House of Commons

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

Monday 3 February 2014

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

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

1. Whether the UK received advance notice of the recent deployment of Russian naval ships to the north of Scotland.

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

The Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov passed through the UK’s area of interest, en route to the Mediterranean, between 28 December 2013 and 10 January 2014. The carrier task group had openly declared its planned deployment on social media sites. Its progress was monitored from the point of its deployment from Russia, and it informed NATO before it commenced routine flying operations.

Once it became apparent that the task group was indeed likely to enter the UK’s area of interest, HMS Defender, as the fleet ready escort ship, was ordered to sail from Portsmouth to meet and escort the group through the UK’s area of interest. This was several days before the task group’s arrival to the north of Scotland. The Russian task group operated in international waters off the coast of Scotland and followed international protocols to arrange their flying exercises. Their contact with HMS Defender was highly professional and cordial throughout.

I am glad to be able to tell the House that the idea that we were caught unawares by this deployment is entirely false, as is any suggestion that there was some kind of stand-off between HMS Defender and the Russian vessels.

[Mr Gray]

We are wholeheartedly relieved to hear that the episode passed off so peacefully and so cordially, and that the relations between the Kuznetsov and HMS Defender remain as strong as they are. Does the Secretary of State not agree in looking to the future—given that 48 ships have gone through the North sea shipping route to the far east this year, and that there is increasing fishing and increasing drilling for oil and minerals in the Arctic—that it is terribly important for our armed services to have first-class relations with those of Russia? I hope that this episode will be the beginning of such relations.

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The fact is that we have very cordial relationships with the Russians and good working relationships with the Russian armed forces, but we should not lose sight of the fact that we cannot be confident that our strategic interests will always align with those of Russia. We should therefore engage and work together with them when we can, but, frankly, we should recognise that our strategic interests may differ at times.

[Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)]

The arrival of the Russian navy off the Scottish coast was the second time in two years that this has happened, yet the Royal Navy does not have a single frigate or destroyer based in Scotland for such eventualities. Last week, the Ministry of Defence confirmed that the fleet ready escort has been gapped for 37 days in recent years. Why has there been a gap to the fleet ready escort?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is flogging a dead horse, frankly. We do not need a frigate stationed in Scottish waters; we need good intelligence about the intentions of vessels approaching the UK’s area of interest, and we have that good intelligence. He talks about the number of frigates and destroyers available. He might like to tell the House how many frigates and destroyers his Scottish navy would have available within its extremely limited budget.

The hon. Gentleman also talks about the gapping of the fleet ready escort, which has occurred for 37 days in the past five years. During that period, there was no specific vessel designated as the fleet ready escort, but that does not mean that there were no royal naval vessels available to respond in case of necessity. In addition to the fleet ready escort, royal naval vessels are usually available to be tasked, as necessary.

[Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)]

If it is safe to assume that these Russian warships were not planning to bombard Mr Salmond, may we assume that they were there to establish the unimpeded rights of Russia to exploit oil in the Arctic? If so, will we have reciprocal rights to look for oil in the Russian Arctic?

[Mr Hammond]

The clear stated intention, which was subsequently borne out by events, was that the Kuznetsov carrier task group would proceed from Russia to the eastern Mediterranean, where it currently is. In accordance with the pattern of its last deployment, it stopped in the relatively sheltered waters of the Moray firth to re-oil on its way to the eastern Mediterranean. This is all perfectly normal procedure, and it was notified to NATO in advance.

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

Does not the debate on this issue underline the importance of our combined—UK—Royal Navy, and also the potential in the strategic NATO alliance? Does the Secretary of State not agree that, in the words of another political figure, it would be “unpardonable folly” to put at risk that NATO alliance by disavowing the very strategic nuclear concept on which it is based?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is right on all counts. NATO’s strategic nuclear concept of course provides protection for the whole of the United Kingdom. Our very close relationship with our NATO allies—in this case, specifically with Norway—ensures that we have good visibility and good intelligence about Russian vessels and, indeed, Russian aircraft approaching the UK’s area of interest.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

I am sure that all Members are immensely grateful for the part played by social media in providing the United Kingdom with intelligence in advance of the Kuznetsov’s arrival in the UK’s area of interest. To put a serious point to my right hon. Friend, surely this incident underlines the need for this Government and this country to have a successor to the Nimrod maritime patrol aircraft, and shows that until we get such a successor aircraft, we will be at risk.

[Mr Hammond]

I do not disagree with my hon. Friend’s assertion that we need to look at how we provide maritime surveillance cover. That will be part of the strategic defence and security review in 2015. However, I am afraid that he cannot argue that this incident demonstrates that need. In fact, this incident shows that we are perfectly capable of maintaining an intelligence picture through imagery, signals intelligence and reports from our NATO allies of movements of Russian ships without having access to maritime patrol aircraft.

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

In the light of this incident, will the Secretary of State tell the House what he is going to do to plug the capability gap in maritime surveillance that has been created by his Government, apart from relying on Twitter?

[Mr Hammond]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not have time to amend his question following my last answer. We will review the provision of maritime patrol cover in the strategic defence and security review in 2015. We will look at the need for it and at how it could be provided, including the possibility that it could be provided through the use of unmanned aerial systems. It is a bit rich for him to say that the gap in maritime patrol cover was created by this Government. What this Government did was to recognise the reality that his Government had been investing in aircraft that would never fly, would never be certified and would never be able to deliver a capability.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

2. What contribution the armed forces will make to commemorations of the start of the first world war.

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

10. What contribution the armed forces will make to commemorations of the start of the first world war.

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

16. What contribution the armed forces will make to commemorations of the start of the first world war.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport has the Government lead for the first world war centenary commemorations. The Ministry of Defence is working closely with it and other Government partners in full support of the commemorations. The armed forces will be present at key events on 4 August 2014, the anniversary of the outbreak of war, and throughout the centenary period.

[Jason McCartney]

What opportunity will there be for my constituents to visit the Colne Valley military cemetery in Ypres, which has the graves of 47 British soldiers, including some from the 49th West Riding Division, during the commemorations of the centenary of world war one?

[Dr Murrison]

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is very keen that people should visit not just the big sites such as Tyne Cot, but the smaller, intimate sites of the sort to which my hon. Friend refers, which can be the most poignant. I hope that there will be such an opportunity as part of the Institute of Education’s battlefield tour programme, which his young constituents will be able to take part in. In particular, I hope that people will have an opportunity to visit sites that have local relevance.

[Rehman Chishti]

Will the Minister join me in welcoming the initiative of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to install quick response codes at memorials, including at Gillingham cemetery in my constituency, so that visitors can access information on and the stories of those who died for our country?

[Dr Murrison]

Of course I welcome that initiative. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is doing a fantastic job in the run-up to the centenary. I know that a number of right hon. and hon. Members are Commonwealth war graves commissioners. It is vital that people have the opportunity not only to pay their respects at such incredibly important sites, but to explore the causes, conduct and consequences of the great war during the four-year period. Initiatives of the sort that my hon. Friend has described are an important part of that.

[Simon Kirby]

Would the Minister mind my mentioning my grandmother’s brother, farm labourer James Marchant, who served in world war one in the Royal Sussex Regiment, a unit in which, sadly, 6,800 men lost their lives?

[Dr Murrison]

I think that many of us will go on a voyage of exploration as we explore our family histories during the four-year period. I know that my hon. Friend has long-standing Sussex ancestry. May I take this opportunity to congratulate his daughter, who I understand has just joined the Army Reserve?

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

I am sure that Ministers will join me in congratulating the shadow Secretary of State for Defence on winning the Opposition Front Bencher of the year award last week. On world war one, I want to make sure that Ministers recognise, not just this year but over the whole period, the contribution that women made to the efforts.

[Dr Murrison]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady, as she would expect. There will be opportunities throughout the four-year period to commemorate not just fighting soldiers, but the population at large and women in particular. It is important to note that this was the first total war that we experienced. It would therefore be bizarre if we did not commemorate the contribution of the whole population, rather than simply commemorating our troops, important though they were.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

There are three memorials in my constituency alone, and we pay tribute to the many who died in the first world war in the most terrible circumstances. Does the Minister recognise that not only will there be a continuing debate about Britain’s involvement, rightly or wrongly, in that war—the sort of debate that does not take place about the second world war—but there will inevitably be renewed criticism of the way senior generals conducted it? Many believe, for example, that “Oh! What a Lovely War” was by no means a total exaggeration.

[Dr Murrison]

I certainly welcome debate and very much hope that this will be an opportunity to explore the causes, conduct and consequences of the war. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of funding that is available across the board. I commend the Heritage Lottery Fund, in particular, for being very even-handed in the way it has behaved. I understand his point of view well, although it is not one that I necessarily share completely. I point out the debate we had in this place on 7 November, which I think was one of the most consensual we have had during my time here. I see the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) nodding in agreement. He and I have had considerable discussions on the matter and I am very pleased that this is consensual and not party political.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

What discussions, if any, have there been with the Governments of Commonwealth countries and the Irish Government on commemorating the first world war?

[Dr Murrison]

I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that 10 days ago I lectured at University College Cork on our relationship in that respect, and I was extremely well received, for which I am grateful. The Government have made it clear that it needs to be a Commonwealth-facing series of anniversaries. It would be extraordinary, given the history, if it was not.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

3. What support his Department has offered to the Burmese army; and what his Department’s objectives are for such work.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Mark Francois)]

Our support to the Burmese military is limited to providing courses that address subjects such as accountability, the rule of law and respect for human rights. We have neither provided any training that would enhance combat capability, nor do we plan to do so. The Burmese military are a central political actor in Burma and are key to the process of political reform. It will only be through engagement with all actors, including the military, that we will see greater democracy in Burma, something I am sure the whole House would welcome.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the Minister for that clarification and for the tone of his response, but civil society organisations in Burma have expressed concern that, given the human rights situation there, our involvement could be rather premature. What conditions were imposed on the Burmese army in return for UK assistance, and how will the Ministry of Defence monitor the Burmese army’s compliance with international law in future, particularly on the use of child soldiers and impunity for human rights abuses?

[Mr Francois]

There are two points to make. First, the trainees who undertook the course were selected by the Burmese army. We are not aware of any involvement in human rights abuses by any of those course participants. Secondly, the House should be aware that in a speech at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst last October, which was broadcast on Burmese television and covered by the international media, Aung San Suu Kyi encouraged the UK to engage with the Burmese military and appealed directly to the Burmese army, saying that she wanted it to be a professional military of the highest standard and noting that the most respected armies in the world were apolitical.

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

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is only by engaging with the Burmese army that we can have any hope of positively influencing human rights issues and democratic accountability and that, on balance—it is a balance—that outweighs the risk of coming into contact with individuals who might have been involved in abuses in the past?

[Mr Francois]

I understand my hon. Friend’s question, and I am mindful of his previous military service. The whole House will understand that Burma has a complicated history and that this is a difficult situation, but given that, and given the fact that the Burmese military have an important role in the Burmese political system, if we are to encourage reform, which we would all like to see, it is right that we engage with the military, although we maintain a strong commitment to human rights in everything we do in that context.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

I visited Burma last year as a member of the International Development Committee, and some of us met General Aung Min, who is leading the peace process. I believe it is extremely important that our military develop relationships with their military and pass on some of the lessons we learnt from the Northern Ireland peace process. I strongly encourage the Government to ensure that that happens.

[Mr Francois]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments and I am mindful that he represents a constituency with a significant military component. The previous Chief of the Defence Staff has visited Burma and engaged with the Burmese military at senior level, and as I said, we are undertaking our course of action partly on the advice of Aung San Suu Kyi herself.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to ensure that suppliers to his Department receive prompt payment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

We are encouraging our suppliers to accept payment through our new electronic bill paying system, and I am proud to confirm to my hon. Friend that the Ministry of Defence paid 92% of correctly submitted invoices within five working days in the last financial year. We have identified that the majority of the less than 1% of late payments made by the MOD were a result of incorrectly submitted invoices, such as those submitted on order rather than after product delivery. All correctly submitted invoices were paid within 30 days in 2012-13.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Prompt payments are particularly crucial for small businesses that can face severe cash-flow problems without them. Will the Minister assure the House that he is doing all he can to ensure that small businesses are paid on time?

[Mr Dunne]

This Department, under this Government, is well aware of the benefits of prompt payment and the importance of cash flow to SMEs. That is why not only are we paying our suppliers on time, we are also encouraging them to pay their subcontractors within 30 days of receipt of a valid invoice.

When this issue was raised in November I inadvertently misled the House and I would like to put the record straight. I informed the House that the Ministry of Defence had incurred a single late-payment penalty on only one invoice out of some 4 million. It has now come to my attention that in fact we paid almost 5 million invoices last year—a penalty payment rate of 0.00002%.

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

It would be churlish of Labour Members not to acknowledge the good work that MOD officials in particular have been doing, not least because they are protecting a supply chain that often produces extremely specialist products. What discussions is the Minister having with small and medium-sized businesses that may be affected by the reported 20% efficiency savings sought in the support contracts about the way that prime contractors may pass that 20% down the line to protect their own losses? Getting paid on time is one thing, but losing one’s business is another.

[Mr Dunne]

I am glad the hon. Lady asked me to comment on that. We are engaged across the supply chain in seeking to extract maximum efficiencies for the taxpayer from MOD procurement. I am engaged in SME conferences with the defence industry right across the country. Indeed, I intend to come to Plymouth in the not-too-distant future, and the hon. Lady may like to join me.

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

5. What his future plans are for the defence estate in Wales; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

Wales is at the very heart of our defence effort and will continue to be so. HQ Wales infantry brigade in Brecon will convert to an adaptable force brigade HQ in situ, and redevelopment work will take place at St Athan. In addition, military training will continue at Sennybridge.

[Roger Williams]

I thank the Minister for that reply and I agree that facilities in Wales are essential for the training of our armed forces. The regimental museum based in Brecon, which is so important to veterans, has been assisted thanks to fundraising by a charity led by Mrs Dorcas Cresswell and Mrs Elaine Stephens. Will the Minister meet that charity to see whether ownership of the museum could be transferred to it so that it can better attract funds?

[Dr Murrison]

I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman is supporting that because museums large and small are extraordinarily important. As he will know, the Ministry of Defence supports the National Army Museum at one end of the scale, but he is right to say that regimental museums at the other end are also vital. I hope that the good work he has described will continue. Out of interest, I would—of course—be more than happy to meet that charity, but as he will understand, I must be cautious about providing monetary support, which is probably better sourced elsewhere.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Some 9% of those in our armed forces come from Wales, yet the population of Wales is only 5% of the UK population. We therefore take a strong interest in the future of our armed forces. The Minister said there will be redevelopment at St Athan. I presume that does not mean that there will be a defence training academy, but what exactly is he going to redevelop there?

[Dr Murrison]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that Wales has provided a disproportionate part of our Army, and I pay tribute to it for that. As he will know, St Athan is of great interest to the Welsh Government, who want to develop an aerospace business park there. The MOD is working closely to reconcile our continuing MOD defence needs for that site with the need to advance the prosperity agenda and the Welsh Government’s requirement to ensure that jobs are sustained and supported there in the long term.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

In my view, possibly the best infantry training area in the United Kingdom is Sennybridge. Is there any possibility of infantry battalions being positioned around Sennybridge, where they would have ease of access for training, perhaps in Crickhowell?

[Dr Murrison]

I agree with my hon. Friend that Sennybridge is a first-rate training area—I have had casual experience of it myself. I am more than happy to consider and discuss his precise proposition, but we have no plans to do that at the moment.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

6. What recent progress his Department has made on its study of the surrender of armed forces widows’ pensions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anna Soubry)]

Under the 2005 pension scheme, widows and widowers retained their benefit for life. The older schemes are of course subject to Treasury rules, which is no doubt one of the reasons why the previous Government did not amend them. If we were to make changes for our service personnel, we would have to do so for all public service pensions, and it has been estimated that that would cost about £3 billion. I know that this has disappointed many, but I can see no prospect of the rules changing.

[Julie Elliott]

I thank the Minister for that response, but there is real confusion among widows, with many unclear about which scheme they are under. What steps are the Government taking to provide widows with the information they need to make informed decisions on their future?

[Anna Soubry]

There are all manner of helplines and organisations available to any widow and widower who is in any way confused about what scheme he or she may be under. I urge the hon. Lady and other hon. Members who have constituents with such complaints to come my way, but an extensive system is available through the various charities and the armed forces to ensure that everybody is fully informed.

[Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)]

Lord Astor recently revealed that it would cost in the region of £250,000 a year to put this matter right, and that the Ministry of Defence spends about £50,000 a year enforcing the current rules. I appreciate that there are concerns about the impact on other pension schemes, but there is support and agreement across the House for special provisions to be put in place, where necessary, for the armed forces community. The Minister will appreciate the difficulties for armed forces spouses in building up their own pension pots, so may I urge her to look again at this matter?

[Anna Soubry]

I can assure the hon. Lady that this is a matter I am always considering, because I know of the representations from the Forces Pension Society and the War Widow Association of Great Britain. The difficulty is that this is not within our gift; it is a matter for the Treasury. The very important point to make is that if this is done for the armed forces, others will come forward. Presumably, that is why the previous Government did not do it. One could imagine that the widows and widowers of police officers and fire officers would make just the same sort of case.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

7. What assessment he has made of the proportion of women in senior military posts.

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Mark Francois)]

The most tangible evidence of the progress that women have made in getting to the most senior ranks of the armed forces is the appointment in 2013 of Air Vice-Marshal Elaine West and Air Vice-Marshal Sue Gray as the first female two-star officers in the RAF. Air Vice-Marshal West is a project manager in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, and Air Vice-Marshal Gray will be responsible for the procurement of future combat equipment, including fighter aircraft. I am sure the whole House will wish to offer both of them congratulations and the best of luck in their new appointments.

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Will he tell the House what specific steps the armed forces are taking to improve the proportion of women serving in senior roles in the military?

[Mr Francois]

The proportion of women in senior military posts is increasing. For instance, I believe that we now have about 30 female colonels serving in the British Army, but the increase is still not as fast as we would wish. Therefore, although we are now seeing the best and brightest of our people recognised and promoted irrespective of gender, we are working to address the under-representation of certain demographic groups, including women. To cite an example that illustrates our commitment, I am delighted that the Ministry of Defence will be hosting an event on 12 March, in conjunction with other Government Departments, to celebrate and support international women’s day.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I welcome the news that women are increasingly moving up into senior ranks in the armed forces, but despite that, women in senior military posts are still experiencing bullying and sexual harassment. When will we have an independent ombudsman service that can enforce zero tolerance of such behaviour throughout the armed forces?

[Mr Francois]

I wish to make it perfectly plain to the hon. Lady and the House that we in the MOD and the armed forces do not tolerate such behaviour, and any allegations are thoroughly investigated. I want to be absolutely clear about that. She is well aware of our discussions with the Service Complaints Commissioner, as she and I have discussed the matter on several occasions. We have been talking to Dr Atkins about how we can modify her role in the future, and those discussions are progressing quite well. We have not sorted out all the remaining issues, but we hope to be in a position to make an announcement reasonably soon.

[Mr Speaker]

It is my pleasure to call Miss Anne McIntosh.

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

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s news today. May the message go out from this House that bullying and harassment will not be tolerated, whether in the military, in politics, or in civilian or any other walk of life?

[Mr Francois]

I find it difficult to improve on what my hon. Friend has just said so I will simply say: I agree.

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

Mr Speaker, you know I never like to be a curmudgeon, but can we not do better than this? When will we have female admirals and generals and other high-ranking female officers? There are not enough, and it has been too long; let us get a move on, or we will never attract high-flying women into the services.

[Mr Francois]

On the specific naval point, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that Commander Sarah West is now the commanding officer of the Type 23 frigate HMS Portland and Commander Catherine Jordan is the commanding officer of the Type 23 frigate HMS St Albans. We have female officers in command of Royal Navy warships, protecting our waters around the coast and serving further in great waters. We are proud of them. I do not want to be curmudgeonly either, but an air vice-marshal is the equivalent of an admiral.

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

The hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) asked about a military ombudsman, and my right hon. Friend talked about making a decision soon, but the excellent Dr Susan Atkins’ term of office is expiring soon. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister last month told us that he was taking a personal interest in whether we moved to a military ombudsman. May we know the time scale for this decision as soon as possible?

[Mr Francois]

My right hon. Friend is a former Defence Minister and knows that phrases such as “relatively soon” are by definition not precise; nevertheless discussions with Dr Atkins have been proceeding well. I do not want to misinform the House and give the impression that every issue has been settled—it has not—but we have made genuinely good progress with Dr Atkins. I feel, therefore, that we are not that far from making an announcement, but I cannot give a firm timing until all those issues have been resolved.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

9. What progress he has made in improving recruitment to the armed forces.

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

12. What progress he has made in improving recruitment to the armed forces.

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

Armed forces recruiting remains a top priority within the MOD, and a new multi-media recruitment campaign was launched on 11 January. As I have previously announced to the House, there has been a series of issues affecting the management of the recruitment process, including IT problems. Action is in hand to address these issues. The recruiting element of the Army website was updated in December, a simplified online medical questionnaire was launched last week, and a new simplified mobile and tablet-compatible application form will be launched later this week. Although it is early days, there is evidence that the principal objective of the national media campaign—to raise awareness of armed forces recruiting—is being achieved, with visits to the Army recruiting website up by over 50% compared with last year’s weekly average.

[Lindsay Roy]

I thank the Secretary of State for that candid answer. Will he confirm that he has no idea how many applications to join the reserves have been lost as a result of the IT fiasco over which this Government have presided, and will he explain how he plans to make potential reservists aware that their applications might not have been processed?

[Mr Hammond]

I think I have dealt with this on a previous occasion. We are aware from anecdotal evidence that some applications have been lost in the system—

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

How many?

[Mr Hammond]

By definition, we cannot answer that question. Every effort has been made by the application of additional manpower to the system, going back manually checking records, to make contact with anybody who may have got lost in the system during the past year, and I welcome the opportunity to place it on record that we would welcome being contacted, as my office has been, by anybody who is so affected who wants to pick up the threads and re-embark on the process. We will make sure that that happens.

[Karl Turner]

With the fiasco of the failed recruitment system costing, I think, £6.7 million and the failure to recruit reservists to plug the gap from redundancies, will the Secretary of State now admit that he is gambling with the nation’s safety?

[Mr Hammond]

No, and I would not gamble with the nation’s safety. The £6.7 million has to be seen in the context of the overall budget for the reserves and regular recruitment process, which is £1.36 billion. As the hon. Gentleman will know, because I have said it many times before, the project to increase the size of the reserves is not to backfill for the regulars as the Regular Army is reduced in size to 82,000; it is part of a broader restructuring of our forces, making different use of regulars and reserves, additional use of contractors and more effective use of civilians.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

My right hon. Friend will be well aware that the size of the armed forces is important in relation to not only initial deployment but the resilience that will allow that deployment to be sustained over a period. In the light of the speech he made at Munich, which has been extensively reported, what assessment has the Ministry of Defence made of the time that the United Kingdom could sustain, for example, a brigade or a division?

[Mr Hammond]

My right hon. and learned Friend will know that the SDSR 2010 sets out a clear level of ambition. We have defined what we will be able to deploy on a sustained basis, and over time the increase in the size of the reserves will be essential to provide that resilience on a sustained operation. The point that I was making at Munich, which I have made before in the House, is—I think most Members would agree—that the mood of the public after 10 years of engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan is unlikely to be supportive of a sustained deployment at scale in the near future.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Although I welcome the progress at Recruiting Group since General Tickell took over there, will my right hon. Friend confirm that the two areas of reserve recruiting that do not come under its processes—the recruiting for the officer preparatory course and transfers from the Regular Army to reserves—are both running at healthy levels?

[Mr Hammond]

My hon. Friend is right. As he knows, one of the things that I am trying to do is see what lessons we can draw from the relative success in those two areas and apply them to the broader reserves recruitment agenda.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

22. My local artillery Territorial Army unit in Abertillery plans a recruitment surge shortly. Given the self-inflicted problems for Army recruitment over the past year, will the Minister publish figures on how many applicants there are from Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively?

[Mr Hammond]

I do not believe that we maintain those data on the basis of the component nations of the United Kingdom, and the data that are published are a matter for the defence statistician, who is answerable to the national statistician.

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

The challenge of meeting the reserves target is well rehearsed, but recruiting to the Regular Army is also in difficulty. Will the Secretary of State give his assessment of this and will he explain the role of regular regiments in assisting with their own recruiting? What continuing role will they have?

[Mr Hammond]

I think this point applies equally to the regulars and reserves. There are things that can be done nationally. Support for the process of managing recruitment nationally is certainly a key part of our plans for the future, but that does not mean that individual units will not have a critical role to play in the attraction function—bringing in people in the first place and getting them to commit to joining the armed forces—and we will give an appropriate focus to that activity.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

23. Will the Secretary of State tell us how often he personally reviews the recruitment figures and, more importantly, whether there will be independent scrutiny of them by, for example, the Defence Select Committee or the Intelligence and Security Committee?

[Mr Hammond]

I have given a commitment to publish them, so I have no doubt that, whether I say so or not, they will be subject to external scrutiny. However, just to reassure the hon. Gentleman, the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), who has responsibility for defence personnel, veterans and welfare, is holding weekly meetings with the senior military personnel responsible. I am holding formal monthly meetings—in fact, regular meetings over and above that—to monitor what is going on. We are absolutely clear that this is our most immediate priority for action in the Department at the moment.

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

11. What progress he has made on improving the efficiency of the European Defence Agency.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

I can confirm that the UK has successfully blocked any increase in the EDA’s budget for the fourth consecutive year. Hon. and right hon. Members would agree, I think, that it would be perverse to squeeze defence budgets at home while acquiescing to increases in Brussels. As a result of the UK’s action, the agency has been forced to prioritise its work plan to focus on delivery of key European capability shortfalls. We note that some progress has been made, but there is much scope for further improvement, notably from efficiencies from the current internal reorganisation process.

[Jonathan Lord]

I thank the Minister for his excellent reply. Will he tell the House by what percentage the European Defence Agency’s budget would have increased over the past four or five years had it not been for the UK Government’s determination to keep its costs down?

[Dr Murrison]

I cannot give my hon. Friend the precise figure he seeks, although it has been flat cash, so he can probably do the maths himself. What is more important is to compare the European Defence Agency’s operational budget with its functional budget. I am afraid it is not a particularly pretty picture, because in 2010 the operational budget was €8.4 million and in 2014 it €6.4 million, while the figures for the functional budget are €22.1 million and €24.1 million. My hon. Friend will therefore understand why we feel strongly that there is scope for further reform at the European Defence Agency.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

Following the meeting on the common security and defence policy on 19 and 20 December, the European Council called for the development of an EU cyber-defence policy framework in 2014. Will the Minister tell us what that will mean for us, in terms of our involvement and responsibilities, and explain how it will interplay with the work on cyber-security currently being undertaken by NATO?

[Dr Murrison]

The first thing to say is that we should resist absolutely any duplicity—[Interruption]—any duplication between NATO and the European Defence Agency. It goes without saying that we should avoid duplicity at all times. The important point to note is that cyber-security is a sovereign capability and is therefore not something that we believe should be subcontracted to supranational organisations. Of course we have to discuss doctrine and dogma and how we interact with this evolving modality, but cyber-security remains a sovereign capability as far as we are concerned.

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

13. What recent discussions he has had with his ministerial colleagues on the mental health of armed forces veterans.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anna Soubry)]

This obviously remains a huge priority for me and other Ministers. One of my first actions after I was appointed was to go to the King’s Centre for military medicine and meet Professor Sir Simon Wessely and his team, which was one of the most enlightening and indeed informative visits that I have made. He discussed with me the state of health of our veterans, and in particular their mental health, which is actually as good as, if not better than, that of those in civilian life. However, when our veterans have mental health difficulties, they must remain a priority for treatment.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. My constituent Anthony Gibbs, who came to see me in my surgery, is a very brave young man who served in Northern Ireland and a number of other places. His service led in subsequent life to severe post-traumatic stress disorder, and he still has very severe mental health problems. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), wrote a report—which the Prime Minister told me last year was being fully implemented—on this issue, but it is quite apparent that things are still going wrong. I hope my hon. Friend will agree to a meeting with me and, if he will come, Mr Gibbs, so that she can have further conversations with her colleagues in the Department of Health and we can start to get this right for the brave young men and women of our armed forces.

[Anna Soubry]

My hon. Friend has written me a letter, which I have before me. All those proposals have been implemented, but we are conscious that GPs, for example, do not always refer people for the treatment that they need. We have discussed the issue at length with the Department of Health. I am not saying that this cannot be done, but it will be difficult, because we cannot tell GPs to make the referrals. I should be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter further.

