.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

On Monday, we had the welcome news that Harrow council and the Department for Education are conducting a feasibility study with the aim of putting a brand new Hindu free school on Whitchurch playing fields in my constituency. May we have an urgent debate on the principle of religious schools, particularly in relation to their impact on Britain, so that Britain’s 1.6 million Hindus have the right to provide an education of their choice for their children?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, and I wish him well with the plans that his constituents are putting together. As he will know, our view is that there is a valuable long-standing tradition of faith schools in this country, and we support the contribution that they make. They are often high-performing schools that are popular with parents, and many of them are therefore over-subscribed. Two Hindu free schools have thus far been established—the Krishna Avanti primary school in Leicester and the Avanti House school in London, which opened in 2012. I hope that this continuing trend of support for faith schools will be sustained.

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

The Leader of the House has rightly commended the work of the emergency services in tackling flooding, and I particularly draw attention to the fire service. My local firefighters are somewhat bemused that they do not have a statutory duty to attend flooding incidents. May we therefore have a debate on the implications of there being no statutory duty, so that we can ask the fire Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), to explain why that is still the position?

[Mr Lansley]

I will gladly raise that point with the Minister with responsibility for fire services, and he may like to reply to the hon. Lady. I have to say that I do not think that fire services would generally regard themselves as in any way constrained by their statutory responsibilities in attending whenever they felt there was a public need for them to do so.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Last week, Thales UK won a £120 million export order to Indonesia, securing important aerospace jobs. That is just one example of the importance of the Government strategy to rebalance the economy by supporting manufacturing, promoting apprenticeships and exporting to high-growth countries. Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the strategy’s most important consequences is the opportunity for young people, and that it is one of the major reasons why youth unemployment in my constituency fell by 45% during 2013? Does he agree that this is a good moment for a debate on youth unemployment to see what more we can do to maintain this encouraging momentum?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is right. The rate of youth unemployment is lower than at the time of the election and the youth claimant count has fallen for 19 months in a row. That is a reflection of the success of the Government’s long-term economic plan. We can see practical benefits from that plan, not least for our young people, but it is also about businesses. We should always reflect on the success of enterprise and on the hundreds of thousands of new businesses that are being established. In particular, as the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills made clear in questions, we must support small businesses and increase the proportion of small businesses that are exporting, particularly to the fast-growing economies around the world, because that will drive growth in the future.

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

I urge the Leader of the House to arrange an early debate on the welfare state. The welfare state in this country has provided wonderful support for tens of millions of people. It is a wonderful creation. In the light of the Channel 4 programme, “Benefits Street”, I suggest that everyone in the House reads Caitlin Moran’s article in The Times on the benefits that the great welfare state has brought to tens of millions of people as preparation for that debate. The welfare state in this country is something to be proud of, not to be derided.

[Mr Lansley]

I suggest that Members would be better advised to read the speech that is being made today by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. They will find that we are returning to the original intention of the welfare state, which is to encourage people to be in work and to help those who are most in need, not to create the opportunity for a lifestyle of living on benefits. People must contribute the most that they can not only to society, but to their own family by taking up the opportunities for work that the economy is creating.

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

Although I fully recognise the need to invest in flood defences, I understand that the Environment Agency put a spade in the ground two weeks ago to start work on flood defences for Exeter—a part of the world that my right hon. Friend knows well, having been to university there—which could have a significant impact on the railways from Exeter to Plymouth and onwards to Cornwall. May we please have a debate on that matter?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot promise an immediate debate, but I can tell my hon. Friend that Network Rail has identified 10 projects to improve flood resilience on its western route. That programme might take several years and the funding mechanism is still to be determined, but it will be important to him. Network Rail is liaising closely with the Environment Agency and will continue to do so.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

At the beginning of the year, the Cabinet Office released documents under the 30-year rule relating to the miners’ strike. The documents clearly show that the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and senior Cabinet Ministers interfered greatly in the miners’ strike, deliberately misled the country and potentially misled Parliament. May we have a debate on that matter?

[Mr Lansley]

I do not recognise the hon. Gentleman’s description of 1984. I was a civil servant at the time, so I was completely non-partisan in those matters, but I remember them. I remember well that the Government were making absolutely sure that the economy of this country was not held to ransom. That was really important.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

Earlier, my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) asked the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott) whether it was fair that a woman who is discriminated against at work because she is pregnant has to pay £1,200 to enter a tribunal. The Minister said that that was not true. Given that it is true—this is not a point of order, Mr Speaker—may we have an urgent debate on how the Government’s decision to introduce fees for employment tribunals is choking off access to justice?

[Mr Lansley]

I think the hon. Gentleman should simply have listened to the reply given by my hon. Friend earlier today.

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

In Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, average weekly gross pay has fallen by 32.5% since 2010, and the number of under-25s who have claimed jobseeker’s allowance for more than 12 months has increased by 223% since December 2010. May we have a debate on the cost of living, and on yesterday’s news that the unemployment count in the north-east went up by 1,000?

[Mr Lansley]

There were regional variations in the employment data yesterday, but having predicted the loss of 1 million jobs, it ill behoves the Labour party not to celebrate the fact that there are one and two-thirds million more private sector jobs in this country than there were at the general election. I am afraid the Labour party is in complete denial about the inevitable fact that, as a consequence of its policies, the deepest recession this country has experienced took the equivalent of about £100 billion from the country’s wealth. It is not possible for everybody in a country to have more money at the same time as it has been made £100 billion poorer.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

A young man in my constituency has a zero-hours contract, but when he has worked he impressed his employer who offered him a six-week training course, leading to a permanent job. I am sure the Leader of the House will want to join me in celebrating that young man’s success—except for the fact that he has been told by the job centre that he has not been on the Work programme long enough and cannot take up the offer. May we please have a debate on the mess that is the Work programme, which—not for the first time—has denied one of my constituents a proper job with real prospects?

[Mr Lansley]

It is the Government’s intention to support young people back into work, and that is what the Work programme and our Youth Contract are all about. It is the largest such programme to support young people, and as a consequence 114,000 fewer young people are among the claimant count. If the hon. Gentleman sends me the particular circumstances of his constituent, I shall of course ask for a response from my hon. Friends at the Department for Work and Pensions.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

One supermarket in my constituency offers free newspapers and coffee, another has opened a new carwash and dry cleaner as it competes for customers, and that of course has a significant effect on local independent retailers. May we have a debate on the balance needed between the actions of the supermarkets and the need to look after our small shopkeepers, and on how we provide support for local independent retailers?

[Mr Lansley]

It is important for the hon. Gentleman to recognise that competition is, as they say, the tide that lifts every boat. In his constituency, as elsewhere, competition will in the end deliver the best consumer benefits.

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

Everybody wants this country to maintain its economic improvement, but may we have a debate about cuts to local government education budgets? It seems contradictory to demand an increase in skills to compete with the world, while also cutting education at its source.

[Mr Lansley]

Notwithstanding the fact that we had to deal with the largest deficit of any country in the OECD, this Government made the commitment—among others—to protect school budgets, which we have done. The hon. Gentleman should celebrate the fact that, together with our coalition colleagues, we have put about £2.5 billion into the pupil premium to ensure that schools with some of the most disadvantaged children have additional resources to help them achieve success in future.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

In September I asked the Prime Minister whether he would adopt a similar approach to that of Sweden and other European countries in accommodating Syrian refugees. He dismissed me, simply saying, “No, we are not going to do that.” Will the Leader of the House assure me that should the Government have a change of heart in the next few days, the Prime Minister will come to the Chamber to make any announcement?

[Mr Lansley]

I hope the hon. Lady was in her place yesterday and able to hear the Prime Minister make it clear that this country is making the second biggest contribution to meeting the humanitarian needs of refugees from Syria, and proportionately we are doing more than anybody else to support those refugees. We are responding to and fully meeting our commitments to those seeking asylum, and as she knows, last year there were around 1,100 asylum applications from Syrian refugees. The Prime Minister made it clear yesterday that we will look at individual cases, but we will not do what some other countries have done who think that taking a relatively modest given number of refugees away from refugee camps somehow meets their obligations to the millions of refugees who want to be supported in their camps, and not to leave and give up hope of returning to Syria soon.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) called for a debate on welfare. We had a debate on welfare just 10 days ago, when the House of Commons voted by a majority of 123 in favour of a commission of inquiry into the Government’s welfare reform policies. When I asked the Leader of the House last week when he was going to establish the commission, he rather derisively told me that he had no plans to do so. The House voted for a commission. Will he to agree to set up such a commission, or is it the Government’s policy that Back-Bench motions are ignored and to be of no account whatsoever in this House?

[Mr Lansley]

I think the hon. Gentleman imputes a motive to me that certainly was not there. He asked the question last week and I will repeat my answer today. The Government consider carefully all motions approved by this House. As I told him last week, I was not in a position to advise him that we had any plans to establish such a commission.

Armed Forces Restructuring

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

11:36

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

With permission, Mr Speaker, I wish to make a statement on the final part of the armed forces redundancy programme. As the House will be aware, following the decisions set out in the 2010 strategic defence and security review, the first such review for 12 years, we have been significantly restructuring and reshaping our armed forces to ensure we can sustain their world-class capabilities in the future. As we move from more than a decade of enduring operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as we bring our troops back from Germany, we are constructing a new force, Future Force 2020, to protect this country against future threats.

Restructuring the armed forces has required us to transfer personnel and resources between regiments and trades to ensure that we can invest in new areas of priority, such as cyber and ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance. We have also needed to ensure that our armed forces retain the right age profile and skills as they reduce in size. Achieving that outcome has, unfortunately, required a limited redundancy programme.

Today, the armed forces are announcing the specialist areas from which they will select personnel to be made redundant in this, the fourth and final tranche. By strongly encouraging transfers between different parts of the Army in particular, we have deliberately sought to keep the number of redundancies to an absolute minimum. Hon. Members will no doubt have seen recent speculation in the press about the size of the final tranche. As a result of the steps we have taken, I can confirm that the overall number of redundancies required is considerably lower than that predicted in some recent press articles and lower than in each of the three previous tranches. It will comprise up to 1,425 members of the Army, up to 70 medical and dental officers and nurses from the Royal Air Force, and up to 10 from the Royal Navy.

Tranche 4 will apply the same selection principles within the eligible cohorts as were used in the last three tranches. Selection for redundancy will be based on three criteria only: performance, potential and employability. This is viewed by the individual services as the fairest methodology to all who fall into the redundancy bracket. Individuals will be informed of the outcome of the selection process on 12 June 2014. Applicants for voluntary redundancy will leave six months later and non-applicants 12 months later. As with previous tranches, there are a number of important exclusions from eligibility for compulsory redundancy: those serving on specified operations any time between today and the date of notification of selection for redundancy, 12 June 2014; and those who, on the date of notification of selection for redundancy, have been warned for specified operations commencing on or before 12 December 2014.

Unlike tranche 3, those who volunteer for redundancy having been formally warned for specified operations deploying before 12 December 2014 may still be directed to deploy by their chain of command. This is to ensure that their places do not have to be backfilled at short notice owing to the notification period occurring over the handover between the Herrick 19 and Herrick 20 deployments. The redundancy programme will not impact adversely on current operations in Afghanistan. Personnel assessed as being permanently below the level of fitness required to remain in the forces will not be considered for redundancy and will instead leave through the medical discharge route at the appropriate point in their recovery.

As a way of reducing still further the number of personnel to be made redundant, we will continue to encourage personnel to transfer from areas of surplus to areas of shortage. Specific vacancies have been identified across all three services and those identified as at risk of redundancy will be encouraged to transfer to areas for which they have appropriate skills and will be offered retraining, as necessary. The chain of command will continue to inform these personnel of the transfer opportunities available to them at all stages of this process.

I have also instructed the services to seek to maximise the number of volunteers in order to minimise the number of compulsory redundancies. However, noting that 84% of personnel made redundant in tranche 3 were applicants, it is likely that the percentage of volunteers overall in this final tranche will be lower owing to the low historical level of volunteers among Gurkhas—one of the fields eligible in this round—and the fact that a number of specialist fields will face 100% selection, meaning that there is little or no incentive to volunteer.

Throughout the whole redundancy programme since 2010, approximately 500 Gurkhas have been transferred to other parts of the Army, significantly reducing the requirement for Gurkha redundancies. However, there remains a surplus of personnel in the Brigade of Gurkhas, which is due largely to the changes in their terms and conditions in 2007 that aligned their service periods with that of the Regular Army—from 15 years to 22 years—and a raised recruitment level to compensate for some soldiers’ previous long periods of leave in Nepal. Gurkha personnel now serve on the same terms and conditions as the rest of the Army and are therefore eligible for the redundancy programme, like other personnel currently employed in areas of surplus.

I fully recognise the challenges for servicemen and women of transition to civilian life. My Department has worked hard throughout this programme to ensure that all those selected for redundancy receive not only an extensive redundancy package but comprehensive resettlement support to help them find work and settle into life outside the armed forces. The career transition partnership, which provides briefings, advice and guidance on such issues as housing and obtaining future employment, is highly successful in assisting service leavers to find work, and our latest figures indicate that approximately 90% of service leavers seeking employment find it within six months of leaving the armed forces—a better result than for the population in general.

To support service people leaving the armed forces still further, I can announce an additional measure today. Last year, we announced a new £200 million Forces Help to Buy scheme for service personnel. Ownership of a family home provides security and peace of mind and will help to smooth the transition to civilian life. I have therefore extended the scheme to allow personnel leaving in tranche 4 who do not own a home to apply for a loan in advance of their redundancy package to allow them to purchase a home during the period between notification of redundancy and the actual date on which they leave the armed forces and receive their lump sum redundancy payment.

As an organisation that is fed from the bottom up, the armed forces are always recruiting, and this must and will remain a priority. There is a constant need to replace with new talent those who are promoted or who complete their service. The armed forces require a constant flow of young, fit recruits to maintain the structure required. That is why a major multi-media Army recruiting campaign began earlier this month for both regular and reserve recruits, which we are confident will raise awareness of Army recruiting and provide the backdrop to a reinvigorated recruitment effort at all levels over the next couple of years to deliver the numbers required to man our future structures, both regular and reserve.

For the men and women of our armed forces, I know that this has been a painful process, but completion of this final tranche will mark a turning point. With the bulk of our troops back from Afghanistan by the end of this year, and coming back from Germany over the next four years, as we build Future Force 2020 they will be able to enjoy the peace of mind that comes from belonging to armed forces that have put a period of change and restructuring behind them and are focused on building their skills and capabilities for the future.

After a decade of unfunded promises and shortages of key equipment under the previous Government, our personnel will have certainty about the future size and shape of our armed forces, and confidence that they will have the kit, equipment and platforms they need. Just as important, the country can have confidence that its armed forces will not only be affordable and sustainable, but among the most battle-hardened, best-equipped and best-trained forces in the world, able to ensure that Britain remains safe and secure in the future. I commend this statement to the House.

23:46

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance notice of his statement and for early sight of it, which I appreciate.

Have we not come a long way since the Conservative party said before the last election that they would have a bigger Army for a safer Britain? What happened to, “Put simply, we need to have a larger Army and we need more infantry”? When did that change? It changed when the party entered government; it was a broken promise. There were more broken promises from them even in government. After his Government’s defence review, the Prime Minister said in 2010:

“we will retain a large, well-equipped Army, numbering around 95,500 by 2015—7,000 fewer than today.”—[Official Report, 19 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 799.]

Why did that change? Will the Secretary of State accept that this Government have let down the armed forces and their families?

No one underestimates the challenges of reconfiguring our armed forces and at the same time maintaining the British military’s reputation as the best in the world. Withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the presence in Germany means that there is, of course, a need for an appropriate reduction in personnel across all three armed forces. That is sensible and fair, and we support it. Is it not the case, however, that the Secretary of State is failing to approach this with the strategy required for the good of the country and the sensitivity required for the good of the individuals involved and their families? Let us not forget: this is about people.

The Secretary of State has simply not made a convincing case for further redundancies in the armed forces or for reducing capability at an even quicker rate. Does he accept that there are real concerns that by pressing ahead with these redundancies, the Government are taking risks with Britain’s safety and security? It was clear last year that the required uplift in the number of reserves—the 10,000 new recruits to replace the 30,000 regulars—was not happening at anywhere near the speed required. The Government hardly met a third of their own targets. We said then, as did Members from across the House, that the Government should pause their reductions in Army numbers until it was clear that their reserve recruitment was on track. That is still the case today.

On this specific round of redundancies, will the Defence Secretary tell us how many of them will be compulsory and from which regiments and squadrons the redundancies will be drawn? Does he not agree with me that this is a shocking way to repay the dedicated service that these people have given their country? Is he concerned about a loss of skills, particularly on pinch points, and what is he doing to address the problem? Will he confirm at least that no one will be made redundant in a way that affects their pension entitlement? Is it true that a small number of military personnel have been made redundant just days before they meet a service requirement for a pension to which they are entitled? If that is the case, it is not fair. Will the Secretary of State say more about the support he will give those who are leaving the service and making the transition to civilian life?

The Gurkhas are one of the finest fighting forces in the British Army. Does the Secretary of State accept that they have been affected disproportionately by cuts in the Army? In 2011, more than half the redundancies fell on the Gurkhas, and in the second tranche of redundancies in January 2012, when the rest of the infantry lost only 500 men, they lost 400. Does the Secretary of State think that that is fair? What does he think about the public perception that those redundancies are a result of the increased cost of the Gurkhas following their rightly successful campaign for better pay and conditions?

The sense that I have today is one of amazement. How does the Secretary of State do it? A recruitment campaign started last week amid great fanfare, but was followed a day later by the revelation of an IT crisis that had prevented people from signing up, and now by a parliamentary statement announcing redundancies. If the Secretary of State were a football referee, the crowd—and it would have to be a charitable crowd—would be chanting, “You don’t know what you’re doing”—and they would be right.

The Government are letting down our armed forces and their families, and taking risks with our country’s safety and security. The Secretary of State’s story is one of failure, on procurement, recruitment and redundancies. He is getting it wrong and he knows it, and today’s statement only reinforces that.

[Mr Hammond]

Dear oh dear! Let us start from the beginning. The hon. Gentleman trotted out some well-known lines that he has used before, and I shall respond to them as I have done before.

The hon. Gentleman began by asking when the Government had changed their aspiration to have larger armed forces. Perhaps some of my hon. Friends can help me with that, but I would guess that it was at about the time when Labour was wrecking our economy, and we were recognising that we would have to recalibrate our ambitions in all sorts of areas in order to govern the country responsibly. We understand, above all else, that a strong defence of this country can be built only on a strong economy. We must first repair the damage that Labour has done to our economy and then repair the damage that it has done to our society, after which, hopefully, we shall in due course be able to afford to put more money into our armed forces as our economy and our public finances recover.

The hon. Gentleman said that we had let the armed forces down. I say that it is Labour, through its wrecking of our economy, that has let our armed forces down, as it has let the rest of the country down. As for the hon. Gentleman’s comments on this particular tranche of redundancies, what I hear from him is total confusion. He accepts the need for downsizing and restructuring of the Army, but says that we have not made the case for using the redundancy process to do that. He is talking nonsense. We have set out a structure for our armed forces in “Future Force 2020”. They will be smaller than they have been previously, but, crucially, they will have a different structure, relying on reserves, on civilian support and on contractors in some specialist areas. As a consequence, the redundancy process needs to address the structural imbalance in the Army, taking out areas of capability that we no longer need in our regular forces.

As the hon. Gentleman will understand if he listened to my statement, I cannot tell him in advance what percentage of the redundancies will be compulsory; that will depend on how many people volunteer. However, I have been very upfront with the House. As there will be a significant number of Gurkha redundancies and Gurkhas traditionally do not volunteer for redundancy, and as the fact that 100% of the numbers in some fields of redundancy will be made redundant, giving little incentive to volunteer, we expect the overall percentage of volunteers to be lower in this final round of redundancies than it has been in the past.

The hon. Gentleman made two points about fairness. First, he asked whether I thought it was fair that people approaching their immediate pension point—the point at which they can leave the Army and draw an immediate annual cash pension—should be eligible for redundancy. We have thought very carefully about this over the period of the redundancy programme. The truth is that wherever we draw the line there will be somebody just on the other side of it who feels hard done by, and understandably so, but we concluded that it would be unfair to take into account length of service—proximity to immediate pension point—as a criterion for redundancy and we have stuck to that position throughout all four tranches of redundancy. Given the nature of the fields we are looking at in this tranche, we expect the number of people potentially at risk of redundancy who are within a year of their immediate pension point to be very small compared with previous tranches.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the Gurkhas and raised again the question of fairness. He asked explicitly whether the increased cost of Gurkha service was driving these redundancies. The answer is no, but it is the change in their terms and conditions. Previously Gurkhas served under different terms and conditions. The size and level of recruitment to the Brigade of Gurkhas was designed around 15 years of service. We now have to deal with the bulge caused by a change in the terms and conditions so that Gurkhas serve for 22 years. That is a structural challenge in the Brigade of Gurkhas. We have also seen a change to the terms and conditions of service, which no longer provide for Gurkhas to take long periods of leave to return home to Nepal. That was previously covered through an over-manning by about 370 individuals in the Brigade of Gurkhas, which allowed for those periods of extended leave at home that are no longer available now that the terms and conditions of service are standardised across the Army. So what we are seeing here is not an unfairness; we are seeing the consequences of a decision to apply fairly the terms and conditions of service to the Brigade of Gurkhas as they are applied to the rest of the Army.

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

My right hon. Friend has said this is the final tranche; well, thank God for that. What commitment can he give that this is the very last of these unwelcome statements for many years to come?

[Mr Hammond]

I can tell my right hon. Friend that the resizing of the Army announced as an outcome of the strategic defence and security review 2010 will be achieved by the redundancies that have been announced over the last three tranches and the redundancies that will be announced in this tranche. This will deliver us the size of the armed forces we need for Future Force 2020. I cannot predict or predetermine the outcome of the next SDSR, which will take place after the general election in 2015.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State recently confirmed in a written answer that we have deployed military personnel in a US base in Djibouti. Please will he tell me what their role is? Are they involved in the drones programme in Yemen, and will they be affected by this cuts announcement?

[Mr Hammond]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that personnel deployed on overseas operations will not be affected by the redundancy announcement I have made today.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

While many will remain baffled at this Government’s priorities in increasing overseas aid by £2.5 billion this year and continuing to inflict these long-planned cuts on the Army, will my right hon. Friend nevertheless accept that had it not been for the fact that the Ministry of Defence was starved of its share of the increase in public expenditure under the last Government, the base from which we would have had to restructure the MOD under this Government would have been a jolly sight better than it has been?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend has a good point. The hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) lectures me from the Opposition Front Bench, but it is noticeable that during that long period after 2001 when there appeared to be no limit to the scale of public spending and no limit to the level of taxation and borrowing and spending that the then Government were prepared to engage in, the armed forces did not share in that cornucopia and the consequences are here for all of us to see today.

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

The Conservative party continued to promise a larger Army even once the scale of the challenge facing our public finances and the country was known. Does he accept that that did a disservice to the British public and the armed forces on whom we rely?

[Mr Hammond]

I know that Opposition Members do not like this, but the truth is that we discovered a black hole in the finances of the Ministry of Defence that had to be dealt with if we were going to have sustainable armed forces in the future and eliminate our armed forces being asked to deploy without the equipment and protective personal equipment that they required to do so safely. We had to put that right. That has meant that some tough decisions have been made, but my understanding is that the Opposition accept the restructuring and resizing of our armed forces and that we have to have an Army of 82,000 going forward. If I am wrong about that, I should be happy to be corrected from the Front Bench and to have an explanation of how the Opposition propose to pay for a larger Army.

[Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

When the withdrawal from Afghanistan is complete, the RAF will have only about four aeroplanes and a few hundred people deployed abroad, yet it retains 220 combat jets, 650 support aircraft and 36,000 men. It is not clear to me what these are for, given that there is no discernible air threat to the United Kingdom. Will my right hon. Friend be a little less timid and have a close look at how military aircraft assets are held in this country and set about some vastly needed and urgent reform?

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his suggestion. The balance between the different arms and the focus that we put on different parts of our defence infrastructure is quite properly reviewed in the strategic defence and security review process. I am glad, and I am sure he will be too, that we have now placed this on a firm quinquennial footing so that the issues can be reopened and re-examined regularly. It is quite proper to do so.

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

Is not the failure of the Army recruitment strategy the reason the redundancy numbers are smaller than originally envisaged?

[Mr Hammond]

We constantly look at all the levers—as the Army calls them—of manning. The levers are recruitment levels, voluntary outflow—people leaving the service before the last possible date—and redundancy, which is always the last resort. There is a constant rebalancing. We had already reduced intended recruiting numbers to minimise redundancy, but we cannot do the whole restructuring through the recruitment lever alone because in some areas we have to take personnel out of the structure in order to deliver Future Force 2020.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Some people suggest that there will not be much support for expeditionary warfare among the public again. In my experience, the public can be very fickle, especially when events and horrors happen. With this tranche of redundancies, we now have the smallest armed forces we have had for a long time. May I ask the Secretary of State to say what everyone in this House feels—that our armed forces will now be up to any challenge that they are asked to meet within their small numbers, and that our people should rest assured that they will do that extremely well when called on to do it?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend observes that we shall have the smallest Army for a number of years when we have completed this restructuring, but we might also remind ourselves that we still have the fourth largest defence budget in the world and, on any fair and objective assessment, the second most capable expeditionary armed force capability in the world after the United States. The public can rest assured that our armed forces will do their duty and protect this country wherever, whenever and however called upon to do so.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement. The UK Government have acknowledged that personnel reductions in Scotland have been disproportionate. The right hon. Gentleman’s predecessor confirmed that there would be cuts of 27.9% in Scotland, compared with 11.6% across the UK. Will the Secretary of State confirm that personnel numbers are at a record low in Scotland, at around 11,000? That is significantly lower than the level of 15,000 planned by the Scottish Government for after independence.

[Mr Hammond]

I was thinking about how to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question, but he has just given me the solution. The Scottish Government’s so-called plans for the future Scottish defence force exist in cloud cuckoo land. Their numbers simply do not add up, and our analysis shows that they would require about 30% more than they are proposing to spend to deliver the full structure that they have outlined in their White Paper. I look forward to coming to Scotland in due course and deconstructing, yet again, the rubbish coming out of the Scottish National party.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

Can my right hon. Friend confirm for my constituents that we still have a well-equipped, properly staffed and professionally led defence force that is capable of meeting present and future challenges and defending our nation?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes. Future Force 2020 will be able to deliver the outputs specified in the strategic defence and security review, in which we set out clearly what we expect our armed forces to do and how we expect them to work, frequently in partnership with allies. I am confident that they will be able to deliver those outputs for the benefit of our nation.

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

What can the Secretary of State tell us about his longer-term recruitment plans for the Gurkhas, or is this just the beginning of the end for them?

[Mr Hammond]

No, we maintain recruitment of Gurkhas, but we have to deal with the structural imbalance caused by the changes made in 2007. Once we have done that restructuring, the pattern of sustainment in the Brigade of Gurkhas will require continued recruiting as we move to a normal pattern of 22 years’ service for Gurkha servicemen.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

The Prime Minister’s approach to defence is the most complacent I have known in my lifetime. A few days ago, the former US Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, said:

“With the fairly substantial reductions in defence spending in Great Britain, what we’re finding is that it won’t have full spectrum capabilities and the ability to be a full partner as they have been in the past.”