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

14. What steps his Department is taking to support veterans of nuclear weapons tests.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anna Soubry)]

It is important for me to make clear that the Government continue to recognise, and be grateful to, all the servicemen who participated in the British nuclear testing programme. Like all veterans, they are entitled to a comprehensive range of support from the veterans welfare service at the Service Personnel and Veterans Agency, which can also put them in contact with other organisations that can help with specific issues.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I am sure the Minister is aware that, according to the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, nearly half the descendants of those veterans have experienced some kind of congenital problem such as illness or disability, while the veterans themselves are particularly susceptible to cancer and other diseases. Will she consider establishing a benevolent fund to support those who are still suffering the after-effects of nuclear tests?

[Anna Soubry]

We had a lengthy debate in, I think, Westminster Hall on this very issue. I am aware of the argument that is being advanced by the survivors, but there is no evidence to support their claims, and I do not think that it would be right to set up a £25 million benevolent fund when no proper basis for it has been provided. I am always available to listen to arguments, but so far I have heard no good argument to support that case.

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

Will my hon. Friend ensure that the nuclear veterans data are shared with other parts of the national health service, so that it can deal with some of the issues that may arise?

[Anna Soubry]

I cannot see any difficulty with that. As long as people have given permission for their data to be shared, it seems to me to be eminently sensible.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

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

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

My first priority remains the success of our operations in Afghanistan. Beyond that, my priorities are the Ministry of Defence’s transformation programme, which is due to be completed in March 2014; building confidence in the armed forces in the Future Force 2020 model; developing the reserve forces; reinforcing the armed forces covenant; maintaining budgets in balance; and reforming the defence procurement organisation so that our armed forces can be confident of being properly equipped and properly trained.

[David Mowat]

Last week I was pleased to hand Lance Sergeant Tom Reah of the 1st Battalion Coldstream Guards the keys to his new house, which had been purchased with help from the long service advance of pay scheme. Does the Secretary of State agree that schemes of that type are very important when homelessness is rife, and that we should do all that we can to increase their take-up and efficacy?

[Mr Hammond]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We have taken a number of steps to increase home ownership among members of the armed forces. Most recently, we announced that those who are made redundant in tranche 4 of the Army redundancies will be able to draw up to 90% of their redundancy packages before redundancy so that they can, if they wish, complete a home purchase before leaving the forces and forces accommodation.

[Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)]

I had to look twice at today’s date. Reading The Guardian this morning, I thought that it must be April the 1st. Apparently the Defence Secretary is the champion of the shipyards and the workers, the insider on shadow Cabinet discussions, and the man in the know on Labour party policy.

Labour’s position is in favour of the minimum credible independent continuous-at-sea deterrent, and I have told the Defence Secretary that directly and recently. Will he now tell the House why he is playing party politics with an issue of such national importance?

[Mr Hammond]

I do regard this as an issue of national importance and I hugely welcome the position of the hon. Gentleman and his Front-Bench colleagues, but we should not be naive about this: he knows and I know that there are those who do not support this position and that there are those who are seeking to undermine the consensus that we have formed in the national interest. I hope he will agree with me that it is important that all of us who believe this consensus is in the national interest do what we can when we can to ensure that those who are seeking to destabilise it do not succeed.

[Vernon Coaker]

Having been to Barrow after a few days in post to see the successor programme and having met Keep our Future Afloat and the trade unions regularly since then, my and our position is clear. Perhaps the Secretary of State is a little confused. Are these whispers he says he has heard about the Opposition in fact about those he serves alongside in government, namely the Liberal Democrats? Is it not his coalition partners, not Labour, where the opposition comes from when it comes to retaining a nuclear deterrent?

[Mr Hammond]

In terms of official party policy the hon. Gentleman is of course right and I do not know why he is trying to make a spat out of this: we agree on this issue. He knows very well, however, who within his party is seeking to reopen this issue. He knows what is going on behind the scenes and I absolutely support his determination to hold the line in the Labour party. I wish him every success in doing so.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

T2. I understand that there will be an exchange of contracts between the Ministry of Defence and Cherwell district council for the sale of MOD surplus land at Craven Hill early in March. That is good news because this is the largest Government surplus brownfield site—it is a one-off and in due course will enable the building of up to 1,900 homes. May I invite my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to come to Bicester later in the year, once completion of the contracts has happened, to turn the first sod on this important construction site?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr Andrew Murrison)]

We do expect exchange of contracts between the MOD and Cherwell district council in the time scale my right hon. Friend outlines, but there are a number of outstanding issues that will need to be resolved first, including identification of alternative access into the St David barracks area, and we encourage Cherwell district council to be forward-leaning on finalising this point. May I also say to my right hon. Friend that invitations to turn sods are always welcome?

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

T4. Nobody likes long conflicts but given the Secretary of State’s speech at Munich at the weekend, does this now mean public opinion trumps strategic interests in defence policy?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

No, it does not. The subject of the discussion the right hon. Gentleman refers to was the conundrum involving the need for quick wins to satisfy public opinion in countries contributing to stabilisation operations and the very deep-rooted problems that need to be addressed, but that often are not susceptible to rapid solution. It was a serious debate with a panel of experts who are deeply versed in this subject and I was attempting to make a serious contribution.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

T3. With one of my local engineering businesses having been awarded the design contract for the Type 26 global combat ship, please can my right hon. Friend update me on the progress of this project?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Philip Dunne)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving me this opportunity to confirm that the current contest for the design for the Type 26 has been won by BAE Systems but it is in its assessment phase and all contracts that have been placed thus far are to enable BAE Systems as prime contractor to refine its pricing so that when the entire design is mature we will be able to place a main-gate contract, which we hope to be able to do by the end of this year.

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

T9. Will the Minister update the House on what progress the Department is making in incorporating UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security into the training and education of our armed forces?

[The Minister for the Armed Forces (Mr Mark Francois)]

We take all UN Security Council resolutions seriously, including that one. I have already explained to the House how we are attempting to promote more women into senior roles within the British armed forces. Clearly providing appropriate training and mentoring from people in order to do that is a very important part of achieving greater progression.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

T5. Employees of Defence Equipment and Support who are resident in the Chippenham constituency are watching closely to see what the latest reforms of that organisation will mean for them. Will the Minister give them his assurance that those organisational changes will not put their jobs at risk?

[Mr Dunne]

Our proposal to stand up the DE&S as a bespoke trading entity with effect from 1 April are proceeding apace, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman that there are currently some 800 vacancies among the 9,500 posts in DE&S involved in defence acquisition, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told the Defence Select Committee the other day. The prospects for skilled employees in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and adjacent constituencies are therefore extremely good.

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

Does the Secretary of State welcome the terms of the agreement reached in Brussels last month on greater European defence co-operation, including completing the single market in the sale of military equipment? What does he think would happen to jobs in our defence manufacturing industries if Britain were to sleepwalk out of the European Union—a proposition that he has agreed with in the past?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

As in other areas, we strongly support the completion of the single market. However, we do not support some of the other proposals that would have interfered with our sovereign capabilities relating to the defence industry.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

T6. I welcome the announcements made at the UK-France summit on Friday about further co-operation between our two countries. Will my right hon. Friend assure the House that the combined joint expeditionary force remains on track to be fully operational by 2016?

[Mr Francois]

Yes, I can give that assurance, but the date is 2016. The level of ambition that we declared in 2012 was for an early-entry combined force capable of a time-limited but complex intervention operation in the face of multiple threats up to the highest intensity, and I can confirm to the House that we are on track to achieve that by 2016.

[David Wright (Telford) (Lab)]

Further to the point made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith), why cannot the Ministry of Defence assemble data on where in the UK recruits are coming from, be they from England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland? We face a real challenge because of the break in the link between local communities and recruitment, particularly into Army regiments.

[Mr Philip Hammond]

I did not say that we could not provide such data; I simply said that I did not believe we did so. I am happy to go and have a look at what would be involved, but I would not want there to be any suggestion other than that the UK is stronger when recruiting its military forces across the whole of the United Kingdom, organising them across the whole of the United Kingdom for the benefit of the United Kingdom, and financing them across the whole of the United Kingdom.

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

T7. I have had the pleasure and honour of seeing the construction of our new aircraft carriers as a result of the investment being made in the Royal Navy for Britain. What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that the new aircraft carriers will have an airborne early-warning system when they begin operational duties?

[Mr Hammond]

I am glad to tell my hon. Friend that we have been able to advance the Crowsnest airborne early-warning capability project as a result of prudent management of the MOD’s equipment programme, so that we will have the full operating capability available when the aircraft carriers go into service.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

May I refer the Secretary of State back to his Munich speech? He has used the term “time-limited”. Will he tell us what he means by that? He must be aware of the military maxim that no plan survives contact with the enemy.

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Let me tell him what I had in mind. The French have recently conducted a limited operation in Mali; it was limited in time and in scope, and they have been able to carry public opinion with them on that. We are going to have to recognise, in the face of sceptical public opinion about engagement, that some of the engagements we might wish to propose will need to be quite specifically limited in time and scale in order to gain public assent.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Assuming that Ministers feel that their job is to protect not only the sacrifices made by the present generation of armed forces personnel but that of previous generations, will they take the opportunity of the debates in the coming months to argue that the sacrifices made by the millions of people who served in the first world war was not part of some European power play, and that it served to defeat militarism and stand up for the freedom of smaller countries?

[Dr Murrison]

I refer my hon. Friend to the debate we had here on 7 November, in which the Government and the Opposition made it clear that there was complete consensus on this matter. It has also subsequently become clear that the majority of people believe that this country went to war in 1914 for good reasons, given the situation that we faced at the time. I am afraid that none of us has a crystal ball, and no one can ever tell how events will unfold, but I believe that our predecessors did the right thing at that time.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Do the reasons why the public feel war weary and disillusioned include the fact that this House decided to put the lives of our brave soldiers at risk to protect us from non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and from a non-existent Taliban threat to bring terrorism to Britain?

[Mr Hammond]

In respect of the first part of the question, the hon. Gentleman may have to take that up with those who were in Government at the time. On the Taliban threat, I am clear that the Taliban, while not posing a direct threat to UK security, created the conditions that allowed an al-Qaeda threat to our national security to be established in that country.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that it is in Britain’s defence interest to collaborate militarily with other European countries? In that respect, will he welcome the joint exercise recently undertaken by French paratroopers and 16 Air Assault Brigade?

[Mr Hammond]

Yes, on two levels. Clearly, we have an important and developing bilateral operational military relationship with France, which we intend to build on still further in the future. We absolutely recognise the need for collaboration between European countries in defence capability. What we do not want to see is the duplication—or duplicity—of capability that already exists in NATO in the European Union, chewing up resources that we really cannot afford to waste on additional structures.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

While the Government are making cuts to the armed forces, how can they justify spending £66 million on consultants? Is it true that much of that £66 million was spent on the Secretary of State’s failed GoCo procurement? Will he be asking for the money back?

[Mr Dunne]

I am interested that the hon. Lady has given us an opportunity to highlight the amount of money that was spent on external consultants under the previous Administration. While this Government have undertaken transformational change in this Parliament and spent £45 million last year on external specialist advice, the previous Government did no transformation in defence and spent £120 million in 2007-08.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

May we acclaim the fact that Members of both the Conservative and Labour Front Benches are vying to show which party is the more committed to the successor Trident nuclear system? Is the Secretary of State aware that an analyst at the normally sensible Royal United Services Institute defence think-tank has suggested that even an inactive fleet of submarines can help deter actors from seriously threatening the UK? Does he agree that to adopt such a dangerously destabilising posture would not even save any significant money at all?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

First, I agree with my hon. Friend. The outcome of the Trident review precisely showed that the negative impact on our strategic defence would not be justified by the small amounts of money that would be saved by changing the posture. May I also say to him that in respect of the specific article to which he refers, the content was much more measured than the headline suggested and in fact made it clear that there would be very significant additional risks in adopting a different nuclear posture?

[Mr Speaker]

Last but not least is Mr Alex Cunningham.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

How many staff at Defence Equipment and Support have been made redundant and received pay-offs only to be re-employed on a consultancy basis a very short time later? How will that affect the new pay structures that the Secretary of State is planning to adopt there?

[Mr Dunne]

Close to 2,000 people from DE&S took voluntary redundancy under two tranches in 2012. There are a number of vacancies, as I have already said to the hon. Gentleman. A total of seven individuals have been rehired into DE&S who subsequently applied either for lower grade posts or who have upskilled in the meantime.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry to disappoint colleagues who are still trying to get in, but, as usual, demand exceeds supply.

Flooding (Somerset)

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

15:34

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if he will make a statement on the Government’s recent response to the flooding in Somerset and what action the Government have taken following recent Cobra meetings.

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

I am very pleased to have the opportunity to reply to this question. Let me begin by expressing my sympathy for the serious difficulties local residents face in Somerset as a result of the continuing widespread flooding of the moors and levels since late December, including impacts on properties, businesses, transport and farm land.

Recent Met Office figures show that Somerset received more rainfall in December and January than it would normally receive over an entire winter. The high tides experienced in early January and early February exacerbated the situation by preventing water from flowing out to sea, resulting in rivers overtopping their banks and flooding the surrounding land. Floodwater has covered more than 65 sq km on the levels and hundreds of people have been affected with about 21 properties still flooded. Some 200 people have been cut off in the villages of Muchelney, Thorney, Oath, Stathe and North Moor. I visited Somerset on Sunday 26 and Monday 27 January to witness the situation at first hand and listen to the views of local residents and experts.

On 26 January I held meetings with local MPs and the leader and chief executive of Sedgemoor district council as well as a range of local experts including farmers and representatives of the local internal drainage boards. I held further meetings on 27 January, including with the leader of the county council. We agreed to dredge the Tone and Parrett rivers and on the need for local organisations to come together on a partnership basis to fund the ongoing dredging and de-silting that would subsequently be needed.

We also discussed the potential for action to hold water back in the upper catchments and to consider a longer term project to create a River Parrett barrage. In the light of that visit I asked my officials to work with local authorities and other local partners in Somerset as well as the Environment Agency, Natural England and other Government Departments to develop an action plan over the next six weeks for the sustainable future of the moors and levels. On 29 January, the Prime Minister confirmed that dredging would take place on the moors and levels as soon as it was safe and practical to do so. This will build on the targeted dredging of the Tone and Parrett that the Environment Agency began in the autumn. It will build on what the Environment Agency already spends annually on flood risk management in Somerset and the £100,000 a week spent on pumping operations on the moors and levels.

Local authorities, residents and emergency services have been working around the clock to ensure that people are safe. The Environment Agency is carrying out the largest pumping operation ever undertaken on the levels. In addition to 40 permanent pumps, the Environment Agency has mobilised a further 22 temporary units increasing its ability to pump up by more than 150%. It is currently pumping 1 million tonnes a day.

I have chaired five meetings of Cobra since last Wednesday to ensure that the Government have fully considered how best we can meet the needs of the local communities affected while the floodwater remains. Following those meetings, the Government have taken a number of actions.

First, we have put arrangements in place to ensure that the local transport needs of the cut-off communities are met. The Environment Agency, Somerset county council and local responders under the leadership of the local gold command are working together and have a presence on the ground. I am grateful to those who have assisted with that—for example, the Red Cross provided a vehicle to deliver heavy goods and food and local fire and rescue services provided a ferry service. We have also considered how the military could be used to help on the ground and they remain on standby if needed.

Secondly, sewage and wastewater services are not available in some areas. Support has been provided to affected properties and all necessary mitigation measures have been put in place to guard against any public health risks of contaminated floodwater. As is normal practice, floodwater has been sampled by the local authority since the incident began and advice is being given regularly by the local authorities. I urge everyone in the affected area to heed the clear advice of Public Health England.

Since the beginning of last December, the UK as a whole has experienced a period of exceptionally unsettled weather and there is no sign at present of its abating. Many parts of the country have been subjected to flooding from the sea, rivers, surface water or ground water, and I am extremely grateful for the excellent response by the emergency services, the Environment Agency, and Flood Forecasting Centre staff, and the leadership shown by many local authorities in responding to the floods.

Latest estimates suggest that over 7,500 properties have been flooded since the beginning of December. However, existing defences and improvements to the way in which we respond to incidents meant that we could protect over 1.2 million properties from flooding in the same period. Some 87,500 properties are currently being protected. That reinforces the importance of continuing our investment in flood defence schemes and forecasting capability. I will chair a further meeting of Cobra to discuss our response to the flooding at 5 pm today.

[Maria Eagle]

This is an unimaginably stressful and distressing time for those in Somerset who have seen their homes and businesses ruined by floodwater, and more flooding has been reported in Devon and Cornwall this morning. The emergency services and Environment Agency staff deserve our thanks for their efforts on the ground in difficult conditions, yet despite those efforts it is clear that residents in Somerset have been badly let down. When the water first rose, it took far too long to provide the pumps, sandbags and other assistance they needed. We have seen meeting after meeting of Cobra, yet there is little coherence in the Government’s strategy for dealing with the crisis.

Will the Secretary of State set out what precise steps he took between 6 January this year, when he last reported to the House, and last weekend, when the Prime Minister was forced to intervene and tell him to get his skates on? Does he still think that calling for a report “within six weeks”, as he did when he visited Somerset last Monday, is an adequate response? The Prime Minister has said that

“dredging will start as soon as it is practical”.

Can the Secretary of State confirm that that is Government policy? I think I heard him say that some dredging took place on the levels this autumn. Will he confirm that my understanding of what he said in the statement is correct? Will he admit that he knew a year ago of the specific threat of serious flooding in the Somerset levels from the Association of Drainage Authorities, which warned of

“de-silting work on rivers in areas such as the Somerset Levels having all but ceased”,

and what did he do about it? Why did he remove the aim to

“prepare for and manage risk from flood and other environmental emergencies”

from his Department’s list of priorities when he got the job, replacing that with four of his own?

Is the Secretary of State still refusing to be briefed by his own chief scientific adviser on climate change and the implications for more extreme weather conditions? Will he confirm that he has had to correct previously published figures on flood prevention funding, contradicting his claims that the Government are spending more in this four-year period than in the previous four years? Will he admit that the corrected figures reveal that funding for flood protection has fallen from £670 million in 2010-11 to £576 million in the current financial year? Will he admit that £67.6 million of partnership funding has been raised since April 2011, not the £148 million that he repeatedly claims?

Finally, will the Secretary of State apologise to those affected by flooding in Somerset for the decision to use a premium rate number for the flooding helpline? Will he name the company that is making money from those who have already lost so much? The Prime Minister has now said the line will cease to be a premium rate line. When precisely will that happen?

The Prime Minister promised the Leader of the Opposition that the Secretary of State would come back to the House with a “full assessment” of levels of support for flood protection by the end of last month. He failed to do so. Does that not typify the Secretary of State’s whole response to the floods? After his botched badger cull and now his failure on flooding, it is no wonder that people are increasingly asking whether the Secretary of State is up to the job.

[Mr Paterson]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. Cobra has met regularly since the Christmas period, and obviously the floods and levels were regularly mentioned. The first specific request was at last Wednesday’s Cobra, which was acted on immediately by Government agencies responding to Cobra.

The hon. Lady mentioned the six weeks. I described briefly the fact that I went down to Somerset the Sunday before last, had meetings on Sunday evening, meetings on Monday, and agreed, quite clearly, a plan, which had to be worked up in detail with the Environment Agency and with the internal drainage boards. That is a marked contrast with the previous Government, who sat on the Parrett catchment flood management plan way back in 2008 and did absolutely nothing about it.

We began dredging on key points. The hon. Lady goes on and on about DEFRA’s priorities. I boil DEFRA down to two simple priorities across a kaleidoscopic variety of activities: to grow the rural economy and to improve the environment. I cannot think of any activity that involves spending central Government money that better delivers those two key priorities than what we are doing on flood spending. That is why this Government will be spending £2.4 billion in the first four years of this Parliament compared with £2.2 billion in the last four years of the previous Parliament. The hon. Lady has to nod just once—just give one little nod—to confirm that Labour Members will back this Government’s growing spending plans on flood spending. For us, it is a priority; for them it is not. She has missed her chance, but there is still a chance. Will she please agree to match our increased spending plans for this Parliament?

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

These are sad days for the people of Somerset, but local heroes have emerged. We must not use the Environment Agency as a political football. We need to revisit the balance of spending between urban and rural areas. Will my right hon. Friend allow the internal drainage boards to retain their moneys to themselves before the maintenance of these watercourses and look for a scheme similar to that in my own constituency to store the water upstream if appropriate?

[Mr Paterson]

I thank the Chairman of the Select Committee for her question. She is absolutely right that there is a balance to be struck. The lesson in Somerset is that it is an extraordinary environment. It is completely artificial. It was first dredged by the Dutch before the time of Charles I, way back in the 17th century. Our criteria are not applicable in an environment where the rivers are, in effect, canals. We need to treat it as a unique environment and therefore bring in local knowledge. At the meetings I had last Sunday and Monday, it was very clear that this had to be a combined effort of the Environment Agency doing the dredging, and then, for future years, allowing locals to take over and come to their own arrangements. There will be close involvement of local councils and colleagues from the Department for Communities and Local Government to work out how that will be funded and organised.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State guarantee that the measures he has announced to address the very serious problems on the Somerset levels will not delay investment in the south-west’s main priority in relation to flood defences—namely, the upgrading of the Exeter flood defence to protect the railway line and thousands of businesses and homes after last year’s floods, which caused huge economic damage and devastation not only to parts of Somerset but the whole of Devon and the whole of Cornwall?

[Mr Paterson]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to remind us of how damaging the floods were last year and the impact on the railway line, which I saw for myself. Significant work is going on on that line as we speak, as has been discussed in Cobra this week. It is absolutely our intention to deliver the very significant programmes that will soon come forward; we will announce the details shortly.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Does not the recent trouble show the problems of having unelected quangos taking decisions that favour environmentalism rather than the concerns of people and businesses? Is it not better to have democratic accountability through a Secretary of State in whom the people of Somerset can have confidence?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. It shows that this is a team effort. The Environment Agency has done remarkable work around the country in protecting 1.1 million houses. I fully respect and publicly thank the chairman and the chief executive of the Environment Agency, and all those working for it. We then have the “but”. The Somerset levels is a unique environment. It is not typical—it is artificial and all below sea level—and it requires a lot more local involvement. That is why I went down there last Sunday and Monday. I think we have come up with an arrangement that will be satisfactory and, I hope, deliver security to all the people on the levels for the next 20 years once we have worked out the detail of how to deliver, first, the Environment Agency doing the dredging, and secondly, democratically elected local councils working with the IDBs to deliver long-term dredging and maintenance.

[Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State aware of modelling done by the university of Cardiff that shows that a Severn barrage, operating on ebb flood, would significantly protect the Somerset levels from flooding and act as a barrier against storm surge, protecting 500 sq km and many properties from flooding? Is that not a reason for pressing ahead with the barrage?

[Mr Paterson]

I admire the right hon. Gentleman for grabbing the opportunity to promote that project, of which he is a very strong supporter. I remind the House that some are very hostile to it because of the barrage’s environmental consequences.

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

I can only speak as a local Somerset MP, but we have had nothing but help from the Secretary of State. Cobra has done a damned good job and I assure the House that, other than, I think, two days, the Secretary of State has spoken to me every day about what we require to help us in the area. I am very grateful to him for that.

I heard what my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) said, and the Environment Agency people on the ground have done a phenomenal job—they have been superb. The problem lies at the top. There is a disconnect between what goes on here in London and what is going on in the levels in Taunton Deane and Somerset and Frome. We need to sort this out and I hope the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister will get those machines on the levels as fast as possible in order to get this sorted. That will not sort out everything, but it will give people confidence where there is none at the moment.

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. He and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) were both present at the two meetings in which we discussed the broad outline of the plan. As he knows, having represented the area for some years, it is simply not possible—[Interruption] regardless of the chuntering from the Opposition Benches—to get machines on the banks in these conditions. We are looking at technologies that could be borne from vessels as a means of getting going. I reassure my hon. Friend that we are absolutely clear—there was virtual unanimity in our meetings—that we want to get on and get the two rivers dredged at the earliest opportunity, and then hand over to the local representative of the internal drainage boards to carry out the routine maintenance. [Interruption.] To respond to the questions being asked by Opposition Members, that will happen when it is safe to do so.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

May I press the Secretary of State on what he has said about the public health risk of contaminated water? Last weekend microbiologists found 60,000 to 70,000 bacteria per 100 ml; the World Health Organisation suggests that the safe level is 1,000. Other than raising public awareness of the possible risks, what can the Department do to mitigate the impact?

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Lady raises a very important point, which has had some publicity. We have already had samples taken from around the levels and Public Health England has been very vocal in making it clear to all local residents that they should be extremely careful with their personal hygiene and, obviously, that they should not drink or bathe in the water. The standards set are for drinking water. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the issue, which we have discussed on several occasions at Cobra. It is vital, given the current difficult circumstances and the enormous amount of water on the levels, to realise that the water is going to be dirty and contaminated. People must be really careful about washing themselves and, in particular, washing wounds.

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

In Somerset we are getting increasingly bemused by the number of armchair experts from hundreds of miles away who seem to know more about the levels than we do. The right hon. Gentleman knows exactly what I want him to do in terms of dredging and the long-term management of the moors and levels, and I thank him, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), and the Prime Minister for listening and acting on that.

On an entirely local issue, I went down to the villages of Long Load and Long Sutton again over the weekend and they are cut off because of a collapsed bridge. They need an alternative crossing over the river or repairs to the bridge. Will the Secretary of State look into that and see whether something urgent can be done?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and, until recently, ministerial colleague for his support and advice. We have of course discussed this matter frequently over the past year. He better grab me immediately after this urgent question and give me the details, so that I can raise it at Cobra, because it is exactly the sort of thing that we are trying to fix at Cobra.

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure that the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) is far too courteous to interpret the Secretary of State literally. Perhaps spectators to the event will be able to testify one way or the other.

[Chris Williamson (Derby North) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for praising the work of the emergency services. He may not be aware that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who is sitting next to him, is recklessly cutting the number of firefighters: there will be 5,000 fewer in England by 2015 than there were in 2010. Will he ask the Secretary of State to stop those cuts and will he recommend that the Pitt review, which suggested that a statutory responsibility should be given to fire and rescue services, be implemented without further delay?

[Mr Paterson]

I suggest that the hon. Gentleman goes to look in the mirror and reminds himself that his Government left us borrowing £400,000 a minute. I want publicly to praise all those in the fire services: they have supplied specialist vehicles that have been of great succour to those on the levels, and I really admire the work that they have done around the country. The fire services have been key during this very difficult period—over Christmas, the new year and right through January—and I am very grateful to them for the splendid job that they have done.

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

May I commend the Secretary of State for his consultation with local people in Somerset? Following the consultation that he—or the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson)—had with Cornwall’s local authority in Westminster a few weeks ago, is there any way that he can report back to us about rebalancing the Bellwin formula, which disadvantages Cornwall county council?

[Mr Paterson]

I have many responsibilities, but the Bellwin scheme is not one of them. I will, however, make sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government heard that point.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

A number of homes in my constituency were flooded once the brooks stopped being cleared. What confidence can my constituents have that their homes will not be flooded again, given the scale of the cuts in spending on flood protection that have taken place under this Government?

[Mr Paterson]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are spending £2.4 billion, which is more than the previous Government, over this spending round. On local brooks—this picks up earlier questions—we set in train seven pilots last year to see whether some low-risk waterways could be cleared by local farmers or local landowners, with the collaboration of the Environment Agency, so that we get more work done on low-risk areas.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State call in the chairman of the Environment Agency and ask why, from a budget of £1,200 million last year, it spent only £20 million on clearing watercourses? Will he get across to the chairman that we need new budget priorities—not just in Somerset, which is the subject of the urgent question, but in places such as mine—to clear watercourses so that people do not have wet rooms?

[Mr Paterson]

As I have said, I have great confidence in what the Environment Agency, led by the chairman and by the chief executive, has delivered in protecting 1.1 million properties. However, as my right hon. Friend says, we can always do better. One thing I am looking at is getting more low-risk water clearance work done locally, with local councils being more involved, and with local agencies and more IDBs. This is very much a team effort.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Why were there no floods on the other side of the River Severn on the Gwent levels? They have an identical environment, share 2,000 years of drainage history, have had the same weather and tides, and have had no dredging, but have had no floods. Is not the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) right to say that the answer lies in the fact that the woods in Gwent are richly endowed with trees, and have not been denuded in the same way as on the Mendips?

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I am not an expert on the Gwent levels, but I have made it clear that, for the long term, there is a role for holding water further back in the catchment, as there is possibly a role for building a barrage on the Parrett. Those would be special measures for a very particular landscape, but his own landscape of the Gwent levels have their own characteristics, on which I am not an expert.