Does the Secretary of State accept that assessment from someone who knows what he is talking about?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Prime Minister. I wonder whether he remembered the previous Prime Minister’s attitude to defence when he made that sweeping assertion. I have a great deal of respect for former Secretary Gates, but he has been out of office for a couple of years now. I also noted that, in the interview in question, he seemed distinctly vague about some of the details of our defence policy. He could not even quite remember what our position was on aircraft carriers, and it seemed to have completely passed him by that we were building the two largest ships in the Royal Navy’s history right now, not only to replace the carrier capability but hugely to enhance it. I absolutely reject his suggestion that we will not be able to be a worthy and preferred partner for the United States in the future. Just last week, I met the commander of the United States fifth fleet, who told me specifically that the Royal Navy was, and will remain, the fifth fleet’s partner of preference and that, in their joint operations in the Gulf, the dividing line between the Royal Navy and the fifth fleet was invisible. That is the way we want it to be, and that is the way we will ensure it remains.

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

Does the Secretary of State agree—he will not like this—that the great British public are not stupid and cannot be fooled and that we know, our allies know, our enemies know, our admirals know and our generals know that, today at the Dispatch Box, he has run up a flag that tells the world that we are no longer a serious world power? [Interruption.] That is the truth, and he cannot disguise that fact.

[Mr Hammond]

Well, I have heard some rubbish in my time. Although we might disagree, the hon. Gentleman could have tackled me on a range of issues about the impact of the changes that we have made in the structure and funding of our armed forces, but this final tranche of redundancy today—about 1,500 people across the armed forces—is not a big structural change and certainly does not warrant the accusation he has made.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that the unpalatable and difficult decisions that he has had to take on manpower were an absolute requirement to enable us to fund the rebuilding of the fleet, which has always traditionally been, and should remain for a country that is an island dependent on trade, our No. 1 defence priority?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend makes the good point that, as we look to the challenges of the future, we must be prepared to take difficult decisions to flex how we spend the budgets and resources that we have available. Even half a decade ago, no one was talking about investing in cyber-warfare. Now, it is the No. 1 issue on everyone’s agenda. As our defence budgets are not getting larger, to invest in this critical new area, we have to disinvest in other areas. That is the nature of the difficult challenges we face, and we will continue to take those difficult decisions in Britain’s best interests.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

Clearly, as we draw down the Regular Army, the plan is to increase our reservist capability. All the people in the Army Reserve whom I talk to say that we must still do more to persuade particularly small and medium-sized employers to support their employees serving as reservists. What more can the Government do to support them in releasing their people to serve?

[Mr Hammond]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question, and he is right: a big part of getting the reserve recruitment agenda right, and for that matter the reserve retention agenda right, is engagement with employers. Engagement with large employers, including public sector employers, is well advanced, but he is absolutely right to put his finger on the fact that engagement with smaller employers is, first, more difficult and, secondly, crucial to the success of this project. The Defence Reform Bill, which is in the other place, which I am not supposed to call the other place any more—currently, in the House of Lords—

[Vernon Coaker]

Where did that happen?

[Mr Hammond]

In the Procedure Committee, I believe. The Bill contains provisions that will allow us for the first time to pay bounties to small and medium employers when their reservist employees are mobilised. That is not perhaps a differentiator in itself, but it sends an important signal to small and medium employers that we recognise the cost burden that they take on when they allow a member of their staff to become a reservist.

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

As the British Army rebalances its Regular-reservist ratio, will the Secretary of State confirm that, once the Defence Reform Bill becomes law, the large pool of reservists will be considered for all future operations on equal merits as the regulars and that the call-up process will be a lot simpler and without fear of financial loss to the reservists?

[Mr Hammond]

Well, there were a lot of multiple questions in there. First, I should like to make it clear that the restructuring of the Regular Army is predicated on a number of things. The growth of the reserves is one of them, but an increased use of civil support and contractors to provide some of the support functions is also an important part. Once we have built the reserve force to the level that we have set out by 2018, there will be certain areas where we use reservists routinely on operations because we only hold those capabilities in the reserve force. But of course, a core function of the reservists will always be to provide resilience and reinforcement for an enduring deployment of the nature of what we have been doing in Afghanistan.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State not recognise the public’s disillusionment that the cost of being the fourth highest spender on defence in the world has been the loss of the lives of 626 British soldiers in two avoidable wars? Does not punching above our weight militarily always mean dying beyond our responsibilities?

[Mr Hammond]

I do not think the hon. Gentleman is doing a great service to the families and memories of our brave servicemen and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the two campaigns that he refers to. I do not think that many hon. Members or, indeed, many of the British public think that it is either right or in our interests to turn our backs on the world. We are an open nation and a trading nation that depends on the maintenance of the rules-based system of international law and trade. We should remain fully engaged in the future, and our armed forces are but one—a very important one—of the many levers that we have available to maintain our influence in the world.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

The armed forces recognise, as does everyone else, what had to be done to clear up the mess that the last Labour Government left the country in, but they want, as we all do, some stability and certainty in their lives, so will my right hon. Friend reiterate and make it clear to the House that, once this last tranche of redundancies has been completed, that is it—this is the final tranche—so that everyone in the armed forces knows that they have some stability and certainty?

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, and that is exactly what I want to convey today. This has been a difficult time: a period of uncertainty and change, and no one likes uncertainty or change. The armed forces will now be able to concentrate on the future and on building the skills and capabilities that we have set out for Future Force 2020, knowing that we have completed the draw-down in size and the major restructuring that we have undertaken. That provides a very robust base to build for the future, with armed forces that will remain one of the most experienced combat-hardened and capable armed forces in the world.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State clarify whether personnel who are serving on operations will be accepted or refused if they apply for redundancy?

[Mr Hammond]

I am happy to clarify that for the hon. Lady. Personnel who are serving on operations are, of course, eligible to apply for redundancy if they wish to do so, but if they are serving on operations at any point between now and the announcement date on 12 June, they will not be eligible for compulsory redundancy. So if they do not volunteer, they will be exempt from redundancy.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State say a little more about the reinvigorated recruitment effort that he told the House about? In particular, will he be open to different methods, so that we can see more of what works?

[Mr Hammond]

As my hon. Friend might well imagine, Ministers and senior officials are vigorously examining different approaches that have been tried in different areas and different parts of the country to see what works best. What is clear to me is that, as I said in the House last week, we must focus back on using front-line reserve units as the principal tool of recruitment to the reserve. We can support that with national campaigns and a nationally managed IT platform, but we must rely on front-line reservists recruiting their fellow reservists. Everything that I have seen reinforces that, and it will be one of the driving requirements in how we manage this campaign.

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

May I clarify that the Secretary of State is promising the House that RAF redundancies will be confined to a maximum of 70 medical and dental officers and nurses?

[Mr Hammond]

I can confirm that.

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

The plan to replace 20,000 regulars with 30,000 reservists is beset with problems, including more than £50 million wasted on a botched IT system, missed recruitment targets, cancelled reserve courses and a widening capability gap. Given that the previous Secretary of State recently confirmed in this House that the original plan was to hold the regulars in place until the reservists were able to take their place, can this Secretary of State inform the House why and when that plan changed?

[Mr Hammond]

First, my hon. Friend continually asserts, and I continually rebut, the idea that we are trying to replace 20,000 regular soldiers with 30,000 reservists— that is not what we are doing. We are restructuring the regular force; the regular force will be smaller. We will use civilians in a different way from how we have used them in the past. We will use contractors more effectively, learning the lessons, particularly from the US experience of using contractors to support combat operations. We will also use reservists, but it is simply wrong for him to suggest that this is a straightforward swap of 20,000 regulars replaced by 30,000 reservists. That is not how it works.

My hon. Friend knows very well the answer to the second part of his question: there is not the budgetary capacity to maintain the Regular Army at 102,000 while building the reserve to 30,000 by 2018. That simply cannot be done without imposing new and unwanted cuts elsewhere.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I listened carefully to what the Secretary of State had to say about individuals being made redundant just before their immediate pension point. What he failed to say, of course, was that for some long-serving officers this loss can amount to tens of thousands of pounds in forgone pension payments. Does he really believe that that scale of loss is consistent with the spirit of the military covenant?

[Mr Hammond]

Let me just be clear about what we are talking about, as although the hon. Lady may understand this, perhaps not all hon. Members do. When people reach their immediate pension point they can leave the Army, notwithstanding the fact that they may be only in their 40s, and take an immediate pension. When somebody is close to, but has not reached, their immediate pension point when they leave the Army through a redundancy, they receive an enhanced lump sum redundancy package to reflect that fact and they still, of course, retain their pension rights when they reach their pensionable age of 60 or 65, depending on what pension scheme they are in. We have looked at the alternatives and concluded that all of them would deliver at least as much unfairness to other groups, and that this is the fairest and most appropriate way to proceed.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

We were told, understandably, that the armed forces had to take their share of pain through the time of recession. Surely, by the same coin, as the economy is growing they can take their share of the gain. If the reserve recruitment programme does not go as well as we all hope it will go, can we at least keep the door open—I am not asking for a commitment now—to once again recruiting more for the Regular Army in the future and increasing it to meet our commitments as they arise?

[Mr Hammond]

I can say two things on that to my hon. Friend. First, unfortunately, the scale of the damage to our public finances is such that, as the Chancellor set out a couple of weeks ago, although the economy may be recovering, we have not yet dealt with the structural deficit we inherited from the Labour party, and it will take some years yet to correct the fiscal imbalances that we face in this country. However, he is right to say that we should never say never, and one of the key drivers in our restructuring of the Army is to ensure that we retain a capability to regenerate force, so that if at some future point our public priorities change or external circumstances force us to change them, we will have the capability within our armed forces to expand again and regenerate that capability.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

How many Gurkhas will lose their jobs? What percentage of such redundancies will be voluntary?

[Mr Hammond]

I can tell the hon. Lady that the expected number of redundancies in the Gurkha areas are: 71 in the Queen’s Own Gurkha Logistic Regiment; 28 in the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers; 246 in the Royal Gurkha Rifles; and nine among Gurkha staff and personnel support functions. On voluntary versus compulsory redundancy, all I can tell her is that historically the uptake of voluntary redundancy by Gurkhas has been very, very low. Therefore, on a pessimistic projection, I have to assume that the majority of those redundancies will be compulsory.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has already confirmed that the UK has the fourth largest defence budget in the world. Will he also confirm that the UK, along with the United States and, ironically, Greece, is one of only three of the 28 NATO members to be achieving the 2% of GDP level on defence expenditure?

[Mr Hammond]

I am pleased to be able to tell my hon. Friend, as my colleague the Estonian Defence Minister would never forgive me for not mentioning this, that Estonia has joined the elite band of countries that meet the 2% of GDP defence spending target. Just four countries in NATO meet that target.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I am sure that members of the RAF will feel the shock that I felt at the announcement that 70 medical and dental officers and nurses are to be made redundant. In evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, those were identified as “pinch trades” in some aspects of the armed forces. The Secretary of State has talked about the ability for people to retrain. Will he say something about the support given for people to leave one branch of the armed forces and move into another branch, where there may well be vacancies they can fill?

[Mr Hammond]

First, I reassure the hon. Lady that nobody will be made redundant in a pinch-point trade; these redundancies are happening only in areas where we are carrying surpluses. As a result of restructuring, a change in the way we deliver the service means that the posts of 16 RAF dental officers, nine RAF dental nurses and five RAF dental technicians are no longer required. She is right to raise the issue of retraining, and I recall that she raised it in respect of previous tranches of redundancy. We have put in a lot of effort in this tranche to make sure that we put even more emphasis behind the opportunities for retraining. Where people have the skills and the willingness to retrain, they will be fully supported through the chain of command to retrain and redeploy within the armed forces. We have no wish or ability to lose talent and skills that we have, so long as we can deploy them in a way that is usable within the new structure that we are putting together.

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

What impact will this announcement have on Devonport-based ships and the Royal Marines based in my constituency? Will he ensure that we can recruit more doctors and dentists, bearing in mind that we have one of the finest medical schools in the country?

[Mr Hammond]

As I have been at pains to point out, the fact that we are making people redundant in certain areas does not always mean that we will not be continuing to recruit in those areas. The armed forces are bottom-fed organisations, and we have to get the correct rank structure within each of the specialisms. My hon. Friend will have heard me say that the maximum number of Royal Navy redundancies will be 10, all of which will be in the medical and dental field. I expect the impact on the Royal Navy to be very limited. We will, however, have smaller medical and dental services in the future, to reflect the way in which we provide those services to our armed forces in peacetime.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend remind the House of the scale of the financial challenge faced by the MOD in 2010 compared with that in other nations? Will he also tell the House what steps are being taken to ensure that we do not face such challenges again?

[Mr Hammond]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I know that Opposition Members do not like it being said that we inherited a £38 billion black hole in the defence budget. We have dealt with that and we have put in place a balanced equipment plan that is fully funded with a contingency of £4.5 billion in it. More importantly, we have put in place mechanisms to ensure that projects do not get signed off willy-nilly by politicians when the resources are not in place to pay for them. That ensures that we have a coherent defence budget and that we never again find ourselves in the position of the former Labour Defence Secretary Lord Hutton who, for the want of £300 million over two years, was forced to delay the aircraft carrier project and drive £1.6 billion of additional costs into that programme. We will not get ourselves into that position.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

Some of my constituents have been alarmed by recent reports of unfilled vacancies in key roles such as intelligence officers, radiologists and electronic warfare system operators. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the announcement today will take account of the need to maintain all capabilities and avoid expensive short-term replacements from outside the armed services?

[Mr Hammond]

As I said in an earlier reply, we will not be making any redundancies in those pinch-point fields. We face, across the armed forces, a number of areas in which we directly compete with very highly paid civilian occupations. I am talking about engineering of all types—nuclear, aircraft and airworthiness speciality skills. In those areas, it is a constant challenge to recruit and retain staff, but those are challenges that the single services manage extraordinarily effectively in the circumstances.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

How many of those currently working at the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps, many of whom are constituents of mine, will be affected by this programme? Will the Defence Secretary confirm that all those made redundant will receive a generous compensation package and help with housing and new jobs? We need to work closely with counties such as Gloucestershire, which have signed the military covenant, and to emphasise to the young of our county and my city that there are still real opportunities to join the Army and learn skills, for example as bricklayers and electricians.

[Mr Hammond]

Those opportunities do indeed remain, and the purpose of the current marketing campaign is to emphasise to people that all areas of the military—the Navy, the Army, the Air Force and the Marines—are recruiting and open for business. However, we are conscious that the inevitability of a redundancy programme sends out a somewhat mixed message. I can also confirm that military redundees receive generous compensation packages. I have announced today help with housing purchase, and there is an excellent programme in place for supporting people to acquire the skills they need for dealing with the civilian world, including employment search. I am confident that we have done everything we can to make the transition from military to civilian life as smooth as possible for those who will be affected by the programme.

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

A question has been raised about the armed forces covenant. Will the Secretary of State clarify and confirm that it was brought about by this Government in 2011, helping armed forces personnel and their families. Will he also clarify whether, following the post-2014 restructuring that will take place after Afghanistan, the United Kingdom will retain all its Reaper drones, and whether those drones will play a part in our long-term strategy?

[Mr Hammond]

I can confirm that it is this Government who have enshrined the armed forces covenant in law and have very positively driven the armed forces covenant programme since that time, creating the community covenant and the corporate covenant, which now play an important part in the overall programme. My hon. Friend also asked me about Reaper drones post-Afghanistan, stretching the statement on redundancy to its maximum limit. None the less, I say to him that we expect unmanned aerial vehicles to form a permanent and significant part of our future aerial capability.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

If 18 medical and dental posts are to be lost from the RAF and the Royal Navy, what efforts are being made, and what incentives are being provided, to ensure that such experienced and dedicated personnel find new careers in the NHS where their skills are badly needed?

[Mr Hammond]

Such people are inherently employable. Almost all of them will be absorbed pretty much immediately into the NHS. The priority challenge for us is to ensure that as they make that transition into the NHS, they join the reserves to continue playing a part in delivering Britain’s military capability.

Points of Order

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

12:36

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I ask the Secretary of State—[Interruption.] May I ask you, Madam Deputy Speaker—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. If the hon. Gentleman is making a point of order, it has to be just that. It cannot be a question to a Minister, and I cannot answer questions on behalf of the Minister.

[Vernon Coaker]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Would it not have been appropriate for the Secretary of State to make available to the House before the statement a document that broke down some of the numbers relating to the redundancies? For example, he referred to it in answer to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) about the Gurkha regiments.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

If the Secretary of State has an answer to that question as it concerns the workings of the House, I will ask him to comment.

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

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am not sure whether it would be in order, but if you say that it is, I will happily place in the Library of the House a document that shows the fields. This document will have been circulated in the Army today and it will become publicly available, but I am happy to put it in the Library of the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

It is certainly in order for the Secretary of State and his Ministers to give information to Members of this House. I am grateful to him for reacting so quickly to a request to do so.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence confirm that what he proposes to put in the Library—I hope it will be today—is the announcement of the specialist areas from which the armed forces will select personnel to be made redundant, to which he referred in his statement? Will he confirm whether that is what he is proposing to put in the Library? I wonder whether that will give us an understanding of the geographic breakdown across the country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman knows that it is inappropriate and out of order now to carry on the arguments rehearsed during the statement. However, if the Secretary of State would like to give further information on a point of order about information to Members of this House, I will allow him so to do.

[Mr Hammond]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will be interested to know that the document I intend to place in the Library will set out the fields and the numbers against each field. However, unless my hon. Friend is a very credible detective, I doubt that he will be able to determine much about the geographical distribution of those redundancies.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I thank the Secretary of State for his helpful provision of information.

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

On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Earlier today, I asked a flooding-related question of the Leader of the House. My husband has a direct interest in and is on the register of the Fire Protection Association, which is a not-for-profit organisation. As the fire service is the common thread there, it is probably appropriate that I make a reference to an indirect interest.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

It is indeed appropriate, and I thank the hon. Lady for setting the record straight so quickly.

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

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sure that you are an avid reader of the Daily Mirror and will therefore have seen the story this morning about the rusting Russian cruise hulk that is apparently drifting towards the United Kingdom and is populated by cannibal rats. Has the Department for Transport or the Home Office said whether a Minister will be coming to the House to update us on what on earth is going on?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I will not enlighten the House about the number of times a week I read the Daily Mirror, but although I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s ingenuity in bringing this clearly important and worrying story to the attention of Members and of Ministers—[Interruption.] Order. I have at this stage had no indication that any Minister intends to come to the House to make a statement. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman’s concerns will have been heard and taken on board by those on the Government Front Bench.

Bills Presented

Consumer Rights Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Secretary Vince Cable, supported by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Secretary Pickles and Jenny Willott, presented a Bill to amend the law relating to the rights of consumers and protection of their interests; to make provision about investigatory powers for enforcing the regulation of traders; to make provision about private actions in competition law; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 161) with explanatory notes (Bill 161-EN).

Deregulation Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Oliver Letwin, supported by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, Secretary Chris Grayling, Secretary Michael Gove, Mr Secretary Pickles, Mr Secretary Paterson, Mr Secretary Davey, Mr Secretary McLoughlin, Secretary Maria Miller, Mr Kenneth Clarke and Michael Fallon, presented a Bill to make provision for the reduction of burdens resulting from legislation for businesses or other organisations or for individuals; to make provision for the repeal of legislation which no longer has practical use; to make provision about the exercise of regulatory functions; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 162) with explanatory notes (Bill 162-EN).

Backbench Business

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

Shrewsbury 24 (Release of Papers)

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

12:41

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House is seriously concerned at the decision of the Government to refuse to release papers related to the building dispute in 1972 and subsequent prosecutions of the workers known as the Shrewsbury 24 and calls on it to reverse this position as a matter of urgency.

The debate is long overdue but I urge colleagues not to intervene unless they feel they have to, because there are a number of Members who wish to speak and time will obviously be limited.

Nineteen seventy-two was a momentous year for industrial relations in this country. A weak Government had twice declared states of emergency, first in February during the first miners’ strike for almost half a century, and secondly in August during the national dockworkers’ strike. Matters were made worse by the Government’s attempts to prevent unions from defending their members’ rights, wages and conditions at work. It was clear that of all the work forces in the United Kingdom, the building industry was a bigger mess than all the rest put together. Wages were low, there was no job security and exploitation was rife through a system known as “the lump.”

[Jim McGovern (Dundee West) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Anderson]

Quickly.

[Jim McGovern]

As I am sure my hon. Friend is aware, the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs, of which I am a member, has conducted an inquiry into blacklisting. Would it be fair to say that the Shrewsbury 24 would most certainly have been blacklisted after the strike in 1972?

[Mr Anderson]

I thank and forgive my hon. Friend for his intervention. There is absolutely no doubt about it: people were blacklisted. One real sadness about what we are discussing today is that 40 years on from that disgrace, similar things are still taking place. The Scottish Affairs Committee should be congratulated on the great work it has done in this area.

The lump was a system whereby people were paid cash in hand, meaning not only that no income tax or national insurance contributions were paid—so the state was robbed—but, vitally, that workers were uninsured against accidents or worse while they were at work. That was extremely serious. A building worker was dying every day on average on building sites across the UK and, in the three years before 1972, almost a quarter of a million industrial injuries were reported, with many more not being reported.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Anderson]

In exasperation, I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I hope that his debate will be balanced. He talks about the need to protect people’s rights and about violence, so I very much hope that in preparation for the debate he spoke, as I have, to some of the police officers in Shrewsbury and some of the people in the building trade who experienced great violence and intimidation from those people at that time.

[Mr Anderson]

I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman listens to what I have to say, he will realise what went on in Shrewsbury, including evidence from the police—

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Has he spoken to the people there?

[Mr Anderson]

I will run the debate; the hon. Gentleman should just sit there and listen.

In 1972, the unions, exasperated at the failure to achieve progress, called the first and so far only national building strike ever held. Four months later, the strike was called off after the unions forced their employers to concede the biggest increase in basic pay rates ever. It was a victory for the working man, but a bitter blow for the employers, who were determined on revenge. They were not alone. The Tory Government were rattled by the success of one of the least well-organised groups of workers in this country and were determined to help their friends in the building industry.

To pursue that revenge the employers’ body, the National Federation of Building Trades Employers, went on what can only be described as a fishing expedition. It wrote to its members on 20 September 1972, two weeks after the strike ended, seeking any information related to possible violence and intimidation during the strike. The clear intention of the federation was to pass the dossier on to the Home Secretary for his consideration so that he could tighten up the law on picketing in industrial disputes. The federation specifically asked its members for information on any incidents available to them, including signed statements from any eye-witnesses; copies of any photographs from local newspaper photographers of, as the federation said, “the more notorious occurrences” that would give strong support to the submissions; and any other kind of suitable evidence that members might have come across, such as tape recordings and personal photographs.

It was not just the members of the federation who were being written to. In a letter to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Robert McAlpine complained that there was no problem with the law governing pickets and their activities, but that the problem was rather down to

“the lack of enforcement of the law by the police”.

That was a clear shot across the bows of the people who had the responsibility of ensuring that the law was adhered to on the ground. The police, in whom we put our faith to ensure that the law is upheld properly, were being told by an employer that they had not done their job properly.

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

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Anderson]

Yes, but will my hon. Friend please be quick?

[Mr Cunningham]

I will be as quick as I can. It is not only in the building trade that blacklisting has gone on since the ’70s; it has gone on in other industries. We have recently had debates about that. More importantly, the Tories have not changed. Look at the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, because that tells us a lot. They want to make the law worse for working people.

[Mr Anderson]

My hon. Friend is right. Some things, sadly, never change.

When the dossier was completed in October 1972, it was passed on to the then Home Secretary, Robert Carr, who immediately instructed the chief constables of West Mercia and Gwynedd to investigate events in one particular part of the country—that is, the area in and around north Wales. He obviously wanted to pursue the agenda laid out by the employers in the dossier despite reports such as those in the Financial Times—hardly the workers’ friend—that said:

“This document is itself flawed since it suggests the existence of a sinister plot without being able to substantiate the allegations.”

Those involved who are in the House to listen to the debate today believe that the Home Secretary gave the job to the police so that they would put bones on the case that the employers were trying to make.

Why was that important? If it could be shown that the activities of the pickets were deliberately planned to intimidate, the charges laid against them could be much more serious than those for the argy-bargy that was the norm on picket lines. In particular, if conspiracy could be proven, the potential to lock up some of the leaders of the dispute for a very long time became a reality.

The choice of north Wales as the focus for police action was not an accident. Despite evidence of much more aggressive activity in other parts of the country, the Home Secretary deliberately focused on north Wales. That might be purely coincidental, but I can assure the House that no one involved in the campaign believes that to be so. North Wales was a part of the world where the McAlpine family had a huge amount of political influence. They were not only influential players in the Tory party but one of the biggest developers in the building industry, including at the site in Brookside in Shrewsbury that was the epicentre of the case against the pickets. In addition—again, this may be purely coincidental, but I doubt it—the high sheriff of Denbighshire, the man responsible for law and order in the area, just happened to be the ninth member of the McAlpine family in succession to have held that post.

As the police investigation gained momentum, 31 pickets were arrested on 14 November—two months after the end of the dispute. The men were released without charge, but three months later, on Valentine’s day 1974, 24 of them were rearrested. A barrage of charges— 242 in total—were levelled at these men, all of whom were charged with intimidation. Much more seriously, the first six to go on trial were charged with conspiracy to intimidate contrary to common law. This was the charge that the employers’ body wanted to see, because it gave the establishment the chance to send pickets to jail for long periods. The intent was clear—lock these people up and the rest of the trade union movement will know that legitimate trade union activity, including picketing, could now be treated as a criminal act.

So how did these workers become embroiled in this legal minefield? On 31 August, a joint meeting of members of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians and the Transport and General Workers Union was held in The Ball and Stirrup pub in Chester. At the meeting, which was the first time many of those present had met each other, a request was read out from union members in the Shropshire area seeking support from other comrades throughout the north-west to successfully prosecute their case in their area. The meeting agreed that a group of pickets would travel down to Oswestry on 6 September to meet local activists and then decide which locations to picket.

That meeting is crucial to the issue. Anyone who has ever been involved in picketing, and looking round this room, I see a number of people who have been, knows that, especially when you are going outside your own area, you have to plan properly—basic stuff including where people are going to be picked up, when they can expect to get home, and where they are likely to be throughout the day. You also need to ensure that anybody going picketing is aware of the need to behave properly at all times and give them clear information in case there are problems. The meeting was simply a planning meeting, but crucially, when the case went to court, it was classed as a meeting to conspire to intimidate workers on the ground. No evidence was ever laid to substantiate that claim, but it was the crux of the case and it was what led to imprisonment.

The prosecution were so intent on getting jail sentences imposed that they even charged a person with conspiracy who was not present at the planning meeting. John McKinsie Jones had been collecting union subs in the downstairs bar of the pub, and he left before the planning meeting even began. He was nowhere near the meeting, yet amazingly he ended up being sentenced to nine months in jail for conspiracy to intimidate. How on earth can someone be part of a conspiracy when they are not even at the meeting where it is discussed?

It is interesting to compare what happened to the pickets who were charged with 242 offences between them and those at other courts who had been involved in similar activities. Earlier in the year, two trials were held in Mold. At the first trial, only minor charges were upheld by the jury and the maximum fine was £50. At the second trial, the jury found all defendants not guilty of anything. One of the main reasons for this was that in Mold, prior to the jury being selected, the lawyers for the defendants exercised their long-held right to challenge potential jurors. As was the right of the defence laywers, they were looking for people who might have connections with the building industry or might be hostile to trade unions. As a result of the cross-examination, a number of prospective jurors were excluded from the jury.

However—again, forgive my scepticism—after those trials, but before the Shrewsbury ones began, the Lord Chancellor, Lord Hailsham, another part of the Tory hierarchy, unilaterally banished the right of lawyers to challenge jurors. This was done without warning and contrary to decades of practice, and without any prior consultation with the legal system or other interested parties. In order to try to get a fair trial despite these clearly deliberately motivated changes to the legal process, the defendants’ lawyers requested that the trial of those charged in relation to picketing in Shrewsbury be held in Mold or be moved to an area of the country that was more neutral than Shrewsbury would have been. The judge flatly turned down that request and set 3 October 1973 as the date for the first hearing.

The trial judge, Mr Justice Mais, was a surprise choice for such a high-profile, politically charged case. He had little, if any, experience in cases of this magnitude, or in criminal cases at all; his expertise was mainly in rural and ecclesiastical matters. His behaviour throughout the case led many to question his capability and impartiality. A number of issues gave rise to this concern. For example, when the jury were called to bring in the verdict, they were unable to come to a majority decision—they were tied at eight to four. The judge asked them to keep going but they said, “We’re too tired to go on today—we need to have a break.” So he agreed to give them a break and let them stop in a hotel overnight, but he closed by saying:

“You should go to the accommodation prepared for you…and I suggest that you continue your deliberations there.”

That was an extraordinary thing to suggest. The only place where a jury should consider any case is in the jury room and nowhere else, be it a hotel or anywhere else.

If that were the judge’s only error, it would still be wrong, but throughout the trial his behaviour was, to say the least, questionable. The campaigners provided me and other Members of this House with reports from David Altaras, a junior barrister who defended Ricky Tomlinson at the first trial. In 2012, he gave a statement in which he said:

“Given the fact that I regularly adjudicate criminal trials myself I have no hesitation in saying that, during the trial, the Judge’s conduct towards the defence frequently crossed the line between permissible and impermissible behaviour and amounted to a display of obvious hostility towards the defendants. He took particular exception to John Platt-Mills who represented Des Warren and to Des Warren himself. I vividly recall an occasion when Mr Platt-Mills was cross-examining a witness (probably a police officer) and the Judge took off his wig and threw it on the bench in irritation. I recall occasions when he threw his pen down and turned to face the wall when either a defendant was giving evidence or the defence were adducing evidence in cross-examination. In addition, I can remember his rather rude interruptions during cross-examination.”

He went on:

“During the Judge’s various outbursts, I remember members of the jury nudging one another. My own view at the time, a view shared by other members of the Defence team with whom I discussed the Judge’s behaviour, was that the jury (a) could have been in no doubt where the judge’s sympathy lay and (b) could have absolutely no doubt that he loathed Mr Platt-Mills.”

So we had a court case where the legal system had been changed to deny jury challenges, that was held in an area where the defendant’s legal team were genuinely concerned about the lack of neutrality and was presided over by a judge whose inexperience was matched only by his partiality.

But it gets even worse. The campaign team’s researcher, Eileen Turnbull, has trawled through documentation that is in the archives at Kew. She has uncovered a letter dated 25 January 1973 from the then Attorney-General, Peter Rawlinson, to the then Home Secretary, Robert Carr, in which he advised the Home Secretary that in his view, having discussed the case with Treasury Counsel and the Director of Public Prosecutions, these

“proceedings should not be instituted.”

That was the highest legal advice in the land. We remember how, in the previous Parliament, my party was, quite rightly, lectured by then Opposition Members about the failure of Tony Blair to listen to the Attorney-General in relation to the Iraq war. In this instance, the same authority advised the Home Secretary not to pursue the case. The Home Secretary ignored him, and we have to ask why. The people who went to jail are clear about the reason. They have no doubt that the pressure from the building industry, particularly from a man who would soon be appointed as deputy treasurer and chief fundraiser to the Tory party, was overwhelmingly more important than the views of the people entrusted with advising on legal issues at the highest level.

We must remember that this pressure had been felt by the police at the highest level, with the result that in the autumn of 1972 they set up a huge fishing expedition. A team of detectives were billeted in north Wales and 800 statements were taken, of which 600 were discarded. This was despite the fact that on the day in question—6 September 1972—not only were no arrests made, but the police actually congratulated the leaders of the pickets on the disciplined way in which they conducted their activities. We must also remember that this was all done at the behest of the building employers’ federation.

Another issue of grave concern was the decision during the trial to allow an inflammatory television programme to be aired on the very night of the prosecution’s summing up. Under the title, “Red under the Bed”, the programme was an attack on this country’s left-wing political parties and trade union activity. It specifically referred to the ongoing trial. The day after it was aired, Judge Mais dismissed the defence’s attempts to have the TV company charged with contempt. Indeed, he criticised the defence for having the temerity to raise the matter. What is of even greater concern is that the papers that have already been released show that the then Government, right up to the then Prime Minister, were involved in assisting the programme to be produced.

There is clear evidence in the paperwork already in the public domain that a special unit was set up in Government to undermine legitimate trade union activity and to paint left-wing political activity and parties as subversive, despite their legitimate right to agitate in a modern democracy. That was all being done behind closed doors and it would never have been exposed without the determination of those who still seek justice today.

These men went to jail as a direct result of the onslaught of the establishment over a prolonged period, which was clearly designed to deter the wider labour movement from using industrial action to pursue its legitimate claims. Des Warren was given a three-year jail sentence and Ricky Tomlinson a two-year sentence, and John McKinsie Jones—the man who was not even present at the so-called conspiracy meeting—went to jail for nine months. Other men received suspended jail sentences. At the second trial, three more pickets—Brian Williams, Arthur Murray and Mike Pierce—were given jail sentences. At this and the subsequent third trial, others were also given suspended jail sentences.

These men and those who have been campaigning for more than four decades contend that they went to jail and got criminal records as a direct result of direct political interference in this country’s political and judicial systems by very strong personalities who pressurised politicians, senior police and members of the judiciary to take part in a witch hunt and to send out a clear message of intent that people involved in industrial disputes would face exceedingly serious consequences.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I am listening intently to the worrying case being made by the hon. Gentleman. Is he able to enlighten me on whether there was a financial link between the employers and the party then in government? In other words, were the employers funding that political party?

[Mr Anderson]

I cannot say for certain that that was the case, but it is clear that one of the main protagonists was Mr McAlpine, who became the deputy treasurer of the Conservative party within a matter of months after the trial ended and who was also one of the party’s chief fundraisers for decades.

The ongoing refusal to release all the documentation related to this case only hardens the suspicions of those involved. The morass of papers already in the public domain show clear evidence of the pattern of pressure that was applied in order to get the results the employers wanted. Today we have a chance to set in train the process that should lead those in power to come to a view that it is in the real public interest and, clearly, a matter of natural justice that the remaining papers be released. Only then will we really be able to see just how far the tentacles of big business spread into the public realm. Whether we like it or not, we are responsible for the failures of the state in the past. Today, collectively, we can start to address those failings.

13:03

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

It is very interesting to see no fewer than 34 Labour Members present.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

And trade unionists.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

And trade unionists; I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful intervention. It is quite clear that old Labour is still alive and well and, in some respects, seeking both to justify and to romanticise mob rule and violence and intimidation.

[Mr Campbell]

You have not been listening.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Not only have I been listening, but I was party to the public debate at the time, for I had a letter published in The Times on 14 January 1975, when I was director of Freedom Under Law, calling on the then Home Secretary to allow the law to be upheld and for the jail sentences of Tomlinson and Warren to be maintained, so I have an interest in the matter.

It is important for Labour Members to realise that if they wish to secure the support of the British people at the next election, they need to make it clear that they renounce the kind of practices that prevailed in the 1970s and 1980s.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

No, I am not going to give way at the moment. It is very important that people should understand the conditions that applied at the time. People who were going about their ordinary activities were subjected to intimidation. I became the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood in 1983 and I saw constituents of mine who were trying to go to work in Littleton colliery having bags of urine thrown at them by striking miners from south Wales.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

No, I will not give way. This was in the day of the flying pickets. These people would go around the country supporting trade unions that were engaged in that kind of intimidation, even though they themselves had absolutely nothing to do with the strike or industry in question.

The statistics make interesting reading, because it was at this time after the second world war that Britain was going substantially down the tubes. Successive Conservative Governments had failed not only to turn back but to arrest the ratchet of socialism that had driven through this country in the immediate post-war years. [Interruption.] I see that that has huge support on the Opposition Benches.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The hon. Gentleman is a Labour Member for whom I have an immense amount of time. He was a very good Transport Minister and it would give me enormous pleasure to give way to him.

[Jim Fitzpatrick]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He will forgive me if I disagree with pretty much everything he has said so far, even though we do agree on certain aspects of life in politics. The motion calls for the publication of papers. It does not call for anybody to make judgments for and against; it asks for the papers to be published so that the public can make a judgment call. Some of us believe that those papers will show certain things and, obviously, Conservative colleagues think they might show something else, but surely we can agree on transparency in politics and the publication of documents.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I am slightly relieved to hear that he does not agree with what I have said, because that makes my life easier and it probably makes his life easier as well. I will not resile from my personal affection for the hon. Gentleman and I will address his point.

The hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) was on his feet for about half an hour, during which he talked about the circumstances that prevailed at the time. We heard about the way in which the workers were being ground down by the employers and, of course, every possible opportunity was taken to associate those employers not only with the Conservative party, but with its fundraising efforts. It is important that there is a public understanding of the conditions that prevailed at the time and how it came about that these men were jailed.

I want to draw attention to the record of days lost to industrial action at the time. In 1970, when Ted Heath became Prime Minister, nearly 11 million days were lost. In 1971, the number of days lost was 13.5 million; in 1972—the year in question—it was nearly 24 million; in 1973 it was 7 million; and in 1974 it was 14.75 million. That illustrates just what was going on in the country at the time. [Interruption.] There was indeed a Tory Government. There was also a concerted effort by the trade union leaders, whom Margaret Thatcher described in her book as being first, second and third socialist politicians. They were not trade union leaders and they were not looking after the interests of their members. They were in pursuit of a political objective, which was to support the socialist party under the guise of the Labour party at the time. That is what they were trying to do. The Conservative Government at the time did not have a majority and, I submit, probably did not have the conviction to roll back socialism and tackle the trade union reform that was necessary, which was of course addressed by Margaret Thatcher and the 1979 Government.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I invite the hon. Gentleman to respond to the question put to him about the motion. I do not want to hear a re-enactment of the events of 40 years ago. The general public are entitled to see the papers relating to what happened then. Does he agree that the papers should be published so that both sides can see exactly what happened 40 years ago?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I told the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who is a friend, that I would address that point, and that I would do so in my own time, not in his. The Liberals, typically, are sitting on the fence. I forgive my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell). It is absolutely right and proper, and important—[Interruption.] I know that we are in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, but there we go.

Britain was the sick man of Europe in the 1970s. One reason for that was the kind of trade union activities that were going on. The hon. Member for Blaydon has given his romanticised version of what went on, and I am absolutely determined to put an alternative case, and I hope that I am in order to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker. That alternative case will not be uttered by any Opposition Members. I suspect that the only other person to do so will be my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who of course has a vested interest in his constituency. [Interruption.] I thank the hon. Member for Blaydon, and I will indeed continue.

I have set out the pattern of industrial action that was destroying Britain, and of which the country was absolutely fed up. An opinion poll in The Times in January 1980 said that 71% of the people surveyed about the kind of measures that the Thatcher Government were introducing —to restrain secondary picketing and intimidation—wanted those measures to be taken, as, interestingly, did 62% of trade unionists. One of the successes of the Thatcher period was to restore trade unions back to their members, taking them out of the hands of their politically motivated leaders. We were acting very much in line with the spirit of the British people.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

This history lesson is very interesting from the hon. Gentleman’s point of view, but for the third time, will he give us a straightforward answer: does he believe that the papers should be published—yes or no?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The hon. Gentleman, who is also a friend, will have to be patient. I will deal with that point in my own time. [Hon. Members: “When?”] In my own time.

Secondary picketing was eventually outlawed in 1984, during the Parliament in which I first served in this House. Much has been said about the cases of Warren and Tomlinson, but it is very important to put some of the facts on the record. To quote from my letter in The Times of 14 January 1975:

“It is worth reminding them”—

those who took the same line as the hon. Member for Blaydon—

“of the words of Mr Justice Mais, the trial judge, in passing sentence on December 20, 1973. Of one of those jailed, he said: ‘You took part in violence and encouraged violence… You are prepared to impose your views on others by violence if need be.’”—

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On three occasions, the hon. Gentleman has been asked to clarify his position and to address the motion. He is not in any way discussing the motion. Will you perhaps advise me? Time is moving on and many hon. Members wish to speak, but he is clearly filibustering to waste time.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s point, but it is not possible for a Member of the House to filibuster while I am listening carefully to what is said and making sure that it is relevant to the matter before us. The hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) has explained that he is coming to the main point of his argument. I have allowed him to develop his argument, as is perfectly in order, but he is an experienced parliamentarian and will know that he must come to the very point of the matter. I will be very strict this afternoon in making sure that all speeches are within the scope of the matter before us and are properly in order.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I am most grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Hon. Members should accept that the question whether the remaining papers that have not been released to the National Archives should be revealed is a pertinent one. In debating, as we are, the issues surrounding the cases, particularly two of the cases, it is highly relevant to question whether the papers should be revealed.

Before I was interrupted, I was quoting Mr Justice Mais, the trial judge. He went on to tell the six people before him:

“Some of you were clearly determined to strike terror in the hearts of those who continued to work.”

That was a very serious crime indeed. Furthermore, the case went to appeal and, to quote The Times editorial of 20 December 1974, the Court of Appeal judge said:

“There was at each site a terrifying display by pickets of force and violence actually committed or threatened against buildings, plant and equipment; at some sites, if not at others, acts of personal violence and threats of violence to the person were committed and made. Persons working on the sites and residents near by were put in fear.”

That should not be tolerated in our country, and it should not be supported by Opposition Members.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The hon. Gentleman has quoted the Court of Appeal judge. He was the same judge on whose verdict the hon. Gentleman relied for many years in resisting the case for a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday and so on. Is he confident that his reliance on Widgery today—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. In interventions as well as speeches, hon. Members will stick to the matter before us. [Interruption.] Order. The hon. Gentleman may make his point, but he must refer to the matter before us, from which he was straying very considerably.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I also want to refer to people who have spoken more recently about the issue. An article from Wales on Sunday of 27 January 2013 in the debate pack provided to Members—so it must be relevant, Madam Deputy Speaker—states that

“Peter Starbuck, who says he was Oswestry’s largest contractor at the time, claims violence and intimidation were a routine part of the strikers’ tactics and the convictions are sound. And bricklayer’s labourer Clifford Growcott has described how he was ‘punched and kicked like a football’ during the strike.”

I am astonished that Opposition Members want to side with people convicted of using that sort of violence against their fellow human beings.

[Mr Anderson]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman who proposed the motion.

[Mr Anderson]

I take from what the hon. Gentleman has said that the Court of Appeal judge was Lord Widgery. On the point about the litany of activities that are supposed to have happened—if it is correct that those events happened, they are very serious—why was not one person arrested on the day that they happened or are alleged to have happened? Lots of policemen were there, so why did they not pick those people up and arrest them? Why did that happen five months down the line, when they were effectively stitched up by the case against them?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

The hon. Gentleman obviously knows the answer to that question. I have no idea. I was not involved in the trial and I was not at the trial, but I was involved in the public debate at the time.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I will give way to the hon. Lady in a minute.

I remind Opposition Members that in Margaret Thatcher’s excellent book, “The Downing Street Years”, she wrote about the Government’s attempts to deal with trade union legislation. At one point she says that

“when a dispute did occur the trade union was able to exercise what amounted to intimidation over its members—‘lawful intimidation’ in the unhappy phrase coined by Labour’s former Attorney-General, Sam Silkin.”

At the highest levels of the Labour party at that time, such practices were basically endorsed. I say to right hon. and hon. Members on the Opposition Benches that the country has moved on. If the Labour party wishes to occupy the Government Benches once again—I very much hope that it will not—its Members must understand that the public out there do not want to see any return to such behaviour or to hear any sympathy expressed for it.

The hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) has been extremely persistent and I am delighted to give way to her.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is talking about the dispute. The motion is about the request for papers. The Government cite national security as a reason for not disclosing those papers. What does national security have to do with an industrial dispute?

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I will address that point in one moment. I only wish to make two further points and one of them will address the hon. Lady’s question.

Robert Carr, who became a peer in the other place—I will continue to refer to it as the other place, Madam Deputy Speaker—was accused of conniving with the police and the security forces at the behest of the construction industry. That is a conspiracy theory. Those of us who knew Robert Carr cannot imagine that he was anything other than a charming, polite and reasonable Home Secretary. I do not think that he was in the business of conniving.

Let me conclude by coming to the point that has been raised a number of times.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I say to the House and to the hon. Gentleman that if he concludes his speech in the next two to three minutes, he will have taken the same amount of time as the proposer of the motion. That would be reasonable.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I am most grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, for that guidance. I will fully comply with the implicit request.

I put it to Opposition Members that it is not only the current Lord Chancellor who has reviewed these matters. I have not spoken to him about the matter, but I understand that he has done so recently. He has considered that there is no reason to change the decision of previous Lord Chancellors. Lord Irvine was Lord Chancellor in 2002 when the 30-year rule would have applied. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) later became Lord Chancellor. Labour’s Lord Chancellors all concluded that it was not appropriate for certain of the papers to be revealed. [Hon. Members: “Where are they?”] Labour Members must address that question to the right hon. Member for Blackburn. I have no responsibility for bringing him to the Chamber to provide answers on these matters. He is a Member of the Labour party, not of my party.

It is important that we put it on the record that successive Lord Chancellors have looked at this issue and deemed it appropriate that certain papers, supplied or otherwise relating to the intelligence services, should not be released to the National Archives. I am not privy to what those papers are. I dare say that I would like to look at them. However, I repose my trust in Lord Chancellors, whether Conservative or Labour. They should be responsible for determining whether our national security would be imperilled.

To conclude, in the 1970s, when the nation was being held to ransom by strikes all over the country, people like me and my new wife were stocking up with provisions in case there was a shutdown, and Ross McWhirter of the “Guinness Book of Records” and I were looking at how we might produce a newspaper to get information out to the public when the newspapers were being closed down by trade union militants. That was the mood of the nation at the time. It is important that the country understands that. This case arose out of that mood.

Thank goodness for this country that we had a Conservative Government, led by a real Conservative in Margaret Thatcher, who restored the power in trade unions to their members. Today, we have the evidence. The number of working days lost to strikes in 2012 was not 10 million, let alone 30 million. It was not even 1 million. It was 250,000. That is testimony to the fundamental reform of trade union relations that was carried out in this country. The United Kingdom has prospered ever since.

13:19

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) claims to be a member of the most transparent Government ever. Ricky Tomlinson might have a couple of words to say about that. I congratulate—[Laughter.] Someone’s just got it!

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) on the tenacity he deployed to secure today’s debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee, which has been persuaded, unlike those on the Government Benches, that this issue is important enough to warrant a full parliamentary debate. It is important that we stick to the terms of the motion.

It is true to say that this debate has been a long, long time coming. We now know more than ever about the political, judicial, media and police manipulation that scarred the working lives of 24 ordinary men, who were wrongly convicted on trumped-up charges, with six of them unjustly jailed. As John Platt-Mills, QC, said:

“The trial of the Shrewsbury Pickets is the only case I know of where the government has ordered a prosecution in defiance of the advice of senior police and prosecution authorities”.

I want to praise on the record the remarkable persistence of the campaigners over the past four decades. In particular, I praise Ricky Tomlinson for the way in which he has used his fame as an actor to highlight this injustice. Despite his success, he has remained steadfastly shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with the other Shrewsbury pickets and their families. Ricky said from the dock during his trial:

“I know my children when they are old enough, will understand that the struggle we took part in was for their benefit and for the benefit and interest of building workers and their families.”

When I was indentured as an apprentice bricklayer in 1978, notwithstanding the introduction of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, Britain’s building sites were still workplaces of great danger and the conditions for workers were shockingly poor. On most sites, there were no proper toilets, washbasins or lockers. There were certainly no hard hats, goggles, gloves and masks as standard personal protective equipment. People died daily.

When workers had the audacity to ask the state to take action and stop the carnage, the Government of the day interfered in the business of the judiciary, resulting in the most political and corrupt criminal trial that had been seen in peacetime Britain.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

If the strike and the prosecutions are a matter of such importance to national security that the papers will not be released 40 years later, why did it take the police five months to make any arrests?

[Steve Rotheram]

I will develop that point at the end of my speech and explain why it is so wrong that it has taken so long even for the matter to be debated in this House.

The people we are talking about were arrested on trumped-up charges, received a dodgy trial and were given unsound convictions. That would not be allowed and would not be acceptable today, and it should not have been allowed and should not have been acceptable then. It was a legal process that would shame a third-world dictatorship.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon has suggested, the exploitation of workers and the unacceptable and unsafe working conditions in which workers were forced to operate were the bedrock of the first ever national building workers’ strike in 1972. As a result of that national strike, which was settled on 16 September 1972, the building workers succeeded in achieving an across-the-board increase for all trades working in the construction industry. There was, however, enormous political anxiety as a result of that victory, fuelled by a targeted lobbying campaign by the National Federation of Building Trades Employers. Shrewsbury 24 campaigners firmly believe that the end of the strike was in fact the beginning of the employers’ campaign to have pickets prosecuted, and to use that as a deterrent should they ever have the temerity to take further industrial action.

[Mr David Hamilton (Midlothian) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend accept that that was the precedent that started the ball rolling for all the disputes that came after? That dispute set the goal, which is why it is important to have transparency. After that court case came ’74, ’84, and the miners’ strike—the legal position changed at that point.

[Steve Rotheram]

Absolutely, it was used as a battering ram to send a message not just to construction workers but to working class people throughout the country who decided to take industrial action.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) mentioned previous Labour Lord Chancellors, particularly the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw). Has the hon. Gentleman had any discussions with previous Labour Lord Chancellors about why the information has not been released?

[Steve Rotheram]

The hon. Gentleman should not think I am going to stand here and defend the indefensible. We had an opportunity when in government to do what we are asking for today, but we did not take it. However, that does not stop people continuing to campaign and trying to persuade the Government—no matter what colour—that that is the right thing to do. That is what we are doing today.

[Mr MacNeil]

Is there another consideration, because since previous Lord Chancellors considered the issue and refused to release the papers more research has come forward from campaigners that now makes it more materially important to release the papers and be transparent?

[Steve Rotheram]

That is a good point, and as things develop more and more information is known. Some further information has been gathered by Eileen Turnbull, and I am sure other Members will refer to that in their contributions.

On 20 September 1972, a letter was sent to all NFBTE regional secretaries around the country from its head office in London. It was headed “Intimidation Dossier”. The dossier was presented to the Home Secretary, Robert Carr, who had previously been Secretary of State for Employment and overseen the introduction of the contentious Industrial Relations Act 1971. Out of 85 instances of alleged intimidation and violence detailed in the dossier, only six related to north Wales. Despite the undeniable fact that most incidents occurred elsewhere, the Home Secretary instructed the chief constables of West Mercia and Gwynedd police forces to carry out an inquiry into picketing in north Wales during the strike. Let us not forget that, as was said earlier, none of the pickets was cautioned or arrested on the day, the unions did not receive any complaints from the police about the conduct of the pickets, and photographic evidence shows that the police were present and mingling freely with strikers. Some police had their hands in their pockets—hardly intimidation.

We now know that of the 900 statements taken, 600 were disregarded by the authorities, presumably because they failed to corroborate what the police hoped they would say. On 11 October 1972, Robert Carr told this House that in his opinion there was no deficiency in the law as it stood, and the problem lay with enforcement. In other words, he was pressuring the police who he believed had failed to do their job properly. A few days later, the then Attorney-General, Sir Peter Rawlinson QC, gave a speech to the Tory 1922 committee in which he used strikingly similar language. Following that, we know that of the 200 or so pickets identified, just 24 were carefully selected for a political show trial at Shrewsbury Crown court, and charged with the offence of intimidation under section 7 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act 1875.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

As my hon. Friend may be aware, criminal lawyers in the legal community know that conspiracy charges are always used when there is no evidence of a substantive proper charge. It is the last resort.

[Steve Rotheram]

My hon. Friend makes the point very well.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Steve Rotheram]

I will not take any further interventions. I intended to take 11 minutes but my speech has gone over that because of the interventions.

Six pickets were singled out for special treatment and to stand trial for the common law offence of conspiracy to intimidate. They were arrested while the other 18 were summoned to appear, thereby indicating the distinction in the severity of their roles to the court. That strikes me as odd. Given that the police made no arrests and undertook no immediate investigation after the picketing in and around Shrewsbury on 6 September, where did the “'disturbing evidence” that Robert Carr referred to come from? Campaigners will never know until all documents are released.

In addition to the submission of the dossier, other less transparent forms of lobbying took place, as documented in a letter to the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis—the highest ranking police officer in the country—from Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons in February ’73. That was followed by personal representations to the Home Office, and questions to Ministers designed to turn up the pressure for the police to pursue pickets. As we have heard several times, there were no reports of violence on the picket lines, and no arrests made at the time of the strike.

We have recently seen documents relating to the Brixton riots, the Lockerbie bombing, Mrs Thatcher’s attempted use of the Army against the miners, as well as details of how she made no effort whatsoever to make the case for the release of Nelson Mandela. Most surprisingly, perhaps, in November 2013 The Guardian reported details about the release of secret memos relating to the efforts of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ to maintain a Cypriot base. Given the political, strategic and geographical importance of that base, it is surprising—certainly to all Opposition Members—that an issue of such magnitude does not warrant an extension of the security and intelligence instrument of the Public Records Act 1958, yet documents relating to a couple of dozen strikers during a building workers dispute 40-odd years ago are deemed to be a risk to our national security! It would be farcical if it was not so serious for those whose lives have been deeply scared by this miscarriage of justice, and I can see no reason whatsoever for the Government to withhold the release of those papers.

Yes, it will probably be politically embarrassing for the Conservative party; yes, it will be another shameful exposé of Britain’s dark past in which the powerful ran roughshod over the weak; and, yes, it will be an indictment of how the British establishment—including the hon. Member for Aldershot—believed it was above the law when it conspired to fit up individuals or groups whose politics it feared. But it would be the right thing to do.

I will conclude by placing this debate in a much wider context. We are at a juncture in our country where we have the chance systematically to cleanse the wrongs of our recent history. From Bloody Sunday to historic child and sexual abuse cases; from Amritsar to Stephen Lawrence; and, yes, from Hillsborough to—who knows?—perhaps Orgreave and beyond. I believe that the House must act upon this moment. The Shrewsbury campaign may well have been the first in a series of injustices that have spanned more than 40 years, leaving heartache and grief in their wake, but the time has come for the obfuscation to end, for campaigning to succeed, for documents to be released, and for justice to be done.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. A large number of Members want to participate in the debate so I am imposing a time limit of six minutes for each Back-Bench speech, starting immediately. We will see how we go through the afternoon, but it may be necessary for that limit to be reduced further if we do not have enough time to fit everybody in.