[Mr Jeremy Browne (Taunton Deane) (LD)]

As I stood in Burrowbridge yesterday morning with the water in the River Parrett again breaching the banks, the residents expressed considerable relief that the Prime Minister had committed in this House on Wednesday to the dredging of the River Parrett and the River Tone. However, I must say to the Secretary of State that there was scepticism and even cynicism about whether that would happen, when it would take place and on what scale. I would be grateful if he would take this opportunity to reassure the residents of that village and people across the Somerset levels that dredging will take place to the level that they think is appropriate to reduce the risk of flooding next year.

[Mr Paterson]

I am very happy to repeat that it is our clear intention to dredge the Tone and the Parrett as soon as it is safe to do so. That will be conducted by the Environment Agency. It is looking at technologies now. Part of the plan is for routine maintenance to be carried out in future years by the internal drainage boards, which do a very good job and have many experienced local people on them. That is absolutely our intention. However, the hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that the banks are not safe at the moment, so if we are to use any technologies immediately, they will have to be vessel-borne.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the lessons that are coming out of the horror in Somerset are equally applicable across the whole country? Will he ensure that the Environment Agency starts to do the things that he has been talking about so well?

[Mr Paterson]

I stress again that this is a team effort. The Environment Agency has done a great job at protecting 1.1 million properties. However, it is quite clear from going around the counties of rural England, including Herefordshire and Berkshire, that there is exasperation at the lack of work on low-risk rural waterways, which stopped under the last Government. It is clear that that work is much better done by local people. It should be carried out by local landowners in co-operation with IDBs and local councils. That is why I started the seven pilots. We want to apply the lessons from those as quickly as possible across rural England.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

Residents of Bradford-on-Avon have been heard to say that they have more in common with those just across the border in Somerset than in the rest of Wiltshire. Since Christmas, they have been dealing with the consequences of a 25-year flood event. Whatever action it is necessary for the Secretary of State to commit to in the Somerset levels, will he ensure that funds are available for any measures that are agreed to between the Environment Agency and local councillors to protect Bradford-on-Avon from a repeat of the recent flood damage?

[Mr Paterson]

I obviously cannot pre-empt the priorities that will be decided on by the Environment Agency shortly. I stress that our partnership scheme has brought in significant funds from local councils. I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman’s council is involved in that partnership method of raising money.

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

The Secretary of State is absolutely right to say that this is a team effort. Will he confirm today that the money that has been identified for new flood defences is still available if Cornwall council puts forward an appropriate bid for better defences to protect my constituents in Perranporth, who have suffered dreadful flooding all year?

[Mr Paterson]

As my hon. Friend will have noted, we have an ambitious programme of flood defence schemes that goes right through to 2021. Significantly, that has not been matched by Her Majesty’s official Opposition. If her council puts in a partnership bid, I am sure that it will slot into our programme in the coming years, although I cannot promise when.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Once the waters have subsided and the Secretary of State starts to put right the wrongs of the past, will he have an urgent review of the use of sandbags, which are an old technology and are actually quite porous, when new technologies are available? My constituent, Simon Crowther, has flood protection solutions that deliver better results than sandbags.

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There may well be better alternatives to sandbags. I would be very interested to hear from him if his constituent’s solution is as easy to move around as empty sandbags, because that has proved to be invaluable in recent weeks.

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

The Secretary of State was right to mention the Dutch engineers who drained the levels, because they dug out the ditches and rivers and kept them clean, which was absolutely key. We have now had six weeks of flooding. I welcome what the Secretary of State has done, but we need to change the rules to ensure that farmland and environmental land is protected, because six weeks of flooding destroys not only farmland, but nature conservation and people’s lives.

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. I remind him that we are protecting significant areas of agricultural land as we speak, but my view of the future, as he has probably picked up, is that many of the low-risk waterways are much better cleaned out and maintained by local landowners, in co-operation with the Environment Agency. That is probably the best way to go.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I hope that the Secretary of State will applaud the fantastic work of the Somerset Community Foundation and its hardship fund, which is helping people who are suffering financial difficulties as a result of the flooding. Does he agree that the whole catchment approach should include the Rivers Axe and Brue and that it should involve dredging, repairing the Bleadon sluice gates, installing more flood gates and more pumps for local protection, and ensuring that we value productive land?

[Mr Paterson]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. She is absolutely right that they are part of the whole catchment of the levels, and the relevant internal drainage board will be involved in the discussions. As she probably already knows, the River Brue is one of our pilot schemes.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

The Secretary of State will obviously be aware, as we all are, that the Environment Agency, local authorities and others will be rethinking their programmes after the flood waters retreat. It appears to me that in the past the payment of funds, and certainly central funds, has gone mainly to major schemes. I am delighted to hear that he is moving towards more minor schemes. Does he agree that the collection of small schemes might be more effective in some areas than one or two large schemes, be they in Somerset or north Surrey?

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. He is absolutely right that there is merit in a lot of the smaller, low-risk schemes. What we have seen in the levels—it is a completely unique environment—is that the national guidelines were not appropriate for that artificial environment, and the same might apply in other parts of rural England.

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

If the pastures of the Somerset levels remain inundated for much longer, considerable damage will be done. Will the Secretary of State be able to give farmers advice and help to re-establish those pastures so that they can continue in business?

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that comment, because several of the farmers I have talked with were emphatic that, following the very wet summer we had last year, the grass could be permanently damaged. We are absolutely prepared to work very closely with organisations such as the National Farmers Union and the Country Land and Business Association to help those famers. I also pay tribute to the agricultural charities, which have also been very helpful on the matter.

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I declare an interest as one of the 7,500 people who have had their homes flooded. With Gatwick being knocked out on 24 December and with thousands of houses being planned to be developed in the flood area of the River Mole, the expenditure committed to flood defence is wholly inadequate if we are to continue with the development policy in place at the moment. There needs to be a strategic review for the balance of our priorities as a country.

[Mr Paterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We are absolutely clear that current planning guidance steers property development away from floodplains. In the overwhelming number of cases—over 95%, I think—in which the Environment Agency recommends that a planning application should not go ahead, that advice is accepted.

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

On Saturday morning I visited the North Corner pontoon at Devonport and saw at first hand bits of the sea wall falling off into the River Tamar. Will my right hon. Friend have a chat with Poole city council and the Environment Agency to ensure that some work is done fairly promptly, because otherwise it will have a significant impact not only on flooding, but on the dockyard, which is bang next door to it?

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am afraid that around the coast we have seen significant damage done to our coastal defences, and we are working closely with the Environment Agency and local councils to ensure that it is repaired speedily.

[George Hollingbery (Meon Valley) (Con)]

We all, of course, have enormous sympathy with those in Somerset and elsewhere, including places such as Hambledon in my constituency which has been flooded by ground water for three weeks now, and expects to be flooded for at least another three weeks, or perhaps six or eight. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is at least a crumb of comfort in the fact that the recent Water Bill contains provisions for the creation of Flood Re, which should allow the continued provision of affordable flood insurance to most properties in Somerset and elsewhere?

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Flood Re will, I hope, bring relief to 500,000 people with high-risk properties, and as he knows, the Bill is going through the other place this afternoon.

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

I grew up on the Somerset levels, and when I was a child, farmers were responsible for managing and carrying out drainage on their small waterways. Unfortunately, over the decades, the advice they have received has started to become more conflicting and the different priorities of Natural England and the Environment Agency have caused great confusion and inconsistency. In future, after the emergency has passed, will my right hon. Friend ensure that on dredging policy those two agencies sing from the same hymn sheet?

[Mr Paterson]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point, and I assure him that Natural England will be involved in the discussions that start tomorrow. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North Cornwall (Dan Rogerson), will chair the first meeting to deliver the plan within six weeks.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The Environment Agency correctly identifies housing as the principal driver of where flood defences should be built, and the Secretary of State saw the scheme in Warrington that was completed three months ago and prevented the flooding of 1,500 houses. For the avoidance of doubt, will he assure the House that there will be no knee-jerk reaction to change criteria after the tragedy in Somerset?

[Mr Paterson]

I saw the real value of those schemes when my hon. Friend kindly invited me to his constituency, and I assure him that it is our intention to continue similar schemes around the country.

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

On the better use of technology, will the Secretary of State clarify and confirm that the Government have allocated £4.6 million towards the better use of space technology for weather prediction? It would mean that the United Kingdom is one of only a few countries in the world doing that.

[Mr Paterson]

The Government invest significant sums in forecasting, and, as someone who has received storm forecasts on a daily basis and paid close attention to them in recent weeks, I know that their accuracy is extraordinary and of huge value. I thank all those who have been active in drawing up those forecasts at short notice.

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

If there had been a change of wind in Suffolk, we may have suffered similar levels of flooding to that experienced by constituents in Somerset, which might explain the Gwent issue. Will the Secretary of State assure me that in future he might look again at having the Environment Agency and Natural England as two separate bodies? He is currently advertising for a chairman of the Environment Agency, so this could be an opportune moment to merge the two.

[Mr Paterson]

A triennial review concluded last year that it was better to leave the two organisations as independent because it would be a hugely complicated task to legislate to bring them together. However, the review made it clear—this touches on an earlier question from my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace)—that there needs to be more co-operation between the two organisations, and that significant efficiencies could be made by working together.

Deregulation Bill

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Relevant document: Report from the Joint Committee on the draft Deregulation Bill, HC 925, and the Government Response, Cm 8808.]

Second Reading

[Mr Speaker]

I inform the House that the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and other colleagues has been selected.

16:13

[The Minister for Government Policy (Mr Oliver Letwin)]

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

I will begin by saying something that several in the House might find mildly surprising in the context of this debate: regulation is often sensible and necessary. It is no part of the Government’s plans or our view of life to suggest that regulation is never useful. Indeed, like previous Governments, this Government are presiding over an immense amount of regulation, much of which is constructive and helpful. Nevertheless, it remains true that what we inherited in 2010 was not just a rational set of regulations that anybody who looked at them carefully would have sponsored. There were all sorts of regulations that, frankly, made no sense at all. What we set out to do in 2010 was to review the entire regulatory scene. We have put in an enormous amount of effort, and I am immensely grateful to those in the civil service and outside who have helped us.

As we have gone through regulation after regulation, we have in many instances discovered that there are things being regulated that no longer exist. There are regulators doing things that no longer have any useful purpose, and bodies that are provided for in regulations that no longer function. We have also found that there are things being regulated that do exist, and for which regulations are still operative, but on which such regulation ought not to exist. I suspect that dealing with such matters would be uncontroversial among hon. Members, and I shall give the House two minor, slightly amusing, examples.

On inspection, it turned out that every time the Mayor of London or a borough of London wanted to set up a statue to any grand figure of our past, they had to seek, under a regulation, the specific approval of the Secretary of State. That is clearly completely mad, so I am glad to say that the Bill will remove that particular amusement. A second example—it is a particular favourite of mine, as it has taken a very long time to get this changed—is that until we manage to get the Bill enacted so that clause 40 becomes law, I regret to tell the House that it remains the case that it is an offence to sell liqueur chocolates to under 16s. I can sort of see why someone had the crazy idea to legislate for that at some point, but it does not make any sense, so we are getting rid of it.

[Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is starting to outline a delicious smorgasbord of deregulation. I am particularly pleased about the clauses that will cut red tape for business. When the Departments looked at everything that could be deregulated, were there examples that they wanted to include in the Bill, but could not because they are overridden by EU legislation?

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend raises an immensely important point. I was going to talk about it later, but let me deal with it now. He is absolutely right, and I am not talking of a few cases. We came across—and we continue to come across—many, many cases on which, given our way, we would certainly have deregulated, yet we found that directives made it impossible for us to do what we would have liked to have done. That is, of course, one of the reasons why, if there is a Conservative Government after the next general election, we will be seeking to renegotiate our relationship with the EU and then—as long as the Opposition do not prevent this—putting that to the British public in a referendum. It is also one of the reasons why we are trying to pass the referendum Bill right now, and we will bring it back and do so.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

It would be helpful if the right hon. Gentleman could tell us the number of regulations that he wishes to abolish but cannot. Precisely how many are there? Perhaps he could produce a list.

[Mr Letwin]

That is a very tantalising thought, so I shall go back and see whether that is possible. I am sure we can put together a list. I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman or Opposition Front Benchers would like to see it very much, but it is extremely clear that there are large numbers of cases in which it would have been desirable to do things, but it is impossible to do so because of the structure of directives that we inherited. Most of those directives were signed up to willingly by the previous Government. It is also the case—

[John Mann]

rose—

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Gentleman does not need to exert himself; I will give way to him again.

Of course, some EU regulation is perfectly sensible, but the problem is that much of it, unfortunately, forces us to do things in ways that we would much prefer were not the case. I suspect that, if the hon. Gentleman were to look at some of that regulation, he would agree with me.

[John Mann]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Certainly the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) does wave eccentrically. There is not necessarily anything disorderly about it, but it may offend the sensibilities of some right hon. and hon. Members, a point to which I am sure, as always, the hon. Gentleman will be sensitive.

[John Mann]

I certainly would not wish to offend the Minister; I merely want an answer. He said “many”; he said “many, many”; and I think he said “excessive”. How many regulations—he has been through them all—has he not been able to deal with in the Bill because of European legislation? Is it 10, 20, 50, 100 or 1,000?

[Mr Letwin]

I will send the hon. Gentleman a list. It will not be exhaustive, but I suspect it will contain hundreds, rather than tens, of cases for which we would have wished to do something different. Of course we have not kept an exhaustive tally—there is no point, because we cannot change those things in domestic legislation, which is what the Bill is about.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

rose—

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Letwin]

I will give way to both my hon. Friends, but then if the House will forgive me, I will make some progress.

[David Rutley]

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) likes mountains, so I think that that might be the way to get this concept through to him. We are talking about mountains of red tape in Europe. I remind Members that 70% of the cost of regulation on UK businesses comes from EU regulations. The list the Minister refers to is more than 8,000 metres high—it is the Everest of regulation—and it needs to be combated urgently which is, I think, what he is trying to do.

[Mr Letwin]

My hon. Friend is quite right. Leaving aside the badinage induced by Opposition Members, the serious point is that even before the renegotiation, the Government have made an extremely serious attempt at deregulation in the EU, working with British business to identify the most important things—I will send a list of them to the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann), too, because I doubt he has taken the trouble to read what has already been widely published—but that is an arduous undertaking. By contrast, the Bill deals with those things that we can manage under our control in this House, and we should do so right away.

[Steve Baker]

I welcome the Bill and reassure my right hon. Friend that I would be surprised if history remembered this Government as radically liberal. Before he goes too much further into the detail, however, will he reassure me that he has considered, or that he will consider, sunset clauses for all new regulations?

[Mr Letwin]

I have good news for my hon. Friend: it is not a matter of considering it; we have done it. Every single new regulation we have brought in—incidentally, their number is limited by our one in, two out principle, which means they are slightly more than twice balanced by things that we have removed from the statute book—contains a sunset provision. We took that step right at the beginning of our taking office, and the purpose is to ensure that people do not mindlessly roll out the same regulations long after they have passed their sell-by date.

If I may, I want to return to the Bill—for a moment at least. To set the scene, the Bill is just one small part of the process. The red tape challenge looked at about 6,000 regulations. The one in, two out constraint holds back the stream, while the red tape challenge removes water from the lake behind the dam. In addition, and just as importantly, we have spent an enormous amount of time and energy focusing on enforcement, because it is not just a matter of what regulations or indeed statutory guidance are in place, but a matter of how things are enforced. We have been taking considerable steps to ensure that the agencies responsible for regulation enforce in a way that is much more conscious of the needs of our businesses.

In that context, clause 61, which is probably the single most important clause in the Bill, creates a growth duty—[Interruption.] Do look it up, please; it is useful for Opposition Members to know about a Bill when they are about to launch an attack on it. The clause requires our non-economic regulators, every time they make a decision, to spend time and energy considering whether that decision takes proper account of the need for economic growth. That is not to say that that consideration should overrule all regulators’ duties, but we are trying to create a sense of proportionality and to ensure that our regulators consider effects on growth as they go about their duties.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

That is an excellent idea. I welcome the clause, but is it not the case that now that the EU regulates comprehensively in areas such as the environment and business, we do not need domestic regulation on top, but just the UK consequences of EU rules?

[Mr Letwin]

In many instances there is a good case for not layering further domestic obligations on top of international or EU obligations. My right hon. Friend has a pretty long and distinguished record of involvement in this area, so let me give him an example from the Bill. Clause 59 provides for “ambulatory references” in international maritime regulation. We took the approach that the law of the sea is basically formed by international agreements, and that there is every reason for our regulation not to add to that, nor even to qualify or interpret it, but rather simply to refer to it so that every shipping company and captain of a vessel knows that it is the international agreements that apply to them. That has the advantage that we can be sure that our regulation is aligned with international regulation, which tends to induce shipping to come to this country, and it also simplifies the statute book. That is the kind of shift that we are trying to achieve in many domains.

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

My right hon. Friend seems to be making an excellent case for ending the gold-plating of regulation, although I am a little distressed that the Wreck Removal Convention Act 2011, which I promoted as a private Member’s Bill, will be redundant if this Bill deals with maritime matters. Will he go further and say whether there will be opportunities for Members on both sides of the House to suggest additional measures to be repealed and matters to be deregulated under the Bill, including Acts that received Royal Assent but never came into force, such as the Easter Act 1928?

[Mr Letwin]

I certainly do not want to venture on to the particular terrain where my hon. Friend tempts me, but I shall say that in the whole process of looking at 6,000 regulations and a welter of statutory guidance, one of the things we have done is precisely to draw ideas and information from wide sources throughout the country. This has not been a top-down process involving a small group of bureaucrats. I think I am right in saying that about 30,000 responses have been received following our various online efforts to crowd-source ideas, and in every single case—we have done this subject by subject—we have asked panels of real, live business people, “What really matters to you?”

What we are bringing forward as part of the red tape challenge process, of which the Bill is one small fraction, is not a set of changes that have been dreamed up by some bureaucrat or even some elected Minister, but an approach that is based on the advice of those most affected. I think that is the right way of going about it and, incidentally, it is why, across the 3,000 or so regulations that are being got rid of or improved, we have managed to achieve a little more than £800 million a year of savings for British business. I do not think that that is by any means the limit of what we can achieve, but it is already a significant achievement.

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

The Bill is about cultural change compared with what we saw under the previous Government, when there was the equivalent of six new regulations every working day. The growth duty in clause 61 is an important principle. May I ask the Minister and his colleagues to include on their list of bodies subject to that duty the Valuation Office Agency, whose decisions on business rates for many local businesses are often disproportionate and have driven certain businesses in my constituency to the wall?

[Mr Letwin]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his part—which was signal and tremendously important—in advancing this whole agenda in the early years of this Government. As it happens, I have with me the preliminary list of the non-economic regulators that will be within the scope of the growth duty, and I notice that the Valuation Office Agency is not on it. I shall therefore take full account of his recommendations and discuss with colleagues, and with him, the possibility of including it.

[Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend said that the Bill’s provisions were being introduced on the advice of those who were most affected by the regulations, but he will be aware of the concern that has been expressed by a wide range of media and broadcasting organisations about the effect of clause 47 in removing important journalistic protections. Is there anything he can say to reassure them that it will not have the effect they fear?

[Mr Letwin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, for raising that issue, which is indeed important. It was a late entrant, in the sense that it was no part of the intention of clause 47 to have the effect that some of the media organisations are worried about. Those organisations have been worried that the clause would obviate the need for both parties to be in court when a court orders what is called a production order, which typically requires, for example, a bank to produce the accounts of a person accused of a particular malfeasance, where those accounts are relevant to the trial.

In the case that the media are concerned about, a production order would be used to ask a media organisation to produce some piece of information it holds. Those media organisations were worried that they would no longer have the guarantee of their day in court to contest such a production order, because the effect of clause 47 would be to replace the need for the existence of primary legislation governing inter partes rules with the criminal procedure rules committee. The media were afraid that the criminal procedure rules committee might in some way weaken the inter partes rules. I have good news for my hon. Friend and his Committee, and indeed for the media organisations—which, incidentally, I have offered to meet later in the week or next week. As it was no part of the intention of clause 47 to do that, we are now looking for ways specifically to exempt journalism and all such media items from the clause. If I may, I would like to discuss with him and his Committee the precise drafting of that change, so that we can be sure that the media organisations themselves and the Select Committee are content with the changes we make.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

As my right hon. Friend says, the reason this problem arises is that criminal procedure rules are effectively being delegated to a subordinate body, not to this House. Unlike in most areas of the Bill, where I am absolutely behind the Government, this is an area where some of the rules are constitutionally quite important—we have just heard one example. There might be a number of other areas, which have not come up so quickly, where we would not want to undermine our constitutional protections, so will my right hon. Friend rethink clause 47?

[Mr Letwin]

My right hon. Friend, who obviously has an immensely distinguished record of concern for civil liberties—which he and I have both fought for in various ways over the years—is right to draw attention to the significance of clause 47. One of the things I have asked officials to look at today is the possibility of going out to a further consultation on clause 47, to see whether anyone else comes forward. In point of fact, because the draft Bill went through pre-legislative scrutiny—there was a Joint Committee of both Houses looking at it, and so on—it had a good airing. It is probable, therefore, that other people would have come forward already if they had concerns, but I do not want to take the risk. I think it would be sensible to have further consultation, to see whether we elicit any responses from others who might be concerned. If in the course of that my right hon. Friend discovers any other bodies that are concerned, or any groups of people who might or should be concerned, my door is open to him to have discussions about that.

I want to say one further thing about the background before coming to some of the other, most important clauses in the Bill. There is a strange state of affairs in our country, which is that although a great part of the regulation that governs us is either in directives and then UK legislation or in UK legislation, including statutory instruments as well as primary legislation, a great part of the regulation that de facto affects our businesses is not in any such place, but in the vast reams of statutory guidance.

These are enormous items. I certainly cannot claim to have read the totality of any major area of statutory guidance, because it would be impossible for one person to embark on such a task with any hope of success if that person was carrying out any serious set of ministerial duties. Some of those items of guidance are tens of thousands of pages long. We have therefore undertaken a massive programme of spring cleaning: for instance, we are hoping to achieve an 85% reduction in the sheer volume of health and safety guidance and legislation.

That does not, of course, necessarily equate to a reduction in the burden of the substance of the guidance. What it does is make it possible for people, for the first time, to be clear about what the wretched stuff is trying to do. My experience in dealing with this morass of over-verbose, under-specific and often extraordinarily badly phrased guidance is that the people who are responsible for enforcing it often do not really know what is in it. We are trying to reach a point at which we do know what is in it, and at that point we shall be able to judge whether it needs to be adjusted. That is another important part of our activity, which is not included in the Bill.

Let me now draw the House’s attention to a few of the most important clauses in the Bill, apart from clause 61, which I have already mentioned, clause 59, which I mentioned in response to an intervention from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), and clause 47, which we have just been discussing. I shall begin with clause 1, which the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) will be able to find quite easily if he opens the Bill. It is on the first page.

Under clause 1, about two thirds of the people in the country who are self-employed will no longer be covered by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, and will therefore not have to engage in a number of activities in which they are currently required to engage because they are covered by the Act. The one third who will continue to be so covered are those who engage in high-risk activities, which will be specified and which will be precisely the activities that the House would expect to be covered, such as the activities of the nuclear, construction and chemical industries. That is a major gain in itself.

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

My right hon. Friend said that the clause would affect self-employed people. Will it also affect people who work for themselves through their own limited companies? I understand why it will not apply to those with employees, but will the owner of a company who is both a director and an employer be classified as self-employed for the purpose of the clause?

[Mr Letwin]

That is a very interesting question, which will need to be discussed in Committee. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House, who will be leading the charge, will give it some thought. The clause is certainly intended to cover people who do not have employees, and I do not think that the example given by my hon. Friend involves employees. The intent is there, although I do not know whether we shall be able to find a way of fulfilling it without creating a loophole.

Clause 4 provides for a much simpler apprenticeship scheme. Straightforward agreements and standards will replace a morass of regulation, and employers will be able to secure simple tax rebates as a method of payment for their part in providing the apprenticeships. That is a major advance.

Clause 5 is a good illustration of the way in which the Bill can have positive social effects. At present, disabled driving instructors are in the absurd position of having to have special cars and having to undergo special tests, even when they do not have a disability that in any way affects their capacity to deal with emergencies or other driving problems. The Bill will create a sensible regime under which people will be forced to be tested only if there is reason to suppose that such a special test is necessary.

Clause 7 is another example of plain common sense at work. It removes a crazy situation whereby if gas is being unloaded at a port, and the port is perfectly well licensed for the purpose and contains plenty of people who are licensed to carry out their task, they are not permitted to permit individuals to do the unloading unless those individuals themselves have individual licences and permits. That too is an absurd situation, which the clause removes.

Clause 9 is one of my favourites because it has taken us about two and a half years to get to this. We would have thought it was fairly straightforward. It turned out not to be. This is about knitting yarn. I do not know whether there is anybody in the House who feels passionately that knitting yarn really should be sold only in quantities of grams—perhaps the movers of the amendment feel passionately about that. I personally do not share that passion. It seems to me that if someone wants to sell knitting yarn by quantity of knitting yarn, it is a perfectly reasonable thing to do and we are going to allow them to do it.

Clause 21, by contrast, is not a matter of common sense merely. It is a matter of great concern to very large numbers of our fellow citizens who would like to exercise the right to buy—a fine policy that this Government have been sponsoring and have made much easier in many ways. This clause reduces the period of qualification from five years to three years for right to buy, thereby much enlarging the group of people who can participate.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I notice that my right hon. Friend has scampered past clause 13, which touches on the issue of rights of way, particularly the ones that go very close, or even through, people’s houses. [Interruption.] I just wanted to ask him if we can have confidence that not only are people who like rambling and walking through the countryside going to be able to continue to do so, but people who have a problem with rights of way that intrude on their privacy—and which may have been created willy-nilly by a group of difficult people—will have a chance to fight back without being bankrupted by large organisations that they cannot afford to fight against? [Interruption.]

[Mr Letwin]

Yes, I can give my hon. Friend some comfort on that. Incidentally, it is rather interesting to hear Opposition Front Benchers chuntering away as if this is somehow a preoccupation of those who have large houses. Not at all. I do not know about my hon. Friend’s constituents, but I have a constituent who has quite a small house, who—[Interruption.] Actually, it is a perfectly ordinary house with a perfectly ordinary garden and it has a right of way going through it, and it is pretty miserable. I suspect Opposition Members have such constituents too who have very modest houses with very modest gardens, and if the Opposition knew the slightest thing about rural England they would know that.

The fact is that there has been a problem. We need to preserve the system of rights of way as that is an enormously important part of our countryside, but it has been difficult to make sensible adjustments because of the ground rules against which inspectors are making decisions. The stakeholders working group looked at this very intensively over a very long period and took a very balanced view. The upshot is clause 13 and the surrounding clauses, and I am delighted to say that I have agreed with my right hon. Friend the Environment Secretary that it should be accompanied by guidance that will specifically ask the inspectors to give real weight to the fact that a particular path goes through someone’s garden. That will help enormously to achieve a more sensible balance. That is now being looked at in detail by the SWG, which I hope will approve the new guidance in very short order.

[Bill Wiggin]

I am very grateful for what my right hon. Friend says about that because it can take up to 12 years in my constituency just to get a tiny little movement on such rights of way.

[Mr Letwin]

I very well know the phenomenon. In fact in the case I was talking about, I think it has taken about 25 years, so I know what my hon. Friend is talking about.

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

Will that guidance also refer to the issue of green lanes which has come up among my constituents in north Yorkshire? I would be interested to know whether my right hon. Friend has been lobbied or representations have been made by those involved in that campaign.

[Mr Letwin]

Well, to say that I have been lobbied about these matters is mild understatement. I think it would be sensible for my hon. Friend and me to have a detailed discussion of clauses 14, 16 and 17. I will just mention clause 17 for a moment, which authorises the construction of gates on public ways. If my hon. Friend pauses to consider the materiality of that change, he will understand just how important this is.

Clause 29 is one of the favourites of the Communities Secretary. It decriminalises the penalties for misfeasance with household waste. It turns them into civil penalties rather than criminal penalties, which is long overdue.

Clause 33 is the result of lobbying by Members on both sides of the House. It will fulfil a commitment by the Chancellor by enabling child trust funds to be converted into junior ISAs. That is another excellent move.