13:39

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

As the hon. Member for Shrewsbury, this matter is obviously of great interest to me. I want to put into context my initial question to the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson). To have a strong debate and a point of view, we need to try to understand the other person’s perspective. That is why I asked him how much time he had spent in Shrewsbury interacting with the local people trying to find out their interpretation of what happened at that time. I say to him, and to other hon. Members, that, being the Member for this beautiful Shropshire town, I have spoken to a lot of my constituents who were there at the time. I was born in 1972 when these incidents occurred, so I have to rely on the first-hand accounts and experiences of my constituents. It was disappointing to have been shouted down by Opposition Members when I tried to make that point.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) said, 1972 was a time of great industrial strife. Some people felt that they had the right to intimidate and use violence to achieve their political objectives. Margaret Thatcher saw the danger to democracy of allowing this to continue. She saw a great danger to our parliamentary process and to the rule of law by not tackling people who felt that the use of violence was a perfectly legitimate tool to pursue their aims. We must not forget how damaging militant trade union vandalism was, and we must never allow it to return.

I spoke to the police officer who was first on the scene, Mr Aubrey Kirkham. He is a respected member of the Shrewsbury community. He described the people descending on our small town that day—400 people, I think he said to me, came on coaches from outside Shropshire—as a “marauding mob”. He felt that they meted out huge intimidation to local people and massive violence to local workers. Police suffered great violence and were massively outnumbered. He told me of one bricklayer from Heathgates in Shrewsbury who had a brick thrown at him for refusing to come down from scaffolding. He subsequently fell and a year later he died. Some of his family think that he died as a direct result of that incident.

Many constituents say that these people have been tried and convicted by a jury, and they are bewildered that this debate has even been called. They think that Parliament should be looking at other, more pressing priorities.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

The issue we are debating is not whether what the hon. Gentleman is saying is correct, or whether what is being said by Opposition Members is correct. If the papers were to be released, we would be able to make that judgment, and that is what we are calling for in this debate.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

If the hon. Lady allows me to finish, I will come on to exactly that point.

Obviously, I have also spoken to many people in the building trade in the past few days, in advance of this debate, for their first-hand accounts. If any hon. Members are genuinely interested in finding out what the people on the ground felt at that time about the violence, I very much hope they will approach me.

Coming on to the point raised by the hon. Lady, the hon. Member for Blaydon asked for the documents to be released. I have two questions. I will be very brief and let other hon. Members contribute. I reiterate the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot: we have to ask why, over a long period—the Labour party was in office for three terms—former Labour Lord Chancellors decided not to release this information. That is a perfectly legitimate question to ask. If Opposition Members feel passionately about this issue—I clearly see that they do—they should challenge and scrutinise their colleagues to ask why the Labour Government did not release it.

I am very interested to hear from the Minister whether he will release the documents and, if not, why he is not prepared to release them. I have been approached by constituents who have a different perspective. They feel that they do not want documents to be withheld from the public domain if there is the potential for a cover-up of some kind, or some form of inappropriate behaviour. As a community, I think the argument is evenly balanced in Shrewsbury. There are people who want to remember the violence. We are a wonderful but quiet Salopian town. This was an extraordinary event in our history and they want people to remember the violence they experienced. They also want the Government to account for why they will not release the documents.

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

In the book “The Key to My Cell” by one of the pickets, Des Warren, he says that when, on 6 September 1972, they visited the first site at Kingswood, they were greeted by the son of the contractor who had a shotgun in his hand and was threatening to use it. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that he seems to be presenting to the House a one-sided version of what happened?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

As I have said repeatedly, both sides of the argument have to be taken into consideration. I felt it appropriate to come here today, as the Member representing Shrewsbury, to outline some of the things that leading members of my community have stated. Clearly, there are other perspectives. I hope the Minister will explain, if he is not going to release the documents, why he will not do so.

[Mark Durkan]

rose—

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am not going to give way, because I am going to end my remarks. Clearly, we can see tremendous passion from the Opposition for this issue to be resolved.

13:40

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) on securing this important debate about working conditions in the 1970s. It is about a time when, in that three-year period, 571 people were killed and 224,000 were injured on building sites. It is about an industrial campaign to ensure that those working conditions changed. It is about a trial that led to the results that my hon. Friend outlined. It is about a campaign, to which I pay tribute, that has lasted now for 40 years to get documents into the public domain to ensure that people have the full facts on why action was taken and why the judgment was made.

The motion states simply that the Government should release the papers referring to all aspects of the trial and the case. The motion is a fair one. I say to both the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) and the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) that the judgment of this House can be made, as can the judgment of the public, on the information contained in that simple motion, which calls on the Government to reverse their position as a matter of urgency and to release the papers.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Hanson]

I will not give way. A lot of Members want to speak and time is pressing.

This is a simple motion, but for my constituents it is not a simple matter, nor has it been for the past 40 years. For my constituent Arthur Murray it meant six months in prison and a lifetime of concern about the impact of that sentence. For my constituent John McKinsie Jones it meant nine months in prison and concern about his employability, his future and his peace of mind. For my constituent Terry Renshaw it meant a four-month suspended sentence for two years, which has had an impact on his life. They are currently bringing a case for the Criminal Cases Review Commission to consider their convictions to see if they were sound. The material that is not in the public domain could well be relevant to the case, and that is why they want it to be released.

I have written to the Secretary of State for Justice on several occasions. When I was a Minister in the Justice Department, I pressed, as a constituency MP, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), to release the information. The judgment was made, under the Labour Government, to release the information in 2012. Being the kind, open soul that I am, I wrote to the then Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), in 2010 to ask whether he could confirm that it would be released in 2012. He wrote back to me on 8 November 2010, saying that the “blanket” covering was still in place until 2012. I wrote to him again on 23 March 2011, and he said he was reviewing the matter and would make a decision. I wrote again on 20 November 2012, and was told by the now Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling):

“On 19 December 2011 Kenneth Clarke signed a new instrument which records that he has given his approval for the retention of the records”.

The retained records include:

“a paragraph from a memorandum from Sir Michael Hanley, Director General of the Security Service to Sir John at the Cabinet Office…a copy of the report which was enclosed with the…memorandum…a paragraph from…Sir John Hunt to a Mr Armstrong dated 13 January”

and

“a paragraph from a memorandum to Sir John Hunt relating to this report”.

It is important that this information be in the public domain. The Government are currently reviewing the 30-year rule and reducing it to 20 years, yet in this case, when there is 40 years of information, they are seeking to extend the period, and so withhold the information, until 2022. That seems unfair.

My colleague Terry Renshaw has been a councillor for years, he has served on the police authority, he is a lecturer, he has been mayor of the town I live in, he is a respected citizen, yet even today they will not let him into the United States of America because of that conviction. My constituent Arthur Murray, a decent man, served six months in prison, and made the point to me that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) made about John Platt-Mills, who said:

“The trial of the Shrewsbury Pickets is the only case I know where the government has ordered a prosecution in defiance of the advice of senior police and prosecution authorities.”

My constituent John McKinsie Jones said only last year:

“I have lived for almost 40 years with the stigma of being arrested, charged, convicted and imprisoned for conspiracy. My family were devastated… Like a lot of the other pickets I had never been in trouble in my life. We were completely innocent of these charges. We were branded as criminals by the media. We were blacklisted”.

This debate is about the lives of people in my constituency; it is about the lives of people who dedicated their lives to the trade union movement and who were only doing their jobs. I want these papers released. I might have to leave before the end of the debate, because of a long-standing constituency engagement this evening, but this debate has my support, and my constituents have my support.

[Sir Bob Russell]

rose—

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I call Dennis Skinner. [Interruption.] I am sorry. I will call the hon. Member for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) next.

13:52

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Well, that has put the Lib Dems in their place, hasn’t it? I have always wanted to do it. I know Clegg’s got a sour face—[Interruption.]

Anyway, we live in the age of transparency, don’t we? We have transparency coming out of every pore. Every day I turn up in the House of Commons, from all sides I am assailed by people saying, “We need transparency.” At the beginning, I was unsure what it meant; I am sure now. It is a class thing. It applies only to the things that affect us, but it does not give us an inch when we are asking for something from the other side. We can have transparency about hospitals, care homes, schools, and everything else, but not about this. Isn’t it strange that we are being told again today, by this tin-pot coalition, that we cannot have it? [Laughter.] It really is tin-pot, although I know the last Labour Government did not pull their weight either. It has to be put on the record.

But this is a debate about class, and we do not get many of those in here. Every so often, it erupts, and we talk about class. That is what this is. It was the same with Hillsborough, when my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) got that debate, and it was the same with Thatcher and the funeral and all the rest of it. I do not want to go into that, but the truth is that it is very rare. Here are a few people who were on the picket line, they ordered a bus from a bus company, and they talk about conspiracies—all the records are there! I know it was not the age of social media, Twitter and God knows what else—if it had been, they would have won, because they would all have had a mobile phone, with a camera, and they could have took some pictures. Yes, it’s about class, and that is why we are here today, thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and other colleagues.

I was here in the 1970s, and I could not believe it the moment I got to London: we were on picket lines, and winning—winning! It does not happen very often, so we have to treasure every moment. My father worked for 50 years in the pits, and when we won the 1972 strike, he said, “It’s the first time in my life.” Yet there is all this talk, somehow or other, about workers having power. It is not true, and this is another example where they do not have it, or otherwise the papers would have been released and, what’s more, this whole episode would not have begun. It began because of the climate of 1970 onwards. The establishment, the Heath Government, were defeated by the miners in 1972, after a seven-week strike. It is true there was a bit of pushing and shoving, but by and large it was a relatively peaceful affair. The police were wearing long stockings underneath their trousers. I told Tom Swain, and he said, “I’m getting a pair.” That’s what it was like, by and large.

What happened then? The Upper Clyde shipbuilders had a sit-in and won. Then there was Vic Turner and Bernie Steer saying, “We’re going to put some pickets on down at the docks”—at what is now Covent Garden—and they got put in Pentonville jail. The Industrial Relations Act had just got Royal Assent, but what happened? After Vic Turner was put in jail with his mates, the Official Solicitor had to turn up, representing all the echelons of the establishment, saying, “They won’t purge their own contempt. We’ve got to do it for them.” We said, “Yes, but at a price”, and so they had to kick the Act into the long grass.

In the middle of all this, some people, such as those I should not speak about in the Gallery, decided also to battle for better wages. They had never had great wages, but UCATT and the building workers had had a lot of injuries, so they decided in that climate to take a chance and fight for better wages and conditions. That is all it was. The evidence was there, as we have heard, but the establishment decided that somebody needed a lesson: “We’ll take these on. We lost to the miners. We lost to Upper Clyde. We lost the Industrial Relations Act. We’ve got to have a victory.” That was what this was all about, and let no one kid themselves: when the echelons of the state decide to take action, the judiciary join them, and I do not care what their names are. It has been apparent for so many years, and it is still apparent today.

My time is running out. I compliment all those who have taken part, but I want to pay my final compliment to that face I saw in Lincoln prison, Des Warren, fighting the establishment, and when I call for transparency, it is the face of Des Warren—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

[Sir Bob Russell]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Sir Bob Russell, I apologise about earlier. As the House will know, we alternate between sides. Follow that, in six minutes.

13:58

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I am delighted that the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) went before me. My only regret is that he was not gracious enough to me, given that we are almost family. It is not generally known that my nephew, who lives in Clay Cross, is the partner of the hon. Gentleman’s second cousin. If they got married, we would be related by marriage—but we are still working on that.

I would like to welcome the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), to the Dispatch Box. I am sure he would have wished for a better occasion to make his debut, but there we are—we have to take the rough with the smooth. Nevertheless, I congratulate him on his new position.

The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) has made the most powerful speech so far. The motion before us is quite clear. I intervened on the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth). I do not want to rehearse here this afternoon incidents from 40 years ago, but we must have all the relevant papers published. It has been acknowledged that successive Governments—perhaps the motion should have incorporated the term “successive Governments”—have failed to do so. It is also important to recognise, as the right hon. Member for Delyn said, how many advances have been made in the safety of building sites over the last four decades. The trade unions can certainly take credit for that, as can anyone involved in health and safety and, indeed, employers. When the London Olympic stadium was built, not a single life was lost. We should contrast that with what is happening at other major sporting venues around the world. Let us acknowledge the positives here.

I conclude briefly by saying that many lessons have been learned, not least in health and safety. We need all these papers to be released. If there is a silver lining to this dark cloud, if it had not been for the Shrewsbury 24, we would never have had the brilliant comedy actor, Mr Tomlinson, on our screens.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before I call the next speaker, I inform the House that I am reducing the time limit further to five minutes. I am doing my best to fit in all those who want to speak. I ask Members to pay attention and to assist colleagues to make their points; it is not necessary to take five minutes, but five minutes is the maximum from now on.

14:01

[Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) on securing this debate. I must say from the beginning that I am not a man of violence, but the contribution from the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) certainly stretched my tolerance level. He reminded us exactly what the Tories are about and what they think the workers should be—seen and not heard, shall we say.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jim Sheridan]

No. The hon. Gentleman has had enough time.

I apologise to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the outside world if I sound somewhat repetitive, but I genuinely believe that the more people that say this and listen to it, the more likely we are eventually to get somewhere on the issue of transparency. If we look at the Press Gallery, we see that there is very little interest in this issue from the press—apart from, of course, the regular and reliable Morning Star. For some reason, other newspapers, apart from some in the Trinity Mirror group, are not covering it.

In a week when we have discussed the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill, we can see how difficult it is, when it comes to what happened 40 years ago, to get transparency from this coalition Government. It is somewhat ironic that we are still discussing this issue in 2014.

To reflect on the Shrewsbury 24 issue, the conditions that existed in the building industry in the 1970s were a blight on our society. Sites with hundreds of thousands of men were given two rat-infested, filthy toilets. There was nowhere to change, so if workers got soaked in the rain, they would either have to go home and lose their pay, or continue to work—sodden and freezing. The health and safety conditions were appalling. In 1973 alone, there were 231 fatal accidents in construction. When talking about this issue, I am reminded of why these people were victimised—it was because they were raising serious health and safety concerns to ensure that workers were safe in the workplace. That is why the then employers turned against the trade unions—to make sure that health and safety issues were not raised at the appropriate time. The employers’ agenda was not about looking after their workers.

We look on some of the working conditions in some countries with disgust, and we call on UK-based companies working in those other countries to look at their supply chains and improve their human rights records. The Shrewsbury 24 were picketing in conditions that we would be horrified at today, so the calm and dignified protest they led is to be commended. It was a difficult task—something that has not been repeated—trying to organise building workers who often moved to new temporary sites and it was a struggle to organise them on account of that. The Shrewsbury 24 wanted to highlight the issues caused by colleagues “on the lump”, but they did not get violent and did nothing illegal. At this stage, I am reminded of what the Scottish Affairs Select Committee is doing on the issue of blacklisting. Only yesterday I listened to some of the evidence that the trade unions gave to that Select Committee. Even today, trade union organisers are refused access to building sites, simply because they want to raise health and safety issues that the employer does not want to listen to. Ordinary trade unions are still struggling to get recognition.

The Shrewsbury 24 hired six coaches and picketed large sites around Shrewsbury, which were chosen because they were not as well organised as some places in the bigger cities. It was peaceful—there were no cautions and no arrests. They had the permission of site owners. Chief Superintendent Meredith even shook the hand of Des Warren and thanked him for the co-operation of the UCATT and the then Transport and General Workers Union.

For that reason, when 24 men were arrested on conspiracy charges months later, they were shocked and confused. Six were sent to jail, and over four decades later, the pickets still deny that they were guilty of any of the charges levelled against them. The sentences had a devastating impact on these men. While in prison, Des Warren was regularly forced to drink “liquid cosh”, which has been blamed for his death from Parkinson’s disease in 2004. These men struggled to get work afterwards.

Let me finish by saying that if there were any sort of national security issue, it would never be viewed as acceptable in this day and age that information for which people are looking should be denied to them.

14:06

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

What lies behind this motion is a belief by many that there has been an abuse of state power and a subversion of the legal process. Successive Governments have said repeatedly that there are just a handful of files relating to the Shrewsbury trials. I would like to focus today on just one single file—PREM 15/2011, with which I hope the Minister can acquaint himself. It is described as “Woodrow Wyatt’s TV programme, ‘Red Under the Bed’”. On 27 August 2012, the National Archives website said that this file was “retained” by the Cabinet Office under section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1958. Why would such a file be kept back when it relates to a current affairs programme that was broadcast on ITV in November 1973? Following a freedom of information request by the Shrewsbury 24 campaign’s incisive researcher in August 2013, the Cabinet Office finally conceded and released some of the papers.

Why is this file relevant? It is relevant because the film was broadcast on 13 November 1973, the day on which the prosecution completed its case against the pickets. It was featured in the TV listing section of the local evening newspaper, the Shropshire Star, which would have been read by many of the jurors. The film included a highly tendentious commentary by Woodrow Wyatt, interspersed with footage that showed the following: two of the six defendants, John Carpenter and Des Warren; Shrewsbury Crown Court, surrounded by police officers, with a group of demonstrators attending a meeting nearby; images of a march through Shrewsbury in which the defendants could be made out; violence and damage alleged to have been caused by pickets on building sites during the national building strike of 1972; and violence and damage alleged to have been caused by pickets during a recent coal strike and a recent dock strike.

The next day, the defence applied to the judge for the television company to be held in contempt. The judge viewed the film and dismissed the application, even criticising the defence for raising the point. The file shows that the film, which lasted for one hour, was followed by a studio discussion of 30 minutes. Interestingly, the discussion was not broadcast in every ITV region—Granada, for example—but it was transmitted by ATV, the region covering Shrewsbury. The final words of that discussion were from the then Conservative MP Geoffrey Stewart-Smith. He was asked by the studio chairman, the late Richard Whiteley:

“Can you give me one example in 1973 of blatant communist influence?”

Stewart-Smith replies

“The violence in the building strike was called by a group, The Building Workers Charter, operating in defiance of the union leadership indulging in violence and flying pickets and this is an example of these people operating, opposing free trade unions”.

Can you imagine anything more blatantly prejudicial to a trial than that, Madam Deputy Speaker? Imagine what the reaction would be today. Just think of any current high-profile trial, and what a defence team would say, and how that would be reported in the print media now.

We have to ask ourselves why that film was made, and why it was shown on that particular date. It is my contention that the file reveals the highest level of collusion between the Government, the security services and the producers of the film. The first document in the file is a memo from Mr Thomas Barker of the Information Research Department to a Mr Norman Reddaway. For the benefit of younger Members, I should explain that the IRD was formed after the second world war as a covert anti-communist propaganda unit operating within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and was closed down in the late 1970s. Mr Barker boasts:

“We had a discreet but considerable hand in this programme....In general, this film, given national networking, can only have done good.”

He praises the studio discussion after the broadcast. The file contains more documents, including a note from the Prime Minister, Ted Heath, supporting the film after being sent a copy of the transcript by the Cabinet Secretary.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Is it possible to view the documentary now, or is it banned?

[Mr Watson]

It is not possible to view it. However, the file reveals that

“In February”

—that is, in February 1973—

“Mr Wyatt approached us direct for help. We consulted the Department of Employment and the Security Service through Mr Conrad Heron's Group, which has been meeting approximately fortnightly for the past year.”

So many meetings; so much consultation. Where are the documents relating to that? Were those people involved in the discussions that led to the decision to prosecute the pickets? If it had happened today, there would be outrage in the House.

Having seen the transcript of the film, the then Prime Minister replied to the Cabinet Secretary:

“We want as much as possible of this.”

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

My hon. Friend may not recall that at that time a number of employers’ organisations, including Aims of Industry, were trying to influence industrial relations.

[Mr Watson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

So we have evidence that the Government and the security services were working closely with television production companies, newspapers and secretive organisations that were the forerunners of today’s blacklisters to produce propaganda to discredit trade unionists. The present Government posted a response to the e-petition on the website, claiming that the withholding of the information was due to an “intelligence and security instrument”. Why? This was a strike organised by building workers 40 years ago with the aim of improving their pay and conditions of work.

If Members want to know the thinking of industrialists at the time, they should read Lord McAlpine’s book “The Servant”. He wrote that the servant

“must have his own network of informants and men who will assist him. The servant must always know how to use the network of the State.

Dealing in deceit, as the servant must, great caution must be required. Avoid small deceits: like barnacles on the bottom of a ship, they build in the minds of people whom you may need to convince in a large deceit”.

What greater deceit can Members imagine than depriving those young men of their freedom and liberty?

The Stasi published their files after the Berlin wall came down in 1989. I think that we can publish ours now.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am now reducing the speaking time limit to four minutes. Everyone who wishes to speak will be able to do so if all Members stick to that limit.

14:14

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

The Johannesburg principles were written a long time ago, but let me quote from them now. This is what was said about freedom of information and the state:

“A restriction sought to be justified on the ground of national security is not legitimate unless its genuine purpose and demonstrable effect is to protect a country's existence or its territorial integrity against the use or threat of force, or its capacity to respond to the use or threat of force, whether from an external source, such as a military threat, or an internal source, such as incitement to violent overthrow of the government...In particular, a restriction sought to be justified on the ground of national security is not legitimate if its genuine purpose or demonstrable effect is to protect interests unrelated to national security, including, for example, to protect a government from embarrassment or exposure of wrongdoing, or to conceal information about the functioning of its public institutions, or to entrench a particular ideology, or to suppress industrial unrest.”

That was not written about this country. It was written in Johannesburg about South Africa under apartheid, about North Korea, about China, and about all the rest of them. However, it applies to this Government now.

That Tory from Aldershot has gone now, but when he quoted from his letter, he forgot to mention the capacity in which he wrote it. At the time, he was secretary of the Society for Individual Freedom. He did not tell us what that organisation was about, but I can tell the House that it worked with BOSS, the South African Bureau of State Security. A book has been written about it, and this is how it described that Aldershot MP’s organisation:

“it’s almost certainly a British intelligence front organization which is mainly used for disseminating Establishment-type propaganda.”

That was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) went on to form a new organisation called “Freedom Under Law”, along with Francis Bennion, to counter anti-apartheid. And what did Francis Bennion do in 1972 to my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain), who was campaigning against apartheid? He took out a private prosecution against him for criminal conspiracy. This is what has been going on, and this is why people do not want those files to come out.

Who was it who funded the Economic League’s secret committee—a secret committee in a secret organisation? McAlpine. Even I was put on a blacklist. Who put me on it? I believe that it was one Russell Walters, who today works as Tory researcher, and who was chief of staff for that would-be Tory leader, the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie). He was working for the Economic League. There was also a bloke called Ned Walsh, a liar, who said throughout these events that he worked for the unions. In fact, during the 1960s and 1970s he was working for the Economic League, infiltrating the unions. That is the conspiracy.

[Katy Clark]

I am intervening on my hon. Friend because I think that he may need some more time. Does he think that this quotation from Construction News, published on 17 December 1970—a very long time ago—gives some indication of the power and influence of the construction industry? The paper said of a private Christmas dinner organised by McAlpine in 1977:

“Anyone who can hold a private party and make it virtually impossible to get a Cabinet quorum cannot be without influence of friends.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman may need more time, but it will come out of the hon. Lady’s time, because the winding-up speeches must start at 2.40 pm.

[John Mann]

The fact is that McAlpine was based in that part of the world, and it is no coincidence that this was picked on.

We know what these people do. They did the same during the miners’ strike. What they do is randomly pick out people and claim conspiracy, which is exactly what they tried to do to my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath and others in the anti-apartheid movement. That is the mindset of some of these people. They believe that they have some sort of supreme knowledge, and then they claim to defend freedom.

These people are not the friends of freedom; these people are the enemies of freedom. That is why those Johannesburg principles were written, and that is why they apply not just to South Africa under apartheid, not just to North Korea and the lunatic running it, not just to China and the repression of working people there, but to this country and to western democracies. Freedom is about the right to go about your business. It is about the right to engage in protest, including industrial protest. It is about the right to hold your Government to account, and to ensure that if there are documents out there, they are brought to light. Such documents are already slowly emerging. We have seen the documents about Hillsborough, and in future we will see documents about Orgreave and the miners’ strike, and many, many more. There is an information revolution going on in this country, because people are fed up with the secrecy of the state and those misfits around it who set up organisations claiming conspiracies when there is no conspiracy because it suits their political ends—and some of them clearly even participate in events like this but are still elected to this Parliament.

If this is a coalition Government, this Liberal Minister needs to demonstrate that he is part of the coalition. The Liberals have always told us they stand for individual freedoms. Well, prove it; release these documents. These people who have had to fight against this for years deserve it, but there is a bigger cause, too: the rest of us. This is about defining freedom in this country. That is what this debate is about, and why this Liberal Minister has to act.

14:20

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

The lack of Members on the Government Benches shows exactly how much interest there is in this topic from this coalition Government of Tories and Liberals.

This Shrewsbury 24 debacle represents a catastrophic and deliberate miscarriage of justice by the state against working individuals. I say again for the record that this was deliberate. This attack on the Shrewsbury 24 was a deliberate, calculated miscarriage of justice. It is a catalogue of deceit, deception, secrecy and discrimination worthy of the best of the best North Korean governmental political plots. It truly is a must-read true-life story of thriller proportions. The covert, politically inspired interference of faceless decision-makers, be they politicians, civil servants, police or the judiciary, made life hell for ordinary hard-working people whose only crime was to dare to take industrial action against the mega cash-rich building companies of that time.

These people—the Shrewsbury pickets—were fighting for £30 for 30 hours and better health and safety on the building sites, where, as has been mentioned on more than one occasion, 571 people in the construction industry were killed in three years. Is that not fair? Is that not what we should be seeking in a modern-day society—health and safety, preventing people from being abused and killed when they take their sandwiches to work and want to return to see their families at night? Is that a crime? Should they have been punished—should they have been imprisoned, as the six Shrewsbury pickets were? The answer to that is of course not.

I have tremendous experience of picketing, and I am proud of having been a picket during many disputes. I witnessed what happened on the picket lines during the miners strike. It was absolutely disgraceful. What we have seen in the last two or three weeks is again a Government refusing to allow papers—confidential and secret papers—relating to that dispute to be released. What we have seen is absolutely ludicrous. There has not been the outrage there should be, but we have seen that senior Cabinet Ministers in a previous Government and a Prime Minister—Thatcher—stood at the Dispatch Box and deliberately misled the Commons, and deliberately misled the Government. Where is the public outcry from the press? There is not one, because they are not interested in ordinary people.

A lot can be said about this but I would like to finish on this point. We cannot even begin to understand how these men and their families felt when they were hammered by the state—by the Government. They were offered lesser charges and they would have been freed. They stood by their principles so that people in the future would benefit, and they went to prison. We cannot begin to think what it was like for these people, who could have been free—“£50 fine and you can go home tonight and be home by 3 o’clock.” That was the agreement, but they stood by their principles. We cannot begin to imagine how they suffered in their time in prison.

Let me say a word on Des Warren, who was treated very badly in his time in prison. The liquid cosh killed him and as a result we are where we are today.

14:24

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

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and our other hon. Friends on securing this debate.

It is important to say, as all Members have said so far, that this is not about defending violence or picket line violence. It is about justice. This is about making the case to publish documents so that the truth can come out. I believe that case has been made overwhelmingly by Opposition colleagues who have spoken and it has even been agreed by Conservative colleagues. The only reason not to publish is that it would prove the political interference and perhaps the source of some of the evidence that was offered against the individuals.

It is important to remember that these were different times, different issues, different perspectives. The establishment was paranoid. It was not just the Tory establishment. Harold Wilson saw political manipulation in the NUS strike in the ’60s. That is when the NUS was the National Union of Seamen, not the National Union of Students. This is not just a Tory crisis, therefore. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) said this period saw the height of trade union membership and power, with working people trying to come to terms with the UK’s industrial decline and trying to hold on to what they had in the face of the establishment coming at them.

Times were difficult and the establishment felt threatened. The Shrewsbury 24 came in the wake of the Pentonville Five and the collapse of the industrial relations court. My hon. Friend mentioned Vic Turner. He was one of my councillors. He was mayor of Newham. When I knew him he was a very gentle and decent man, and he was one of the five who were locked up. Incidentally, for the information of the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), I will say that when I was the secretary of the Scottish nationalist trade union association I issued a statement supporting the release of the Pentonville Five and was contacted by Edinburgh and told to withdraw the press release or be expelled from the SNP. That was the end of my romance with the Scottish National party.

In construction, the lack of a structured, organised business caused industrial carnage as many colleagues have mentioned, with nearly 600 dead on building sites in three years. The lump set worker against worker and kept the industry in the dark ages. They were dark times, indeed, not only for the country but for individuals thrust into the front-line—the Five, the 24 and others. The ’70s was a decade of massive industrial unrest; I am old enough to have been on strike in the ’70s with the fire service—against a Labour Government. It is surely time for the Government to come clean. The Government should publish the papers—I am looking forward to hearing what the Minister has to say—so that these decent men and their families, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) has outlined, can understand what happened and why it happened and hopefully be able to put behind them what I believe will be shown to be another shameful part of our history.

14:27

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) for securing this debate. I also want to thank the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth)—I am delighted he is back in the Chamber—for his stout defence of exploitative and abusive employment practices and his argument for sustaining one of the most grievous miscarriages of justice in living memory, because it reminds me of exactly why I came into politics.

This is an immensely significant case and one that has already shone a light into some of the darkest recesses of the British establishment. What is abundantly clear is that this case will continue to be a running sore until such times as all Government and Cabinet and other documents over the relevant period from the early ’70s to date in connection with this matter are released. The sooner the nettle is grasped the better.

The Government’s determination to keep documents secret and to keep information from the appellants casts a very dark and long shadow over our democracy and serves only to heighten concerns that there has indeed been a conspiracy—not a conspiracy to cause affray at a building site, but one politically to engineer criminal charges and to interfere with the criminal justice system. It can hardly be more serious.

This campaign will ultimately succeed, and when the full truth emerges it will not be a good day for this country. The longer it goes on, the worse it will get. It is a travesty that men have already gone to their graves without this matter having been resolved. The campaigners’ case is simple: they were wholly innocent of the charges made against them. The dispute had come to an end, and no complaint had been made about their conduct at the time. The subsequent investigations many months later, the prosecution and then the sentences imposed upon them were draconian, wholly inappropriate and, worst of all, politically motivated. I want to spend some time talking about the sacrifices that the men made, but time does not permit me to do so.

At this remove, the demands of the workers seem so modest and reasonable, but in the dark days of 1972 they were seen as other things altogether. However, their cause was just and right. They vehemently opposed and exposed the abuses and exploitative and blackmailing practices endemic in the construction industry, which provided workers with absolutely no security of employment. They were working on the lump for appalling pay and, as has been said, fatalities were a regular occurrence. Robert Carr wrote a letter at the time. He said:

“I intend once again to draw the attention of Chief Constables to the provision of the law and discuss with them what further action they might take to defeat such violence and intimidation in industrial disputes.”

So much for the operational independence of the police. The Attorney-General wrote to him at the time and said:

“A number of instances … have been submitted to me recently in which the intimidation consisted of threatening words and in which there was no evidence against any particular person of violence or damage to property.”

He recommended that proceedings should not be instituted. We have clear, unambiguous advice from the country’s leading law officer that proceedings should not be instituted, yet despite that, charges were laid and prosecutions taken. He was also of the view that a jury trial would lead to an acquittal, so Treasury Counsel advised that the principle of jury trial should be abandoned.

It is scandalous that successive Governments have refused to release all the papers about this matter. We are led to believe that it would compromise national security. It is much more likely that individuals and previous Governments will be ashamed and embarrassed by their dreadful cover-up, and the time has come for the Government to do the right thing. These men and their families have waited far too long for the truth to come out and they should wait no longer. As Ricky Tomlinson himself might say, “Guilty? My goodness me, nothing could be further from the truth.”

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am taking the time limit down to three minutes to get three more speakers in before the wind-ups start.

14:31

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend and comrade the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) on securing this vital debate. I regret that he is not in his place at the moment. I was reminded of Aneurin Bevan’s description of the Tory party when I listened to the shameful contribution from the hon. Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth). The way in which this dispute was handled by the Government of the day and subsequent Governments represents a disgraceful and shameful chapter in the long history of hostility towards working people on the part of the Conservative party.

My dad was involved in that building workers strike, and he could well have been one of the victims of the Tory party who were sent to prison for their principles. The following year I started as an apprentice bricklayer in the building trade. Hon. Friends have already pointed to the 571 fatalities between 1970 and 1973 and the 224,000 industrial injuries that took place in the construction trade. I was one of those statistics, because health and safety on the building sites that I worked on in 1973 was disgraceful. That was what the strike was all about. It was about decent pay—£30 a week. It is not much to ask for, for crying out loud. It was about health and safety on building sites to protect young apprentices such as me. I could have been killed because there was no handrail on the scaffolding.

The strike was also about the lump—the disgraceful lump that was endemic in the building trade at that time. We had a vindictive Tory Government. I will not repeat the comments that have been eloquently made by my hon. Friends about the disgraceful treatment of those pickets, but they were charged with intimidation. I have never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. The people who were responsible for intimidation were the vindictive Tory Government, who sent ordinary working people to prison for standing up for their rights, for their comrades, for decent working conditions.

So of course the papers should be released. That is the very minimum that should happen. The convictions that were imposed on those brave trade unionists—one of whom, Ricky Tomlinson, I am proud to say, is in the public gallery now, although I know I should not mention it—should be overturned. I hope that we hear the Minister support that when he gets to his feet.

14:34

[Katy Clark (North Ayrshire and Arran) (Lab)]

This is a highly politicised debate. It touches on the desirability and necessity of workers organising themselves in the workplace to ensure that they are treated well and have decent health and safety and terms and conditions. It has been clear from the speeches that there are different views about that on either side of the House.

Colleagues have been correct to try to explain the context of the industrial dispute. My family were some of those involved in the dispute. My grandfather, Barney Davies, who is still alive, and Larry McKay, my uncle, were members of the Transport and General Workers Union and worked in the construction industry all their lives. They were clear with me why they thought it was important to have strong trade unions in the construction industry, in particular for health and safety. Indeed, they supported the closed shop, because they felt it was the only way that progress would be made in the construction industry.

It is necessary to say clearly that this type of organisation and the 1972 strike were seen as a significant threat to those who owned the construction industry and made huge profits from it. The more we find out about the Shrewsbury 24, the more murky it gets. The motion today is simple: it calls for the release of the documents. It will be interesting to see how the Minister responds to that request. It is difficult to see after 40 years how they can contain anything that seriously threatens national security. If we are not successful now in getting the documents, the issue will not be looked at again until 50 years after the dispute. Some of the people directly involved have already died, one of them probably as a direct result of drug-induced Parkinson’s and the treatment that he received against his wishes in prison. I would ask the Minister to look at this seriously. If he believes in freedom of information and transparency, he should please take action to release the papers.

14:37

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

I shall give the last word in this debate to the person who cannot be here, which is Dessie Warren. Dessie went into the dock against the advice of his lawyers. They advised him, “Dessie if you go in, you will most probably be sentenced double,” and that is most probably what happened, but he addressed the central question we have asked here today: was there a conspiracy? Let me use Dessie’s words:

“Was there a conspiracy? Ten members of the jury have said there was. There was a conspiracy, but not by the pickets. The conspiracy began with the miners giving the government a good hiding last year. It developed when the government was forced to perform legal gymnastics in getting five dockers out of jail after they had only just been put there. The conspiracy was between the Home Secretary, the employers and the police. It was not done with a nod and a wink. It was conceived after pressure from Tory Members of Parliament who demanded changes in picketing laws.”

He was asked about the law. He said:

“the law is, quite clearly, an instrument of the state, to be used in the interests of a tiny minority against the majority. It is biased; it is class law, and nowhere has that been demonstrated more than in the prosecution case in this trial. The very nature of the charges, the delving into ancient Acts of Parliament, dredging up conspiracy, shows this to be so.”

Then he was asked about intimidation. He said:

“The jury in this trial were asked to look upon the word ‘intimidation’ as having the ordinary everyday meaning. My interpretation is ‘to make timid’, or ‘to dispirit’, and when the pickets came to this town to speak to the building workers it was not with the intention of intimidating them. We came here with the intention of instilling the trade union spirit into them, and not to make them timid, but to give them the courage to fight the intimidation of the employers in this area.”

That is the spirit that has been instilled in us for the past 30 years, all the way through this campaign. It is also the spirit that has been instilled in all those others, including Ricky Tomlinson, Eileen Turnbull and the others who have been campaigning over this period. In that spirit, we will not let go until the truth is revealed, until we have full openness and transparency, until those people’s names are cleared and until it is accepted that this was a class attack. It was a class attack involving the intimidation of a group of workers to ensure that others did not fight in what was, and is, a class struggle to improve wages and conditions and, yes, to assert some sort of power and control over people’s working conditions. I support that struggle; that is what this debate today is all about.

14:39

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), on his new position. It has been a long time coming. I hope we can have a constructive working relationship, and I look forward to hearing his views on a number of issues, not least the damaging effects of the Government’s complete dismantling of legal aid. I know he was highly critical of that himself until very recently.

This has been a powerful and emotional, but reasoned, debate that does credit to everyone who has spoken from these Benches and to the House. For 40 years, the treatment of the Shrewsbury 24 has raised questions that successive Governments have not been prepared to answer, and those who were convicted and their families, friends and supporters have campaigned for justice, transparency and fairness. It is right that this issue should be debated fully here and that the House should place demands on the current Government—or, failing that, the next Labour Government—to disclose the remaining documents relating to the case. I hope that there will be some movement on that from the Minister this afternoon, rather than just a repeat of the recital of the Secretary of State’s view that the Government wish to park the issue until 2022.

I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) and the Backbench Business Committee for securing the debate. I also want to thank those Opposition Members who have spoken today, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who spoke on behalf of his constituents, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who has tabled an early-day motion on this subject that has so far attracted 62 signatures, mainly of Labour MPs but also of six Members from other parties.

Most of all, I would like to acknowledge the tireless work over those 40 years of the campaigners. They include the late Dessie Warren and Ricky Tomlinson, who has proved such an effective figurehead and given the campaign some of its best soundbites, including

“a threat to social security perhaps, national security never”.

They include Eileen Turnbull, whose six years of painstaking research has already uncovered many troubling facts in the case, Unite the union, which has offered much in the way of practical and moral support, Thompsons solicitors and Len McCluskey, who has taken a close personal interest in achieving justice for the 24. They also include the tens of thousands of trade unionists who have marched, protested, and signed the petition that led to today’s debate.

This shows the trade union movement at its democratic and campaigning best. In that sense, history is repeating itself, because it was the successful national building workers’ strike of 1972 against the appalling health and safety record of the industry and the exploitation of lump labour that led to the arrest and prosecution of the Shrewsbury 24. In an era before the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, 200 building workers were being killed on sites every year.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Slaughter]

Given the time, I am reluctant to give way.

Summary dismissal and blacklisting were commonplace for anyone who complained about poor pay and working conditions. After years of refusal to act by Government and employers, trade unions across the sector organised the biggest national strike since 1926. They were calling for fair terms and conditions, fair pay and safe and secure working practices. I do not intend to repeat the story of the strike, the arrests, the trials and the subsequent attempts to find justice, which my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon and others have already described. What I would like to do is explain why this issue from 40 years ago still matters not just to those directly affected, but to all of us in this House and in the country.

The picketing that led to the charges was peaceful and heavily policed, and it passed without incident or comment. The arrests months later, the conduct of the trials, the use of conspiracy charges, the sentences handed down, the involvement of the Government and the close relations between senior figures in the Government and the building employers all raise suspicions that these were not normal proceedings. The use of section 23 of the Freedom of Information Act to withhold selective documents, the continuing refusal of the present Government to engage with the campaigners, and the postponement of consideration for another 10 years also suggest that there is a desire to sweep this issue under the carpet. Whether that suggestion is right or wrong could be determined by releasing the papers. That would also provide closure for those convicted, of whom all those who are still alive are of pension age.

I would like to ask the Minister these questions. If he is not prepared to agree to the motion today, will he explain more fully why? Will he tell us how many documents are being withheld, what issues they deal with and why—specifically, rather than using civil service catch-all jargon—they are deemed not to be publishable? I get the impression that this is an embarrassment, an irrelevance or an inconvenience to the Secretary of State. To the 24, it is a matter that has dominated their lives and that continues to do so.

This is not an issue only of historical importance; it continues to affect those convicted today. It affects them in practical ways, such as through the travel restrictions we have heard about. It affects them emotionally, and it also affects them because they are men who have an ingrained sense of justice who in many cases have devoted their lives to the service of their communities. It matters to them, and to Labour Members. It should also matter to the Minister and to his party, which, whatever its historic antipathy to the trade unions, has often claimed the moral high ground on civil liberties and transparency issues.

Sadly, the Minister is now part of a Government with a terrible record on such matters. Under the coalition we have seen: an expansion of the use of secret courts across the civil justice system; attacks on the Human Rights Act and the European convention; the use of judicial review being severely curtailed; unprecedented cuts in legal aid and advice; and restriction on access to justice for everyone from unfairly dismissed employees to mesothelioma victims. And yesterday, we had the absolute disgrace of the gagging Bill, which threatens to shackle and silence the voluntary sector and the trade union movement under the guise of tackling lobbyists. We have seen blacklisting continue as it did in 1970s. We have also seen a Government more closely aligned with special interests and corporate greed, and less on the side of employees or consumers, than the Heath or even the Thatcher Governments.

In trade union history, the case of the Shrewsbury 24 stands alongside the miners’ strike, the Taff Vale case and Tolpuddle as examples of how the state, and the Conservative party and its allies and funders in the corporate sector, use the law and officers of the law to restrict and subdue organised labour. This is a struggle that has gone on for hundreds of years, and it will continue far into the future.

In his autobiography, Ricky Tomlinson asks:

“Will the day come when it will be a crime in itself to be a member of a trade union?”

Certainly there has not been such a sustained attack on trade union rights by the governing party and its allies in the media for 30 years. If the Minister wishes to deny that, or if he wishes not to judge the events that led to the conviction of the Shrewsbury 24 but to give others the ability to do so, he should agree to this motion, release the withheld documents and show that his Government have nothing to hide. Ricky Tomlinson also said recently that it felt as though the Tories were waiting for the 24 to die before they would reveal the truth. The Minister might not be responsible for the Tory party, but he is responsible for freedom of information and for upholding transparency in government. He and his colleagues should support the motion today.

14:49

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Simon Hughes)]

I congratulate sincerely the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) on initiating the debate and the Backbench Business Committee on agreeing to it. This is exactly the sort of issue that we should debate, and I respect entirely the views expressed on a very important matter, which, at its heart, is about the freedom to see documents even though they relate to events 40 years ago.

I am aware that the Government have been noticing this campaign’s growing momentum over the years. This is the first debate on this issue that Parliament has had in either House. Questions have been asked and letters written, but we have never had a debate, so I am very pleased and honoured to reply to it.

I am very conscious of my responsibility, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) for his kind words of welcome. I am a Justice Minister, responsible for freedom of information and the National Archives. I believe in justice. In our Department, we want maximum freedom of information, and we want maximum revelation in the National Archives of documents that have been in the public domain. So I am very clear about where we should be going and what the principles are.

I do not see it as my job to be here to defend the Government in the 1970s or any political party. That is not part of my brief.

[Mr Ian Davidson (Glasgow South West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Oh yes it is.

[Simon Hughes]

No, it is not. I am here to deal with an issue that, if I may just make the obvious and, I hope, only party political point, was not dealt with differently by Labour or Conservative Administrations—a point that has been accepted by colleagues around the House.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Simon Hughes]

I shall be as quick as I can, and if colleagues will accept—

[Chris Williamson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Simon Hughes]

No, I want to try to be helpful, and out of respect for the hon. Member for Blaydon, let me, please, unusually for me, be uninterrupted; I want to respond to as much as I can.

May I tell the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) and other colleagues that, not just as the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, I completely understand the issue to do with health and safety and decent wages generally and in the building industry in particular? I have campaigned on this issue. I understand the dreadful health and safety record in the past. Strong trade unions, particularly in the building industry over the past 40 years, were hugely important in ensuring that wages and conditions were better, which, thank God, they are now. I pay tribute to those who were part of that effort.

At the end of this episode, there were convictions for affray, unlawful assembly and conspiracy to intimidate. They are serious offences. They have led to people going to prison. I will return in a second to how the justice issues may be addressed. I know about the intensity of people’s views. I know about the efforts made to get the petition to the current number of signatures. I am clear what people hope I can say.

The Government are, of course, committed to transparency. We are agreed that as much information as possible should be in the public domain. The public would expect that, and the principles of the Freedom of Information Act, enacted by the Labour Government and now fully in force, are ones that we are expected to implement.

Most of the papers that relate to the Shrewsbury 24 are already available in the National Archives for public inspection. Of the records that date back to 1972, over 90% are available. Only 625 documents, I am told, are not yet publicly available—[Hon. Members: “Only.”]—across the Government, in relation to that year. The only material held by the Cabinet Office that is not available and that is the information at the heart of this debate is one report and three paragraphs—one in each of three separate documents—which I shall return to later.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will the Minister give way?

[Simon Hughes]

No. If I have time a bit later, I will, but I am trying to make sure that all the information is on the record.

There has already been a decision, taken in principle by the Labour Government and implemented by this Government, to reduce the age at which historical records are made available. The period is coming down now from 30 to 20 years. [Interruption.] No “buts”. In parallel with that, we are reducing the maximum duration of the exemptions from disclosure from 30 to 20 years. That has started this year, and the period will also reduce, so that people in future will not have to wait as long to see records. So those are good changes, but let us be specific about the matters that relate to the request for these papers today.

The current law is, and the consistent practice has been, that under section 34 of the Public Records Act 1958, public bodies are allowed but not required to retain records after they would usually be required to be transferred to the National Archives—so, after the old 30-year period, which is reducing. Retention is allowed where it is necessary for administrative purposes or for “any other special reason”.

Since 1967, when Lord Gardiner was Lord Chancellor in the Labour Government, all Lord Chancellors—five Labour, five Conservative—have been satisfied that where the transfer of security and intelligence records would prejudice national security, they can be retained on the “other special reason” basis. That approval is recorded in an instrument, signed by the Lord Chancellor, which is more commonly referred to as the security instrument.

The current approval that governs security and intelligence records was, as colleagues have said—the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) referred to it—given by the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) when he was Lord Chancellor on 19 December 2011. That does indeed last until 2021. That is public; it has been on the website. However, these papers are due to be reviewed by the Cabinet Office for their security and sensitivity every 10 years, as all other papers are, and they will fall to be reviewed next year, in 2015. I should like to tell the hon. Member for Blaydon respectfully that I suggest that he and his colleagues, who have a rightful interest in their being revealed, address that office and that deadline, and I will personally take an interest in this issue in the time up to next year, when they fall to be reviewed for their security.

What are the specific documents? One is a Security Service report, and the other three are single paragraphs, each of which has been redacted from letters and memorandums. The first was in a letter from the director general of the Security Service to the Cabinet Secretary dated 10 January 1975, which is public apart from one redacted paragraph. It refers—it is not a secret—to the fact that the assessment was that there was Communist party activity in relation to the campaign. The second was in a minute dated 13 January 1975 from the Cabinet Office to No. 10, which has been released apart from a single paragraph. The third was in a minute from No. 10 to the Cabinet Office dated 15 January 1975.

[Chris Williamson]

Is the Communist party a banned organisation then?

[Simon Hughes]

Of course it is not. I am just saying what the revealed documents have said, and they are in the public domain. The Ministry of Justice has no relevant information retained. I do not know whether any other Departments have retained any. I am not privy to that information, but I am clear that four pieces of information are retained by the Cabinet Office and are open to review next year.

As hon. Members know, under the Freedom of Information Act people can request that information. They then, in particular, have to confront the question as to whether it is covered by the exemption in section 23 of the Act. The application was refused in this case. It went to the Information Commissioner and he decided on 2 July 2008 that the four documents do relate to the intelligence agencies and therefore fall within the scope of the exemption. The exemption is designed to protect

“Information supplied by, or relating to, bodies dealing with security matters”.

The view of the Government has always been—all Governments have said—that to provide details of the national security risks that might be posed by the release of information of this sort would be detrimental to the purposes of the exemption set out in the Act. So that is the view of the Cabinet Office, but these things will be reviewed next year. The Lord Chancellor has asked me to say that he has personally looked at these documents and come to the same view. I know that that will be disappointing and frustrating to people, but the position is that those documents cannot therefore be revealed now.

However, one other matter is very important. There is currently a legal challenge to the convictions, and the case went to the Court of Appeal. Miscarriages of justice are not matters for the Government to consider; they are matters for the Criminal Cases Review Commission—ultimately, for the courts. The hon. Member for Blaydon set out the arguments for a miscarriage of justice review, and I understand them. The cases of at least some of the Shrewsbury 24 have been referred to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and it is currently assessing that set of applications. It has the power to require, when it is reasonable, that any information held by any public body in relation to any case under review can be retained for, and produced to, it, irrespective of confidentiality. The Commission therefore has, potentially, the access to information of the highest sensitivity, including material withheld by the Cabinet Office—the Commission has the power to see that. My understanding is that the Commission has asked for this information. It is currently considering the application for a review, with this information before it. If the Commission sends a case to the courts, the courts have the power to see the information, and I would entirely expect them to be able to do so.

There are two routes ahead, and they include the point made by the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson). One is the review that is coming up next year by the Cabinet Office. The second is the miscarriage of justice review, which is currently actively being pursued. I hope that colleagues understand that I am, at the moment, unable to change the position that Governments have adopted over the years, but there are ways in which this matter can be reviewed again. I accept that. That is proper and appropriate, and therefore the efforts of the hon. Member for Blaydon, and those of the petitioners and colleagues, are not in vain.

14:59

[Mr Anderson]

I welcome the Minister to his post, and I will look very closely at what he had to say. The youngest picket is 65 and the oldest is 87. One of the people who is central to this debate died last week. The reality is that people may need to be brought to book, and if we go on hiding information, those people will be long gone before there is a chance to find out exactly what went on.

The Minister talked about national security. That has been quoted in this House for the past 40 years. It was quoted over Bloody Sunday; shoot-to-kill; the setting up of a secret terror force in Northern Ireland; the fitting up of the Birmingham Six and the Guildford Four; the picket at Orgreave; the allegations of rioting at Mansfield during the miners’ strike; and, despicably, the Hillsborough decision.

The people of this country do not have faith in those who control the state, because they have seen how the words “national security” have, for so long, meant national cover-up. They do not want to live in a country where secrets are used to abuse the people, and the people in the Public Gallery today were abused. Des Warren went to his death bed as a direct result of being locked up for something he did not do. My sister nursed him in 1988, 15 years after he had been in jail and subjected to what has been described to me as chemical castration. My sister worked as a nurse in the Army, and she said that the two weeks she looked after Des Warren was the hardest work she had ever done in her life. All that man did was to try to make life better for the many he represented. He tried to create a safer working environment and to ensure that employers did the right thing and paid income tax and national insurance contributions. For that, he and five other men went to jail and 18 others had their lives destroyed. This is a matter of justice. I heard what the Minister had to say, and it was not good enough.

Question put.

15:01

Division 191

Ayes: 120

---

Labour: 111
Liberal Democrat: 3
Democratic Unionist Party: 2
Conservative: 2
Social Democratic & Labour Party: 1
Green Party: 1
Scottish National Party: 1

Noes: 3

---

Conservative: 3

Resolved,

That this House is seriously concerned at the decision of the Government to refuse to release papers related to the building dispute in 1972 and subsequent prosecutions of the workers known as the Shrewsbury 24 and calls on it to reverse this position as a matter of urgency.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

I ask Members to leave the Chamber quietly and quickly so that we can start the next important Back-Bench debate.

Holocaust Memorial Day

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

15:13

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Holocaust Memorial Day.

I am pleased and honoured to be asked to open the debate to commemorate Holocaust memorial day. This debate has been held in the House since 2008. As colleagues will know, it is timed to be close to Holocaust memorial day, 27 January—the day that is linked to the liberation of the most notorious of the Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

I welcome the support from my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O’Brien), my hon. Friends the Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd), the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), and my hon. Friends the Members for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) and for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), who represented me at the Backbench Business Committee in order to see this debate put on. I also thank colleagues in all parts of the House who signed the early-day motion associated with the debate and a commemoration of the memorial day.

I thank—on behalf of all of us, I am sure—the Holocaust Educational Trust for its briefings and support, and for its extraordinary work in ensuring that a memory of the holocaust is kept alive by providing resources for education, the opportunity to visit Auschwitz, and the chance to meet remaining survivors.

I am conscious that a number of schools will watch and read this debate and encourage their students to do so, and I think that one of my duties in leading it is to explain exactly what the holocaust was, what it all means to us personally and why it remains necessary to remember it. I am conscious of time and that a number of colleagues want to get in, so I will do my best to be as brief as is necessary.

What was the holocaust and why does it matter to me? I was born just 10 years after the end of the second world war and brought up in north Manchester, one of the main centres of the Jewish community outside London. Jewish boys and girls were a key part of our Bury grammar school community and I was aware of them from my earliest days at five years old. As friends, we played and grew up together, and I picked up quite naturally on their different holidays and why Saturdays, not Sundays, were religiously important to them. As I got older and learned more about the war that fate decreed I had avoided, I became aware that my carefree childhood and youth had been bought at a terrible price by an older generation who had fought for my freedom.

I also became aware of something else: although a number of the families of my friends had shared that war against tyranny, they had also experienced something so profoundly shocking and beyond comprehension that it could in those days hardly be spoken of. They had experienced it not because of anything they had done, but just because of who they were: Jewish. It was the holocaust.

A good definition of the holocaust is provided in the opening displays of the permanent exhibition at the Imperial War museum in London:

“Under the cover of the Second World War, for the sake of their ‘new order,’ the Nazis sought to destroy all the Jews of Europe. For the first time in history, industrial methods were used for the mass extermination of a whole people. Six million were murdered, including 1,500,000 children. This event is called the Holocaust.

The Nazis enslaved and murdered millions of others as well. Gypsies, people with physical and mental disabilities, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, trade unionists, political opponents, prisoners of conscience, homosexuals, and others were killed in vast numbers.”

It started, of course, with politics—the free and democratic election of Hitler and his Nazi party in 1933—and it then continued with the law. In April 1933, the law for the restoration of the professional civil service excluded Jews from professions. In September 1935, the Nuremberg laws banned intermarriage and sexual relations between Jews and Aryans and stripped Jews of their citizenship and all legal rights. Gradually, the civil rights of Jews across Germany were taken away—from being banned from being members of sports clubs in April 1933 to not being allowed to buy milk or eggs in July 1942.