Finally, clause 43 sums up the whole Bill, in my view. It deals with the exhibition of films in village halls. I am talking not about movies involving ghastly violence and huge amounts of sexual activity, which are classed as X-rated. As we can see from the clause, film certificates will continue to apply. At the moment, however, if someone wants to show a Charlie Chaplin film, they have to obtain a licence. That is astonishing, and there is not the slightest reason for it. I know that Opposition Members have no concern with village halls or village life, but perhaps they will recognise that this is also happening in community halls throughout the urban centres of our country. It would be nice if people could show films in those places without a licence, and I am glad to say that liberty will reign in this respect and that clause 43 will enable that to happen.

I hope that I have demonstrated that, while the Bill represents only a tiny fraction of this Government’s vast and enormously successful efforts to have a period of a Parliament for the first time in this country’s history in which we have reduced rather than increased the burden of domestic regulation, it is nevertheless a significant step forward. I am sure that it will be widely welcomed in all parts of the House, except among those on the far left who want to see this country being further and further regulated.

16:44

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

Rarely have we debated a Bill that is so long and so broad and yet so ineffectual, given what it purportedly seeks to achieve. In true “Yes Minister” style, when faced with the important and necessary challenge of deregulation, the Government have decided to deal with the difficult bit in the Bill’s title and do very little about it in the text.

[Mr Letwin]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, and I assure her that I shall not seek to intervene on her on a regular basis. If the task of deregulation is so necessary—a proposition I fully agree with—why were no such steps taken during the many years of the Labour Government?

[Chi Onwurah]

I find it hard to believe that the Minister has intervened to make a point for which he has so little evidence. During the last Labour Government, we deregulated to bring benefits to business of £3 billion a year. This Government’s record is in no way comparable with that.

[Mr Prisk]

The hon. Lady might wish to reconsider those remarks. When we checked with the House of Commons Library, we found that, during the last Parliament under the Labour Government, the equivalent of six new regulations were introduced every working day. Does she deny that?

[Chi Onwurah]

The figures that I gave were accurate. Speaking of the regulations that we brought in, was the hon. Gentleman against the minimum wage? I know that he voted against it. Was he against every aspect of the legislation that we brought in?

[Mr Prisk]

No; what I am against is Opposition spokesmen standing at the Dispatch Box pretending that they somehow helped business when in fact they hindered it, day in and day out.

[Chi Onwurah]

The hon. Gentleman would be pleased if his Government had our record on growth and business starts.

We now know where the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) has been hiding for the past year. He has been off with the Minister for Government Policy tackling big issues such as deregulating the sale of knitting yarn, freeing our children to buy their own chocolate liqueurs and decriminalising household waste. When the Prime Minister told people suffering from high energy bills to put on a jumper, the Minister sprang into action by making it easier for them to knit their own.

[Alok Sharma]

rose—

[Chi Onwurah]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has something to say about knitting yarn.

[Alok Sharma]

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy made the point that there is a lot of regulation that we can do nothing about because of EU regulation. If the hon. Lady cares so much about regulation, why will she not support the European Union (Referendum) Bill?

[Chi Onwurah]

I know that the Government face a real challenge in keeping their Members off the subject of Europe, but perhaps in this debate on deregulation, they will understand that we are not here to discuss the potential of a referendum. I will come on later to talk about the relevance of Europe to the matter under discussion. Europe is not the issue that confronts my constituents today. My constituents are being hit by the cost of living crisis and the measures that this Government, not Europe, have brought in to ensure that their wages do not rise at the same rate as prices.

It is nice to know that when the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government spoke eloquently about every Englishman’s right to have the remnants of their tikka masala collected promptly, the Minister boldly made sure that they would not face prosecution if they placed it in the wrong receptacle. It is all in this Bill—farriers, road humps and late-night takeaways. This is the Christmas tree Bill to end all Christmas tree Bills. In fact, Christmas trees are one of the few things that are not covered by this Bill.

[Alok Sharma]

rose—

[Chi Onwurah]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has something to say about that.

[Alok Sharma]

It appears that the hon. Lady is going to oppose every measure in this Bill. Is that the case?

[Chi Onwurah]

There are some measures in this rag, tag hotch-potch of a Bill that are welcome and that we do not oppose. What we oppose is the approach of this Government to a cost of living crisis, which is to attack the rights of ordinary working people.

By my count, the 69 clauses and 17 schedules cover at least 12 Whitehall Departments. As I have said, although there are many parts of the Bill that we support or do not oppose, there are some very disturbing proposals hidden beneath the knitting yarn, which we will vigorously oppose. There are fresh attacks on employment rights, with the removal of yet more powers from employment tribunals. Those are measures that the Government’s own impact assessment claims will have a negligible effect on businesses or even cost them money. We will not support any new attacks on working people.

[Julian Smith]

Does the hon. Lady not agree that the cumulative effect of the Government’s reforms of small business red tape and regulation have made it easier for those businesses to create jobs and growth and provide the results that we all want, which is our constituents in work?

[Chi Onwurah]

We all know that small businesses need a cut in business rates, as we have proposed, and then a freeze. We will also freeze their energy bills, which will save an average of £1,800 a year. At the same time, we would change the economy so that it delivers secure employment, which would benefit businesses large and small.

We want this Government to acknowledge, once and for all, that it was not working people’s job security that caused the global financial crash and that preventing employers from discriminating against pregnant women is not the root cause of the cost of living crisis. This Government are so out of touch that they not only do not understand the challenge they face—the need for an economy that works for all, delivering good, well-paid jobs—but fail to understand the real solutions to the problems that they do see.

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

The hon. Lady talks about preventing mythical attacks on working people. Does she concede that under the policies of this Government more than 1 million more people are in work in this country?

[Chi Onwurah]

I know that almost 1 million young people are unemployed and that 1.3 million people in part-time work are seeking full-time work. I also know, because I speak to these people in my constituency, that some people who are supposedly in jobs with zero-hours contracts are getting no work, cannot make any plans and cannot go out and spend money. That is the working environment that this Government support and that the next Labour Government will change.

Let us turn to the first, and most worrying, part of the Bill—the general measures affecting business. Exempting self-employed people in certain industries will create confusion about who is covered and who is not. The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health, the chartered body of health and safety practitioners and the world’s largest health and safety professional membership organisation, is opposed to that, calling it

“a very short-sighted and misleading move”,

and saying that

“it won’t actually help anyone; it won’t support business; but it will cause general confusion.”

Even the Federation of Small Businesses, which supports the change in principle, says that the implications are not well understood and it is particularly concerned about the unintended consequences for insurance, which will need to be considered further in Committee if the Bill gets there.

The Bill will also remove employment tribunals’ power to make wider recommendations to employers who have been judged to have discriminated against someone unlawfully. Such recommendations are only advisory—they are not mandatory and they promote good working practice. Why are the Government trying to prescribe the ability of tribunals to make observations? What are they afraid of? The Prime Minister says that we are in a global race, but that race cannot be won by attacking employment rights at every opportunity. The Opposition will not support a race to the bottom.

The House of Commons Library considered the impact assessment for that measure and found that despite the Minister labelling it deregulatory and counting it as an out under the Government’s arbitrary one in, two out system, business will incur a cost as a result of the removal of the power. Only this Government could propose a supposedly deregulatory measure that costs business money. Those on the Front Bench look slightly puzzled; this is work by the House of Commons Library.

[Alok Sharma]

I am not sure how often the hon. Lady talks to business, but perhaps she saw the submission from the British Chambers of Commerce, which said:

“The BCC supports the thrust of this Bill. The BCC welcomes measures to reduce unnecessary health and safety regulations on the self-employed”.

She should talk to business more before she comes to this House.

[Chi Onwurah]

I have just quoted the FSB, which stands for the Federation of Small Businesses—I hope that the hon. Gentleman is aware of that. I talk to business regularly and if he disagrees with the FSB, we would be pleased to hear the evidence on which that is based.

The Government sacked hundreds of staff at great expense several years ago, and they are now seeking to re-employ them through a recruitment firm, hiring at least half of them. I have seen the job advert, and apparently they will work on the Government’s red tape challenge and deregulation programme. [Interruption.] Well, it is certainly true that the Government need all the help that they can get, but I hope that they will succeed—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Mr Maynard, I do not need comments like that. We are listening to a debate. I know that it is not normal for everyone to agree with every word, but we have had enough of comments being shouted across the Chamber.

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I made the comments; I would not like my colleague to be accused.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

It is very gallant of the hon. Gentleman to offer that information. I will say to him as well that, although his hon. Friend has also been making comments across the Floor of the House, I hope that it will stop now.

[Chi Onwurah]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I hope that the new employees will succeed in making the Minister understand that we do not build an economy that works for working people by attacking their rights.

[Julian Smith]

Does the hon. Lady welcome the shared parental leave that the Government have introduced as part of trying to make things easier for couples who want to work and share parental leave during the course of their professional life?

[Chi Onwurah]

The Labour Government did more to support working families and working parents than any Government before, and of course we support that measure.

I shall try to make progress and speak to my experience with business. Before entering the House, I worked for many years in telecoms in the private sector in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Nigeria and many other countries around the world; I worked in companies large and small. I then worked for the industry regulator in this country, Ofcom, for six years, so I have seen regulation from many different viewpoints, and I am familiar with the impact that it can have on businesses of all sizes. I recognise the burden that it can represent, particularly on small businesses.

The Opposition believe that Government must seek to reduce unnecessary regulation at every opportunity, but unfortunately, this Government’s debate on regulation is stale and simplistic. Smart regulation underpins fair markets, and can level the playing field for small firms and new entrants—the very people and businesses that create new jobs and prosperity. Smart regulation saves lives. It is a matter of great pride for all of us, I hope, that the 2012 Olympic infrastructure was built without the loss of one life. We can certainly be sure that regulation played a part in that. The men and women working on those construction sites know the value of having clear health and safety laws in place, and I only wish that were the case for Government Members.

Smart regulation can help to drive innovation and growth. Labour’s zero carbon policy helped to make this country a world leader in low-carbon technology and architecture. Yes, regulation—

[Andrew Bridgen]

rose—

[Chi Onwurah]

I am going to make progress, as many Members wish to speak.

Regulation is a concern for some businesses, but business people understand that rules are needed to protect people’s safety and rights, promote competition and prevent employers from being undercut by those who do not play by the rules. As the Federation of Small Businesses has noted, the concerns of business are often about how regulations are developed and introduced, how they are enforced, and the duplication and overlapping rules that waste their time. The Government’s rather crude “one in, two out” approach fails to recognise that sensible and proportionate regulation introduced and implemented properly can promote healthy, competitive markets. The issue is more complex than the number of rules coming in and out.

We believe it is essential to take a fresh look at existing regulation, how it is implemented, and how—in response to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood)—it is translated from European directives. Regulation protects consumers’ and employees’ rights, ensures that our industries play their part in moving to a green and sustainable future, and keeps citizens safe; it has saved many lives. It is important that it is effective and enforceable. Challenges arise when ill-thought-through regulation has unforeseen consequences or is interpreted bureaucratically and inflexibly. Some regulation can certainly represent an unnecessary burden on businesses, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises that may not have access to legal advice to interpret regulation accurately or the resources to implement it fully.

When in power, Labour sought to reduce regulation by introducing the Better Regulation Commission and the ongoing better regulation programme, and made a number of legislative changes to reduce the cost of regulation. Our programmes for simplifying regulation delivered—[Interruption.] Our programmes delivered— I would have thought this figure would be of some interest to Government Members—£3 billion of savings to business per year. In contrast, the impact statement for the draft Bill—Ministers have not dared to produce a comprehensive summary for the current Bill—estimated that it would save business and civil society £10 million over 10 years. So we have savings of £10 million or £3 billion; I think the Minister can do the maths. The figures underline that while we all agree unnecessary regulation can be a burden on business, a sensible approach to deregulation is about more than repealing statutes.

In government, we introduced legislative reform orders to help Ministers to get unnecessary burdens on business off the statute book. However, as the Regulatory Reform Committee has noted, instead of using those 11 procedures already available to Government for deregulating, Ministers chose to invent a new one. We also set up the primary authority scheme and the Regulatory Policy Committee, as well as a Cabinet Sub-Committee to focus minds at the very top of Government. That was our record in government.

Building on Labour’s progress in government, the Bill seeks to introduce a growth duty on regulators, as the Minister explained. This duty will compel them to have regard to the promotion of economic growth when carrying out their functions and to carry them out in a necessary and proportionate way. We support the aims behind the duty and, clearly, the principle that regulators should go about their business in a proportionate way, but we must ensure that the duty does not inhibit or contradict the primary function of any regulator.

The crude proposals in the Bill do not fit into an overall strategy or vision for this country. They show no recognition of why growth is important to deliver good, sustainable jobs, to help people’s incomes rise faster than costs, and to ensure that we become richer as a nation. They do not mention long-term or sustainable growth—they refer simply to growth—and they fail to recognise that good regulation is necessary to protect jobs and growth. Is it right that a housing bubble or a casino-capitalism-fuelled, short-term growth spurt should be a primary consideration for the Office for Nuclear Regulation? I hope we all recognise that markets need to be regulated in order to protect growth and jobs, or are the Government suggesting that the underlying cause of the global financial crisis was too much regulation?

[The Minister without Portfolio (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

I am sorry to put the hon. Lady out of her stride, but I have slightly lost her point; I will be replying to this debate, so I just want to follow her argument. She has said that she is in favour of regulators paying regard to the aim of getting growth in the economy and of their regulations being proportionate to the risks they guard against, but now she appears to be speaking against that. I do not follow her argument: is she proposing to vote against the regulators being asked to have regard to the growth of the economy and against their regulations being proportionate? If so, I have not followed her logic. How on earth would our proposed measures produce a casino-like growth bubble? We are simply proposing a sensible constraint on regulators to make sure that they remain proportionate and do not do out-of-proportion economic damage.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the Minister for his intervention, which, I regret to say, illustrates that this Government still do not understand the driving forces behind the global financial crisis.

Although we want regulators to have regard to the impact of their regulations, we do not agree that one of their primary objectives should be to support or promote short-term growth. There is a list of regulators. Should short-term growth be a priority for the human rights regulator? Either the Bill should be amended or the impact of the proposals should be clarified, so as to ensure that we do not find ourselves in a situation whereby all the regulators seek to promote short-term growth spurts, regardless of the consequences elsewhere. I hope that explanation has offered clarification, at least to a certain extent, and that Government Members will find it easy to discuss.

We have concerns about other parts of the Bill. Housing is a critical part of the cost of living crisis for families up and down the country, so should there not be a coherent, long-term approach, rather than ad hoc tinkering? Will not reducing the right-to-buy qualifying time hamper the ability of councils to build more homes at a time when they are needed more than ever? We will certainly seek proof that that will not happen. We will also seek clarification and reassurances on some of the measures affecting transport, licensing and local authorities, among others.

The decriminalisation of waste will, apparently, reduce the regulatory burden on households, but it should be remembered that in 1991 a then Tory Minister said something similar about the decriminalisation of parking offences. I doubt that many car owners feel that parking is less of a burden as a result, but it is certainly the case that it opened up new avenues of revenue for hard-pressed councils.

The proposals on justice are interesting. I imagine that the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), approached the Lord Chancellor, who had just taken his job, and asked him what regulations he would like to get rid of, and that he came back with the idea of stripping away safeguards on the seizure of evidence from journalists, although we hear that that was not the intention, and a proposal to remove parliamentary scrutiny when he wants to close prisons. In answer to one of my parliamentary questions, the Ministry of Justice has revealed that, since 2010, it has yet to repeal any regulations, but has introduced eight. If those are the sorts of ideas that it has come up with, perhaps it is a good thing that we have been spared any deregulation by the Ministry of Justice during the past three and a half years.

Some measures in the Bill are welcome. Although those affecting businesses will have only a small impact on a small number of them, they are welcome, as are those on child trust funds. The measures on rights of way are also good news, provided that the full package agreed with the stakeholder working group is passed.

I pay tribute to the hard work of the Joint Committee on the draft Deregulation Bill, chaired by my noble Friend Lord Rooker. Although it was not given the time it felt appropriate, thanks to the Joint Committee the Bill is in a slightly better state than it was last July, but it is fair to say that the Government have not responded to many of its criticisms.

It is also fair to say that the overall reaction to the Bill has been underwhelming—lukewarm at best. Ministers are delighted with it, but reading the Bill, I realised that that is because it seems to be about removing burdens as much on Ministers as on business. By my count, half the proposals in the Bill will take away burdens from Ministers and the Government, while less than half will remove them from business. This is more doublespeak: deregulation is apparently about deregulating Whitehall, not small business. For some reason, that reminds me of the Localism Act 2011, which has somehow resulted in hundreds of powers being localised in Whitehall.

That explains why the expected impact of the Bill is rather low, and underlines why it is a rather simplistic tool for a multifaceted challenge. All Governments say that they want to reduce regulation—I am sure that every Byzantine emperor came to power on the promise of reduced regulation—but getting regulation right is much more about working behind the scenes with business and interested parties than about bluster and press releases.

[Julian Smith]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Chi Onwurah]

I am just finishing.

Once again, this Government’s rhetoric extends far beyond their reach. The Opposition will seek to remove or amend the iniquitous clauses if the Bill is committed, and we believe that the remaining clauses will have a very limited, if welcome, impact.

17:18

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

I rise to give my full support to the Bill, which represents another important clear-out of unnecessary barriers to economic growth and will help to clear a path to the creation of more jobs. It also tackles the worrying “something must be done” culture of believing in legislation as the cure to all problems. Too often, legislation and heavy-handed regulation makes things worse, not better.

We need more first-time entrepreneurs to step forward without being put off by the fog of regulation, and we need more such people to take another step by becoming first-time employers. I therefore welcome provisions in the Bill to simplify apprenticeships, just as I welcomed measures in the Finance Act 2013 to reduce the burden of employer’s national insurance contributions— the jobs tax—which the Labour party has sought to increase.

We need not only first-time entrepreneurs and first-time employers, but first-time exporters. We must continue to help more first-time home owners within our property-holding democracy, so I welcome clause 21, which will reduce barriers to the right to buy—[Interruption.] The receipts will be used to build more social housing, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) has indicated from a sedentary position.

By pulling down barriers to action, we are sending the clear message that Britain is open to people giving it a try, realising dreams and achieving ambitions, regardless of whether they are the first in their family ever to do so. We are saying that there is hope and opportunity. As the Prime Minister said to the Federation of Small Businesses at its conference last week, there are areas where the Government need to

“get out of the way of small business success.”

That means introducing a programme of ongoing tax reductions, continuing to drive down the barriers of regulation and letting businesses steer their own course to success. The new employment allowance is a rebate of £2,000 on the national insurance contributions of every business in the country.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

We cut Labour’s jobs tax.

[David Rutley]

Absolutely.

The duty to pay employer’s national insurance contributions for people under 21 will be abolished completely. Last year’s autumn statement included a cap on the increase in business rates and a rolling programme of small business rate relief that will enable a £1,000 reduction in business rates for shops and retail premises, which will help to safeguard our high streets.

The Bill is an integral part of the Government’s long-term approach on deregulation. As the Minister said, the red tape challenge has highlighted just how much regulation there is and demonstrated the Government’s willingness—their desire even—to drain the swamp of existing regulation. The Minister kindly referred to that as a lake, but I think that it is more of a swamp.

[Julian Smith]

I fully support my hon. Friend’s comments. Does he agree that the Minister for Government Policy, the Minister for the Cabinet Office and several other Government Members have worked hard for many years on this specialist subject to ensure that we reduce regulation on business?

[David Rutley]

I agree with my hon. Friend completely. There has been great determination not only to reduce the deficit, but to build a plan for growth. Deregulation is a fundamental part of that plan, so I praise the work of the Minister for Government Policy and other Ministers who have made invaluable contributions.

The Government have turned their attention to not only the stock of regulations, but the flow of new regulations—the river that is running into the swamp that we are looking to drain. Their progress has been so good that their one in, one out approach has become a one in, two out rule. Ministers must remove twice the cost of any new regulation that they introduce. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk), who also made an invaluable contribution in this area as a Minister, that is a culture change that will keep us on the path to more jobs and increased growth.

I welcome the fact that hundreds of regulations have been improved, modified or removed by the Government, and that they are being more ambitious still in the Bill by aiming to improve or sweep away thousands more. As the Prime Minister said, this will be

“the first government in modern history that at the end of its parliamentary term has less regulation in place than there was at the beginning.”

That must be an important priority. With the eurozone in a sluggish period of economic growth and an in/out referendum on the cards in the UK following a Conservative victory at the next election, the Bill will hopefully not only help the UK to tackle its own challenges, but provide the impetus for serious deregulatory reform in Europe.

[John Mann]

As co-chair of the all-party group on mountaineering, what is the hon. Gentleman’s view of how clause 1 will apply to mountain guides and those who take people climbing? As he well knows, all mountain guides in this country are self-employed, even though many of them work within organisations and agencies such as the Plas y Brenin centre in north Wales. How will removing the general health and safety responsibility from self-employed mountain guides affect health and safety in that industry?

[David Rutley]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and I am sure that he and I will wish to debate it outside the Chamber—

[Mr Letwin]

rose—

[David Rutley]

I will try to respond to that point before I hand over to the Minister. Surely the purpose of clause 1 is to ensure that those who are self-employed in industries in which there is no risk to the lives of others can get on with their work. I do not know the exact details regarding mountain guides, so I will hand over to the Minister, who I am sure will give a much better-informed answer.

[Mr Letwin]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way because this is a beautiful illustration of the problem. Mountaineering, like many such activities, is covered by the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority, so those who are self-employed in that terrain are already regulated. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) illustrates beautifully the kind of problem that arises owing to multiple duplications of regulation. There are clear reasons why health and safety regulations apply in certain dangerous disciplines, but not when they are already regulated.

[David Rutley]

I thank the Minister for that reply. I am sure that the hon. Member—and friend—for Bassetlaw (John Mann) and I will enjoy further conversations about that subject outside the Chamber.

The Bill will help to provide further impetus for change in not only the UK, but Europe. Fortunately, there is increasing evidence that, in contrast to the abject failure of the French socialist approach under President Hollande, the UK’s plan A can only help to bolster the pragmatic supply-side reform movement that has been spurred on by the Government and by the Prime Minister’s business taskforce. It has already been embodied by Open Europe and the Fresh Start group, which I and other Government Members support. Indeed, I was honoured to help to host a round-table discussion on better regulation only last month with delegates from across the EU. The Bill will do a good deal to deregulate in the UK, but if we are also to increase the EU’s competitiveness, we need to spread the lessons of our approach across the European economy.

[Julian Smith]

I think that my hon. Friend was on the trip to Brussels when we asked the Commission whether it had removed any regulatory burdens from small businesses. The lady we were speaking to looked absolutely startled and could not remember any rule that ever been removed from business.

[David Rutley]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that further highlights something I said earlier: 72% of the cost of all regulation—that is tens of billions of pounds—that has been put on UK businesses has come from the EU. That has to change.

Churchill once said:

“If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.”

Those words from the wise are worth listening to. Of course, 10,000 regulations also destroy competitiveness, so there is an urgent need to make targeted reductions in the swathes of regulatory burdens that are preventing British citizens from getting back to work.

[Andrew Bridgen]

My hon. Friend knows, as I do, that large businesses rather welcome a heavily regulated environment, especially in mature markets. Such an environment is anti-competitive, because it creates huge barriers to entry for small firms and cuts competition.

[David Rutley]

Absolutely. Providing for a more level playing field and enabling small and medium-sized enterprises to compete fully in the marketplace is at the heart of what the Government are trying to do, and that has to happen.

To secure the sort of reform that we are pushing for, we need to continue to inspire our EU neighbours with ambitious reforms such as the Bill. In that way, we can build alliances in Europe with politicians, citizens and businesses that also want a competitive EU—a single market, not a single over-regulated state. That is what we are working for. The EU institutions, especially the red tape-loving European Parliament, have become divorced from the economic reality of Europe and its people, including those in the UK. In the end, however, reality does bite, and the fantasy that it is a public good to have ever more legislation in ever more areas of life is fundamentally exposed. Barriers that hinder innovation, and the overall competitiveness of our entrepreneurs, employers and exporters, must be addressed at EU level as they are tackled in the UK.

In October, the Prime Minister’s taskforce showed what could be done with its “Compete” principles for better regulation and more than 30 recommendations for reducing the bureaucratic burden. The public outcry, especially in the UK, that led to rules on discards being swept away from fisheries policy shows that even Brussels, with enough pressure, will respond to the agenda for change. With the work that is being pushed forward and the alliances we are building in Europe, it is good that latent EU reformists have been enabled and even emboldened to get on to the front foot in arguing for a better Europe.

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

Most of the hon. Gentleman’s speech seems to have been concentrated on the European Union. Is it aimed at Tory voters who may be considering voting for the UK Independence party?

[David Rutley]

I am not sure that that contribution particularly advances the debate. I refer the hon. Lady to the comment I made earlier: 72% of regulation comes from the EU. We must address that situation, but Labour Members appear to have no appetite to do so. The issue was ducked for 13 years under the previous Government, but we are getting serious about it.

I will return to the Bill in a minute, but it is important to consider this issue in context. The German Finance Minister, Mr Schäuble, has warned against endless regulation and went as far as to state that among the

“worst news I got as Finance Minister two years ago was that a big bio-chemistry companies was shifting all its research from Europe to the US because of regulations coming from Brussels.”

The Bill helps to show that better news is possible with sufficient political will, not just in Germany, but in Holland and Sweden, where others are beginning to recognise the need for reform. One key thing we must demand is the implementation of the services directive across the EU. That must be a priority to ensure that consumers across the EU benefit, and that UK service companies—and, for that matter, those from other EU countries—can compete effectively.

If the EU adopted steps similar to those taken in the UK, such as the one in, one out requirement, which is moving to one in, two out, and the Government’s three-year moratorium on new regulation for small businesses, that would show that it, too, was open for business. There are signs that the EU is beginning to listen, and hopefully in the light of the Bill and the other work the Government are taking forward, it will show even more interest.

No one knows the precise direction of our economic journey over the next decade and beyond, but it will be easier if the Government continue to turn off the many red lights and deal with the road blocks faced by smaller businesses. As the Minister said, it is good that clauses 61, 62 and beyond deal with the idea that non-economic regulators must have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth, which is an important step forward.

It is also important to present better regulation proposals as a cause of optimism and positivity, rather than allowing the scurrilous left and the Labour party to pretend that it is all too difficult, or to insult the self-employed by suggesting that they do not have proper jobs, when of course they do. The Bill will empower people to achieve the things they want in their careers and businesses, and we must implement such measures to ensure that inflexible labour markets are swept away.

Deregulation does not take rights away; the Bill seeks only better to define them. Clause 1, for example, exempts from health and safety law self-employed people whose work activities pose no risk of harm to others, which is a measure supported by the British Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses. Clause 2 frees employers from the threat of wider recommendations from employment tribunals, thus de-risking the employment process and making jobs more likely to be created in the first place. If we can spread the Bill’s positive vision of deregulatory reform to our neighbours in Europe and the global economy, we will be pulling down barriers to people’s dreams and clearing road blocks to our constituents’ ambitions, and it is because of that that I support the Bill.

17:35

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

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Deregulation Bill because, whilst acknowledging that removing unnecessary burdens on small businesses is welcome, the Bill fails to recognise the social, economic and environmental benefits of effective regulation and contains a number of extremely damaging proposals including: the watering down of safety protections for employees that will leave workers at greater risk of injury, ill-health and abuse; the erosion of protection of journalistic sources and against police seizure of journalistic material, which threatens the basis of the free press; and the imposition of a growth duty on non-economic regulators such as Natural England and the Health and Safety Executive, which is irresponsible and risks undermining their core roles; further considers that this Bill is another illustration of a Government which is embarking on a deregulatory path without due consideration of warnings, including from businesses, that effective regulation is essential to create jobs and innovation and that ripping up vital green legislation risks locking the UK into polluting industrial processes for decades to come, jeopardising future competitiveness, damaging the UK’s attractiveness for green investment, and undermining new industries; and further believes that this Bill represents a race to the bottom and an obsession with GDP growth at any cost which is not in the public interest.

I tabled this reasoned amendment because I believe that the Bill should not be given a Second Reading. I listened to the Minister characterising those of us who have signed the amendment as somehow being of the far left. If that is the case, that category would have to include groups such as the UK Green Building Council, the Aldersgate Group and many other business groups right across the spectrum that have deep concerns about the Bill’s direction of travel.

I did not table this reasoned amendment without giving consideration to those parts of the Bill that are welcome and uncontroversial. Certainly, some parts of the Bill are completely fine. For example, it is cold homes week and many MPs and charities are working hard to highlight fuel poverty in cold homes. Scarves are a symbol of the campaign and people have been knitting away in the past few weeks to draw attention to the need to tackle fuel poverty. I am sure that nobody would object to the clauses in the Bill that would remove restrictions on the selling of knitting yarn. They will allow small and large businesses engaged in the selling of yarn better to meet their customers’ needs. Other provisions are similarly sensible, such as those that would facilitate the recording of public rights of way, and I give them my full support. Removing genuinely defunct legislation from the statute book also makes sense.