And then the war. Shortly after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Nazis began to force Jews under their control to move into ghettos. This short-term measure soon developed into a long-term policy. The first ghetto in Poland was set up in October 1939. The Nazis established more than 1,000 ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union alone. Living conditions were abysmal. Often several families lived where before there had been one. Jews were not allowed to leave or have any contact with the outside world. Food rations were at starvation level and disease was rife through lack of clean water and sanitation. Hundreds of thousands of people died in the ghettos. In the wake of the Warsaw ghetto revolt in April 1943, the Nazis decided to liquidate the remaining large ghettos. Eventually, those who lived in the ghettos were deported in cattle trucks, without food, sanitation or water, to concentration camps.

Let me quote from a remarkable memoir entitled, “Out of the Depths”, for which I am indebted to Israeli Ambassador Daniel Taub, who gave it to me at Christmas. It is the memoir of a small boy who survived deportation from Piotrków in Poland to the concentration camp of Buchenwald and who grew up to become Israel’s Chief Rabbi: Israel Meir Lau. His father, also a rabbi, is attacked during the process of deportation, and Rabbi Lau writes not only of the incident, but of how it was so important to him—and the Jewish people—in surviving the years to come. He says:

“Today, looking back on the six years of that war, I realize that the worst thing I endured in the Holocaust was not the hunger, the cold, or the beatings; it was the humiliation. It is almost impossible to bear the helplessness of unjustified humiliation. Helplessness becomes linked with that dishonor…

When a young boy sees his father beaten by a Gestapo captain with a maikeh”—

a rubber club—

“kicked with nailed boots, threatened by dogs, falter from the force of the blow, and suffer public shaming, he carries that terrible scene with him for the rest of his life. Yet I also carry the image of Father, with astonishing spiritual strength, bracing himself from falling, refusing to beg for his life, and standing tall once again before the Gestapo captain. For me, that image of his inner spiritual strength completely nullifies the helplessness that accompanied the humiliation.”

The Nazis established hundreds of concentration camps across Europe and six extermination camps located in Poland. The largest of the camps was Auschwitz-Birkenau, established by the Nazis in 1940 at a Polish army barracks in the suburbs of a small Polish city. Auschwitz-Birkenau was actually three separate camps with three different purposes, but Birkenau—also known as Auschwitz II—was the main death camp, built in 1941 on the site of the village of Brzezinka, 3 km from Auschwitz. The overall number of victims at Auschwitz-Birkenau in the years 1940 to 1945 is estimated to be just over 1 million—between 1.1 million and 1.5 million—people, the majority of whom were Jews and died in the gas chambers.

Those are the facts about the holocaust. I did not know all that when I was young, and I did not at once understand it all. My holocaust education and experience has continued throughout my life and my political career. As a student, I paid my first visit to Israel, and the first of a number of visits to Yad Vashem, which many other hon. Members have visited. That great centre tells the story of the holocaust through painful documentary, but, most poignantly of all, though family pictures and artefacts of the lost—the lost people and their lost homes, villages and towns.

We will all have our own memories of Yad Vashem, and know the points in the building at which we are stopped in our tracks. For many, it is the pile of children’s shoes, but for me it has always been the children’s memorial, where, surrounded by everlasting light, the names of the children of the holocaust are read out, with their age and location. It represents the most painful loss of all—the loss of innocence and of promise.

Yad Vashem, and other excellent memorials, such as that designed by Daniel Libeskind in Berlin and the Washington holocaust centre, I have found profoundly moving. Auschwitz, where many colleagues in the Chamber have been, should be part of people’s life journey to understand their world. I particularly commend the Holocaust Educational Trust’s work in providing such a chance to so many young people. Strangely, it is one visit I have not yet made. I do not know why. Perhaps, with all I now know, I am afraid to confront the emotion of being there, but I know that the time is coming when it will be right for me to go.

One place I have been is Warsaw. I have long been inspired by the extraordinary story of the rising of the Warsaw ghetto—the just over one mile square area that housed some 400,000 men, women and children. After some 250,000 had been deported by 1943, to die at Treblinka, the ghetto rose. The fiercest fighting was between mid-April and 16 May 1943, after which both life and the ghetto were extinguished. Some of the world’s most harrowing images of war and suffering come from the ghetto.

There is little left of the ghetto—the Soviet empire had no wish to commemorate or preserve the area, and built upon it—but I spent a morning tracing a couple of buildings, a handful of cobbles, the tramlines and the renowned wall on Sienna street, just to connect in some physical way with what had happened. Remarkably, there is a synagogue, which was saved because it was used as a stables by the Wehrmacht. There is a memorial at the Umschlagplatz, the station used for people to begin their journey to Treblinka.

The stories of survivors such as Chief Rabbi Lau, so painstakingly preserved, remain vital to the memory of what happened. Reading them is graphic. Meeting survivors is both humbling and inspiring, and I have been fortunate to meet several over the years. I commend the UK’s ambassador to Israel, Matthew Gould, and his team for their inspiration in co-ordinating funding from the UK to create a remarkable series of centres called Café Britannia.

Nearly one in every three senior citizens in Israel survived the camps or lived under Nazi occupation. According to a survey that was released earlier this year by the Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel, 37 Israeli holocaust survivors pass away each day. Of those who remain, many live alone and in poverty, psychologically and physically scarred by the trauma of their experiences. Those survivors often carry a deep need to share their stories, both to ease their personal pain and to educate others. In some cases, they crave the company of their fellow survivors—the only ones who can genuinely relate to their feelings and memories. As time goes by, the window of opportunity for reaching out to those ageing, vulnerable citizens grows smaller.

The UK has been involved in co-ordinating finance from the Jewish community and others in this country to fund a series of centres where survivors can meet socially. More than 1,000 survivors are now enjoying company and activities through the Café Britannia network, which represents 20% of all the social clubs for survivors in Israel. In January 2011, while I was Minister for the middle east, I visited one such centre to find people from Manchester and hear about their extraordinary backgrounds. Thus, history and the contemporary meet.

That leads me to my last point, which is why we still need to remember. The holocaust is unique. There is no parallel—it was a cataclysmic event of such size and quantity that there can be none. Although its facts are unique, the evil heart that created the horror still beats. As Solzhenitsyn said in “The Gulag Archipelago”:

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts.”

It is because of that universal appeal that I am pleased that Holocaust memorial day embraces the genocide in Bosnia, Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur. I do not believe that the unique nature of the holocaust is devalued by recognising the horrors that have occurred since. The generosity of the Jewish community in being inclusive reminds all of us of our common humanity. However, we should still choose our words and descriptions with care so as never to minimise the scale of what the holocaust represents. If that heart of evil has produced what it has since, it can do so again. The greatest enemy of those who wish to cause us harm is memory—the human conviction never to forget, so as to warn others.

The evidence that we need to do so is all around us. Anti-Semitism remains on some university campuses in the United Kingdom and appears to fuel the rise of proto-fascist parties in continental Europe. Other Members might raise Jobbik in Hungary and the potential visit of an individual to the United Kingdom. Jobbik holds 12% of the parliamentary seats in Hungary. It has been reported that in 2012, the party’s foreign affairs spokesman called for a list to be compiled of all Hungarian citizens of Jewish origin as they were a “national threat”.

[Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman has referred to a Hungarian neo-Nazi who intends to come to my constituency this Sunday to organise an anti-Semitic rally. That is the constituency that contains the Jewish museum, where the national launch of the Holocaust memorial day commemoration will take place on Monday. Does he share my view, which I have expressed to the Home Secretary, that she should use the powers that she has to keep this stinking, rotten, neo-Nazi alien out of this country?

[Alistair Burt]

I share the concern of the right hon. Gentleman and the views of the Jewish community, which have been expressed in exactly the same way. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary takes due note of what has been said by so many.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend has mentioned all the people who were killed in Auschwitz. As somebody of Polish origin, I know that this issue is very important for all of us. Will he pay tribute to the many people in Poland and throughout Europe who hid Jewish families, at great risk to themselves and their families, because many people were spared the concentration camps by people who realised that what the Nazis were doing was so deplorable?

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid point. Colleagues will appreciate that when opening a debate it is not possible to cover everything, but the role of the righteous gentile, appropriately recorded at Yad Vashem and other places, is an honourable one. Year after year we hear more stories of people who did extraordinary work, putting themselves at risk, and those in Poland who did that are to be as well thought of as any, bearing in mind the horror of Nazi occupation.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend—I see him as a Friend in this—on securing this debate. Does he agree with me about the Jobbik leader and the problems originating from that? I am going shortly to see the Hungarian ambassador about that matter. Does my right hon. Friend agree that inter-parliamentary co-operation in dealing with racism and anti-Semitism is essential in stopping the spread of that kind of vehemently racist party?

[Alistair Burt]

My hon. Friend’s record on this issue is one of great courage and hard work over many years, and he again makes a good point. Parliamentarians need to work with each other to prevent abuse of parliamentarians and loss of their rights in certain places—the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd) does an invaluable job in the Inter-Parliamentary Union on that—and I and other colleagues would be interested to hear more about how co-operation between parliamentarians, particularly in Europe, can counter that scourge.

I am conscious of time, so let me move to a conclusion. Anti-Semitism also pains the people of France, who saw three Jewish children murdered in Toulouse in May 2012, and where we currently see public demonstrations of support outside synagogues for an entertainer of clear anti-Semitic views, who has allowed a holocaust denier to share his stage. This man is associated with a salute—the quenelle—made notorious in this country through its use by the footballer Nicolas Anelka. It is for Mr Anelka to answer the charges laid against him and I do not intend to make him the subject of our debate, but I would contrast his behaviour with that of the English football team who, with the support of the Holocaust Educational Trust, made a journey to Auschwitz during the European Championships of 2012. Captain Steven Gerrard spoke of the impact of that visit on the players, their awareness of their privileged life and their position as role models, and their understanding of that. I think those are the footballers whose views we should note today, and we should watch the film of their time there made by the Football Association and the Holocaust Educational Trust. That is what schools should look at as representing role models in this country.

Last January I attended the commemoration of Holocaust memorial day at the London Jewish Cultural Centre in north London, at the request of one of my longest standing and much loved friends from college, Mandy King. I took part in a moving morning of music and verse, with predominantly young people drawn from diverse communities. I was proud to follow at that ceremony a young girl from the Islamic Foundation. What a statement from both Jew and Muslim that they could stand together, because in my recent role I have been more acutely aware than ever of the pain in the Islamic world from so many sources, of the misery inflicted every day through sectarian violence, of that evil which flows through too many human hearts, and the pain of unresolved injustice, which perhaps this year might finally be addressed. All could be put aside in remembering the uniqueness of holocaust, while the generosity of the Jewish community in sharing the pain now has powerful resonance throughout the country.

With many thanks to those who work so hard around the country to remember this weekend and involve so many, let me conclude with Primo Levi’s haunting poem, “Shema”, which echoes the pain of his existence in Auschwitz:

“You who live secure

In your warm houses,

Who return at evening to find

Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man

Who labours in the mud

Who knows no peace

Who fights for a crust of bread

Who dies at a yes or a no.

Consider whether this is a woman,

Without hair or name

With no more strength to remember

Eyes empty and womb cold

As a frog in winter

Consider that this has been:

I commend these words to you

Engrave them on your hearts

When you are in your house, when you walk on your way.

When you go to bed, when you rise.

Repeat them to your children.

Or may your house crumble.

Disease render you powerless.

Your offspring avert their faces from you.”

15:34

[Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)]

It is pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who is respected across the House, and his compelling and emotional opening contribution.

The holocaust has always baffled me. If we are going to give away our age, I was born 20 years after those events. I have never understood how human beings in their millions could be so seduced by a message of hate that they could stand by and watch as other human beings were degraded, humiliated and murdered; how people could have stayed at the entrance to the gas chambers in Auschwitz, stripping people of their belongings and their last remnants of dignity, knowing that the fate that lay in store for them was a 20-minute, excruciatingly painful journey to death.

We are in the month of January and the phrase, “Man’s inhumanity to man” was first introduced in a poem by Robert Burns titled, “Man Was Made to Mourn”. As poignant as those words are, I still do not think they convey the horrors that took place over 70 years ago. Probably like everybody else in the House, I have read the books and watched the documentaries. I have watched “Schindler’s List”, “Band of Brothers”, in which the 101st Airborne Division liberated a sub-camp of Dachau concentration camp, and “The World at War”. All those depictions of what took place, however, fail to equal the insight offered to me by a survivor, Harry Bibring.

I had the privilege of meeting Harry in 2012. The Holocaust Educational Trust suggested that I might like to encourage my local authority to have a survivor meet and talk to older pupils from high schools in my area. Harry was born in 1925 and lived in Vienna with his mother and father and his sister, Gertie. His father owned a men’s clothing shop and, for that time and place, his family were relatively well-off. The young Harry remembered having family holidays. He enjoyed swimming and ice-skating, and his mother and father were well-off enough to be able to give him a season ticket membership to an ice-skating rink. He remembered hanging out of a window in Vienna watching the Germans march in, in 1938. He remembered liking the soldiers marching and the bright flags, but little did he know as a child that they were Nazi soldiers and that those bright flags were swastikas.

Harry’s membership of the ice-skating rink was revoked just days later, when a “No Jews Allowed” sign was erected. In November 1938, Harry’s father’s business was destroyed during Kristallnacht. He was arrested soon after. After he was released from prison, the family intended to flee to Shanghai, but his dad was robbed on his way to purchase the tickets. Thinking, as any mother and father would, of the safety of their children, Harry’s parents arranged for him and his sister to flee on a Kindertransport to the United Kingdom.

Harry’s father had arranged for guarantors to pick them up when they arrived in the UK. Harry said:

“I remember going to the Vienna West Bahnhof with my sister and our parents to get on the train at 10pm on the 13th March 1939 with about 600 other kids. The following day the train went slowly through Germany until it reached the Dutch border. Once it crossed over into Holland we were met on the platform by Jewish volunteers from Holland who gave us sweets and toys. We crossed to England on the night ferry from Hook of Holland to Harwich and arrived at Liverpool Street station in the afternoon of the 15th March 1939.”

Harry was not to know, when he left Vienna, that that was the last time he would ever see his mother and father. They were killed by the Nazis. Harry and his sister Gertie survived. Harry is still with us, and the world is an immeasurably better place with him in it.

Looking back from 2014, I would like to think that I would not have followed the crowd had I been in Germany at that time. I would like to think that I would have behaved like Irena Sendler, a Polish lady—the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) mentioned such people from Poland—who did so much to protect Jewish people. She was honoured in 1965 by the state of Israel as “Righteous among the nations”. During world war two, Irena served as a plumber working in the Warsaw ghetto. She smuggled Jewish babies out of the ghetto in the bottom of her toolbox. At the back of a truck, she kept a dog she had trained to bark to cover the noise of the infants when Nazi soldiers approached. The Nazis eventually caught her, sentenced her to death and broke both her arms and legs, but she managed to evade execution and survived the war. She kept details of all the children she saved in a glass jar she buried in her back garden, and she tried to locate their parents after the war, but sadly most had perished in the gas chambers. I wonder if I would have been brave enough to do something like that.

Holocaust memorial day allows us to remember those who perished, those who survived and those who were brave beyond our comprehension, and it challenges us to learn from history to prevent such events from happening again. That is our aspiration, but sadly Bosnia, Darfur and Rwanda remind us that history can repeat itself.

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

We need to observe Holocaust memorial day, given that across Europe we have national list systems for elections, meaning that a small percentage of a population can elect neo-Nazis. We have to remember that this is happening, and we need to reinforce to people that 6 million of the Jewish community were murdered. We must not forget that Hitler came up partly through democratic institutions, and we must ensure that such a thing never happens again.

[Mr McCann]

I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. I appreciate that others want to speak, so I shall move on without taking any further interventions. However, the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire said that politics was at the heart of the matter, and we must remember that it was the treaty of Versailles that gave Hitler a platform on which to build the hatred that led to the terrible atrocities of the second world war. It was a twisted variety of politics, but politics none the less.

I want to finish on a positive note. I have been very lucky in my life. I have visited both the Holocaust museum in Washington DC and Yad Vashem. These museums are grim, and going through their exhibits can be an emotionally draining experience. At the end of the museum in Washington, the visitor passes down long corridors, either side of which are huge glass containers filled with the spectacles, shoes, luggage and possessions of the Holocaust victims—a haunting end to an experience that you can never forget—but at the very end is a video loop in which a woman explains her personal story of liberation. When she was emaciated, dehydrated and thought she was near the end of her life, she was picked up by a soldier. She told the soldier that he could not touch her because she was Jewish, and he replied, fighting back the tears, “I’m Jewish too.” The gentleman was a GI. After the war, they married and they settled in the United States of America—a triumph of the human spirit over evil and another reason we should all observe Holocaust memorial day.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. As the House will be aware, several Members wish to speak and there is limited time, so I am imposing a seven-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches.

15:43

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

It is a privilege to follow the outstanding opening speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) and the genuinely moving speech by the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann).

It will come as no surprise, with the name O’Brien, that I am not Jewish, but it is critical to remember that we are all survivors and collectively have a duty to work together to avert an atrocity such as the holocaust ever happening again. As has been said, ultimately the causes were as political as anything else, and so, being engaged in politics, we have that duty.

As someone born in Africa, I do not deny the unsettling parallels with what has happened in places such as Rwanda—it is 20 years since those events—and although we were rightly warned to be extremely careful not to confuse the word “genocide” with “holocaust”, given the gravity of the holocaust, which we have to respect, none the less there were many lessons that humanity could and should have learned that could have helped us to avert the genocides on the continent of my birth. In that sense, we are all participants and all survivors.

Above all, I want to pay tribute in my brief contribution to the Holocaust Educational Trust. I have been a beneficiary over the last 12 months, and I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau with the trust in what is a Government-funded programme. We are accountable in respect of how worth while the experience is—and of that, I am in no doubt. Although I have been to Israel, including to Yad Vashem, with the Conservative Friends of Israel, nothing quite prepares one for the first visit to witness what took place at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It was a privilege to make this visit accompanied by a group of sixth formers from my constituency, which made the experience all the more powerful. As someone in their 50s, I was travelling for the first time to this place with young people; the cross-generational learning and deep emotional experience that was shared between us helped us to understand what it means to witness what amounts to an appalling assault on the eyes, the mind and the heart. We all took away different things from the day. Some things shocked us, and then there were odd things, such as the very normality of life around Auschwitz that carries on today, and the extraordinary bewilderment at how a herd of human beings could have persuaded themselves not to stop this happening at the time. It was difficult to manage the sense of disbelief, horror and outrage as we went through this vicarious experience. When we returned on the plane, there was a not a shocked silence—more a sense of relief from a discussion of shared experiences. We gained a nearer—never a perfect, but a nearer—understanding of what had taken place there.

For those who have the privilege of living in the UK, one particularly telling item was a map on the walls of Auschwitz, showing the railway lines along which all the people had been transported from around Europe. Huge distances—from Norway or Hungary, for example—were involved, but there was no line through the UK. We were not invaded by the Nazis, and were not subject to these appalling transportations, so all the more for us to learn from the experience. We all carried with us the shocking images and the sense of outrage, and we recalled the point on the tracks where the trucks were parted, the dolls’ clothing, the names on the suitcases, the sheer industrial scale of Birkenau, and the candle lighting ceremony at the end. These experiences created a deep impression and will be for ever remembered. I would like to pay particular personal tribute to the wise leadership and spiritual input of Rabbi Marcus, who is deeply involved in the visits.

One of the benefits of these trips is the ability to broadcast a longer message through local newspapers, for example, and students can be encouraged to be part of communicating the message and sharing it with their peers. It was a harrowing and tough day for all of us and the horror of what we saw and the reactions and emotions we experienced will stay with us for the rest of our lives. One cannot overstate the importance of visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau or of recognising the full extent of the ghastly industrialised nature of the holocaust. These events might have taken place 70 years ago, but as our society bears witness, we need to continue to teach the lessons of the holocaust to the younger generation in order to fight bigotry and hatred today. After witnessing what happened, it is impossible to understand how there could be holocaust denial.

We do see some anti-Semitic behaviour in our midst today—on the football terraces, for example. There have been some recent arrests. I take note of what my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire said about focusing on positive things, but let us be absolutely clear that there should be no no-go areas for this type of behaviour. We must not allow the excuse of “What happens on the terraces stays on the terraces.” In this instance, with anti-Semitic behaviour, holocaust denial or teasing chants, the police must enforce the laws of the land. If we allow a chink in this armour, we start to excuse something that is historically inexcusable. We have the witnesses of young minds on the football terraces; they must not be given the chance to think anything other than that the holocaust was one of the most horrific experiences in history. A visit to Auschwitz with the Holocaust Educational Trust is the ultimate antidote to any such tendencies. I commend the trust’s work and the public support that it receives, and I would encourage not just the continuation but the broadening of its programme.

15:50

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am privileged to be able to follow such genuine and effective contributions. I congratulate in particular the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on the very moving and sincere way in which he opened this extremely important debate.

The first Holocaust memorial day was held here in the United Kingdom in 2001, as a result of a cross-party decision by Parliament following a private Member’s Bill presented by Andrew Dismore. At that time, there were doubters who were not sure that it was appropriate to have a Holocaust memorial day focusing on the holocaust itself. Now that date is firmly in the national calendar, and I think that very few people would question the correctness of our decision.

It is absolutely essential for new generations to receive education about the brutality, the depravity and the racial hatred involved in the organisation of the calculated mass murder of 6 million people. That lesson needs to be learnt so that people not only know about the unique horror of the holocaust, but understand where hatred and bigotry can lead, because that affects all of our society and all the people in it. The Holocaust Educational Trust’s lessons from Auschwitz programme enables generations of young people and their teachers to visit Auschwitz, as part of a wider educational programme to provide a greater understanding of the holocaust and its impact for everyone.

This week I attended the trust’s annual Merlyn Rees memorial lecture, which was given by Thomas Harding. He spoke of the search for Rudolf Höss, the kommandant of Auschwitz. That served as a reminder of the need to bring war criminals to account, and also as a reminder of the nature of evil. Rudolf Höss led an apparently normal family life, with a loving wife and loving children, in the midst of the horrors and the butchery of Auschwitz. Perhaps we should reflect on the nature of evil, and on what people can do.

Also this week, the Football Association decided to charge Anelka following his celebration of having scored a goal by making an “inverted Nazi symbol” salute, the quenelle. What I found even more disturbing than what Anelka did was his defence, which was that he had acted in support of his friend Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, who is a French performer, a holocaust denier, an anti-Semite, and someone whose offences include inviting the holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on stage as part of his performances. The people who support this performer claim that they do so because they are anti-establishment, and that they are not anti-Semitic, but it does not take very much imagination to appreciate what that defence actually means. It gives us food for thought, because it is deeply and gravely disturbing.

Sadly, anti-Semitism has not gone away, even following the horrors of the holocaust. A very recent European survey made disturbing findings in that regard. There is also anti-Semitic discourse: not explicit anti-Semitism, but reference in writing, speech and films to images and words which invoke feelings of anti-Semitism. The Community Security Trust has listed incidents of anti-Semitic discourse in its recent report and they are extremely disturbing. They are disturbing because they are wide-ranging and cut right across the political spectrum. They range from the bizarre, such as the reference in Press TV, speaking for Iran, which claimed that the Olympics were a Zionist plot and blamed Jews in Hollywood and the so-called Jewish-controlled media as ultimately responsible for the United States school shootings and massacres of children, to those I find more disturbing, such as the Occupy Wall Street cartoon from Tampa in the USA which was displayed on Facebook and which showed a big-nosed bearded Jew using the UN logo as a steering wheel in a car with President Obama as the gearstick.

I am also concerned by statements such as that made by former diplomat Peter Jenkins in a debate at Warwick university, where he stated that Christian morality was somehow superior to Jewish morality. He said:

“The idea that a just war requires the use of force to be proportionate seems to be a Christian notion and not a Jewish notion.”

I find that kind of insinuation that morally Judaism is inferior to, in his case, Christianity not just plain wrong but deeply disturbing. That kind of insinuation, which I hear too often, should be recognised. Reference has already been made during this debate to the planned visit to London this weekend of Gábor Vona, leader of the anti-Semitic Hungarian Jobbik party, and his plan to be here on Holocaust memorial day.

Now that we have Holocaust memorial day firmly in the national calendar, I think we understand the need to educate people about the enormity of the evils of the holocaust. That is so that people understand what happened in those terrible years and that terrible time. It is also a lesson for today and about where evil, bigotry and prejudice can lead. It is something that all in our society need to learn.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I call Lee Scott.

15:57

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

I start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) not only on securing this debate, but on the moving and compassionate way in which he spoke. You are truly a good man, sir.

Quite rightly, Madam Deputy Speaker, you called me by the name I have had since my birth: Lee Scott. However, if it had not been indirectly for the holocaust you would have called me by the name of Lee Shulberg, because that is our family name. My late father changed our name, because being caught while fighting in the second world war with a Jewish surname was the difference between going to a prisoner of war camp and a concentration camp. We kept the name after the second world war, but on a personal level I felt that I would like to get the name Shulberg into Hansard in the House of Commons.

Anti-Semitism has not gone away. At the last general election, as many friends on both sides of the House will know, I was approached by some people while out campaigning and called a “dirty Jew” and was told they wished to kill me. On a fairly regular basis I still get anti-Semitic e-mails. Has anyone learned anything from history? I sometimes fear not when we look at genocides across the world that are still happening. Even today, as we sit in this House, there are people in camps in various countries who are being killed.

I want to pay tribute particularly to Karen Pollock and the Holocaust Educational Trust. I have been to Auschwitz with them and I have also visited Theresienstadt and Babi Yar, a ravine where Jews were rounded up, shoved in and shot. I have seen first hand the piles of the children’s shoes, and I am not ashamed to say that I cried at Auschwitz. I do not often cry, but at Auschwitz I cried when I saw what man’s inhumanity toward man can lead to.

I have worked closely with my hon. and good Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) on various projects that have involved holocaust survivors. I went into schools to talk about what happened and I try to make some semblance of sense of what happened and to explain it to people. But it is impossible to make any sense of it. I pay tribute to everyone from all political parties who were involved in getting Holocaust memorial day into our calendar. On Holocaust memorial day on Monday, I will be in the London borough of Redbridge, my local council. I pay tribute to Councillors Alan Weinberg and Leon Schaller, who paid for and dedicated a memorial to the holocaust, which is in our main park, where we will hold a ceremony of remembrance. I have looked around the Chamber today and seen people with tears in their eyes, and at that ceremony there will be tears in all of our eyes because people, not only Jews but Gypsies, homosexuals, and anybody that the vile Nazi regime wanted to get rid of, were exterminated.

Last night I happened to be flicking through the TV programmes quite late and saw a drama about the Nuremberg trials. I saw the evidence of what was done. I again could not comprehend, even though I know it, even though I have seen it, what we saw and what we heard. The work that the Holocaust Educational Trust does, the work that many people do to teach the next generation—because let us face it, there will not be many survivors left as years go by—recognises that if we dare forget what has happened in the past even for one second, it is not impossible that history will repeat itself.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

Of course history repeats itself. I have seen genocide. I have buried 104 women and children in a mass grave. I have picked up the head of a child thinking it was a ball and dropped it with horror. I was so upset with myself when I discovered it was a child. I have seen this. Of course history repeats itself. The purpose of Holocaust memorial day is to remind us that it continues in another form, and that is the purpose of this debate and of our remembering—to try to stop it happening again. My goodness, we are human beings and it will happen, but we must make every endeavour to stop it.