My worry is that the basis of the Bill is incredibly simplistic and crude: in the Government’s mind more regulation is bad and less regulation is good, without ever questioning the kind of regulation. Is it smart regulation? What is the purpose of the regulation? Will it actually generate more development? Will it incentivise industry? Will it provide industry with the level playing ground it often asks for? Instead of this nuanced approach, we have a complete knee-jerk reaction that says, “Regulation is bad, deregulation is good” and proceeds in a simple way.

I will make comments on three areas of the Bill. First, I want to cover some specific provisions—I will outline just a few. Secondly, I want to talk about the fundamentally flawed premise on which the Bill is based: it fails to recognise that some regulation can be good for business and job creation, as well as for consumers. Thirdly, I will say a few words about the new growth duty on non-economic regulators, which I fear will interfere with, and impinge on, their ability independently to carry out crucial roles, including: the Care Quality Commission protecting public health; Natural England protecting our environment; the Health and Safety Executive protecting employees and others from harm at work; or the Equality and Human Rights Commission challenging discrimination and protecting human rights. This growth duty is just the latest manifestation of an obsession with short-term GDP growth at any cost, and that is simply not in the public interest.

First, I will focus on just a few of the harmful provisions that I think Ministers are trying to ram through in the name of deregulation. The Bill narrows the application of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, following the 2011 Löfstedt review. The Bill effectively exempts self-employed people from health and safety law where their activities do not put another person at risk. On the surface, one could ask what could be wrong with that. The problem is that the changes in the Bill are completely unnecessary, because the only time the 1974 Act can be used is when a person does put another person at risk. No self-employed person has ever been prosecuted or threatened with prosecution for risking just their own health. Right now, the law is straightforward and it works. The Bill will create not only confusion, but complacency.

Let us not forget that the fatality, injury and ill-health rate for the self-employed is already much higher than that for other sectors. Some of the more dangerous industries, such as agriculture and construction, have a high proportion of self-employed people working in them. There is an obvious risk that people who control the workplace where self-employed people work may think, wrongly, that they do not need to be as concerned about fulfilling their duty of care to the self-employed. The TUC has made this point clear, as have the majority of respondents to the HSE consultation, who rejected the very option we now have put before us. The health and safety professional body, the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, warns:

“This is a very short-sighted and misleading move, it won’t actually help anyone; it won’t support business; but it will cause general confusion.”

As well as health and safety protections, it is also reasonable to ensure that employees do not face discrimination in the workplace, yet the Government are trying to take a massive backward step in the fight against discrimination, too, by removing the powers of employment tribunals to issue wider recommendations on gender, race or other forms of discrimination in the workplace.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

As the hon. Lady will be aware, employment tribunals made these recommendations only 19 times in 2012, and in fact employers often welcome them because they help to resolve many underlying issues that often lead to discrimination claims being made in the first place.

[Caroline Lucas]

That is a clear example of where the status quo is not causing a problem. The Government are looking for problems to solve where there are no problems, and instead are creating a whole lot more.

Affordable housing could be another casualty of this obsession with deregulation. Reducing the eligibility period for the right to buy could seriously undermine housing associations’ ability to provide affordable housing and make it more, not less, difficult for housing associations to do business, contrary to the Government’s own apparent aims. It would be interesting to hear what assessment the Minister has made of the impact on the Government’s ambition to deliver 165,000 affordable homes over the Parliament. Why did they not consult housing associations on the impact of the measure before bringing it forward?

On the environment, in May 2010 in the coalition agreement, the Government committed to encouraging community-owned renewable energy schemes, and that is being delivered with the launch of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s community energy strategy. However, the reduction of energy and climate change duties, set out in clause 28, appears specifically to contradict that commitment and undermine the recent statements supporting community energy made by Ministers.

On public participation in decision making, the Bill weakens the Government’s overall consultation duties by removing specified statutory duties to consult. The majority of the consultation requirements to be removed by the Bill relate to the environment and greatly reduce the participation rights of affected people, including regulators such as Natural England. Consultation is a core element of democratic government and serves as one of the main ways the Government can be held to account for their actions. It also contributes to increasing public trust in government and is essential for developing policy and legislation, because it provides access to wider sources of information, opinions, and potential issues and solutions. The Government risk undermining their legitimacy and triggering a public outcry by removing statutory consultation requirements. The statement in schedule 15 that the Government consider these statutory requirements to consult as unnecessary is neither satisfactory nor sufficient to justify that removal.

More specifically, the UK is a signatory to the Aarhus convention, which binds the UK to provide the public with, among other things, a right to participate in decision making in any proposed activity that might have a significant effect on the environment and/or during the preparation of plans and programmes relating to the environment. The removal of the requirement to consult on the exercise of various powers relating to the environment directly conflicts with the requirements of the Aarhus convention, which stems from principle 10 of the Rio declaration, which opens with the declaration:

“Environmental issues are best handled with participation of all concerned citizens, at the relevant level.”

The Government should justify the removal of each of the consultation requirements and confirm how the UK’s public participation obligation, pursuant to the convention, will be discharged.

We have already heard quite a bit about clause 47. I was going to say that hidden in the Bill was a provision seeking to repeal some of the journalistic protections in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 that currently ensure proper and fair judicial scrutiny before police applications to obtain journalistic material are granted. I am grateful for the fact that the Minister is attempting to reassure his own Back Benchers on this issue, but it worries me that only at the last moment, when the Bill has got to this stage, is he proposing further consultation on this important part of the Bill. That strikes me as odd, as many organisations have been extremely vocal in raising this issue over several months. The Newspaper Society, The Guardian and many others have warned about the impact of closed material proceedings and so on.

I am grateful that, at the last minute, the Government are looking again at this matter and saying they will consult again, but that raises questions about how many other parts of the Bill will have unintended consequences.

[Mr Letwin]

The hon. Lady is making a serious speech; I hope I can correct just one misapprehension on her part. Although it is perfectly true that the Newspaper Society and others raised this issue, from memory it was on Wednesday or Thursday last week. They had not done so when the Joint Committee was scrutinising the Bill, nor did they do so when the Bill left the Joint Committee and we responded to it; they did so only last Wednesday or Thursday. That is why I have said that some further consultation would make sense, in case anyone else out there has views who has not come forward during the whole six months or so of exposure of the draft.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the Minister for that clarification. That is not as I understood it, but I am pleased to be corrected if that is the case. Certainly the lobby that I have been aware of—which is perhaps looking at broader issues than the question we are currently discussing—has been going on for a long time, but I thank the Minister for his clarification.

My second main objection to the Bill is that, in a sense, it just feels like the latest manifestation of a Government embarking on an evidence-free deregulatory path without due consideration of warnings, including from business. Those warnings say that effective regulation is essential to create jobs and innovation, and that ripping up vital green legislation risks locking the UK into polluting industrial processes for decades to come, jeopardising future competitiveness, damaging the UK’s attractiveness for green investment and undermining new industries. Let us take, for example, the UK Green Building Council, which works daily with more than 400 companies and organisations, from the largest to the smallest, across the built environment industry. In response to the Prime Minister’s comment last week about deregulation, Paul King, its chief executive, said:

“The Prime Minister’s boasts of ‘slashing 80,000 pages’ of environmental guidance is utterly reprehensible. It is the same poisonous political rhetoric from Number 10, devaluing environmental regulation in a slash and burn manner. These words are not only damaging and irresponsible, but misrepresent the wishes of so many modern businesses, both large and small.”

[Andrew Bridgen]

Apart from that one, rather spurious example, can the hon. Lady give the names of other business organisations that are demanding more regulation in the UK?

[Caroline Lucas]

I certainly can. I could talk about the Aldersgate Group as one or the Prince of Wales business trust as another. There are plenty of business organisations out there that make it clear that appropriate regulation is helpful to them. What they want is clarity, which is the very opposite of what they have had from this Government, under whom rules have been changed almost overnight. I am thinking, for example, of the feed-in tariff change, when suddenly the rules were changed retrospectively, more or less overnight, causing huge confusion and complication for many companies.

What those companies want is a level playing field, and clarity and certainty into the future. They are happy to have clear, sensible regulation that applies to all; what they do not want is a Government who simply come out with more and more rhetoric and introduce rules retrospectively or at the last moment. Many businesses in my constituency are tearing their hair out about not being able to plan for the future, because they do not know what the Government’s latest response will be to the UK Independence party or whoever else they are trying to close off.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I ran a business for 22 years, and what small businesses knew under the last Labour Government was that, on average, every working day we would get six more regulations affecting our businesses. Does the hon. Lady think that was very welcome?

[Caroline Lucas]

I am not a spokesperson for the Labour party, but if the hon. Gentleman wants to ask that question of those on the Labour Front Bench, he is very welcome to do so. What I am talking about is my knowledge of small businesses, with which I spend a lot of time in my constituency. What they would love to see is a reduction in VAT or an extension of the threshold, so that more small businesses are caught by the business rate relief. There are all kinds of things that they would like to see, but they are not necessarily telling me about a huge burden of regulation of the kind that the Government think they are trying to solve.

An example of the positive role of regulation is the 2016 zero-carbon target. This set a destination in advance and precipitated a huge amount of innovation from businesses figuring out how to get there—new jobs, new industries and new export markets for UK businesses. Customers are increasingly interested in energy efficiency, and a new home will probably save them £800 on their annual energy bills. Builders have responded to a clear stepwise trajectory towards zero-carbon homes, with uplifts in regulations in 2006 and 2010, and again this year, en route to 2016, from when all new homes are meant to be zero-carbon. The costs of building low-carbon, efficient homes have tumbled—by half in the last two years alone, according to forthcoming research. That example highlights the fact that Government regulation, not deregulation, can be incredibly successful in driving innovation, keeping energy bills down, creating jobs and cutting carbon emissions.

Environmental regulation to manage building in flood-prone areas will protect people from the nightmares that we have witnessed on our TV screens, if not in our own living rooms, over recent weeks. There are plenty of examples of disastrous deregulation, too. The US car industry lobbied and funded both Democrats and Republicans to reduce regulation. The result was that it drove itself to bankruptcy, because it was out-competed by overseas manufacturers that developed more efficient cars to meet tougher regulations elsewhere.

The Government seem to be ignoring business representatives speaking out in favour of strong regulation. I have mentioned the Aldersgate Group a couple of times. In 2011, it warned that the drive to cut regulations on business could threaten the economic recovery. In a report launched here in the House of Commons, it stated that Government initiatives such as the red tape challenge that threaten “to rip up” vital green legislation would lock in polluting industrial processes for decades to come, jeopardise future competitiveness, and damage the UK’s attractiveness to green investors. It questioned whether measures such as one in, one out rule made sense, and would address pressing environmental challenges such as climate change. That is just one example of a market failure that requires more, not less, regulation to safeguard the environment and drive development in new industries.

The Aldersgate Group also highlighted the negative impact of putting sensible environmental regulations at risk with a consequent loss of business confidence. Peter Young, the group’s chairman, said:

“It is a myth that all businesses want less regulation. Effective green laws create a level playing field which drives efficiency, early action and the innovation in UK companies that will be the engine for future growth and jobs.

A crude deregulation drive risks damaging competitiveness and severely threatens the Prime Minister’s commitment to a green industrial revolution. The regulatory framework should encourage a rapid shift to a sustainable economy rather than being held back by vested interests or the lowest common denominator.

The Government’s ‘war on red tape' must not become a crusade that threatens regulatory outcomes such as protecting the environment. Even the threat of deregulation on the Climate Change Act and renewable energy support is massively eroding investment and making growth more difficult.”

There you have it, Madam Deputy Speaker. That is not just the Green party speaking; some of the captains of some of the biggest industries in the country are saying, very clearly, that the idea that all businesses hate all regulation is a myth and a travesty.

[Richard Fuller]

What does the hon. Lady think is the impact of deregulation on the interests of small business, as opposed to large business? She has talked about large businesses, but does she not think that deregulation particularly helps small businesses?

[Caroline Lucas]

I certainly think that some deregulation can help small businesses, and I also think that small businesses find it harder to deal with. What I object to is the fact that we are talking in vast generalisations. Let us instead talk about specific regulations. By and large—apart from, for instance, the clause about knitting yarn—the Bill contains none of the measures that small businesses in my constituency are crying out for. As I have said, what they would love to see are changes in the whole economic environment, such as the introduction of a higher threshold before business rate relief comes in. That would make a huge difference to them.

Let me now say something about the growth duty. I fear that it will interfere with, and impinge on, the ability of organisations to play crucial roles. The idea that growth must come before everything is a mantra and an ideological obsession, and it seems to me that an obsession with short-term GDP growth at any cost is simply not in the public interest. The Government’s justification for the growth duty has been inconsistent and incoherent. Regulators are already subject to a statutory duty to regulate proportionately, to be transparent and accountable, and to target activities only when that is necessary. That legislation is already there.

Ministers give assurances that the independence and effectiveness of organisations in carrying out their duties will not be undermined. A Government consultation paper states:

“Supporting growth and stripping back burdens are not sufficiently prioritised.”

However, it also states that

“the regulators would need to be able to demonstrate that they have considered the economic impact of their actions when making decisions”,

and that

“the duty is intended to be complementary to, and not override… existing duties.”

I do not understand why the new growth duty is necessary. As the consultation paper makes clear, regulations already exist, and we already know that the bodies concerned must take into account the impact of their proposals on the wider economy.

It seems to me that what we have here is yet another knee-jerk reaction. Growth must come before everything else—protecting workers’ rights, public health, equality, fair treatment, and the environment—and that, in my view, is a very negative approach.

17:54

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I am very happy to be contributing to the debate. It is a particular pleasure for me because I served on the Joint Committee, and, during that process, welcomed the contributions of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy and my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister without Portfolio.

I especially welcome the Bill’s proposal for a duty for growth. I think it fair to say that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has transformed Britain so that it is once more a nation that prides itself on trade, growth and entrepreneurship. Exports are up again, and businesses are growing and benefiting from the fiscal and regulatory changes on which the Government have rightly focused. It is about time that we repealed legislation that is no longer of any practical use, and started to recreate an even playing field for competition, business start-ups and entrepreneurship. That is why the Bill is so important.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) and the Ministers have pointed out, the Bill is one part of the Government’s ongoing deregulation agenda. It sits alongside the red tape challenge and what was formerly known as the one in, one out rule, which is well known in Government circles. I want to highlight some key aspects of the Bill, particularly those relating to business.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill will drive future jobs and growth, will be welcomed by small and medium-sized enterprises, supports apprenticeships, and will particularly help entrepreneurs and the self-employed?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As he has so succinctly put it, creating jobs and giving people employment are central to our long-term economic plan, and to a sustainable strengthening of our future economy. The Bill will not only help those who are employed, but will help people to secure employment, which is why deregulation is so essential.

[Richard Fuller]

I know that my hon. Friend is keen to move on to specific aspects of the Bill, but may I ask her a question before she does so? Those of us who believe in free markets and the power of entrepreneurs to achieve great change want the Government to do as much as they possibly can to get unnecessary regulation out of the way. Given her experience on the Committee that considered the draft legislation, can she assure the House that the Government have gone as far as they possibly could in this Bill to get rid of such regulation?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is right to ask that question. The Government have, of course, gone incredibly far. They inherited an appalling number of regulations from the last Government, and they are now doing exactly the right thing. They are making good progress, and setting the right direction of travel. We need to support them in that, because British business in particular depends on the changes that we are making in order to create the even playing field that will enhance our competitiveness in the world.

[David Rutley]

My hon. Friend is making a passionate appeal for common sense and entrepreneurial values. As someone who was a member of the Joint Committee, will she comment on the quality and strength of the proposals that were advanced by Opposition Members? Did they help the debate?

[Priti Patel]

I think that there is a correlation between what we have heard so far today and some of the Committee’s debates. The Committee was particularly well informed, because the draft Bill had been published some time earlier, and because we received many submissions, about which I shall say more shortly. What we have heard from Opposition Members this afternoon in decrying this Bill is a reminder to the House and the nation of their illiterate economic approach and why so much in the past has gone wrong in relation to regulation and lack of support for businesses in particular.

My support for this Bill is absolutely fundamental. It is about jobs, growth and deregulation. Over 80% of my constituents are employed by SMEs. These SMEs are the backbone not just of my local economy in Witham but obviously of Essex and the eastern region, which is a very sizeable net contributor to Her Majesty’s Treasury.

Those SMEs and my constituents who are employed by them welcome this Deregulation Bill because they know that it will transform the landscape for them when it comes to doing business, removing so many of the obstacles and burdens of red tape that have stifled them. My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) talked about the swamp of regulation. That is exactly it. We have to move on; we have to drain the swamp and get rid of the burden of regulation across every level that affects SMEs, whether that involves local authorities, county councils or health and safety bodies. These are the barriers we have to remove to enable businesses not just to thrive and grow, but to have that even playing field.

[Guy Opperman]

My hon. Friend is making a good point, which is that it is not just the businesses and small entrepreneur employers and the self-employed who will benefit from this Bill, but so too will public sector organisations, that will be freed up from deregulation they do not need so that they also can use the taxpayers’ money in a better way.

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is about how we can transform the way public bodies, including Whitehall, function. Our new growth duty is an important step in changing that mindset. This is a real message going out saying, “The status quo is not enough any more.” For us to be competitive as a country, we have to change our mindset across Government and Whitehall and also across all aspects of decision making, to help our businesses thrive.

[Richard Fuller]

I would like to bring my hon. Friend back to the general principles and look at the bodies that regulate. The last Government were so keen on establishing regulatory authorities, increasing the burden on business, and that did nothing to stop the increase in youth unemployment and nothing to stop this country racking up massive amounts of debt and the stagnation in wages. Is she sure that under this Government we can really get deregulating? Have we done enough to get rid of some of the bodies the last Government put in place, that stopped us growing as an economy and did not do anything to tackle some of the problems we inherited?

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point on public bodies in particular. In the public bodies legislation we went a long way to reshaping that landscape. I am sure there is more to do, however, and this Deregulation Bill is a highly positive and a very welcome start. I commend our colleagues on the Front Bench on everything they have done to champion this. As and when the Bill passes through the Bill Committee, we can do more to strengthen and enhance the ability to deregulate across Whitehall, too.

I mentioned that a vast number of my constituents are employed by SMEs. Interestingly, there is a diverse range of businesses in my constituency. Many of them come under the category of self-employment, but they too come across aspects of health and safety regulation in particular. Many of the businesses in my constituency are hugely supportive of scrapping the rules for self-employed workers, whose activities pose no harm, and of changing the landscape in that regard. They are being liberated now, so they are no longer saddled with this burden and are able to grow and move their businesses on.

[David Rutley]

Important points are being made in this debate. In Macclesfield we are very proud of our level of self-employment, particularly among women. Is it my hon. Friend’s experience that female entrepreneurs and small businesses run by women have expressed the same sentiments that she has been talking about, and that that cuts across the board for both male and female entrepreneurs? This makes a big difference in helping people to be empowered about deciding how they want to take their careers forward.

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Those of us who have worked in business are very aware that at the end of the day we want an even playing field. I hope Members will forgive me for saying again that Essex is the county of entrepreneurs; we lead the way. My hon. Friend is right that this is about the empowerment of the individual, and Government getting out of their way so that we liberalise enough to liberate them to move on and do the right thing.

I mentioned the improvements to health and safety regulations. This will show that less regulation does something very important, which makes for better regulation. We have to get rid of all the redundant stuff—the stuff that is causing the problems and the barriers—and have more effective regulation.

It is wrong for those who are opposed to changes in this area just to assume that we are making a change that is going to leave people vulnerable. This is about better and more sensible regulation. There are many measures in this Bill that seek to achieve that.

I mentioned the work the Government are doing through the red tape challenge. That is already making a big difference to businesses. It is saving in excess of £30 million per annum and it is expected to lead to more savings. My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield spoke about forums he has been involved in. I have spoken in many business forums over the past three years. For small businesses in particular one fact sticks out: under the last Government small businesses were saddled with red tape and regulation the burden of which was equivalent to £17 billion per annum. That is the cost of Crossrail. These are the types of costs and burdens we have to lift from small businesses, and this Government are going further than any British Government have gone in reducing the burden of regulation and cutting red tape. This is all about boosting business confidence and job creation in particular.

[Guy Opperman]

In terms of job creation, does my hon. Friend agree that the Bill specifically addresses young people and the need to have improved and more flexible apprenticeships? The proposals of the Richard review, which are implemented in this Bill, will offer a clear direction of travel that will produce greater skills and more jobs in the future.

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is right. There is rightly a focus on young people, but I come back to my point about small businesses: they are the first port of call for young people in the jobs market. Our schemes for apprenticeships are about making that connection and that link—about supporting both parties to come together in the right way and create jobs and prosperity. Clearly we want sustainable jobs that will benefit our local communities and economies.

I want to touch briefly on an emotive group of clauses: clauses 13 to 19 on the use of land. This topic came up when my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy opened the debate, and specifically the question of rights of way. This is a very sensitive area. It is right that this Bill provides a mechanism to allow landowners to extinguish redundant rights of way on their land where it is appropriate to do so. I have to say we received a great deal of evidence on this issue—that may even be an understatement, as we really did receive a lot of evidence. A lot of work is still taking place and dialogue is going on with the stakeholder working group. There is a long history here, with so many examples where local authorities and landowners have not been able to find the right kind of outcomes and resolutions. The Bill reduces the burdens on local authorities that arise from their having to consider many detailed applications for modifications. There are so many sensitivities and so many people and communities to please in different ways. This Bill has thus far approached this issue in the right way.

Clause 37 relates to education. We have spoken extensively today about business, jobs, growth and young people. Our young people start off in schools, and the clause rightly acknowledges that head teachers are the best placed to know what is right for their schools. We are empowering them not only to improve standards but to do the right thing in relation to teaching, to discipline and to having control of their budgets. We need to get rid of many of the over-zealous regulatory burdens that have hindered them in the past. Our schools are there for all the right reasons, to provide the necessary educational standards for our young people to leave school with good qualifications that will enable them to enter the employment market.

Serving on the Joint Committee was an education for me. It gave me great insight into the extent of the existing regulation in Whitehall, and into how easy it has been to create it. There has undoubtedly been a culture in which creating regulations and burdens seemed like the right thing to do, but this Government are now doing the right thing by deregulating in order to create more jobs and get more people into employment, which will build a stronger and more competitive economy.

18:10

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

Having sat on the Joint Committee on the draft Deregulation Bill, the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) has far more experience than me. The Bill proposes the abolition of many regulations, and it is important that the House should take a close look at all the evidence given to the Committee.

My stance is that sound regulation is essential for a well-functioning market economy, and that deregulation also has a place in those arrangements. I have no time for dinosaur-like regulations that have finished doing their job. For example, I am happy to see that clause 9 will get rid of regulations relating to the sale of knitting yarn. There are many more detailed regulations that should no longer be on the statute book, because they are not helping business or providing the level playing field that it needs. I do not want to see costly or unnecessary burdens on businesses. It is in all our interests to have regulations that are fit for purpose, that are properly enforced and that are properly understood by the general public and by those responsible for complying with them.

We also have to recognise, however, that regulation can be for the public good. The Bill contains a great deal of detail that needs to be understood. The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health has raised the matter of clause 8 with me, pointing out that if a consolidated list of authorised fuels is to be published, those fuels need to be registered under their original names rather than their brand names. That is one example of the detailed points that need to be examined, and I have no objection to that happening.

Many regulations have come about as a result of lengthy campaigns to get them on to the statute book, often by people who have been involved in some kind of dreadful catastrophe. Those people simply wanted to prevent what happened to them or their loved ones from happening to anyone else. Those regulations can involve important aspects of health and safety and of well-being. Clause 26 deals with the removal of the duty to order the re-hearing of marine accident investigations. The Government are proposing that the Secretary of State should simply have a discretionary power in this regard. They might think that that will be sufficient, but I ask them to consider the case of the MV Derbyshire. We should not forget how many years of campaigning it took for the hearing of that case to be reopened. We need to be careful before we press the delete button for certain regulations; we need to be very clear about what we are doing.

We need a coherent, long-term approach to regulation —in which some deregulation has a place—as a tool to frame policy that is consistent with our international commitments, but this Bill has insufficient regard to the Government’s avowed intention to be the “greenest Government ever”. The Cabinet Office is meant to be the all-knowing, all-seeing hub of joined-up, cross-cutting government, but there is no sense that it used an informed, evidence-based approach in building this latest bonfire of red tape. I say that with particular reference to the proposals for a duty to achieve economic growth.

My biggest objection to the Bill is the duty to achieve economic growth as set out in clauses 61 to 64. I was interested to hear what the Minister for Government Policy said earlier about that. He did not give the House any clear examples of any environmental appraisals that had taken place during the drafting of the Bill. The clauses appear to be a blatant attack on sustainable development, and they have nothing to do with deregulation. They are about something completely different.

I find it extraordinary that little weight has been given to the evidence that the Wildlife and Countryside Link group, and others, gave to the Joint Committee on which the hon. Member for Witham served. Insufficient regard seems to have been given to environmental appraisal throughout the clauses, and I wonder how the Government can square clause 61 with guidance from their own Natural Capital Committee. Did the Joint Committee take any evidence on that?

At the very least, an amendment should be tabled to the effect that the person exercising a regulatory function should consider the depreciation of natural and other forms of capital. The Bill should also replace the duty to achieve economic growth with a duty to achieve sustainable development. I am conscious of the fact that, when the Government got rid of the Sustainable Development Commission, they appointed the Cabinet Office as the hub for all the different green initiatives and charged it with responsibility for all those policies. I cannot see where that sits in relation to the Bill.

The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), who is also a Minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, told the Joint Committee:

“I want to stick to growth, pure and simple”.

Sustainable development is seen by the Government as a drag on growth and a regulatory burden. In the light of that analysis, I appreciate that anyone advocating the retention of an overall sustainable development duty by the Government could be regarded as persona non grata, but I want to explain why retaining such a duty is not a retrograde step and should be included in the Bill.

This nation signed up to Rio and to Agenda 21. After last year’s Rio conference on sustainable development, it signed up to the Rio principles. Indeed, our own Prime Minister is responsible for implementing the millennium development goals in a way that incorporates the sustainable development goals. That is an international commitment, and it was made in the cause of the betterment of future generations. It is universal and should be retained by any UK Government, and I believe that it should be referred to in the Bill.

Sustainable development is not an impediment to growth. It is an expression of a much richer and deeper growth; an affirmation of well-being, of social justice and of living within planetary guidelines for the sake of our children and their children. It is in line with powerful and persuasive advocates of placing human betterment and ecological resilience at the core of our human values and endeavours.

Despite what the coalition Government say, they cannot advocate sustainable development if they go ahead with pure economic growth without any reference to it. Sustainable development is a force for good, proclaiming values and outcomes for which people yearn. It reminds us of our place alongside nature so that we cannot inadvertently step on nature’s toes in the pursuit of immediate growth, leading to longer-term, costly and possibly irreparable ecological degradation.

A sustainable development duty would give light to such considerations. It would require us to consider the longer-term implications, for our offspring and for the effective nurturing of our planet, of what we are doing in the name of growth. There is no incompatibility between sensible and reliable growth and sustainable growth. Integration should be recognised as it encompasses social betterment as well as a sound ecological basis for all future growth.

I have two other points to make outside of clauses 61 and 65. The Bill proposes to remove the commitment to promote sustainable communities from general local government responsibilities and to reduce the requirement to consult generally over local government initiatives. We have already heard from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about the importance of consultation and the links with the Aarhus convention. The measure could lead to any proposal from local government being about only economic growth, ignoring environmental and social considerations. We agree to that at our peril, and I hope that it will be examined closely in Committee. The misfit in relation to sustainable development also appears in the proposal to lower or even to remove any obligation on local governments to cut down on carbon-based energy use and to reduce or to remove the scope of micro-generation. Those are valuable planks in the shoring up of the low-carbon future for local living, striking at the heart of the recent advice of the Committee on Climate Change.

The Environmental Audit Committee, in its report on carbon budgets, found that the Government’s voluntary approach to securing local emissions reductions was insufficient. We recommended that local authorities should set emissions reductions targets with progress reports to Ministers each year. Not surprisingly, the Government disagreed with that, but they did commission the Committee on Climate Change to provide advice. The CCC’s advice was to strengthen incentives for local authorities to act. It recommended that a statutory duty be placed on them to draw up low-carbon plans to include a high level of ambition for emissions reductions and increased funding to go with it. That advice has not been recognised.