[Mr Scott]

I thank my hon. and gallant Friend for his intervention. Yes, as I have said, things are going on as we sit here today, but I still say we can remember and we can do our utmost to make sure such things do not happen anywhere again.

I know that many hon. Members wish to speak, so I will not detain the House too much longer. My final statement is that I am proud to be a Member of this House. I am immensely proud and grateful to Great Britain for taking in my grandparents, because without any question I would not be alive today if it had not. And I am proud to be Jewish.

16:03

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on securing this debate. It is a privilege to follow the speech that we have just heard.

In 1939, a 10-year-old Jewish boy from an industrial town in what was then Czechoslovakia was put on a train by his mum and two teenage sisters and eventually made his way to Britain as a refugee. It was to be the last time that he would see them. They were rounded up, sent first to a ghetto, then to Theresienstadt, and eventually to Treblinka, where they were murdered on 5 October 1942. That boy is my dad and that explains why for me this issue is so important.

Like other Members who have spoken today, I have visited Auschwitz with the Holocaust Educational Trust, which does such important work. I want to say a few words about the survivors with whom they work, including people such as Ziggy Shipper, who at the age of 84 visits schools every week to teach children where hatred and prejudice can lead, and Eva Clarke, who was born in Mauthausen concentration camp, but survived and came to the UK after the war. I met an amazing woman through the Association of Jewish Refugees, Mindu Hornick, who lives in Birmingham now. She was imprisoned in a concentration camp and then sent to work as slave labour in an armaments factory. I said to her, “Mindu, these shells that you made, how many of them worked?” She looked at me, smiled and said, “None.” Is that not incredible? Here was a woman, in fear of her life in a concentration camp, thinking about how she could prevent other people from being killed.

Ben Helfgott weighed less than 6 stone when he was rescued from Theresienstadt, but he went on to represent Britain as an Olympic weightlifter. The only other member of his family to survive was Mala Tribich, who was forced to work as a slave labourer. She was sent to Ravensbrück and ended up in Bergen-Belsen. Tomorrow, she will be speaking to hundreds of people at Dudley’s annual holocaust commemoration, which I organise. Those are all incredible people. They spend their time teaching students and young people about the evils of racism, and it is humbling to see the sense of duty and commitment that drives them and other survivors to use their experience of that terrible period to create a better world for the rest of us.

I have seen young people visiting Auschwitz with the Holocaust Educational Trust, and I have seen their lives being changed by witnessing the appalling evidence of the industrial-scale slaughter that took place at Birkenau. I have seen them return to Dudley to campaign against racism and build a stronger and more united community. No one can fail to be affected by what they see in those places: the mountains of human hair and glasses; the pots and pans and personal possessions that show that people thought they were going to live elsewhere, not to be murdered.

Last summer, my dad and I travelled to the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. In Ostrava, we found the flat where he grew up. He stood on the pavement, pointed at the first floor window and told me that that had been his bedroom. He described how he had been woken up in the middle of the night on 18 March 1939. He had looked out to see what the noise in the street was. It was German soldiers marching into the town square. We found the site of the Jewish school and the synagogue he had attended. Ostrava had had several synagogues, Jewish schools, sports clubs, shops and businesses to serve the 10,000 Jews who lived there. Incredibly, the single room that serves as the city’s synagogue today has seats for just 30 people. For me, that evidence of entire families and whole communities having been wiped out is even more moving than the evidence of industrial-scale slaughter on display at the concentration camps.

In Poland, we travelled to a small town called Nowy Targ, where we found the family shop of my dad’s uncle, Emmanuel Singer. A few streets away, we walked through the Jewish cemetery, which contains the mass grave of 500 Jews who were butchered in a single day. We saw the wall behind what is now a youth club where one of my dad’s cousins had been shot after being dragged from his fiancée’s family’s attic. We heard how Emmanuel Singer had fled to Krakow with forged Aryan papers and hidden there before being betrayed, arrested and tortured for his money. He was then dragged to his death along a country road, chained behind a horse and cart. Three thousand Jews lived in Nowy Targ before the war. I asked the local historian who was showing us around, “How many survived and came back? How many live here now?” She looked at me as though I was mad, and replied, “None, of course.”

Seeing that for myself and hearing the detailed, human stories really brought home to me the horrific scale of the tragedy. It is impossible to compare anything to this, history’s greatest crime, but it is certainly possible to learn lessons. There is a quote from the Spanish philosopher, George Santayana, at the memorial at Auschwitz. It says:

“The one who does not remember history is bound to live through it again.”

The fact that there are no tracks leading from Britain to Auschwitz tells us something very special about our country. When other countries were rounding up their Jews and herding them on to the trains to the concentration camps, Britain provided a safe haven for tens of thousands of refugee children such as my dad. It is a fantastic thing about our country that the son of a Jewish refugee can become a Member of Parliament and serve as a Government Minister.

Let us think of Britain in the 1930s. The rest of Europe was succumbing to fascism, but here in Britain, Mosley was rejected. In 1941, France was invaded, Europe was overrun and America was not yet in the war. Just one country was fighting not just for Britain’s freedom but for the world’s liberty. Britain did not just win the war; we won the right for people around the world to live in freedom. For me, that period defines our country. It is what makes Britain the greatest country in the world, with a special claim to the values of democracy, freedom, fairness and tolerance. Because of who we are as a people and what we are as a country, the British people came together and stood up to the Nazis and fought fascism. We are a country that does not walk away or turn a blind eye. On each occasion when people have been gassed and chemical weapons have been used against people, we have known whose side we were on and we have always in the past stood up for the oppressed.

16:10

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

Like my colleagues, I thank the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for securing the debate, and it was a privilege for me and my hon. Friends to assist him in that. I thank the Backbench Business Committee. Such debates have taken place since 2008. I have been involved in them all since being elected in 2010.

I also thank colleagues for their powerful, resonant and quite modern speeches. I say “modern” because they are here today to represent their constituencies in the year 2014, yet two of my colleagues’ parents were Jewish and survived the holocaust. If they had not survived, my colleagues would not be here. That really does bring things home to me and is the reason I was always determined if I got elected to give my full support to the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust memorial day on 27 January.

All colleagues have alluded to the obvious reasons for the memorial day. It is about the memory of those millions of people who died simply because of their race, colour or creed. Another reason relates to the modern day. As other Members have mentioned, we cannot forget what happened or let it go because, if we did, we would demean the memory of many people who were slaughtered in this desperate way and make it easier for society, for nations and for people to continue to behave disgracefully.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) made a strong point about when he was serving in Bosnia and the reality of genocide there. That demonstrates poignantly, powerfully and horribly what life and death really mean in such situations, and it reminds us all of what is happening in the Congo and Syria and of the rise of profound political and religious extremism, which has got worse over the past few years. We all have views about why that has happened, but it is undeniably continuing to get worse. A number of colleagues have mentioned the Jobbik party in Hungary, with 15% of the vote, and another is the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn in Greece, with 12 MPs.

These things do not go away, because humanity is basically interchangeable. Feelings, ignorance, fear and anger are the same today as they were 5,000 years ago. The only difference is that we now dress differently, we have computers and a few other things, and we drive very fast in cars, which we could not do 500 years ago, but humanity does not change. However, a positive aspect of humanity is a continuous determination to get better, to improve and to be kind and generous. Alongside all the horror that the Holocaust Educational Trust helps us to understand as parliamentarians, and Holocaust memorial day helps us to remember and commemorate those who died, there is the other side of human nature. That is also part of this remembrance.

I shall give colleagues an example. There is a country at the moment that does not get a busting lot of good media coverage in the Daily Mail and the rest called Bulgaria. Perhaps all hon. Members know—I did not know until a few months ago—that, although Bulgaria is smack in the middle of the Balkans and central Europe and has had a history of virulent anti-Semitism for hundreds of years, the Bulgarian people would not accept what the Nazis wanted, so 50,000 Jews survived in Bulgaria. Is that not fascinating? That is the flip side of this horror of the holocaust; so many good things were done. As another colleague said, we should not forget the individual families in Poland and other parts of Europe who saved Jewish families, at enormous cost to themselves. I was determined to mention the 50,000 Jews saved in Bulgaria in the Chamber today, because whenever I read certain papers at the minute I find that poor old Bulgaria does not get a lot of good coverage. So I pay tribute to that nation, in my small way as a Member of Parliament within Westminster, for what its people did. A lot of the Bulgarian Government wanted to go along with the Nazis and pack all 50,000 Jews off, but the Orthodox Church in Bulgaria and the people there just would not have it.

[Bob Stewart]

What the hon. Gentleman has said rings a bell, and I want to place on the record the fact that in the middle of the war in Bosnia, in 1992-93, the one section of society in Sarajevo that was not threatened was the Jewish section. The Muslims, Croats and Serbs were all up against it. The one people protected, or seemingly protected, was the Jewish community, and guess what that community did? It tried to help other people. I pay tribute to that.

[Stephen Lloyd]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s intervention, as he makes such a powerful point.

So where are we at? Human nature is never going to act in a way that means these things will never happen again—we all know that. The reason for this commemorative day and the reason it is so important that the mother of Parliaments keeps having this debate year after year, even though it is 40, 50, 60, 70 years since these tragedies took place, is that it is a small way of holding the mirror up to man’s bestiality. That small attempt, that bit about knowledge and that emphasis on trying to ensure that the memory never disappears goes some way in helping us to challenge bigotry, of whatever type. Wickedness is not specific to any particular character or race; it covers humanity generally. So I am proud and privileged every year when I take part in these debates, even though I am not Jewish and have no personal family connection with the holocaust; I was always determined that if I had the privilege to be elected I would be here to do what I can in a small way to support this.

I pay tribute to the Holocaust Educational Trust, which does a fantastic job. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), as I know through my involvement with the trust that he was immensely important in getting the resources to ensure that the trust went on. All in all, this is a powerful annual debate, and it is a privilege to be here and to listen to the real, powerful experiences set out by some of my colleagues.

16:18

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

May I start with an apology, Madam Deputy Speaker, because I have to be in Scotland this evening so I may not be able to be here for the wind-ups? I apologise to the Front Benchers and to other colleagues for that.

I thank the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) for his generous recognition of the role played by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). Sometimes, in the rough and tumble of politics, things can be forgotten, and those of us who were in the House at that time remember the tenacity with which he pushed for the memorial day. He was also a driver of the Stockholm declaration of 2001, and I thank him for that. I also want to thank the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who laid out the justification and rationale for today’s debate, and told us of his own journey—such journeys are the theme of this year’s memorial day.

Like other Members, I have visited Auschwitz-Birkenau and, although I grew up knowing about the holocaust—I was born in the last year of the 1940s and so am slightly nearer the end of the second world war than some of my other colleagues—nothing that I knew or had learned about it prepared me for the experience. The word “industrialisation” has been bandied about, but the whole programme is almost beyond comprehension. There was a trial and error approach. Initially, it was, “Let’s try and shoot the Jews.” Well, that was not fast enough. Then it was, “Let’s look at portable gas chambers”, but that was not efficient enough. Then they looked at how to dispose of the bodies. All that energy and entrepreneurship—if I can put it in such a way—went into an extermination programme, the sole purpose of which was to eradicate the Jewish community from Europe.

Like others who have spoken, I cannot comprehend the evil philosophy that underpinned the holocaust, and I will not understand it for as long as I live. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann) said, it is difficult for us to appreciate what happened in those reasonably civilized cultural communities that produced philosophers and musicians. When it came to it, 6 million Jewish people were murdered, 1.5 million of whom were children. Like the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire, I will never forget the first time I went through the children’s memorial at Yad Vashem.

We must also recognise the other groups of people who were murdered by the Nazis. Gypsies, disabled people, trade unionists, homosexuals, Poles, Russians and prisoners of war were all murdered as part of their ethnic cleansing programme.

When we visited Auschwitz and looked at those piles of glasses and children’s shoes—I will never forget the children’s shoes—there was a realisation among most of us that that could just as easily have been us. That is what made it all the more evocative. There was one young woman on the tour who said, “I don’t believe it.” She was not a holocaust denier in a political sense. She just could not comprehend that human beings could do that to each other. The Holocaust Educational Trust should be congratulated on, among all the other things that have been mentioned, encouraging, allowing and supporting young people to face up to the fact that human beings can do awful things to each other. I am sure that the young woman, once her colleagues had spoken to her, came to her understanding of the events. None the less it shocked us that there we were seeing what had happened, and it was just too awesome—in the correct sense of the word—for her to understand.

We must continue to support the Holocaust Educational Trust and other organisations and all the visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau and other centres. I have visited Theresienstadt, or Terezin as it is often called, which is a town that was evacuated and filled up with people who were on their way to Auschwitz.

As the right hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr O'Brien) said, genocidal murder has not stopped. We can see that in our most recent history. In 1994, 1 million Rwandan people were killed in a matter of 100 days. How is that comprehensible? We must all understand that we, as part of the international community, stood back and watched it happen.

I am pleased that Scotland’s Holocaust memorial day is being held in Stirling. The speakers will include Arn Chorn-Pond, who escaped from Cambodia after being held by the Khmer Rouge, and Alfred Munzer, who, as a Jewish child during the holocaust, was separated from his family and kept in hiding by Indonesian neighbours in Holland.

I will not be with my colleagues, Provost Mike Robbins and others in Stirling because I will be in Auschwitz on Monday with other politicians from across Europe, from Poland, and from Israel, and with some survivors for a special remembrance on the 60th anniversary. We will be in Poland at a site that is symbolic but, sadly, not unique in the history of the holocaust. When we stand on those railway tracks and remember those who were murdered, we will also know that thanks to the endeavours of many there will be communities, children and young people across the world commemorating that day.

The one point of optimism in all this is that the Nazis never achieved their ambition. They did not exterminate every Jew from Europe. If an optimistic message comes out of Holocaust memorial day it is that: the survivors won.

16:25

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

I should disclose that I am trustee and director of the Holocaust Educational Trust. I thank all the contributors to today’s debate for the compliments and thanks they have given to the trust. On behalf of the trust, I thank this Government and their predecessors for the support that they have given to the trust, particularly for the programme that takes children to Auschwitz. That has affected many Members’ constituents and it is good that this is a matter with cross-party support.

It would not be right for me to pick out everybody who has spoken today, on both sides of the House. Every contribution has been outstanding. The hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) made a point that was particularly interesting and relevant to me when he spoke about how this country stood up against Nazism. My late father, who was brought up in London in the 1930s, remembered very well that on Sunday mornings the blackshirts marched in their hundreds up and down the streets of this country shouting, “The Yids, the Yids, we’ve got to get rid of the Yids.” That is hard for us to believe in our society, despite the mention today of the Community Security Trust and some unforgiveable anti-Semitic incidents. When I compare that with people watching hundreds of people marching in jackboots in our own country shouting such things about Jewish people, I believe that we have progressed tremendously.

My father, on being conscripted into the Army in this country as a normal 18-year-old boy, was beaten up by the non-Jewish members of his platoon, who said, “You Jews are to blame for this war.” That was a feeling then and the little remnants of that feeling come out in what those people from Hungary say and what people—very few people, but some—say elsewhere, albeit quietly now because of the protection of the law. That feeling is still there.

I feel that today, as the Member of Parliament for Watford, I should particularly talk about holocaust education in one school that is, I believe, a model for schools around the country. It is Watford grammar school for girls, under the inspired leadership of Dame Helen Hyde, the daughter of holocaust survivors. It is a very successful school. It is called a grammar school, but it is actually a state comprehensive school with some selection. In many ways, it is ordinary—it could be any school.

The girls begin their holocaust education in year 9, when they are taught about stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination and where they can lead. They are asked to look at their own prejudices again because, as hon. Members have said, it is in the nature of human beings to have some prejudices. They talk about Anne Frank and her experiences in detail, even at a very young age.

In years 10 and 11, the girls do a detailed study of what took place under the Nazis, the outcome for Jewish people and others. They consider the moral and ethical issues that affect people in general. Further on in the school, they can do GCSEs and A-levels in relevant subjects.

Dame Helen runs the largest student holocaust conference every November, attended by 400 students and members of the public. I have had the privilege of opening the conference and up to 16 survivors have spoken. This school in this small part of Hertfordshire is a model. The girls do very well academically, so it does not in any way prejudice their education. Holocaust education is used as a way of teaching them about so much in life that is relevant to people.

Through my involvement with holocaust education and with the HET, I have spoken to girls and boys in a school two or three miles away from here, in east London, where one of the survivors sent by the HET to speak to them gave, as one can imagine, a very moving story of their experiences in the holocaust. A young lady—a Muslim—told me that the speaker, a 90-year-old lady, was the only Jewish person she had ever met in her life. In certain hon. Members’ constituencies two miles to the north and east of here, that probably would not be the experience. It shows the prejudice that can build up about Jewish people because people do not meet anyone of Jewish faith.

If the theme of my short speech is one thing, it is that holocaust education is not just about the most important thing—teaching about the holocaust—but about the lessons that the holocaust can have for everybody’s life in getting rid of the prejudice that is seen in all our lives. To some people—we heard football used as an example—these things might be harmless fun, but they fuel prejudice and ignorance.

I am pleased to be part of this debate that takes place in this House every year. I hope it will focus some people’s minds on the holocaust and remembering the 6 million-plus people who died tragically. If their deaths meant anything—if there is one thing they could have hoped for—it is that they helped to eradicate this form of prejudice for generations to come.

16:31

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Watford (Richard Harrington). We can all join in thanking him for his work as a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust. I add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) on introducing the debate. It is entirely appropriate that we consider this matter on a regular basis. When he summed up last year’s debate, which was led by my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans), he said that these debates show the House at its best. Today’s has been no exception, and we should all be proud of that. Last year, I explained that my interest in understanding more about the holocaust had arisen from visits I had made to Rwanda.

In 2012, I went to Auschwitz with students from Rugby high school. Last year, the editor of the local newspaper visited with another school party. In his account, he wrote of the massive impact on the young people who go there. They start off chatty, as teenagers often are, but as they see the horrors of Auschwitz the magnitude of what happened there dawns on them, and they become much more thoughtful and reflective. In addition to having seen what happened in Rwanda and Auschwitz, next month I will be joining a delegation visiting Cambodia, which it is impossible to visit without having regard to the killings that occurred there in the 1970s.

We have heard many emotional and moving speeches. Earlier today, I re-read last year’s debate in Hansard to remind myself of the comments Members made. I vividly remember the remarks of the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton), who spoke about his meetings with holocaust survivors—some of whom were members of his family—what they had seen and gone through, and the fact that it had never left them, not least because of the numbers tattooed on their arms. My hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) gave an account of what he had seen in Bosnia in 1992. He concluded by saying that we must prevent an event such as the holocaust from ever happening again, which is, of course, one of the reasons for holding this debate and for the programme of events run by the HET. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott) reminded us, when we read about the horrors of Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur and Rwanda, we sometimes wonder whether we have learned the lessons of the holocaust. When I visited memorials in Rwanda and spoke to people who wanted to talk about the genocide, one question I was regularly asked was, “Why did the international community stand by and let it happen?” We might ask ourselves whether we are doing enough to bring conflict and bloodshed to an end across the world today.

On Monday, as part of raising awareness for Holocaust memorial day, I will join students from across Rugby at a study day at the art gallery and museum, which has an exhibition exploring the life of Anne Frank. She hid for several years in her father’s business premises in Amsterdam before being found and taken to her death at Belsen. The exhibition consists of paintings by artist Anne Berger, who has visited the Anne Frank house and created a number of images of her life. Using those images, students from schools across the town will take part in workshop groups and explore themes of discrimination, refugees and the journeys they made. I am very much looking forward to joining those students to talk about the issues and understand their perspective of what happened during the holocaust and elsewhere in the world.

I am also looking forward to sharing my thoughts on what I have learned not only from my visits, but from the two debates in which I have taken part in the House. I have learned as much from the speeches of other Members as I have from seeing things. I look forward to celebrating the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust in ensuring that the world never forgets.

16:36

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute privilege to participate in this debate. I wholeheartedly congratulate the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) not only on securing the debate, but on his deeply moving contribution.

Members on both sides of the Chamber have made some incredibly powerful contributions reflecting on the events of decades ago and pondering their relevance today—and I certainly believe that they are relevant today. We said then that never again would the world stand by while a state killed its own citizens in such a planned and systematic way. Today, and even then, it was unimaginable—completely and utterly incomprehensible —that a state could inflict such suffering and despair by exterminating its own people and those of other countries simply on the basis of a perceived difference.

Yet, as we reflect on the holocaust, how can we not also consider, as has been said, Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur, where we have seen communities systematically dehumanised and killed because of a perceived difference, whether it be one of race, religion, ethnicity or belief?

[Bob Stewart]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lyn Brown]

Can I not?

[Bob Stewart]

Of course.

[Lyn Brown]

With the help of the Commons Library, I have looked at some of this place’s wartime debates about the holocaust. They make it absolutely clear that there was a high level of awareness of the situation. In a debate on refugees on 19 May 1943, a Home Office Minister said that since the outbreak of the war, 8 million people in Poland had suffered barbarous punishment or death, and many others spoke knowingly of the Nazis’ intention to exterminate the Jewish people.

There is also a palpable sense in these pages of powerlessness with regard to tackling the problems, which were known about, and saving lives. Perhaps that sense of powerlessness has been echoed in this Chamber throughout the decades since. Indeed, I remember the debate on Syria.

In 1939 the merchant ship St Louis set sail from Hamburg with 937 German-Jewish refugees on board, seeking asylum from Nazi persecution. Despite setting off with visas to allow them into Cuba, they were denied access. They set sail for the US and Canada, where access was also denied to them. The St Louis returned to Europe, and at that point the UK agreed to take 288 of the passengers. Others went to Belgium, France and the Netherlands, but following the German invasion of those territories, they were again at risk, and historians estimate that 227 of the asylum seekers on that boat subsequently perished in the holocaust.

What makes the holocaust stand out is not only the sheer number of victims, but the concrete evidence of how the killing was organised and implemented on such a scale. Of great significance is the fact that every Jew was defined not by their religion or their own definition, but by the perpetrators’ definition. Jews were singled out and registered on a central database—its purpose was to expedite their murder—before being publicly marked, stripped of their citizenship, forced to hand over their possessions, dehumanised and, ultimately, deported to their death. I am astonished that the Nazis intended to expand the final solution beyond their borders: they drew up lists of Jews in the USA, Great Britain, Israel and so on. There has never before been such an event in history.

Our political forebears in this place did something, but we have to admit that it was not enough. Debates at that time referred to quotas or the numbers that should come here or go elsewhere in our empire. I am sure the Government of the day thought they were acting for the best, but it simply was not enough. Edmund Burke is attributed with saying that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men—and, indeed, women—to do nothing. We said, “Never again,” and we set up the United Nations to promote world peace, but we have still seen enormous inhumanities unfold in front of our eyes. Even today, we see credible evidence of the organised murder on a horrendous scale of the people of Syria by the state.

In preparing for this speech, I was reminded of one by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) in 2008. In it, he reflected on a visit to a museum in Rwanda that commemorates the millions who lost their lives as the world looked the other way. There is a picture of a young boy called David, a 10-year-old who was tortured to death. His last words were, “Don’t worry—the United Nations will come for us”. But, as my right hon. Friend said, we never did. That child believed the best of us, only to discover that the pieties repeated so often, over and over, in reality meant nothing at all. The words “Never again” became a slogan, rather than what they should be—the crucible in which all our values sit and are tested.

My mother, like many of her generation, watched the liberation of the camps on newsreel footage. She was so profoundly moved by what she saw that she ensured that I was educated about it, and she gave me a copy of Anne Frank’s diary when I was about 10 years old. I devoured that book—trying to imagine myself in Anne Frank’s shoes—and I gained a tiny insight into the injustice and inhumanity to which she and her family were subjected. It was a lesson that I hope I have not forgotten. Years later, my mother and I visited Prague. We went to the ghetto, and saw the walls with the names of the 80,000 Jewish victims and the piteous paintings by the children.

I hope that hon. Members will allow me to say that I am neither a moral nor a political coward, but I know myself: I know how that visit, and the ones to Anne Frank’s house and to Dachau, affected me. I have therefore baulked at making the trip referred to by many hon. Members today, but in the light of this debate, I will face up to the challenge and visit Auschwitz-Birkenau before the end of this Parliament with, I hope, the support of the Holocaust Educational Trust.

This year, we mark the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war—the great war, as it was labelled at the time—and we should use the tone of this debate, which I commend, to fend off the revisionism that such occasions sometimes engender. It is widely believed that the treaty of Versailles created the conditions in which fascism emerged into the 1930s, and from which the horrors of the holocaust unfolded. Let us bear that in mind when we assess the events of 100 years ago and let us apply the lessons to our foreign policy when we encounter inhumanity in today’s world.

We know so much about the holocaust. We should be immensely grateful to the Holocaust Educational Trust for providing the resource that we all need. I join others in commending its work and that of Karen Pollock in particular. I am sure that the trust will rise to the challenge of keeping alive and accessible the stories and lessons of the holocaust as the number of survivors sadly dwindles over time. I commend the Government’s continuing commitment to ensuring that the holocaust is never forgotten, including through their funding for the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust under the admirable leadership of Olivia Marks-Woldman. Both trusts play their part in humanising the holocaust. In my view, that is the only way in which we can begin to comprehend such a vast and enduring tragedy.

In the Chamber today, we have heard how Members have comprehended the horror through seeing the piles of shoes or treading the steps into death chambers. For me, it is those paintings by the children in the Prague ghetto. We know so much, and yet we seem to learn so little. As we pause in the week before we mark Holocaust memorial day on 27 January, with its theme of journeys, we should take time to reflect on our global shortcomings and on our tendency to recognise the absolute horror of the holocaust, and yet to allow subsequent genocides to happen with such depressing frequency.

16:46

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

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) for leading us in this debate. Many of his remarks had a profound effect on me. To summarise, he said that although the holocaust is in many ways a story of hopelessness and humiliation, it also provides many examples of courage, stoicism and, ultimately, the triumph of the human spirit.

I echo my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown)—she is my hon. Friend—in saying that it has been a privilege to listen to all the speeches that have been made in this debate. That is not always our experience in this Chamber, but everyone has listened intently to every word that has been said today. I have been moved by many of the remarks that colleagues have made. We have shared our different experiences, the ways in which we have encountered the holocaust and how we have responded individually. Perhaps more importantly, we have resolved to act together.

The British mainland escaped the horrors of Nazi occupation. Although some European Jews were able to flee here, most notably through the Kindertransport, for most of us the holocaust is not a family experience. I note that it is for some Members who have spoken, but for most of us, our witness and understanding has come through history, literature and perhaps film.

My first knowledge of the holocaust was as a 13-year-old watching the TV series “Holocaust” in the late 1970s. That spurred me to read the only book about the holocaust that I could find at the time, which was “Scourge of the Swastika” by Lord Russell of Liverpool, who was involved in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals. I have never forgotten the table of categorisation in that book for the Nazis’ targets for imprisonment and murder. We are all familiar with the yellow star and the armband, but less often mentioned are the colours and symbols that were used for Gypsies, Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the disabled. I was most alarmed by the pink triangle for homosexuals, because at that age I was just coming to terms with what I was.

The first reason to remember the holocaust is to understand that minorities are our friends, our neighbours and our work colleagues. In the twisted minds of those who hold a prejudice, the minority could be ourselves. That is why we should be thankful that we live in a society in which human rights are upheld and in which minorities are our fellow citizens, not outsiders who are confined to legal or physical ghettos.