In conclusion, the Government should reconsider their position on sustainable development in Committee. They should consider how, as it currently stands, the Bill will undermine regulators such as Natural England, and they should think again about how local councils can be supported to build sustainable commitments and reduce carbon emissions. I will leave it at that as my voice is just about to give way.

18:24

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), who chairs the Environmental Audit Committee of which I am a member. It is a great pleasure to operate under her chairmanship. None the less, I take issue with some of her comments about regulation, because of the issue of enforcement, which applies, for example, to our report on wildlife crime. It is a question not of more regulations but of better-quality regulations, which usually means fewer regulations. That is an area that we can continue to discuss in Committee.

This is a great Bill, so I will not support the reasoned amendment. If the Bill is successful, it will send out a signal that we will not tolerate regulation in excess. The Bill is important in the context of some of the other measures that the coalition has successfully passed. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy is right when he says that it is not the only thing that we have done. The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 deals well with regulatory change, because it reduces it in the main, and we can celebrate that. [Interruption.] I know that the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) will agree with me on that.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that European legislation comes into Whitehall and is embellished and made even more vigorous, adding to the red tape? Though a combination of going back to the European legislation in the first place, and abolishing much of the embellishment, we can free up our businesses to work in a more competitive manner.

[Neil Carmichael]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He puts his finger on one of the big problems that we have had for generations—since we joined the European Union—which is gold-plating. We must be bold enough to admit that and rigorous enough to remove it where it is inappropriate. People often misunderstand regulations from the European Union. We should be thinking about the spirit of them and not necessarily the precise detail.

The Bill proposes measures on purely domestic matters, which is not surprising because a huge amount of unnecessary legislation has stacked up over the years, as we can see if we look through the various clauses of the Bill. Before my hon. Friend intervened, I was trying to set out the case that the coalition Government have achieved a lot. I was going to move on to the abolition of quangos and so forth, because they too bear a huge burden of responsibility when it comes to excessive interference and regulation. We must not overlook that fact. I compliment the Government on the actions they have taken thus far to reduce the number and scope of quangos.

My second point relates to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel). On one matter she was precisely wrong: of course, Essex is not the only place where small businesses thrive. Gloucestershire is another place—more precisely Stroud valleys and vale. Wherever I go in my constituency, small businesses are concerned about the perceived or actual burden of regulation, so they need that succour that encourages them to think that there is a way through and a way forward. Many of the specific issues that I discuss with small and medium-sized businesses crop up in this Bill. I am not surprised that matters such as employment, health and safety and so forth are covered. I will say a few words about specific clauses shortly.

Of course we want to remove regulation where it should be removed, and we need to refine it where it should be refined; but some regulation is necessary and we must accept that. Anyone who looks at the disastrous decisions of the previous Government leading up to the banking crisis will know that good regulation of financial services is necessary. We should say so, and we should ensure that such regulations are effective and transparent and can evolve through time. Changing circumstances demand that, and that is another theme that runs through the Bill.

Let us take as an example a regulation that I have just discovered, which hampers the Secretary of State’s approval of the use of fuels for domestic burning. At a time when we are looking for more sources of energy and worrying about our supply of it, it is absurd to have such an unnecessary hurdle in the way of new technologies, however small. It seems to me that the first test of regulation should be that it can reflect changing technology and new innovations. The regulations on fuel and fireplaces need to be ripped up and I am glad that is part of the Bill. They illustrate an important point about regulations, which is that they can become far too restrictive.

I also came across another regulation that I had no idea existed. If someone wants to be a driving instructor and happens to be disabled, they have to go through a separate licensing system. There are two big problems with that. First, it is discriminatory, and, secondly, it is simply monstrously unnecessary. Why should that be a regulation? Obviously, it should not and it is absolutely right that the Bill will remove it.

Another classic has to be the regulation that prevents railway companies from extending rail beyond 25 miles. When was that regulation introduced? In the Transport Act 1968. Things have changed and we need to start to recognise that changes such as those we have seen in the rail industry must be dealt with commensurately through the removal of unnecessary regulations.

Another great regulation that is to be removed concerns the role of the Secretary of State for Education and the office of the chief executive of skills funding. It is quite right that that office should be removed because it is effectively an unnecessary quango that removes the transparency and accountability that there should be around the decisions of and issues to do with the Skills Funding Agency. It is right that we give more power to the Secretary of State and not have such a structure standing in the way of effective progress.

In my constituency I always talk about promoting apprenticeships, which MPs of all political complexions want to do. I have been asked how reimbursement takes place and have had meetings with businesses through colleges. One thing they want to know is whether their cash-flow situation will be eased if appropriate, so I certainly welcome the changes to apprenticeship schemes.

I will not go through all the regulations covered by the Bill, but I particularly salute the change to the growth duty. It makes huge sense to encourage all regulators—in fact, all agencies involved in government—to think hard about how their measures relate to economic growth, because that is our central requirement right now. Economic growth is coming along and various sectors, including manufacturing, are doing quite well but they do not want to be hampered by unnecessary interference and regulation. We need instead to have confidence in the people involved in such industries. If one theme runs through the Bill, it is that we should trust people. That is emblematic of various measures passed by the Government since 2010, and the Bill brings all that work together.

In conclusion, let me reinforce the point that the Bill is part of a wider story of our deregulating and improving delivery in government, often by standing back from various sectors. It is also about trusting people and ensuring that we give them a sense of accountability and transparency. We must do all that with a clear mind about what we want to achieve: a free economy that can thrive and develop while taking account of and benefiting from changes in technology, modern ways of doing things and so on. We cannot rely on the Transport Act 1968 and such measures indefinitely.

I welcome the Bill. This exercise is a little like cleaning out the attic every now and again; it should be done frequently, as we get clutter. It seems to me that such an exercise would be a good thing to do virtually every Parliament.

18:35

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

And so we move on from “Cash in the Attic”. I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, as although I was present for the beginning of the Minister’s introductory statement, I had to leave the Chamber to attend a sitting of a statutory instrument Committee, which went on for a fair period of time. I was going to speak about the point raised by the National Union of Journalists about the security of sources, but I believe it has been said that that will be reviewed by the Government, so it is clear that I am more effective out of the Chamber than I am in it. I wholeheartedly support my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) in her expressions of concern about the overall nature of the Bill and how deregulation in a range of areas will impact on key policies to which the Government have signed up, but from which they now seem to be resiling, especially regarding environmental protection and tackling climate change.

Let me run through the clauses that will require further clarification as the Bill makes progress and express some of my concerns. Clause 23 removes restrictions on the provision of passenger rail services by amending the Transport Act 1968, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), and permits the passenger transport executives, or PTEs, to carry rail passengers. That is a major step forward in devolving regional rail franchises, but there is a lack of clarity about the consequences for PTEs. Will they remain as local economic regulators or will they be equipped with sufficient funds to provide rail passenger services? It would be useful to receive clarity from the Department for Transport about how it views the future role of PTEs, as the clause calls that role into question.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) talked about the removal under clause 26 of the duty to order a rehearing of a marine accident investigation. The Merchant Shipping Act 1995 placed a duty on the Secretary of State to reopen marine accident investigations in the light of new evidence, but that duty will be abolished. My hon. Friend spoke about the MV Derbyshire tragedy in 1980, which led to a campaign being waged by many people, including families and trade unions across the piece—the National Union of Seamen, as it was at the time, Nautilus and the International Transport Workers Federation. It was a significant victory when then Secretary of State exercised his power to enable an investigation of that case to take place. It would therefore be a real concern if that power were removed from the Secretary of State, because the function is legitimate—

[Mr Letwin]

Just to correct the hon. Gentleman, nobody is removing a power; what is being removed is a duty. The fact that the Secretary of State has the power to order such inquiries is absolutely fine; the problem is that he has a duty to do so even in a case when he and everybody else knows perfectly well that there is absolutely nothing we can do as a result of the new evidence. The simple existence of new evidence will force an inquiry that costs millions of pounds, and that is all that we are trying to end.

[John McDonnell]

I welcome that clarification, but it would be helpful and reassuring if there were guidance about how the power will be exercised in the future. There is a concern that removing the duty will mean that the power will not necessarily be exercised without our again having to mobilise long-winded campaigns.

[Mr Letwin]

I will certainly talk to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, and we will find some means of ensuring that how the power will be used in the future is clear.

[John McDonnell]

I find that extremely helpful. I chair the RMT parliamentary group, and it would be really useful in discussions with the Department for Transport about this matter if there was full consultation with the unions concerned—the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, and Nautilus International—as well as the UK Chamber of Shipping and others, and especially some of those groups that have campaigned on investigations over the years. It is important that we assure people that if there is an accident—we all hope that there is not—there will be a proper investigation.

Clause 59 deals with ambulatory references to international shipping instruments. It amends the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 to enable the Government to update international shipping conventions without having to introduce secondary legislation. The Joint Committee expressed concern that that will undermine and bypass full parliamentary scrutiny. For example, there is concern in the shipping industry—it has been expressed by the UK Chamber of Shipping, as well as the Nautilus UK and RMT unions—regarding the international convention for the prevention of pollution from ships, under which changes to the sulphur emissions regime in Europe are due to come into effect in January 2015, with progressive measures continuing to the end of the decade. It would be unfortunate if something that had a major impact on the shipping industry did not receive full parliamentary scrutiny, as might be the case under the new procedures.

I share concerns that have been expressed about the provisions on the exercise of regulatory functions, and I say that on behalf of many people who work in the transport sector. We are told that consultations will take place over the coming months on which bodies will be covered, particularly regarding the Office of Rail Regulation, which was not included in the original list of bodies. Bodies that are included in relation to transport include the Office of Rail Regulation, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and traffic commissioners. There was a period in which market forces and economic concerns overrode safety concerns as a result of the early privatisation regimes, but we would not want to go back to the days when those economic concerns undermined safety, especially in industries such as rail and shipping. As the consultation is rolled out, I would welcome the Government ensuring that there is full consultation with all relevant bodies, particularly the unions, with experience of the period when safety was undermined, especially in the rail sector, so that that can inform the introduction of this aspect of the Bill. I hope that the Government will think again about the drafting of the proposal, because there are serious concerns about the conflicts that it will bring about between considerations of safety and of economic costs.

The Government should approach a number of the Bill’s proposals on education with trepidation, especially the devolution of school dates to individual schools. There is an understanding that parents want some certainty about school hours and holidays. With the devolution of such measures, near chaos could break out as individual schools determine their own dates and holidays. I caution the Government that parents may become anxious as the wider community becomes aware of these measures.

There are concerns—certainly among teachers—about schedule 14, which sets out proposals to reduce burdens on schools, including the removal of the obligation on employers of teachers in English maintained schools to have regard to statutory guidance relating to staffing matters such as the appointment, suspension, discipline and dismissal of teachers. There is concern that that may lead to the removal of the obligation on the Secretary of State to provide guidance on staffing matters, which might ultimately be a threat to school staffing regulations. If that is the case, schools will be concerned that they will have to take individual legal advice on staffing matters rather than adhering to what is relatively clear staff guidance and regulations from central Government. The Government must look at the consequences of such a broad-brush legislative proposal.

I am anxious about the removal of home-school agreements, which are good and are working on the ground. They were welcomed by the educational establishment and have general support, so I do not understand why the Government have provided in schedule 14 to remove the requirement on governing bodies to adopt such an a agreement.

As others have said, we all welcome the ability to remove unnecessary or archaic regulations, but the Bill is littered with proposals to remove regulations that are relevant, and their removal could have consequences beyond those calculated by the Government, including an impact on safety, which is the major concern that I have tried to express this evening.

18:46

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

May I begin by welcoming the Bill and commending my hon. Friends the Members for Macclesfield (David Rutley), for Witham (Priti Patel), and for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) for their excellent contributions to the debate? I believe that the Bill will act as another lever to encourage economic growth, and it builds on this Government’s record of scrapping obsolete legislation.

I have said before in the Chamber—and I will say it again—that the business of business is business, and the business of government is creating an environment in which business feels confident to grow, thrive and create jobs to create wealth and pay taxes that support our whole economy. The Bill is part of that.

Since the Government took office, some 800 regulations have been scrapped or improved, giving business a welcome lift, including, if you will excuse the pun, Mr Deputy Speaker, changes to working at height legislation. Indeed, there are 2,200 regulations in the Government’s sights for abolition or reform. It is estimated that when this work is completed—if it is ever completed, because regulation needs to be looked at all the time—these measures will save business £850 million a year, underlining the Government’s support for enterprise, entrepreneurs and job creators.

I should like to turn specifically to some of the economic growth clauses that have provoked the most interest, debate and discussion, including in the Chamber today, beginning with clause 1, which aims to take those who are self-employed and who pose no risk to others out of the scope of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. That could remove the unnecessary burden of health and safety regulations from 800,000 self-employed people.

[Mr Letwin]

To give my hon. Friend some good news, we think that the figure is rather more like 2 million.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for moving the goalposts in the right direction.

[David Rutley]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he share my view that deregulatory steps such as this will give more people the confidence to want to become entrepreneurs, and to take on their first employees. Those are the aspirations that we need to support. Does he think that the Bill will help us to move in that direction?

[Andrew Bridgen]

I certainly do. Having been a business owner under the previous Government, and representing businesses as a regional chairman for the Institute of Directors, I know that the thought of ever more regulation is in the psyche of business people. The Bill is totemic—in fact what the Government are doing is totemic—not only in stemming the tide of regulation but in giving a commitment to reduce the burden of regulation over the term of this Parliament. That will take a lot of believing by the business community, and we need to reinforce that message. It will give confidence not only to people who have businesses but people who would not even consider starting up a business. There is no doubt that when people who work in a business see the pressure that the regulatory burden places on those who run it, they are dissuaded from going it alone and starting their own business. We want to reverse that situation.

Recommending the removal of the self-employed from health and safety law originated under the review ably chaired by Professor Ragnar Löfstedt, on which I served as a member of the advisory panel with the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller), Sir John Armitt, Dr Adam Marshall of the British Chambers of Commerce, and Sarah Veale, who was later replaced by Liz Snape, representing the TUC. The proposed change is based on the approach taken in a number of other European Union member states, including Germany, where legislation on health and safety at work applies only to employed workers; France, where, as a general rule, the provisions do not apply to the self-employed or to employers themselves, except when they are directly carrying out an activity on a site; and Italy, where the health and safety at work regulations do not apply at all to the self-employed. Clause 1 is nothing new in a Europe-wide sense as regards health and safety.

When the clause was scrutinised by the Joint Committee, on which I also served, with my hon. Friend the Member for Witham, a number of stakeholders raised concerns that the recommendation might lead to the self-employed in risky occupations such as construction being taken outside health and safety law. I can assure the House that Professor Löfstedt has made it clear that that was never, and is not, the intention of the proposal. The clause has the support of the Federation of Small Businesses, which believes that it will help with the perception of health and safety law. I fundamentally disagree with the groups who are arguing that this change will cause confusion, because asking the self-employed, “Does your work activity pose potential risk of harm to others?”, is not too taxing a question. As I said, major economies in the European Union seem to manage perfectly well without this unnecessary regulation. It is also worth noting that it could well save small businesses not only an enormous amount of time but an estimated £300,000 a year.

Clause 2 curtails an employment tribunal’s powers to make wider recommendations. This is another needless regulation. Its discontinuation is supported by business groups, as best summed up by the British Chambers of Commerce, which stated that the measure currently in place extends tribunals’ jurisdiction beyond the

“time, information and expertise of the panel”.

I fully agree with that view. The regulation is unnecessary because it serves only to create fears among employers about inappropriate or excessive recommendations. I therefore welcome this move to abolish it.

Clauses 58 and 59 imposes on regulators the economic growth duty—a new duty that requires them to have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth when exercising their regulatory function. This is a welcome move, as all sectors that are in a position to do so should do what they can to contribute to and complement economic growth. The clauses have received a positive reaction from business groups and many of the regulators themselves, with the British Chambers of Commerce stating that the duty could

“help establish more constructive relationships between business and regulators”.

The Institute of Directors said that it could be helpful in serving as a catalyst for regulators to consider the costs and the benefits when developing new policies. I believe that there needs to be a new and dynamic—a symbiotic—relationship between business and the regulator rather than the historical one that has too often tended to be adversarial, and these clauses will help to achieve that. It is also encouraging that the measure is being positively embraced by many regulators such as the Security Industry Authority, which stated that it recognises the importance of economic growth and supports efforts to encourage it. These regulators are funded to the tune of £4 billion a year, and they need to make their contribution to economic growth if we are to compete on an international level against countries with far fewer regulations and regulators than the UK.

I recognise that the measure has not been universally welcomed, with opposition from, among others, the TUC, which described the duty as “a very odd concept”—but then it often appears that the TUC and its paid mouthpiece the Labour party view free market capitalism as a very odd concept, as underlined by some recent policy announcements. I find that view rather disappointing.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

More for the sake of accuracy than anything else, may I point out that the TUC is not affiliated to the Labour party? Individual unions, some of which are so affiliated, do indeed politically and financially support the Labour party. The hon. Gentleman should be accurate in his abuse.

[Andrew Bridgen]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I always try to be accurate in my abuse, as he well knows.

Business is always looking for help to comply rather than pure enforcement from regulators, and giving regulators a complementary economic duty should not undermine their primary regulating function. A number of regulators, such as Ofsted, have made it clear to the Minister that without a duty to consider growth, it is not something they would consider. I hope that the new head of Ofsted, when appointed, will embrace that concept. This demonstrates the importance of getting the duty on to the statue book to empower our regulators. I believe that it will lead to less burdensome and better regulation for business in future.

My hon. Friend the Member for Witham mentioned the use-of-land provisions in clauses 13 to 19. This aspect of the Bill has received a lot of attention, particularly in relation to rights of way and proposed changes to the designation of public footpaths. I am sure that all right hon. and hon. Members will be aware of how emotive and protracted disputes over rights of way and public footpaths can be. Definitive maps and statements setting out recorded public rights of way have never been completed despite work on this being done for well over 50 years. The changes proposed in the Bill will harness and streamline expertise by devolving decisions on public rights of way to a local level. I understand that there have been positive responses to the proposal, with the chief executive of Ramblers, Benedict Southworth, commenting:

“The proposed legislation has been carefully put together by representatives from landowners, paths users and local government—including ourselves and the NFU—who have worked together for over three years to simplify the law around rights of way for the benefit of everyone.”

We should all applaud that. This proposal will have a positive economic impact, as it will cut the time for recording a right of way by several years and save, it is hoped, almost £20 million a year by cutting needless bureaucracy. It is also worth noting that visitors to England’s outdoors spent £21 billion last year—a significant contribution to our economy—including in my constituency, where we have many well-used public footpaths as well as the heart of the new national forest.

Overall, the Bill builds on this Government’s achievements in cutting through needless red tape that has been allowed to build up on the statue book over many years. The previous Government used regulation as a first response rather than a last resort. As we have heard, they presided over the creation of 1,500 new working regulations a year for each of their 13 years in office, or six new regulations every working day. That was a burden that fell on and hindered individuals and businesses. By contrast, this Government have committed to freeing British business of the needless bureaucracy that damages our international economic competiveness, hinders millions of individuals in their daily lives, and reduces the efficiency of our public bodies and services. This Government are committed to reducing the regulatory burden on business by 2015, compared with the target of 2010 that we inherited, and this Bill is another important part of the delivery of that pledge.

18:58

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

I am glad to have the opportunity to say a few words in this debate. It is obviously right for Governments periodically to review regulation, not just once a Parliament, as the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) said, but on a continuing basis. Having served for a number of years on the Regulatory Reform Committee during the Labour Government’s period in office, I know that we did a lot to try to simplify regulations in many ways.

Certainly, there is no objection in principle to the idea of a Bill that, every now and then, seeks to remove the regulatory burdens that can build up. One of the criticisms of this Bill is that many of the proposed measures are so minimal in their impact that one wonders why they could not have been brought forward years ago. I find it hard to believe that it has taken the great minds of the Department almost four years under a Conservative Government to work on the measure relating to the sale of yarn and other similar, relatively minor measures. One would think that this Government, who are so stated in their commitment to abolishing unnecessary regulation, could have done that at an earlier stage, even though such measures are welcome.

Some measures are to be welcomed. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) has mentioned the measure relating to rights of way. They do not apply to my constituents—it is a devolved issue—but from what he has said it sounds like a sensible measure that should be enacted, as I am sure it will be.

The Bill also proposes to repeal those sections of the Digital Economy Act 2010 that allow courts the power to order internet service providers to block access to websites that infringe copyright. I understand that those sections have never been used. Many Members made very strong arguments against them at the time, because they felt they were unnecessary, but we were told they were important. I confess that I was one of the Back Benchers who rebelled against the measures and did not support them, and now, four years later, we find out that they were not necessary in the first place. Clearly, it is right to repeal them and perhaps that highlights the need closely and thoroughly to scrutinise Bills.

That highlights one of the problems with the way in which the Government have described this Bill, because those measures have never been used and are, therefore, not a burden on business. Business is not having to spend lots of money to address the measures, because they have never been applied to anyone. That is also true of other measures in the Bill. I accept, however, that the possibility of a measure being taken against a business might jeopardise its activities, so it is a good thing to address that.

Questions have to be asked about other measures and I hope the Minister will address them either when he replies to the debate or at a later stage. I was interested to hear my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) raise the issue—I had not appreciated this fully—of the proposals relating to international marine agreements. I have served on the Environmental Audit Committee for some time and we have had a few major discussions about the international marine and maritime agreements, some of which are very important. As my hon. Friend said, both the trade unions and the shipping industry have concerns about the effect some of the measures will have on shipping interests, so it is important that we scrutinise them properly. I may have misunderstood the full import of those provisions; if so, but I have no doubt that the Minister will clarify them.

[Mr Letwin]

In the light of the comments made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), which made me look again at clause 59 to see whether my memory was in any way mistaken, I think it would be helpful to give some clarification. Neither the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) nor the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington is correctly informed: the Bill does not in any way diminish the ability of Parliament to scrutinise the measures. It enables the Minister to make ambulatory references to international law through a statutory instrument. It would then be perfectly open to Parliament to debate that statutory instrument and come to the view that it should be drafted otherwise.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that helpful clarification.

Another question arises from a letter sent by the Law Society of Scotland to every Scottish MP. Perhaps the Minister will address its two particular concerns either now or in Committee. First, on clauses 10 to 12, it is

“concerned about partial authorisation of insolvency practitioners.”

It points out that, in Scotland,

“significant parts of the corporate insolvency”

regime

“are linked to bankruptcy legislation”,

and its view is that the proposed regime of

“partial authorisation as an insolvency practitioner will not be effective in Scotland because of the linkage between company insolvency and bankruptcy law.”

I have no doubt that that point can be pursued in future.

Secondly, the Law Society of Scotland is concerned about clause 44 on the repeal of the duty of the senior president of tribunals to report on the standards of decision making. This is another measure where it is hard to see how it can be a major burden on business. The only burden is the duty on the senior president to make a report, which a Minister can then presumably choose to act on.

I note with some concern, given my own involvement in it, the provisions that would repeal certain sections of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006, which, the Minister may recall, I promoted as a private Member’s Bill. Indeed, he and I co-operated on many aspects of it. Perhaps I should at this point declare an interest as an unpaid board member of the Edinburgh community energy co-operative. The Act has a number of measures to promote sustainable and renewable energy and action on and awareness of climate change. I fully accept that many of the Act’s measures have been taken on board elsewhere since it was enacted, including by the Climate Change Act 2008. However, not all of the 2006 Act’s provisions have been taken on board elsewhere, so I would be concerned to see them removed to the extent proposed by the Bill.

My final comments relate to the implications of the duty in clauses 61 to 64 to take account of the

“desirability of promoting economic growth.”

As Opposition Members have said, we support the general desirability of promoting economic growth. Indeed, as the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) pointed out, regulators are already expected to take such concerns into account. They do not usually produce regulations without any wider consultation or discussions. They have processes whereby they seek comments from business, among others, and we can be pretty certain that, when business feels that a regulation is damaging economic growth, it will say so. I find it hard to understand how this proposal will have anything other than damaging consequences.

[Mr Letwin]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making a characteristically thoughtful contribution. It seems to me that his structural argument—and, indeed, that of other Opposition Members, including the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, who have made serious contributions on the subject of clause 61—ignores the fact that, at the moment, regulators do not have that duty, and the result is that they would be failing in their duties if they were to pay specific attention to economic growth, even in the way the clause requires, which is as a balance to their other duties. For example, the Environment Agency, which always has to attend to environmental considerations, is positively not allowed to pay attention to growth duties.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

The Minister makes a constructive point and perhaps it can be pursued and tightened up in Committee. My concern is that the real purpose of the clause is to say that economic objectives should trump other objectives and that they should take precedence over sustainable development objectives and, as my hon. Friend the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee has said, health and safety objectives and, indeed, equality objectives. The proposal is also of concern to other Members and is at variance with our cross-party commitments to prioritise sustainable development and recognise the requirement of public bodies—this had cross-party agreement just a few months ago—to have an equality duty.

[Joan Walley]

Will my hon. Friend tempt the Minister to respond to him again to put the whole issue of sustainable development on the record? If there was a duty for sustainable development, that would balance the economic, the social and the environmental, and there would be no need for the new duty for economic growth.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and if the Minister wishes to intervene to clarify the issue, I am happy to let him do so.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. May I help a little? If we are to have interventions, could they be a little shorter, because some of them are almost turning into speeches?

[Mr Letwin]

I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker. I accept this is a slightly odd way to conduct a debate, but it seems to me to be productive, so bear with us.

There could of course be a general duty to have regard to sustainable development instead of all the duties on all the regulators—we could say that we do not need any other duties—but all the other regulators have lots of other duties, and by introducing economic growth not as an override but as a balancing consideration, that precisely induces them to consider the totality, namely sustainable development.

[Mark Lazarowicz]

I am grateful to the Minister for his comments, and I welcome his commitment to a balancing duty, with all duties being taken into account in decision making. I am not sure whether the Bill will have such an effect if it becomes law, but that point can no doubt be pursued through amendments in Committee and on Report, if necessary.

It is important not to forget or lose sight of the fact that although it is important to take into account the economic growth imperative, the other concerns that I and my colleagues have raised must also be kept in the balance. Notwithstanding the Minister’s assurances, which I am sure are genuine, I remain concerned that the effect of the Bill, as now proposed, will be to put other objectives lower in the pecking order of decision making than the requirement to consider the needs of economic growth, and I certainly hope that those points can be teased out and clarified at a later stage in the Bill’s progress.

19:09

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

I was on the Joint—or pre-legislative scrutiny—Committee, and it was quite evident that there has been a lack of consultation with the people who will be involved in the Bill’s multitude of changes to regulations.

The Committee wondered whether there would be much opposition to the Bill as a whole and whether it would go through Parliament without any difficulties. When we look at the variety and the wide range of what the clauses are about, we can see that the Bill may contain problems. It moves from health and safety to driving instructors, and from sellers of knitting yarn—nearly every speaker has mentioned them—to child trust fund transfers. It is a mishmash of clauses about regulations, but the reality is that each one is important to somebody: each of these pieces of legislation is there for some reason.

The Minister for Government Policy made light of the Bill, which I am not sure is right, because it embodies plenty of important issues. The Bill is a package of measures, so for it to get the consent of the House, there need to be big changes. He mentioned Charlie Chaplin and children’s liqueur chocolates, for example, but we have concerns about safety and health, and others that I will come on to. I have grave concerns about clause 1 on “Health and safety at work: general duty of self-employed persons”, and clause 2 on the “Removal of employment tribunals’ power to make wider recommendations”, as well as clauses 61 to 64 on the “Exercise of regulatory functions”.

Clause 1 is a particular concern, because it serves no purpose other than to confuse. The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) said quite the opposite, but we are entitled to take different views. That is the sort of thing that the Bill will invoke. The clause will take those self-employed who pose no risk to others out of the scope of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 by restricting its coverage to a self-employed person

“who conducts an undertaking of a prescribed description”.

At this point, we are not even sure what the prescribed descriptions will be. They will be determined by the Secretary of State in regulations. The clause is therefore problematic because we are not sure what the regulations will say or mean.

[Mr Letwin]

Just to clarify, we have almost completed discussing that matter, and by the time the Bill is considered in Committee, we will have brought forward the full descriptions of the activities that are exempt.

[Ian Lavery]

It is good news that, at least in Committee, people will have a much clearer understanding of the descriptions.

It is not fair to say that there is no problem in relation to the safety and health of self-employed people. Fatality rates among self-employed people are 1.1 per 100,000, as opposed to 0.4 per 100,000 for employees. It is important to recognise and listen to what experts are saying. In opposing the clause, Richard Jones, the head of public affairs and policy at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health—it is hardly a revolutionary organisation —said:

“IOSH fully supports the simplification of legislation and guidance, but is against lowering of standards that could lead to more accidents and deaths. As we have made clear to Government, we think it would be unhelpful, unnecessary and unwise to exempt certain self-employed from health and safety law, as the Government is proposing—causing more of a hindrance than a help. Health and safety is often misunderstood and wrongly labelled as a barrier to business—whereas in fact, it sustains business growth and success. The Government needs to promote this message, provide health and safety support for SMEs and debunk the misperceptions.”

The Prime Minister has made it clear to bodies such as the Federation of Small Businesses that he will continue to champion deregulation as a public service to small businesses. However, if clause 1 is agreed to, it might exempt 1 million people from health and safety law. Health and safety failures in the UK cost billions per year.

At present, the self-employed have a legal duty to ensure that they protect others from harm resulting from their work activity. There is no confusion: everyone is very clear that no one, even the self-employed, can take risks with the safety or health of others. That is the situation as it stands. At present, the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act can be used only when a person puts another person at risk. If someone is injured through their work, regardless of what they previously believed, the Act will apply. No self-employed person has ever been prosecuted or threatened with prosecution for risking only their own health. However, the Act means that the Health and Safety Executive has been able to give them guidance on how they can protect their own safety. Despite the Bill, every self-employed person will still have to do risk assessments to see whether their work poses a risk to others. If there is no risk, there is not a problem, which is just the same as it is now.

That situation will not change, but what will change is the confusion and complacency that the Bill will introduce. Self-employed people will be unsure whether they are covered, or they may assume that they are not covered if they are not on the list of prescribed occupations or sectors, even assuming that they are fully aware of the list. Worse still, people who control workplaces for the self-employed will wrongly think that they do not have a duty of care to them. Self-employed people who employ others may interpret the provision to mean that they are exempt from the law. Given that the most dangerous industries—agriculture and construction, for example—contain a high proportion of self-employed people, anything that confuses the situation is a recipe for disaster. The Bill states that it will reduce the

“burdens resulting from legislation for businesses or other organisations or for individuals”.

In fact, it will do the opposite. It will not change the situation for those who genuinely do not pose a risk to others, but will create complete confusion for all other self-employed people.

Clause 2 removes the power of employment tribunals to make wider recommendations to employers who are found to have discriminated unlawfully. The Labour party totally opposes that clause. Before the introduction of the Equality Act 2010, a tribunal could only provide a remedy to successful claimants and could not recommend that an employer address the root causes of the discrimination. In almost three quarters of cases, the victim leaves the workplace. The tribunal was unable to ask an employer to change its policies, its practices or a culture that would be likely to lead to further discrimination.

The Government want to repeal the provision that allows tribunals to make wider recommendations because of employers’ fears about inappropriate or excessive recommendations. However, there is no credible evidence to support that argument. In 2012, there were 19 cases in which tribunals issued wider recommendations, according to a recent study that was published in the Equality Opportunities Review. In 15 cases, the recommendation was for training on equality and diversity. In seven cases, respondents were asked to address equality issues generally or to review policies. Such recommendations are made by a tribunal judge and two lay members, including one who represents business. After considering all the evidence at the full hearing, they make proportionate and reasonable suggestions to address the serious cases of discrimination.

Clauses 61 to 64 have been discussed widely by Members on both sides of the House. They are of great concern to Labour Members. They will impose a new duty on some bodies to have regard, in exercising their regulatory functions, to the desirability of promoting economic growth. It is, of course, important that regulators do not set out to impede economic growth. However, having a statutory duty that obliges them to have regard to economic growth in the exercise of their functions, with no clarity as to how it might operate, will potentially interfere with their ability to perform their statutory duties. There is a danger that those who are regulated will attempt to use the new duty to override the actions of the regulator. For example, a business could argue that requiring a particular process to be undertaken before it conducts a certain activity would prevent it from making a profit and thus reduce its ability to grow. On the other hand, not conducting such a process could lead to an accident or to an employee becoming ill. Which of the competing duties would prevail and who would make that decision?

On education, paragraph 1 of schedule 14 removes the requirement on governing bodies in England to ensure that policies that are designed to promote good behaviour among pupils are pursued at their school. Surely it is a mistake to remove that requirement. In the past few days, the Secretary of State for Education has stated that discipline is lacking in schools, and has said what teachers, head teachers and governing bodies should do to instil more discipline. However, under the Bill, behaviour policies may be watered down or removed. Effective pupil behaviour policies are made through collaboration between the head teacher, the governors and the teaching staff. Ofsted is inspecting pupil behaviour more closely than ever before.

Paragraph 3 of schedule 14 transfers the responsibility for determining school term dates from local authorities in England to governing bodies. Teachers and parents share concerns about letting schools decide on their own terms and holidays. The National Union of Teachers commissioned YouGov to survey teachers in 2013. The vast majority of teachers—80%—said that it was important that schools maintained similar term dates. There are also concerns about the statutory guidance on staffing matters in schools.

Before I conclude, I want to mention a number of other clauses that cause me great concern. Clause 23 will remove restrictions on the provision of passenger rail services. Clause 26 will remove the duty to order the rehearing of marine accident investigations. Clause 59 relates to ambulatory references to international shipping instruments. I am concerned about those clauses among many others.

In Committee, consideration needs to be given to a raft of serious and detailed issues, especially safety and health. This is a mixed bag of a Bill. It is hard to support it in its present state because of the variety of deregulatory measures that it contains. Some of them are simple, but some of them are very significant.

19:26

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

I rise to speak in support of the amendment that appears in my name and the names of the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell). I was delighted that the Minister referred to it as an amendment of the far left in this Parliament. If that is the case, I am probably nicely in the political centre in my home community of Carmarthenshire. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion spoke passionately and convincingly about the many pernicious and insidious aspects of the Bill that reflect the Government’s true intentions.

I am glad that the Joint Committee that carried out the pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill criticised the enabling clause heavily. It would have allowed Ministers to scrap regulations by order, as they saw fit. That clause has been removed by the Government, or at least substantially amended. As originally conceived, it would have set a worrying precedent. It was reminiscent of the Henry VIII clause that was originally proposed in the Public Bodies Bill in 2011, which would have allowed the Government to abolish public bodies. At least the Government had the good sense to drop that proposal in the end.

Why do the Government need to do away with these regulations? The origins of the Bill are rooted in the perceived need to do away with red tape that was supposedly holding back economic growth in the dark days of 2011, 2012 and early 2013. However, what was holding back economic growth was not the bogeyman of small but important pieces of regulation and protection, but a dramatic slashing of capital investment, which had the effect of stagnating and even shrinking the economy at a time when the Government should have been stimulating the economy fiscally, rather than simply monetarily. That was the reason for the prolonged nature of the great recession, the massive drop in living standards, and the dashed hopes and dreams of millions. Unemployment rose and companies folded because of a lack of business and a lack of funds as the banks, propped up by the Government, failed to lend.

For many parts of the British state, the economy is not recovering. The Government point to UK GDP figures, but conveniently ignore the fact that growth is concentrated in London and the south-east of England. In my part of the world in west Wales, the latest gross value added statistics showed that the economy had shrunk by 4%. Although Wales as a whole is slowly beginning to turn the corner, we have been massively handicapped over the past five years by reductions in wages in real terms and decreased economic activity, and we have not benefited from the significant capital injection that London has seen in projects such as the Olympics and Crossrail. To suggest that red tape was holding back the Welsh economy is to tilt at windmills.

Before the Government get too carried away and announce the end of boom and bust, as the last Labour Government did, or the end of the struggle endured by ordinary people and the end of the squeeze on living standards, they should take note of the upcoming green budget 2014 by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. It warns that

“there is little reason to expect a strong recovery in living standards over the next few years…it seems highly unlikely that living standards will recover their pre-crisis levels by 2015-16.”

Desperately needing to appear to be doing something, the Government announced a deeply serious investigation to discover what was holding the economy back, pledging to cut any red tape. Finally, that allowed Ministers and the Government to hold it up and shout, “Eureka! Here is the lost formula for economic growth and business investment.” I do not need to remind Members that business investment and lending across the British state is at pathetic levels, even though the Government now rejoice in forecasts for economic growth. Business investment in the UK as a share of GDP is among the worst in the world.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion spoke about several aspects of the Bill but focused on the scrapping of environmental regulations that apply in England. Thankfully, much of the Bill will not apply in Wales, as the National Assembly for Wales is sovereign in those and other areas. However, some of the more pernicious aspects of the Bill certainly do apply to Wales. The Bill is so far-ranging and a real hotch-potch of ideas—some bad, some made and some just plain ugly—but I will focus on just some aspects, particularly those relating to health and safety, employment tribunals, civil liberties, housing and the scrapping of energy and climate change obligations.

The removal of employment tribunals’ power to make wider recommendations is insidious. It follows in the same vein as earlier plans by the Government, such as the proposal to make it easier to fire employees, as recommended by the Beecroft report, and the Chancellor’s plan to allow companies to offer shares in return for workers giving up their employment rights. It also follows the halving of the consultation period before large-scale redundancies can take place, the introduction of fees for workers bringing employment tribunal claims, and proposals for a lower cap on unfair dismissal awards.

The removal of an employment tribunal’s power to make wider recommendations typifies the Bill’s ideological nature. The Government are seeking to chip away further at workers’ rights, and the Bill reflects that attitude and those prejudices. Many Government Members are still chasing shadows, believing that they are fighting the battles of their ideological heroes of the ’70s and ’80s, but the trade unions are not the potent forces of yesteryear, because successive Governments, both Labour and Tory, have emasculated them.

I welcomed the announcement made on the Floor of the House this afternoon on clause 47, which threatened to introduce rules for secret hearings should the police wish to seize journalists’ notebooks, photographs or digital files. Applications, or “production orders”, must currently be made in open court. That change would have represented a worrying and sinister development in the near-continuous eroding of civil liberties under the Labour Government and the coalition.

Clause 28 represents yet another nail in the coffin of the Government’s claim to be the greenest ever. Whatever happened to “Vote blue, go green”? The removal of the requirement for the Secretary of State to set a target for microgeneration follows the fiasco over the sudden reduction in feed-in tariffs. I need not remind anyone of the Prime Minister’s recent reported comment that he wanted—I hope that you will forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker—to cut all the green C-R-A-P.

The changes to health and safety in the Bill have already been heavily criticised by the TUC, which noted that the plans to exempt the self-employed fail to take into account the fact that the fatality rate among that group is far higher. It is important that all workers are protected. Any attempt to chip away at health and safety legislation, even if just for a particular group, represents a threat to the safety of all workers.

Although plans to speed up the right to buy do not apply in Wales, I believe that the move is symptomatic of the Government’s return to the Tory and Labour boom-and-bust model of growth based on rising house prices and personal debt—the British disease, as I call it. It does nothing to address the need for housing where there is high demand and will not bring about an increase in social housing provision. How does something like that affect Wales, Members might ask, as the clause does not apply there? When the boom-and-bust model hits bust and there is another housing crash in England, that will affect the whole economy of the British state.

I look forward to questioning the Government Ministers responsible for the later stages of the Bill’s progress on the consequences and impacts of some of its other clauses and provisions.

19:34

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

For this flagship Government Bill, one wonders where all the Tories have gone. They seem rather reluctant to participate in the debate, whereas on these Benches—[Interruption.] Fine dialogue on modernising the structure of the Labour party might well be going on elsewhere. Colleagues have rightly seen that the mishmash of junk that has been presented as the Deregulation Bill is virtually worthless—so much so that it does not even warrant attendance.

The Bill should be called the Deregulation (of previous Tory laws) Bill. The Minister who opened the debate, despite being such a learned man, suggested that it was undoing the ills of previous Labour Governments, but the truth is rather different. The following clauses remove previous Tory legislation: clauses 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 36, 46, 47, 49, 50, 53, 57, 59 and 60—virtually the entire Bill. The same is true of the detail, as schedules 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16 and 17 remove previous Tory legislation. I am therefore in favour of some of those changes—although not all—because they relate to irrelevant legislation that should never have been on the statute book in the first place. Redundant and irrelevant Tory legislation is rightly being removed, although of course, being the Tory party, they have to throw in half the legislation on health and safety.

[Neil Carmichael]

I have not had time to flick through every clause in the Bill, but who was in power in 2004 when the regulations on the management of child trust funds were introduced, and who was in power in 2003—this is a choice example—when we were legislating on the provision of late-night refreshment?

[John Mann]

As the hon. Gentleman said, he has not had time to read the Bill, which is why I itemised, for the record, every clause and schedule that removes Tory legislation. In fact, around 80% of the legislation being removed is Tory legislation. Indeed, when the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), responds, he will doubtless wish to outline which bits he introduced in his various ministerial guises. Given his ministerial longevity, there will undoubtedly be several regulations that he was personally responsible for but now wishes to remove, and we on the Opposition Benches might wish to back him on that.

However, the Minister for Government Policy, a highly educated and learned gentleman, did not, when receiving his challenge on self-employment and safety, know what he was talking about. I cited, in relation to clause 1, what would happen with a self-employed mountain guide. He immediately jumped in to assist his hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), who was struggling, because he knew that I was right and that the clause represents an undoing of the self-employed mountain guide’s employment position. There is a critical flaw in the logic of the Bill. Mountain guides require insurance, and to get it they need to demonstrate that there is a health and safety profile, and that is relevant for those who employ self-employed mountain guides who take people out on ropes. By the way, I personally managed to negotiate, on behalf of the all-party group on mountaineering, exemption from the working at heights directive anomalies that affected that profession, demonstrating that the way the industry works meant it was not safe to put that application into place. I am not, therefore, on the side of unnecessary regulation, but the protection of the employment position of those self-employed people is fundamental.

A better-known example, the single biggest civil litigation case brought by a group of workers against a Government, demonstrates the issue more brutally. That common-law action brought by workers in the mining industry, for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and Vibration White Finger, cost the Government a huge amount of money, because the people involved were employed primarily by the Government, so it was a taxpayer liability, although there were some private companies. The civil action was successful because the litigators had demonstrated that appropriate practices and procedures were not in place. If there had been proper regulation of the mining industry at the time, the cost to the health of the men forced to bring the case would have been hugely reduced, as would the financial cost to the taxpayer and other employers, which went into many billions.

That is the point of good regulation. A good health and safety procedure—for example on use of breathing equipment in a colliery or the handling of vibrating tools—would have been a mitigating factor in those processes, and a huge mitigating factor in terms of compensation. That is precisely why self-employed mountain guides require a structure within which they can get insurance and quantify it, to take them out of the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. What we are doing is leading to a lawyers’ paradise in which the agency that might employ people, and the individual, will be able to battle between one another over who is liable, if it can be demonstrated in court that particular procedures were not followed. A requirement of responsibility under health and safety law gives protection to that self-employed person as well as to the agency employing them.

Let me tell the House why I know that. When I ran a small business—as I did for many years—we had to deal with working at heights and a range of legislation, and I shall illustrate my point with some examples. A case was brought against us by an employee who had broken his foot. However, because of manual handling at work legislation and the fact that we had applied it, the case got nowhere. That was precisely because the legislation had created a structure with a sensible and rational procedure, which we could demonstrate and insist that the employee followed. When he did not follow that procedure, we could demonstrate that as the employer—with liability—we were not in fact liable for the accident.

It is a myth that good regulation damages small business. I lived with regulation day in, day out, and if we ask small businesses, we find that they nearly always object to two things: paperwork—that is always a nightmare—and cost. When small businesses complain—and when I did—it is about cost. If regulation costs a lot and someone is trying to make ends meet, it is difficult. However, regulations on manual handling at work, and health and safety legislation, do not involve cost other than training the work force. It is a miniscule cost. It is an absurdity when someone is handling heavy goods, as we were, not to have such regulation. Let me give a second example.

[Mr Kenneth Clarke]

The hon. Gentleman is making a passionate defence of the regulations under which he successfully defended a claim many years ago, but the Bill does not affect health and safety legislation as far as small employers—such as those whom he is speaking so eloquently in favour of, and such as he was—are concerned. It is an interesting illustration of the value of health and safety regulation, which I do not dispute, but what on earth has it got to do with the Government’s proposals?

[John Mann]

When even the Minister who is responding to the debate has not read the Bill it is a bit of a problem. Read schedule 1. Most of the employees that I had were self-employed—[Laughter.]

[Mr Clarke]

I am sorry; that is what fooled me.

[John Mann]

I do not find it amusing that the Government introducing the Bill have no idea what goes on in workplaces and of the effect that this change will have, so let me illustrate my point. In the kind of work that we were doing, such as setting up major concerts in huge halls, a variety of different people come in and work together. Who is responsible for ensuring that the ladders going up—perhaps 50, 60, 70 feet—are secure? If it is a self-employed person, without that requirement in law because of this change, that buck—that burden—can be shifted. One critical thing in such a situation is having an overall duty because then everyone is liable. When working in complex spaces, with people going backwards and forwards carrying huge loads of equipment, lugging it and putting it up on high, all—whether a single person, a company or a company bringing in self-employed people, as we often did—ensure that the systems and the space is properly secured because they have a responsibility without exclusion.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s arguments. His scenario is that of several self-employed people working as contractors in an umbrella organisation, but there is nothing in the Bill or clause 1 that would absolve that umbrella organisation from any health and safety aspect that I can see. His examples just do not apply.

[John Mann]

As I illustrated with the mining industry, if we move away from regulation, it will lead to civil litigation, and exactly the same will happen with the clauses in this Bill. That is illustrative not of a specific measure in the Bill in relation to the mining industry, but of the principle that moving away from good regulation creates a liability. It is not a cost saving for the employer because that liability comes back. In such a situation, yes, the Bill would have an impact because there is no overriding factor—that is the point. The case of the mountain guides is a wonderful example because the person who owns the mountain is normally the general public. We cannot say, “Ah well, this private landowner is responsible for this bolt coming out and this person who has been guided up falling to their death.” That is why this form of legislation came in.

The Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe is the sole Euro-fanatic in the Tory parliamentary party these days. He is more Euro-fanatic than my good self. I note that in the past hour, UKIP has just nicked one of my Bills put to this Parliament about shifting the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to Manchester, and proclaimed it as its own.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Let me try and drag the hon. Gentleman back to the actual debate. With his vast business experience and knowledge, will he please explain how most of his employees were self-employed? That is a clear contradiction in terms.

[John Mann]

We are now dealing with the most extraordinary Conservative party. When the people being brought in are self-employed—and that is not an unusual situation—it depends what industry they are working in—[Interruption.] They are the contractors who are brought in. The hon. Gentleman may wish to make pedantic points, rather than getting to the heart of the weakness of the Bill.

[Mr Letwin]

rose—

[John Mann]

I will take an intervention from the Minister who got the position on mountain guides wrong.

[Mr Letwin]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I would scarcely have engaged in diminishing the brilliance of his eloquence were it not for the fact that it may be that someone reading Hansard would be misled into supposing that what he is talking about had any kind of rhyme or reason in it at all. Actually, if he was the employer, he would continue to be covered by health and safety legislation as before. That will always be the case for the employer, regardless of whether the people working for an employer are contracted to him as self-employed or otherwise. If he is really serious about this, he will attend to the fact that what we are doing is removing Health and Safety at Work, etc. 1974 Act provisions for those self-employed people themselves in those occupations which are not prescribed and are, therefore, without risk to other people.

[John Mann]

As the Minister knows, the definition of what is risk to other people is entirely subjective.

[Mr Letwin]

I am sorry, but it will not be in any way subjective; it will be utterly objective in the sense that the Health and Safety Executive will be publishing a list of the prescribed activities that will continue to be covered by the 1974 Act.

[John Mann]

We will see which are included and which are not. When the Minister talked about mountain guides, he gave the example of a regulator that does not exist for that profession. That was the example he gave to promote his Bill and demonstrate that it would be regulated. Wrong. That regulator does not exist in relation to mountain guides; it is an entirely different body with nothing whatever to do with them.

Perhaps Conservative Members would like to listen, because I have worked in this situation. For example, when working to set up a concert there will be a range of different people: some will be self-employed and some will be employed. If overall responsibility for health and safety is removed from the self-employed, that will put everybody at risk, because that responsibility will no longer be defined. That is a fundamental flaw in the Bill that the Ministers clearly have not thought through.

The Minister for Government Policy put up the wrong regulator in the example I cited. I personally negotiated with the previous Government the exemption from the working at heights directive on precise technicalities. I demonstrated that it was not safer to be included. Despite the perception, it would not have provided health and safety. In climbing, there are two ropes. The worst-case contingency training did not allow for one of those ropes snapping, so the directive was a nonsense. It was not a nonsense in terms of the principle of the law; it was a nonsense in the detail. The principle of deregulation should be that if regulation is not effective—when it is useless, when it does not work and when it is outdated—it should be removed, as has been the case for stuff going back 150 years.

[David Mowat]

The hon. Gentleman said that the Minister referred to the wrong regulator. May I then refer to the right regulator in his eyes: the HSE? Why does he think that the HSE supports this deregulation if it contains all the evils that he suggests?

[John Mann]

The HSE does not regulate training for mountain guides. As with any risk assessment, the responsibility for risk assessment, given that there is a health and safety duty, lies with the individual. That is the basis on which the voluntary organisations across the world and in this country that oversee health and safety standards operate. The duty to need to have that risk assessment, and that health and safety duty, is just as applicable for the self-employed as it is for those employing others, so there is no difference in that example.

Let me cite another example of how good regulation works. The Minister said that there were hundreds of pieces of European legislation that should be removed, but he could cite none of them. In our business we worked all over Europe. We had to drive lorries across Europe before good regulation came in. If we did a job in Hungary, we had to drive through France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Austria and Hungary. There was different regulation for lorries and heavy goods vehicles in each of those countries at that time, and some of the differences were huge. For example, we could not drive on certain roads in Austria. There were different speeds and different specs covering what kind of vehicle was allowed. In terms of free trade, that was a lot of regulation in many countries, and I would suggest that there is now sensible regulation.

Virtually all the regulation emanating from Europe is to do with the single market. The figure that I have read is 90%, but the Minister without Portfolio is a greater expert on this than me, so I am sure he can confirm that. A single market requires regulations so that products can be sold on an equal basis, and they are counter to import controls. Import controls and regulation do not go together; they are polar opposites. If the Conservative party is saying—it would be useful to have this clarification—that it intends to remove a lot of European legislation on the single market, which import controls would it bring back in? Many economists and others would say that import controls are a cost on business, just as civil litigation costs, as the mining industry found, are a cost on business. Good regulation, especially on health and safety, protects the position of the self-employed and the employer. It is not a burden on them, but a protection to them, as well as the worker concerned.

There is some good stuff in the Bill. The provisions on rights of way may well speed up a long drawn out process and ensure that they are brought in properly, appropriately and speedily. That may well be a very good thing, but it would have been useful also to have dealt with regulation on health and safety in graveyards. They are the perfect example: there was no regulation, and 3 million gravestones, due to what many people described as health and safety, were staked. There was no regulation for that; it was precisely the absence of regulation that led to 3 million gravestones being staked. The House may recall that I am a qualified topple tester in graveyard health and safety. What happened was due to the same problem that the mining industry faced: insurance risk. Insurers demanded action, but there was no coherent regulation that said, “Here is what the health and safety standard should be.” Faced with pressure from insurers, people did their own thing—they made it up as they went along—but that is precisely what the Bill proposes should happen in many areas. That is the principle behind what Ministers are proposing, but the Bill will shift the burden on to insurance companies and the courts, and that is not protection for the employer.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Given the hon. Gentleman’s aversion to releasing the self-employed who do not pose a risk to anyone else from health and safety legislation, will he explain why countries such as France, Germany and Italy do not bring the self-employed under the terms of health and safety?

[John Mann]

I will not give a detailed exposition about climbing guides in France and Germany, save to say that they have a formalised responsibility for health and safety.

[Mr Wallace]

As a Parliamentary Private Secretary, I am sorry to break the convention of the House by rising to speak, but I am a qualified Austrian and British ski instructor, as well as an avalanche safety instructor, and I can tell the hon. Gentleman, to put him out of his misery, that a person’s qualification, by its recognition, gives them not only insurance, but cover from being sued, and that the people who grant the qualification are obliged under health and safety and other legislation to instruct people in accordance with recognised standards.

[John Mann]

The hon. Gentleman will therefore know that he has a legal duty, if he is taking people with him, to carry out a risk assessment, and the removal of precisely that legal duty is the danger of clause 1. That is the danger of ill-thought-through legislation—[Interruption.] Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall pause to ensure that Government Members are listening.

I can give another example of good regulation that was absent for a century but which the Government dare not include in the Bill. I am talking about safety at football stadiums. For 100 years, there was disaster after disaster—two at Ibrox; one at Bolton, Birmingham, Bradford and Hillsborough—but no effective regulation. It was a case of, “Make it up as you go along.” In 1968, a stand burned down at the stadium of the Minister without Portfolio’s local team, Nottingham Forest, but no safety regulation was brought in for football or sports stadiums. Had it been introduced, it would undoubtedly have covered wooden stands. A repeat incident took place in 1985 in a virtually identical stand, which shows the danger of not having effective regulation.

There is another contradiction with this Government. We have heard several times about the one in, two out principle, but the precise definition of “one in” is regulation under statutory instrument. The Department for Communities and Local Government has handed to local authorities regulation in disguise. Over the past year, the Government have put a range of regulatory barriers in the way of self-builders, but they have not classified it as new regulation. They have introduced the barrier of pre-planning consultation fees and extra charges on developers and new builders, and they have introduced the community infrastructure levy and applied it to self-builds, which is another form of regulation. Being a Nottinghamshire MP, the Minister will know that in Nottinghamshire self-building has come to a complete stop. The first local authority to apply the levy was Newark and Sherwood, since when there have been no self-builds. Builders are not building one or two-plot developments because of the burdens on industry.

The Government have gone further, however, and brought in the affordable housing levy for single dwellings, meaning that in Newark a builder or a couple wishing to build their own home have to face those barriers and pay up to £50,000 in new taxes. That is not counted as regulation, but I say it is regulation and a burden on business. In Nottinghamshire, the policy is decimating small family building companies that rely on this kind of work, which is why there are virtually no one, two or three-dwelling property starts in Nottinghamshire. Newark and Sherwood led the way, and others have followed, using new regulation—new burdens on small builders and aspiring home owners—brought in over the past 12 months.

I trust that the Minister will confirm that there will be a change and that these burdens—[Laughter.] The Minister for Government Policy laughs, but it is no laughing matter for the couple in Tuxford who are told they have to pay £64,000 in taxes before they can even start building their own property under policies introduced by this Government. I want confirmation in this debate that that burden on business will be classified as regulation. In terms of one in, two out, they can be classified as part of the in; at the moment, they are not. This is fundamental to the Government’s approach of shifting the burden on to the courts—we will see more cases going to court—and insurers under the pretext that this is all the fault of Labour regulation.

I will end on this—[Interruption.] I have never been in a debate like this, Madam Deputy Speaker, with such rudeness—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has indicated that he is about to draw his remarks to a close after more than half an hour of a passionate and perfectly in order speech. Hon. Members should not dissuade him from so doing.

[John Mann]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Had they been required, I could have given a range of other examples to demonstrate my point.

I come at this from the perspective of someone who has run a small business and who can say unequivocally that good, effective regulation is pro-business, that removing good regulation is anti-business, and that removing regulation will shift the burden to the courts and insurers, and will destroy small and medium-sized enterprises. In their ignorance of the small business sector, that is what the Government are doing.

The Government are slaves to the saying, “Red tape is bad.” Of course, red tape is bad. The Bill gets rid of much bad Tory legislation—nearly 80% of the Bill removes Tory legislation—that was contested at the time and should never have come in. Labour Members accept, I am sure, their apologies and their recompense to society shown through their being prepared to get rid of it, but alongside those measures they have thrown in a few gems introduced by Labour that protect workers and employers, and fundamentally protect the self-employed and small businesses.

I look forward to hearing from the Minister how much European legislation can be identified. It is nonsense to suggest that the Government are anti-regulation, given that, as I have demonstrated with DCLG, they are powering in taxation and burdens on small businesses in my area and elsewhere through the back door. Their disingenuous approach needs to be exposed. Nevertheless, I welcome the fact that a raft of bad Tory legislation will be confined to the dustbin, if the Bill—in a greatly amended and improved form, I hope—reaches the statute book.