In recent years, mass knowledge of the holocaust has come through the films with which we are all familiar, but literature and celluloid are no substitutes for real-life experience and testimony. We have all mentioned speeches and visits to museums and monuments. I first went to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1992, when frankly it was not usual to do so, during a visit to Poland while inter-railing. I will never forget it. There were very few visitors at that time, and when we followed the line to Birkenau, I climbed the gatehouse tower and looked at the scale of the camp. To those who have not yet been there I say that that is the memory that will live with them; the scale and the industrialisation of mass murder. I was there entirely on my own—no one else—visiting on a hot summer’s day in 1992, and it gave me my own time of quiet contemplation. It is not a visit I have ever wanted to repeat, but like the shadow Minister, I think it is perhaps something I should now do.

I have since been to Amsterdam and the Anne Frank House, and I have also seen the pink triangle memorial in that city—the only known monument to gay people who were murdered by the Nazis. In 2012, I went to Yad Vashem with the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel, and I was familiar with many of the historical displays there. My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire said that he was profoundly affected by the children’s memorial, and no one could not be. What most affected me was the hall of names, where one looks up at a cone of photographs—hundreds, perhaps thousands, of photographs of people who were wiped out by the Nazis, reflected in a dark pit below. I really could not hold it together on that occasion.

The holocaust is a unique event and must be remembered and understood, particularly by young people for whom it is an historical event that took place long before they were born. It is right for the Government to support that, and many hon. Members have mentioned that they work with the Holocaust Educational Trust, led by Karen Pollock. It facilitates school visits to Auschwitz, as well as talks in schools, such as those that took place in my constituency, to give young people a vivid account and an unforgettable memory. Of course the most powerful testimony comes from holocaust survivors, such as Auschwitz survivor Freddie Knoller, who is still speaking in schools at the age of 92.

Last Monday I joined several other people now in the Chamber—the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) mentioned this—at the Holocaust Educational Trust annual Merlyn Rees memorial lecture, to listen to Thomas Harding tell the fascinating story of his Uncle Hanns and the arrest of the Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Höss. Thomas Harding discussed how people can turn from being loving fathers to murderous monsters. We are all familiar with the phrase from that time and the excuse that was often used about following orders, but he said that that was perhaps better described as people surrendering their capacity to think to others.

In more recent massacres and genocides we have seen how easy it can still be for people in advanced societies to slip from civilised values into thoughtless barbarity, whether in Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, or the current horrific scenes in Syria, where reporters are using the holocaust as a context in which to explain a tragedy unfolding before our eyes. People can still all too easily be led into acts of cruelty and murder.

That is why it is right that this Government—as did the previous Government—support the work of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, led by Olivia Marks-Woldman. Its annual act of remembrance on 27 January, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz, will be marked around the country on Monday. This year’s theme is journeys, and those of us who have seen at Auschwitz the pile of leather suitcases will certainly appreciate the resonance. Next year will be the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The Prime Minister has set up the Holocaust Commission, chaired by Mick Davis, president of the Jewish Leadership Council. That is because real-life memories are fading as people who remember the holocaust or who were told stories by their parents die. The work of the commission will be to consider how we can keep that testimony live and real, and ensure that those of the next generation comprehend the history, and also learn how to shape their future.

Next year will also be the 20th anniversary of another horrific episode in the history of Europe: the massacre of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica. I was particularly struck by the two interventions from my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), who served with NATO in Bosnia. Last year, my Department supported Ummah Help’s Remembering Srebrenica project. We will continue that support in the next year.

History is not just a moment in time studied for curiosity or even for leisure; it also gives us lessons we should learn. Not learning those lessons is a warning about the future. I will end my remarks by quoting a survivor of Buchenwald and Auschwitz, Elie Wiesel, who went on to win the Nobel peace prize:

“To forget a holocaust is to kill twice.”

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Before I call Alistair Burt for the closing remarks it would be remiss of me if I did not welcome the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown). I believe it is the first time she has spoken at the Dispatch Box as a shadow Minister. I am sure all Members look forward to future speeches, given the power and commitment with which she delivered her speech today.

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear.

16:55

[Alistair Burt]

I am sure all of us echo your remarks, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I will comment on the speech by the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) in a moment. I am probably more proud to be winding up the debate, having heard it, than I was when I started. I will make five brief points.

First, I commend this debate to any of those who watch our proceedings, whether those in schools thinking about Holocaust memorial day, or young people who want to watch something not just on this issue but on how Parliament works. The debate has been exceptional. We have had personal experiences, family experiences, difficult experiences of some horrors and a collective knowledge of the subject that has been brought about by those who work so hard for us outside, including the Holocaust Educational Trust. The debate has been a model of its kind. I am proud to have led it, but even prouder of the speeches we have heard this afternoon.

Secondly, I would say, “Do fix on the hope.” “Schindler’s List” does not conclude with the death of the little girl in the red dress; it concludes with the generations who were saved by Oscar Schindler and the generations still to come. The personal experiences and journeys referred to by colleagues are a reflection of hope. As the right hon. Member for Stirling (Mrs McGuire) said, the survivors won, not the Nazis. In all our reading on the holocaust, we should fix upon the hope.

Thirdly, we must not believe that it cannot happen again. Above all, we should keep in our minds that it could happen again. It is the evil in human hearts, which is reflected the moment one begins, unjustifiably, to separate someone as the “other”, that provides the opportunity: so long as somebody can be “Untermensch”, so long as someone is not like you, so long as someone is not human, they can be disposed of. As colleagues have said, the world is full of examples, even today, of where that is true, so do not believe that it cannot happen again.

Fourthly, reflect on this: we know about the holocaust for a number of reasons, but two are primary. First, people survived. That is how we know about it: people have their stories. Memorial day and everything we have spoken about today depends on the fact that people survive and can tell their stories. The second, and more difficult thing that people have to remember, is that we know about it because it was stopped. The holocaust did not come to a natural end. People did not suddenly wake up and say, “This is wrong and we must stop doing it.” It was physically stopped. It would be wonderful if we lived in a world where there was no physical need to intervene and stop people doing wrong. I do not believe that we do. That is why an international security system exists to protect people. This is something to debate: at what stage do people say, “Enough is enough” and do something about it?

Fifthly, I say. “Do go.” So many of the speeches we have heard today have been influenced and coloured by the fact that we have been to places: the Anne Frank house, Yad Vashem, museums around the world and, above all, Auschwitz. Go and get the sense of what this was about from the physical presence in various places.

It would be the greatest honour for me if I could make my first journey to Auschwitz with the hon. Member for West Ham. Perhaps we could support each other as we go. I would love to take that journey with her.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank the House for giving us time for this important debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered Holocaust Memorial Day.

Rural Fair Share Campaign

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

17:00

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

I rise to present a Rural Fair Share petition on behalf of hundreds of my constituents and supported also by a further 590 online signatures gathered through my website. The East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire contain not only the finest people, but two very well-performing councils that are sadly underfunded. Before I read out the petition, I want to thank Hatty’s teashop in Epworth and Rob McArthur at Snaith chippy, who, while people were buying their pattie and chips, encouraged them to sign the petition.

The petition states:

The Petition of residents of Brigg and Goole constituency,

Declares that the Petitioners believe that the Local Government Finance Settlement is unfair to rural communities; notes that the Rural Penalty sees urban areas receive 50% more support per head than rural areas despite higher costs in rural service delivery; and opposes the planned freezing of this inequity in the 2013–14 settlement for six years until 2020.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to reduce the Rural Penalty in staged steps by at least 10% by 2020.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.

[P001316]

Flooding (North Lincolnshire)

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mr Evennett.)

17:02

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I would like to thank Mr Speaker for granting me this debate, which is of great significance to my constituents, many of whom have seen their homes and businesses flooded for the second time in six years. This time, it was a result of a tidal surge; previously it was a result of heavy rain—but if a person’s home is flooded, the source is of little consequence. With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall conclude my remarks in time to give my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy a couple of minutes to highlight similar issues a little further along the estuary. The Minister has already kindly agreed to that.

The tidal surge that affected the Humber estuary on the night of 5 and 6 December was greater than that of the disastrous floods of February 1953, but thankfully the impact was much less, thanks to the extensive work undertaken in the years since. Clearly, investment in flood defences has been effective, but with severe weather apparently becoming more common, yet more needs to be done—we must not be complacent. The recent surge resulted in major damage to the port of Immingham. Measured by tonnage, the Immingham-Grimsby port complex is the largest in the UK, with about a quarter of all freight moved by rail starting or ending in Immingham. Much of this freight—coal for power stations, oil and other essential products—is of vital strategic importance.

The port was left without electricity, and extensive areas were flooded. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for his visit to Immingham on the afternoon of Saturday 7 December. He heard at first hand from Associated British Ports and Environment Agency staff, and the visit enabled me to brief him about other incidents of flooding in the Barrow Haven and New Holland areas. We heard from the dock master for Immingham and Grimsby, and it is clear that he made the right decision by opening the Grimsby lock gates at exactly the right time, so preventing a large area of Grimsby and the north end of Cleethorpes, where thousands of terraced houses are situated, from being overcome. I lived in one of those terraced houses at the time of the 1953 floods, but I am not old enough to have more than a hazy memory of that terrible time. However, there are many who do recall the devastation and deaths at that time.

The 60th anniversary of the 1953 floods occurred this time last year, and was marked by a special conference held at the Reeds hotel in Barton-upon-Humber and attended by the then Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon). The conference was attended by representatives of all the agencies involved, and we went away thankful for what had been achieved and hopeful that we would never witness anything like that again.

On the night of 5 December, the hotel was flooded and has since gone into liquidation, leaving a trail of lost jobs, lost deposits and wedding plans thrown into jeopardy. One cannot but reflect on the irony of that situation. The forced closure of the hotel is a loss for another reason; it was a social enterprise, owned by Odyssey (Tendercare), a local charity that helps and supports cancer victims. A couple of miles from the hotel is the village of Barrow Haven, which is a small community whose focal point is the pub, The Haven Inn, which also finds itself closed for business as a result of flooding.

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

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate. Does he share with me concerns about the availability of flood insurance to businesses, particularly small businesses, which are vital to economic growth in our local area? Under the new Government scheme, the Flood Re scheme, small businesses are excluded.

[Martin Vickers]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I recognise those problems. I have spoken to a number of businesses that have experienced difficulties with insurance. I agree that we need to look further at this problem.

It is not just businesses that have been affected. Having visited the village on a number of occasions since the floods, I can vouch for many sad stories among the local Barrow Haven residents. It is a miserable experience to visit people in their water-ravaged homes, but how much more miserable for those whose homes have been affected.

Local residents such as Mark and Sarah Kilbee described their particular experience as follows:

“We had no knowledge of the flood, no prior warning. That alone put my husband and me, and our animals, at risk. We lost a large amount of personal possessions we had worked for over the last 15 years. With a warning we could have been better prepared. After the water had arrived we managed to save our cats and dogs by getting them upstairs. We sat on stools in the water all night with no heating or electricity. No one came to help us that night and we watched our possessions float away.”

The council pumped 33,000 gallons of water away from that one property alone, and it is now costing the Kilbees £100 a week to run dryers and humidifiers, which is causing considerable hardship.

I hope that the Minister can assure me that he will instruct the Environment Agency to install sirens in Barrow Haven and other villages along the Humber bank. Text and e-mail alerts are important, but can often be missed until it is too late. If someone’s home or business has been flooded, what they want is an immediate response by the various agencies.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. The timing is particularly opportune, as seven weeks after the east coast storm surge, we now have a full picture of the extent of the damage and how well the clear-up and repair costs are going. In Lowestoft in my constituency, a small geographical area was hit very hard. Although the community rallied superbly, it will take many people and many businesses a long time to recover. A concern that I raised for debate before Christmas was that the Bellwin scheme could constrain councils such as North Lincolnshire and Waveney district council in my own area in their work to get communities back on their feet as quickly as possible. Does my hon. Friend agree that to achieve this goal, the tight time scales for carrying out the work should be extended and the bar on capital expenditure should be relaxed? Does he also accept that there may well be a case for increasing the percentage of costs that local councils, such as North Lincolnshire council, can recover?

[Martin Vickers]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am certainly aware that North Lincolnshire council will be assessing the impact of the Bellwin scheme and suggesting possible changes to the Minister. The Minister may wish to comment on that.

North Lincolnshire council responded well in the days immediately after the event, and it was difficult to find a critical word about it. It is appropriate at this point to place on record my thanks to the local community and my appreciation of all who worked very long hours in atrocious conditions—the council, the Environment Agency, the fire and rescue service, the voluntary sector, those working for the utility companies and many more. They all did everything possible to restore services and make people feel as comfortable as possible.

On 23 December I met John Orr, the area manager of the Environment Agency. It was a very helpful meeting, and Mr Orr and his team are currently preparing both a short-term and a long-term strategy to avoid a repeat of last month’s floods. We have agreed that if I arrange a public meeting when the full details are available, in the near future, representatives of the agency will attend the meeting and explain their plans to local people. That is very welcome.

We cannot leave people with the fear that the same thing could happen again for a moment longer than is necessary. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure me that he will liaise with the agency and ensure that the meeting happens as quickly as possible, because it is at that point that we shall know the full extent and the costs of the work that is required. I realise that he will not want to do the equivalent of signing a blank cheque by saying that he will ensure that everything that is beyond the agency’s existing budget will be funded, but my constituents, quite reasonably, want the Government to recognise that this is a priority.

In the immediate aftermath of the floods, there was a widespread feeling among my constituents that they had been forgotten. That was partly due to the inevitable media focus on the death of Nelson Mandela. BBC local radio, in the shape of Radio Humberside, was first-rate, but my constituents felt that, nationally, the BBC seemed to forget that anything else was happening in the world. Their feeling of neglect was reinforced when the floods that hit many parts of the country during the Christmas period became headline news for days on end.

It is also regrettable that no statement was made to the House in the immediate aftermath of the 5 December floods. I understand that the Environment Secretary wanted to make a statement, but that, for whatever reason, that was not possible. I know that the Government were taking action and making help available where it was necessary, but the lack of an official statement was regrettable. Of course actions speak louder than words, but the feeling of being ignored could so easily have been avoided. I know that the Minister will want to do all that he can to correct that impression, and to give an absolute reassurance that all that is necessary will be done.

The Environment Agency has told me that it has already committed £650,000 to repairs along the south bank of the Humber, including repairs to the stretch of defences between New Holland and Goxhill Haven and between Barrow upon Humber and New Holland. Repairs are now being carried out between Barton-upon-Humber and Barrow upon Humber. Those repairs are due to be completed by March, with further repair work continuing through the year. Repairs are being prioritised, and a risk-based approach is being used in line with the Humber flood risk management strategy.

When I met representatives of the Environment Agency, I found it extremely helpful to do so along with one of the farmers who owned land in the vicinity, because his experience was invaluable. It is often said that the Environment Agency does not make the best possible use of local knowledge, and last Friday, when I met local representatives of the National Farmers Union, that opinion was repeated. A Humber flood forum exists, but there is a feeling that it meets irregularly, and that its collective expertise is not used to best advantage. As the Minister knows, many farmers and local councillors serve on drainage boards. May I urge him to ensure that their collective knowledge is put to the best possible use? Not only businesses and homes but farmers suffered as a result of the floods, losing livestock and grazing land. Perhaps a greater involvement of the farming community would be helpful in future.

Those whose homes or businesses have been flooded do not want to hear politicians debate which Government spent, are spending or will spend more than the other; nor do they want to hear endless arguments about whether the cause is climate change. Whether it is or not, the fact remains that we are experiencing more severe weather events, and my constituents want positive action. Let me take this opportunity to thank the Secretary of State for meeting me and other local Members of Parliament, and to thank the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), for his help and support.

What my constituents want to hear from the Minister in his reply is a reassurance that everything possible will be done. They want to hear that if additional resources are required, they will be made available; that better use will be made of local knowledge— there is no price tag on that one—and that better warnings will be provided by way of sirens; that if further help is needed to see those affected through the period when they are having to live in temporary accommodation, it will be forthcoming; and that if help is needed to smooth the passage of insurance claims, it will be available.

Actions speak louder than words. I urge the Minister to ensure that those actions happen, and that they do not take too long.

17:15

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

I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) for giving me an opportunity to speak for a couple of minutes about the experiences in Brigg and Goole. Whatever the reasons for the flooding, I think we can all agree it was nothing to do with the passage of the same-sex marriage Bill in this place. Whatever the reasons, however, as my hon. Friend said, residents simply want action now. I agree with a great deal of what he said, and congratulate him on securing the debate. The Minister is a very competent Minister. We did not necessarily agree with everything in the Water Bill Committee, but I know he is incredibly competent on this matter and I reiterate to him our invitation to our constituencies to see the clear-up work going on.

My constituency was particularly badly affected when the tidal river Ouse overtopped the banks at Reedness and devastated many homes there. The Dutch river as we call it, but the River Don to others, overtopped at Old Goole. The Trent overtopped and flooded many properties in Burringham, Gunness, Amcotts and Keadby, and the tidal Humber estuary overtopped and devastated about a third of South Ferriby as well as houses in the communities of Winteringham and Burton-upon-Stather. We suffered particularly badly, therefore.

Since then the council has responded very well. I should pay tribute to Councillor Liz Redfern, the leader, who very quickly, having been approached by me, my hon. Friend and ward councillors, agreed to issue £300 to everybody regardless of whether they were insured, to help with the clear-up costs. Those cheques were out and delivered by the end of the following week. The council has also established a £1,000 interest-free loan for anybody who was flooded which they can pay back over a period of five years with no interest at all. The council has done everything it can, therefore, and the parish councils, too, have been incredible in my constituency. It was a privilege to see them in action both on that evening and the day after and the weekend after as I went around visiting flooded properties.

I concur with my hon. Friend about sirens. A lot of people did get warnings, but a lot of constituents either missed them or did not feel they came at the right time. In the community of Reedness, for example, people received flood warnings when the water was already up to their ankles or deeper. The Environment Agency is pursuing those issues.

There are two particular issues I want to raise with the Minister, but before doing so I should say that another issue I will be writing to him about is to do with the CEMEX plant at South Ferriby. I have not given him prior notice of that, but it was truly devastated when the Humber came over. Some £30 million-worth of damage was caused to that big local employer. Although it has said absolutely that it is committed to bringing that plant back into action, it will struggle, and it may require and seek some assistance. It has approached the council but the council simply does not have the resources, so I will be pursuing that separately.

The first of the major issues is where we go now with the Humber flood risk management strategy, a document I have been involved with since its inception some years ago when I was a local councillor. It identifies particular locations in my constituency, especially the bank at Reedness, which is significantly lower in part than in other communities, and there is a feeling that that dip in the bank of about 9 or 10 inches was the reason why it was flooded and other communities were not. There is the same situation at South Ferriby and the South Ferriby to Winteringham stretch. The Humber strategy is a good strategy because it talks about maintaining and improving defences over the next 15 to 20 years. The policies adopted for those two sections are welcome, but they were adopted in 2008 and we have not yet seen a clear timetable of when the funding is going to come forward.

[Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

I accept the importance of flood defences and in some respects flood resilience measures, which the hon. Gentleman is talking about, but does he agree that just as important is ongoing maintenance? We have to have that ongoing maintenance from the EA week in, week out.

[Andrew Percy]

In my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes—and particularly in mine, which is very susceptible to flooding—that maintenance has gone on. With the exception of a concrete culvert at Keadby, we saw no breaches of our defences. They did the job they were designed to do, and they are designed to a very high standard. They have been damaged since, which is important, but from a maintenance point of view the banks did the job they were designed to do. With rising sea levels, the issue is that they might not be sufficient and we want to see this investment brought forward.

My final point is on internal drainage board assets. I met representatives of the drainage board at Reedness two weeks ago. The board suffered significant damage to its assets when the embankment was breached there, and it is not clear yet how it will fund the recovery works. I would like a bit more clarity on that and have tabled a parliamentary question on the matter. I look forward to hearing from the Minister.

17:20

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) on securing this important debate and on the way in which, as the local Member of Parliament, he has been there for his constituents and raised issues here and with local agencies and helped in any way he could. I thank hon. Members across the House for all that they have done to support their local communities and for passing to me and my colleagues and officials any information that needed to be passed back.

The coastal surge that struck the eastern coast of England on the night of 5 to 6 December was a significant flood event in terms of scale and was highly significant to those who bore the brunt of it and the economic, societal and emotional cost of flooding. My thoughts and those of hon. Members across the House are with those people who experienced that, and with people across the country who experienced other events in the weeks that followed, which we also heard about from my hon. Friend.

The coastal surge is estimated to have caused flooding of around 2,600 properties, although this figure is subject to change as the recovery effort progresses. Our thoughts are with all those who have been affected by high winds and whose homes and businesses were damaged during the powerful storms. However, through investment by Government and improvements to the way we manage this type of flooding, we were able to protect up to 800,000 properties countrywide that would otherwise have been flooded. It was reassuring to hear that, in many cases the defences functioned as they should have done and the agencies were there for people, although of course where things could have been better I reassure hon. Members that they will be better in the future. I thank them for raising issues with me.

There was a multi-agency response to this event, with all relevant authorities pulling together to protect people and their property. I am grateful for the excellent response from our front-line emergency services, including the police and fire services, the Environment Agency, and local authorities. I would like to praise the work of the flood forecasting centre, which is run jointly by the Met Office and the Environment Agency. Over 160,000 homes and businesses received a flood warning and advice in advance to enable them to put their flood plans into action. The combination of accurate forecasting and extensive planning and preparation allowed us to co-ordinate the response to ensure the focus was on protecting communities at risk and on the key infrastructure that supports them.

The flooding on 5 December 2013 caused overtopping of defences around the Humber estuary and the tidal Trent, flooding land and properties behind. However, the defences performed well and no breaches occurred, limiting the extent of the flooding. Initial reports from the local recovery co-ordinating group indicate that 347 properties and 47 businesses were flooded in North Lincolnshire. However, the full impacts are still being assessed. Particularly affected communities included South Ferriby, Burringham, Keadby, Gunness, Reedness and Barrow Haven. Hon. Members will correct my pronunciation if I have got it wrong. As a Cornishman, I find some of these things a little difficult, but I am sure they will forgive me if I have mispronounced.

A number of roads, including the A1077, and the railway line to Barton-upon-Humber were also affected and closed for a period of time. Flooding events have economic and other impacts that cause annoyance for those who may not have been immediately flooded, and we have to consider those impacts as well. My thoughts go out to all those who were affected, especially given the timing of the event just before Christmas.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State met the hon. Member for Cleethorpes at Immingham docks on 7 December to see first hand how local communities and businesses along the south Humber bank were affected by the flooding. At Immingham port, the Environment Agency, the local authority and Associated British Ports are working to assess the damage and work out a reinstatement programme.

The Environment Agency issued flood warnings along the entire stretch of the south Humber bank and the tidal Trent on the morning of 5 December. Three severe flood warnings were issued to nearly 4,000 properties in parts of Grimsby, Cleethorpes and Humberston. A further seven severe flood warnings were issued to over 4,000 properties along the tidal Trent. Although parts of the south Humber bank experienced significant flooding from the overtopping of defences, no severe flood warnings were issued in those areas. That was because the Environment Agency issues a severe flood warning only if there is a danger to life. The forecast received on 5 December did not warrant a severe flood warning as only overtopping of the defences was predicted. Had a breach been forecast which would have posed a danger to life severe flood warnings would have been issued.

The Minister with responsibility for flood recovery, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), chaired a meeting of key Ministers on Tuesday 7 January this year to ensure that a co-ordinated approach was being taken to assist communities recovering from recent flood events. The Bellwin scheme has been opened to enable local authorities to submit claims for costs incurred in the emergency response phase to protect lives and properties. So far, 41 local authorities—including North Lincolnshire—have registered their intention to submit a claim under the Bellwin scheme. A number of local Members have asked questions in this place and elsewhere about the operation of that scheme, about what triggers it and about what it does and does not cover. My hon. Friend the Minister is taking those questions into account, and the Local Government Association is also raising some of those issues with the Government. We will of course want to work with people on that.

Last Friday, 17 January, an additional funding package of £6.7 million was made available for local authorities affected by recent flooding and severe weather. This new money builds on financial assistance already made available to councils under the Bellwin scheme, and will top up support to cover the costs of clearing up after severe weather and flooding. Further details of how local authorities can apply to the £6.7 million severe weather recovery fund will be issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government shortly. Additionally, my hon. Friend the Minister is inviting leaders of local authorities affected by the severe weather to meetings over the coming weeks to discuss the challenges and the support that I have outlined.

As well as providing updates to communities and local farmers, Environment Agency staff have been attending parish council meetings and holding drop-in events to keep communities updated on local defence repairs. An immediate programme of repair work has been developed for the south Humber bank. Before Christmas, repairs were carried out by the Environment Agency where they were most needed. The rate of repair has accelerated as resources, materials and, importantly, access have become available in the subsequent weeks. The repairs are being prioritised using a risk-based approach, in line with the Humber flood risk management strategy. Repairs to the stretch of defences between New Holland and Goxhill Haven, and between Barrow upon Humber and New Holland, are progressing well. I am pleased to hear from the Environment Agency that it is continuing to receive support from local landowners, which is allowing it to carry out those works more quickly.

The agency is updating its Humber flood risk management strategy, which deals with the long-term justification, funding and solutions for the management of flood risk to communities along the Humber. The agency will ensure that all data and learning from the recent flooding is collected, evaluated and used in the development of the updated strategy. It is important to say that, in government, a lessons-learned exercise is being carried out, led by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy, to look at issues related to this incident of coastal flooding and the other incidents that we have had in the past couple of months.

I understand that the hon. Member for Cleethorpes has had a number of meetings and progress updates with the local Environment Agency area manager, as he has mentioned, to discuss the flooding and a way forward in more detail. If the hon. Gentleman or his constituents identify any further needs, I will ensure that the Environment Agency takes them into account, as part of its Humber flood risk management strategy update. He particularly referred to warning sirens, and I will take the opportunity to raise that issue with the agency, so that it can be taken into account as those discussions proceed.

The Environment Agency continues to assess the damage to flood defences across the country, and we look at the resources that will be necessary to fund that work, but it is crucial that, as we have invested money in these assets over decades, we ensure that they are functioning. I was pleased to hear from hon. Members that those defences were in a good state of repair and performed the task for which they were designed.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) referred to insurance for businesses. I understand the concern, but the Flood Re scheme is focused on residential property. Indeed, it is funded by a levy on the residential insurance market, so we must be careful about saying that we would use that mechanism to support small businesses, as the money comes from residential customers. Many specialist brokers out there are working to help to find solutions for the commercial market. Obviously, I would be happy to do anything to help in discussions with the insurance industry, but the Flood Re scheme is focused on residential properties.

With the little bit of time available, I will focus on some of the specific issues raised by the hon. Member for Cleethorpes. On making better use of local knowledge, as I have said, the Environment Agency is out there, meeting parish councils and local groups. It also has regular contact with internal drainage boards. If any issue is raised there that people do not feel is taken into account, we will, of course, make use of that in future.

My impression, having visited some of the areas that have been flooded around the country in various events in recent weeks, is that people feel that the information provided by the Environment Agency was very good and the warnings were timely and that the understanding of those catchments and coastal areas is very good, but of course we take that point away.

On funding, I have said that we want to ensure that we have the money to make sure that the defences are brought up to—

17:31

House adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 9(7)).