I will finish with a comment about the amendment from the Greens. Perhaps a coalition is forming—a plan for the future—although there are not very many Greens now, and there will be fewer after the next election. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), speaking for the Green party, cited the Green Building Council, but what does that do? Of course it is the glaziers promoting a specific type of window that is enforced on all house builders. There is legislation that means that for those who, like me, live in a listed building, every single window that is repaired, however minor, should by law go for individual planning consent, at great expense to the householder, but also at cost to the developer. I notice that none of that kind of thing is dealt with by this Bill. There is a lot of talk, but when it comes to the vested interest of the Green Building Council and the regulation introduced to give a competitive advantage to certain sections of industry, there is not a single word in this Bill. For those who want to see some of the red tape removed, there will be an opportunity for Members on both sides to propose amendments to the Bill to ensure that such burdens on business, which should not be there, are removed.

20:09

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

We have had a series of bombshells during this debate. As became increasingly evident would be the case, no Lib Dems whatever have spoken in this Second Reading debate or even intervened, which I thought was very telling.

There were also a series of bookended bombshells. At the end of the debate we heard from the hon. Member for Wyre and Preston North (Mr Wallace), who I was not aware had qualified as an Austrian ski instructor. I will certainly take that on board next time I am on the piste.

The Minister who opened the debate mentioned in his second or third sentence the fact that regulation was, to use his phrase, often sensible and necessary, which also came as a bombshell. That was welcome and—to be sensible for a moment—set the tone of the debate throughout: that we should try to have a regulatory regime that is proportionate and appropriate, but that any unnecessary legislation should be removed from the statute book. We on the Labour Benches would certainly agree with that.

The Minister also mentioned—this was the biggest bombshell of all—that Charlie Chaplin can be now be rehabilitated. Chaplin, who was seen as a communist in the United States in the 1950s, has now been fully rehabilitated into the Conservative party of the 21st century. That is welcome. The Minister said that village halls up and down the country are happy to be able to screen Chaplin. I have to ask him: has he seen “A Woman of Paris”, which highlights illicit sex encounters between an unmarried young woman and her boyfriend, who shoots himself at the end of the film? Is this the type of film that the Minister wants to deregulate, to ensure that it is available to the village halls and the spinsters of old England? I do not think it should be.

This is a somewhat ad hoc Bill. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) called it a hotch-potch, while my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) called it a mishmash. The Minister has scouted and hawked round Whitehall for the best part of a year, asking for any ideas for a deregulatory Bill. In many respects, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It is good, as we have heard several times, to have a spring clean. However, I disagree with a lot of what the Minister said. He opened the debate by saying that health and safety legislation was “wretched stuff”. I hope he will use this opportunity to say that not all health and safety legislation is wretched.

[Mr Letwin]

I never said any such thing. What I was referring to was ludicrously overburdensome guidance that is verbose and unclear. That is the bit that is wretched stuff. Of course health and safety legislation is necessary and desirable; it is a question of trying to make sure that is straightforward, clear and to the point.

[Mr Wright]

The phrase that the Minister has just used—straightforward, clear and to the point—is very important, because I am not entirely certain that clause 1 is. My hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck said that it serves no purpose other than to confuse, and I have to agree with him. The Health and Safety Executive consulted on the proposals. To be fair, clause 1 was the preferred option, but the majority of those responding to the consultation opposed the idea.

As has been said several times in the debate, the Opposition are concerned that clause 1 does not really have any tangible impact, but introduces more confusion for self-employed people, who may wrongly think that they are exempt from health and safety laws. No self-employed person has ever been prosecuted or threatened with prosecution for risking only their own health. Given that only people who pose no risk to anybody will be exempt, I cannot see how there will be a practical impact on business or individuals. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which we have heard about, can already be used only in circumstances where a person puts another person at risk anyway.

We have heard about the construction sector on a number of occasions. There is an awful lot of bogus self-employment in the construction industry. Does clause 1 deal with that? I thought that the Minister was very precise, in a vague sort of way, in his use of language, because he said that by the time the Bill reached Committee, “activities” would be prescribed. Is that activities or professions and jobs? It would useful to have an idea about that, because we are extremely concerned about clause 1. We would like clarification, both this evening and in Committee, about which jobs will be excluded and reassurances that protections will be in place.

[Mr Letwin]

Of course I am happy to provide that clarification. When the shadow Minister sees the prescribed list, he will see that it largely concerns activities, but also certain sectors in which so many of the activities cause dangers to other people involved in them that they are completely exempted from the provision.

[Mr Wright]

That is helpful.

I thought the hon. Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley) made a great speech, which was quite literally Churchillian in its approach. Let us not forget that the second Churchill Government produced the Mines and Quarries Act 1954, because Churchill recognised the importance of improved regulation and health and safety in things such as welfare and employment, especially for women and young people. In terms of domestic legislation, the Churchill Administration of 1951 to ’55 were very progressive.

The hon. Gentleman talked about first-time entrepreneurs and first-time exporters. He talked about realising dreams and achieving objectives. I have to agree with him: that is exactly what we want to see. However, there is nothing in this Bill that allows that to happen. Not one jot of what he mentioned in his rhetoric would be allowed under this Bill.

[David Rutley]

Has the hon. Gentleman not taken any notice at all of the debate about clause 1? There are plenty of businesses that would like overburdensome health and safety regulation removed from them, as is clear from the Federation of Small Businesses and the British Chambers of Commerce.

[Mr Wright]

I will come to the precise benefits for business in a moment, but I want first to refer to the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel), whom I cannot see in her place at the moment. She used her knowledge from the Joint Committee and her experience in business. I have to disagree with a lot of what she said. I respect her experience in business, but she says that Government just have to get out of the way of business. I do not think that is necessarily the case in a modern, innovative economy. What we need is a Government who will work with business on a long-term vision and an industrial strategy that will enable us to pay our way in the world.

I agree with everything that the hon. Lady said about business start-ups and the need to enhance our competitiveness, but there is nothing in the Bill—no single clause or schedule—that would facilitate start-ups: if only there were such provisions. One of the things that worry us most is the fact that the United Kingdom is slipping down in the world rankings for start-ups. According to figures from the OECD, it has fallen from 18th in the world last year to 28th this year. When it comes to obtaining electricity for a business, our ranking has slipped from 64th to 74th. Surely we should be doing something about that. The Bill could have helped us to do so, but unfortunately it does not.

Several Members mentioned the Bill’s impact on business. One could be forgiven for thinking that it would facilitate an enormous start-up of entrepreneurial activity, but its provisions are so insubstantial and so insignificant to British business that they are almost meaningless. As was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) in her excellent opening speech, the statement of impact for the draft Bill estimated that it would save businesses £10 million over 10 years: £1 million a year.

[Richard Fuller]

rose—

[Mr Wright]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, who I know is very knowledgeable about business. Those savings to business would equate to a full 20p a year for each and every business in the country. Does he not think that our ambitions should be greater?

[Richard Fuller]

Amen to the hon. Gentleman’s apparent call for the Government to take further action to deregulate and to reduce the burdens on business. He has told us several times how small the changes are. Will he, on behalf of the Opposition, table further deregulatory measures in Committee that will reduce the burden of regulation on business?

[Mr Wright]

When I speak to businesses, which I do every day, they tell me that the main factor affecting their long-term growth perspective is access to finance. Nothing in the Bill enables us to take a long-term view when it comes to where businesses can obtain the finance they need to grow.

It takes four fifths of a second for the British economy—for the hard work and effort of millions of people and enterprises—to generate that potential saving of £1 million a year. I say this to Ministers, and to other Members who have spoken today: do not insult the intelligence of Britain by describing the Bill as a substantial piece of reforming legislation. It will not really help businesses; it will certainly not give them as much help as they need. For the purposes of businesses that want extra orders or secure access to finance, or want the Government to be on their side, this Bill is sadly lacking.

Families are experiencing a cost of living crisis, and have lost £1,600 a year since the general election. Just a few days ago, the Office for National Statistics confirmed that since the Government took office in 2010, Britain has faced the largest continuous fall in real wages since records began half a century ago. However, there is absolutely nothing in the Bill to deal with that situation. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr mentioned a 4% drop in wages in his community in Wales. One would think that the Government would want to do something about that in a deregulation Bill whose aim was to free up the inspiring innovation of businesses and individuals, but not a bit of it. The net benefits to individuals as a result of the Bill will amount to 0.18p for every single man, woman or child in this country. I really do think that the Government should do better than that.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) made a characteristically intelligent speech. She observed that some regulation could be good. She also mentioned clause 21, about which I am particularly concerned. The clause reduces the eligibility criteria relating to the purchase of social housing, which will have an adverse impact on the supply of such housing. Any local authority that wants to plan for the long term will need to spend capital, and will need to borrow as a result. The reduction of the qualifying period from five years to three will make it much more difficult for authorities to borrow on the back of a sustained rental stream. We need only look at the evidence that we have already seen: in the last year 10,600 council houses have been sold, but only 1,600 starts have been made.

Let me return to the hon. Member for Macclesfield and his Churchillian “action this day” rhetoric. What Macmillan did as Churchill’s housing Minister, and what Churchill did in the Housing Repairs and Rents Act 1954, was truly inspiring. It is what the present Government should be doing, but unfortunately they are not.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) conveyed the powerful message that regulation is an essential part of a functioning market economy, ensuring that we are sufficiently competitive. She also said that the Bill paid insufficient regard to the Government’s supposed goal to be the greenest Government ever. There is no environmental concern and no environmental impact, and in fact there is an attack on sustainable development here. This is where the Government have got it wrong. It is not mutually exclusive to think about green and growth, although Ministers often think it is. Actually, if we think about how we are going to pay our way in the world in the 21st century, we realise that the real emphasis should be on the industries of the future—those of the green economy. As the CBI and others have said, this is what the modern face of British industry should look like.

Unfortunately I cannot see the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) in the Chamber. I consider him to be part of the sensible wing of the Tory party, but his speech tonight disabused me of that idea. He served on the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill Committee with me. I do not want to rehash the arguments we had in that Committee, but there was no evidence whatever for some of the stuff that was coming through in respect of Beecroft. What was said was, “I’ve met a bloke down the pub and he said ‘wouldn’t this be a good idea?’” That was the empirical evidence the Government brought forward on that Bill.

The hon. Gentleman will recall that in that legislation the Government abolished the Agricultural Wages Board without a single discussion of it on the Floor of the House or in Committee. It was brought in at such a late stage. What businesses want is certainty. Having uncertainty in terms of feed-in tariffs and other things is anti-business.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) mentioned a lack of clarity with regard to clause 23. He also mentioned individual term time dates for schools in respect of clause 37 and here I declare an interest. My youngest son attends a primary school in Hartlepool and my daughter attends a secondary school in Hartlepool. If those schools do not co-ordinate and instead have different term times, it will cause enormous hassle and pressure for our family and millions like us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) gave a knowledgeable speech and my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck made a key point: the Bill is very wide-ranging—the mishmash that he mentioned—and that variety will potentially create problems. I agree.

There is nothing really troubling about this Bill, although there are individual clauses, such as clauses 1 and 2 on the tribunal powers to make recommendations, that are concerning and we would certainly like to see clause 2 deleted in Committee. The actions in this Bill do not match the rhetoric, however. We do not want to obstruct the Bill’s progress tonight, but we do have concerns on specific issues and we will need to look closely at them in Committee. When businesses are crying out for certainty and greater access to finance in order for us to be more competitive in the world, the Government’s ambitions could have been better with regard to the Deregulation Bill.

20:27

[The Minister without Portfolio (Mr Kenneth Clarke)]

A small and select group of specialist people have taken part in this debate, but it has been a very worthwhile one and while it has got very heated and agitated at times, I keep being reminded of how closely we have all been forced together, and the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) therefore finished on a very welcome note. The fact is that, so far as I noticed in every contribution from the moment the debate started, we all rather accept the need for deregulation. Everybody agreed on the other hand that there is a case for sensible regulation in the modern world. Indeed, it is highly desirable, but it is essential from time to time for Governments and Parliament to ensure that what is being done is proportionate, sensible, justifiable and does not impose unnecessary burdens on individuals and branches of government, and on business and small business in particular. We have gone round and round in circles and some Members have got wildly excited about particular regulations, but the fact is we come back to agreement on that point, and I get the impression that no one is going to press any objection this evening to the vote.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?

[Mr Clarke]

The amendment is of course on the Order Paper, so I give way to the hon. Lady.

[Caroline Lucas]

I have been advised that it will be helpful to the House to let the right hon. and learned Gentleman know that I do not intend to press the amendment tonight.

[Mr Clarke]

I am very grateful to hear it because by its very nature a deregulatory Bill gives rise to many points that can be raised in Committee.

The hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) raised a lot of detailed points, and said that they should be considered in Committee. He has already served on the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee. It is inevitable, when the British cover such a wide variety of things in regulation, that we sometimes have to have an item-by-item vote.

I take it from the tone of the debate today that the general direction of policy set out by the Government has fairly widespread approval. I have endured the experience of opposition, albeit briefly, in my time, and I occasionally had the burden of being sent along to a debate of this kind and trying to find something to argue about. I think that that was the problem facing the two very able Front-Bench speakers representing the Opposition today.

A strange argument broke out at one point today about whether what we were doing was totally insubstantial, worthless and of no point to the outside world, or whether it was completely horrendous and, as the Green amendment, which is no longer being pressed, says,

“ripping up vital green legislation”.

It was suggested that our blood should run cold at the idea of what we were doing to everyone from those climbing mountains to those running small businesses.

The claim was also made that the last Government had somehow achieved £3 billion of savings through their strident deregulatory measures. I am not here to debate the record of the last Government, but that is quite the most startling exposition of what they achieved that I have ever heard. I do not recommend that any Labour spokesman should try to persuade an audience of any of the small businessmen I have ever met that that was what they were doing.

The Bill represents the most determined effort of any Government I have known to pursue the deregulatory aims to which most Governments have paid lip service for the past 20 years. We were all into deregulation in the early 1990s; then the Labour Government talked about “better regulation”. I believe that this Government can claim that the substance of what we are producing greatly exceeds anything that has been done before.

Some of the figures that have been quoted about the impact of the Bill disguise the fact that it is only one part of the red tape challenge that is being led by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy. The Bill runs alongside and is part of that challenge, and it contains the elements that require primary legislation. My right hon. Friend has mentioned the 3,000 regulations that need to be repealed or improved.

The Bill has to be big enough and long enough to deal with so many detailed areas, and it will supplement and add to that to produce a deregulatory effect for businesses—particularly small businesses—as well as individual citizens, local authorities and branches of government, all of which have better things to do than to waste money on statutory duties the reason for which no one knows, or to produce reports that nobody reads or to have obligations for things that nobody is asking them to give advice on. For example, school governors have to publish advice on discipline. Our reforms will not undermine school discipline; my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has talked about the need for school discipline. Most governors do not even know they are under such an obligation, but unfortunately some do produce a statement of policy, which is not required. That regulation will now be repealed.

The key part of the Bill is the one that relates to business. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) on this. I think we will need a Bill of this kind every 10 years or so. In modern times, as a result of single-issue lobby groups and newspaper campaigns, Government Departments engage in ever-more legislative and regulatory activity, sometimes for the sake of being seen to be doing something or, in the case of the lobby groups, being seen to be demanding something new. That has an adverse effect not only on the statute book and the regulatory publications but on the administration of good government and the running of any successful business. The Bill is therefore a welcome, and drastic, attempt to change the culture and go back in the direction of common sense and proper regulation that involves a true public interest and to ensure that environmental standards and the safety of workers are maintained.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), echoed by the hon. Member for Hartlepool, got on to matters that were of concern to her. Although such things can be discussed in Committee, I have to say that an attempt was being made to make a difference of principle that was not there. For example, we had the issue of employment rights and of the tribunals dealing with claims by employees against their employer. Let me make it absolutely clear that the Bill is not remotely trying to roll back the law on unfair dismissal or to reduce the protections against discrimination in the work place.

The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) tried to identify the party political origin of every measure in the Bill. As it happens, it was a Conservative Government who set up employment tribunals, introduced employment rights and started the whole process that we now have. The intention was to provide a sensible, accessible and low cost way of resolving disputes and awarding compensation where some breach of employment rights had taken place. Over the years, the system has become legalistic. It has become almost habitual for anybody who loses their job to bring a claim, because there is very little risk to them and a great deal of encouragement to have a go. None of that is being tackled too directly by the Bill.

Addressing the power and cost of tribunals is much overdue. The principal fundamentals of employment rights are utterly beyond dispute nowadays. For the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central to claim that this Bill is a serious threat to the real principles underlying employment rights and achieves no important benefits shows that she has not met enough employers. When we talk to small employers about the problems of running a competitive business, most will rapidly start raising the problem and cost of claims before employment tribunals. The changes we propose could be criticised for being too modest, but they are certainly heading in the right direction. They should not invite a knee-jerk reaction from the Labour party, or anybody else, that nothing should be done to deregulate in that area and to remove unnecessary cost.

Similarly, on health and safety, absolutely nobody is suggesting, in this Bill or anywhere else, that we lower standards in this country when it comes to protecting the health and safety of the work force, or anybody else. We are not short of regulation in that area. Most of it will remain intact, but what is proposed here seems to be perfectly sensible. The biggest single change is to take away the burdens of health and safety legislation from self-employed people who are not in an occupation that can pose a threat to other people, as will be specified. It is absurd. Let us take a self-employed person, not one of those self-employed contractors in the business of the hon. Member for Bassetlaw, but someone writing a novel in his cottage in the countryside in Dorset. He is a self-employed person. Is Labour going to argue passionately in Committee that he should be subject to health and safety at work legislation, which he is at the moment? Of course he is not likely to be sued unless he throws a book at somebody in a moment of bad temper, but even that is probably not a breach of the health and safety at work legislation. He is subject to inspection. He may have to pay regard to the guidance. I have taken an extreme example of what should be a harmless occupation—if he is a reasonable novelist.

There is a range of other self-employed people who may have to take professional advice on what impact the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 has on their particular activities. We are proposing to clarify that health and safety legislation applies to those people who are engaged in activities that could pose a risk to people other than themselves. Clarity will come when we produce information—as soon as we can in the course of the Committee, as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Government Policy has said—on the specified sectors of the economy and specified occupations. A statutory burden will be lifted from a wide range of self-employed people who have been covered by it by accident.

[John Mann]

No self-employed novelists have had health and safety inspections or a burden that they have had to consider. Is not the problem that once we say a line will be drawn and some will be covered and some will not, that creates a grey area? The grey area creates danger and damage and risk, including for the person themselves.

[Mr Clarke]

I deliberately chose, as the hon. Gentleman did at the other extreme, the rather way-out example with my self-employed novelist. I have not done the research on which self-employed people have found themselves subject to inspection, the recipients of guidance they do not want or feeling obliged to take inspections. I do not know whether self-employed beekeepers or all sorts of other people fall into this area, but there is no doubt that the legislative change and the clarity proposed will put the duty and burden on those who might pose a risk to others and move it from vast numbers of other people. Our independent regulatory committee has estimated the saving for the businesses of many self-employed people.

[John Mann]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman gives the example of a self-employed beekeeper. A beekeeper friend of mine was nearly killed when moving a hive during rain because he was not aware of the dangers during rain. If the person moving it with him had nearly been killed, there might have been a claim against him. Does that not illustrate precisely why an overarching approach is far better than additional regulation and somebody deciding who is in and who is out?

[Mr Clarke]

I admire the eclecticism of the hon. Gentleman. I knew that I could not engage with him on mountain climbing but I underestimated his knowledge of bees and beekeepers. I shall take considered advice on the application to beekeeping and I have no doubt that the matter will be raised in Committee if the position of beekeepers becomes a point of real contention when the list is published. The point that I am trying to make is that I think that the vast majority of self-employed people—I shall not name another esoteric profession—need not be covered by legislation, subject to the Health and Safety Executive, inspection and so on, or to take professional advice. We are rationalising and making sense of one area whereas otherwise our commitment to the health and safety at work of employees and the health and safety of the public remains undiminished.

Another measure that all Opposition Members tried to make a mainstream political point about is the growth duty we are putting on non-economic regulators. I am not a climate change denier; the Government are in favour of environmental protection, and the conservation of our habitat and essential national heritage is a perfectly important objective of the Government. It is completely over the top to describe the changes in the Bill as sometimes threatening all that. We are saying that the various non-economic regulators should have regard to the desirability of the growth of the economy while carrying out their other duties. That was described as a mad dash for casino growth and likened to our casting away of regulation on bankers, which we did not do—it was the previous Government who did that. I would have agreed with the hon. Member for Bassetlaw had he cited that example, as it was a good example of the importance of regulation and the pathetic inadequacy of the Financial Services Authority when the then Chancellor gave it that responsibility. In this case, all that we are doing is saying that while it remains liable to follow its existing guidance—it has been pointed out that it is supposed to regulate only where necessary and proportionate—it is supposed to have regard to the impact on individual businesses, and it should have regard to the growth of the nation. Serious conservation in a highly developed, advanced economy like ours and the protection of our natural environment have to take account of the fact that at the same time, we hope to be a growing economy and a powerful, modern, industrial nation. It is a question of balance, judgment and common sense between the Government’s economic interests and our desire to conserve what is best in our heritage. Describing the Bill as an attack on that is absurd.

That shows why the previous Government’s record was pathetic on deregulation and reducing the burdens on business. They constantly gave in to pressures that drove them in the other direction, and it requires a Government with clarity of purpose to get hold of the subject and make a detailed attempt to reduce unnecessary burdens, bureaucracy and paperwork. The printing of useless documents and general obstructions to growth and efficiency need to be removed if that is to be a success.

I welcome the fact that some things received universal approval. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) discussed what we are doing on apprenticeships, and no one gainsaid him on that. Those are important measures that will strengthen skills training in industry and help to improve young people’s prospects of employment. The measures on yarn received widespread support from those in the House who do knitwork. The measures on rights of way achieved remarkably unanimous acceptance—this is an impossibly controversial area, but the stakeholders’ group has reached agreement. The Government’s proposals have been advanced, and I am glad that they have been accepted.

There was talk of the European Union. We are going to try to secure the application of the same principles there, and Barroso has begun a deregulatory drive, which faces the same difficulty in Europe that it has always faced in Britain, because most of the regulations are supported by some lobby or other. The European regulations are the result of the single market. To stay in the single market required a mass of regulations. When the then Government pressed for the single market to be created, the British Commissioner whom we appointed—Arthur Cockfield, I think—came up with thousands of amendments, which were required in a single market if it was to have common regulation, as we heard, of consumer rights, safety standards, consumer protection, environmental protection and so on.

Our example should be followed in the rest of Europe, and it will help us to guide other member states to adopt the same approach. I believe that for all European countries, but it is Britain that particularly concerns me. If we are to regain our competitive position in the wider market and return to normality as one of the stronger economies in the modern world, deregulation and reducing burdens on business is part of that.

As my hon. Friends the Members for Macclesfield (David Rutley) and for Witham (Priti Patel) said, we are not saying that this is the sole answer for our economy or for small business. It is merely a contribution to a Government policy that is wholly taken up with the plan for long-term economic growth, giving particular priority to small and medium-sized enterprises in this country as never before. We are reviewing the range of advice that the Government give to small businesses and the range of financial support available to them. We have reduced the tax burden on small employers, particularly for young employees. UK Trade & Investment is concentrating on small and medium-sized businesses that want to get into export markets. We are putting a great trade effort as a Government into supporting them. We are reforming UK export finance to make sure that it is available to those small exporters.

This Bill is far from being the entirety of what we are doing to turn Britain into a competitive nation again. It does not cover everything we are doing for the small businesses that provide much of the employment nowadays if one gets one’s economy moving again, but it makes a very important contribution. We actually have a Government who are anti-regulation, anti-bureaucracy and anti-pointless cost. I commend the Bill to the House as a very useful contribution to our efforts.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time.

Deregulation Bill (Programme)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),

That the following provisions shall apply to the Deregulation Bill:

Committal

(1) That the Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.

Proceedings in Public Bill Committee

(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 25 March 2014.

(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.

Consideration and Third Reading

(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.

(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.

(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.

Other proceedings

(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Gavin Barwell.)

Question agreed to.

Deregulation Bill (Money)

Queen’s recommendation signified.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),

That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Deregulation Bill, it is expedient to authorise:

(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided; and

(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Gavin Barwell.)

Question agreed to.

Deregulation Bill (Carry-Over)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 80A(1)(a)),

That if, at the conclusion of this Session of Parliament, proceedings on the Deregulation Bill have not been completed, they shall be resumed in the next Session. —(Gavin Barwell.)

Question agreed to.

Business without Debate

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

European Union Documents

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 119(11)),

Relations between the European Commission and National Parliaments

That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 12989/13, the 2012 Annual Report from the Commission on relations between the European Commission and national parliaments, and No. 13002/13, the Commission Annual Report on subsidiarity and proportionality; recognises the importance of the principle of subsidiarity and the value of stronger interaction between national parliaments and the EU Institutions; and welcomes the Government’s commitment to increasing the power of national parliaments in EU decision-making by strengthening and, where possible, enhancing current provisions.—(Gavin Barwell.)

Question agreed to.

Children’s Centres (Somerset)

Monday 3rd February 2014 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Gavin Barwell.)

20:52

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I have asked for this debate because I have been contacted by parents and carers, contractors, staff and members of the advisory boards connected with three of the children’s centres in my part of Somerset—Cheddar, Wells and Chilcompton.

Sure Start children’s centres are there to protect and help the youngest in our communities, to support and help families, and to invest in the future by providing the very best start for all. In a bid to cut its budgets even further, Somerset county council has acted appallingly, proposing restructuring that will put the most vulnerable at risk and plunge those in rural areas into deeper isolation. It seems to be systematically working to undermine and undervalue the amazing work that children’s centre staff are doing to help and support young families in Somerset. In its flawed consultation exercise, the county council claimed that it needed to review children’s centre provision because

“some Children’s Centres are not performing as well as we would like”.

Rather than being honest and open with the people of Somerset about the fact that it wanted to cut 40% of the children’s centre budget, the council has sought to undermine public perceptions, no doubt seeking to whip the public into demanding the closure of children’s centres.

The mainstay of the county council’s argument is that children’s centres underperform according to Ofsted’s headline data. The council claims that only 37% of Somerset’s children’s centres have received an Ofsted grading of “good” or “outstanding”, whereas the national average is 69%. The council concludes that the 37% Ofsted figure gives it good evidence that children’s centres are not delivering help to the most vulnerable. That is simply not true. Before jumping to any conclusions, I ask the Minister to ask this more fundamental question: why are only 37%, supposedly, of the children’s centres in Somerset getting an Ofsted grade of “good” or “outstanding”? When one asks that question one gets a revealing answer.

Two children’s centres, in Wells and Chilcompton, have recently had an Ofsted inspection. When they received their feedback and report, they were commended on their delivery of support to vulnerable families across a wide and rural reach. Ofsted said that the critical services they delivered to the most vulnerable were deemed as “good”. However, when Ofsted scrutinised the support and data that the children’s centres received from their county council, they were deemed as “requiring improvement”. The county council has failed the children’s centres, not vice versa. The county council’s consistent failures led to an overall Ofsted grading of “needing improvement”, which failed both the children’s centres and the children of Somerset.

Wells and Chilcompton children’s centres are not alone. Shepton Mallet children’s centre had exactly the same outcome last year. Somerset county council is using its own incompetence as a cover for cutting services to the most vulnerable families.

Virtually every improvement suggested by the improvement plan for Chilcompton and Wells children’s centres after the October 2013 Ofsted inspection requires action by the county council, and each of the four action areas for improvement has major implications for it. The first improvement needed reads:

“Sharpen the monitoring of participation rates across all services to ensure the most vulnerable and in particular potentially isolated families can access the full range of services”.

The action required states that the local authority should

“develop and disseminate tracking tools from point of access, to show outcomes and progression”.

The second improvement needed reads:

“Improve the quality of all evaluations”,

and the action required states that the local authority should

“set clear performance indicators”

and

“implement CAF and Signs of Safety in CC’s and agree protocols with partner agencies”.

The third improvement needed reads:

“Improve the impact of leadership”,

and the action required states that the local authority should

“provide clear, simple and concise data which is more accessible & understandable to staff, to support planning and to improve outcomes”

and

“develop partnership agreements where county and district boundaries exist”.

The fourth improvement needed reads:

“Improve the role that the cluster advisory board plays in the support and challenge to the cluster”,

and the action required states that the local authority should

“devise and deliver training”

and that the local authority

“demands that Advisory Board Chairs are trained to lead an AB. But as yet there is no training course available”.

Fundamentally, under the Ofsted framework, it is absolutely impossible for a Somerset county council children’s centre to get anything better than “needs improvement”, and that is not a basis for changes to the service. Somerset county council must not be allowed to blame these failures on children’s centre staff, because they are the very people who are working so hard to keep children in Somerset safe.

Under the council’s proposed structure, the village of Chilcompton will sit in a reach from Farley Hungerford to Lydford—a distance of some 30 miles from north to south—and from Shipham to Rudge, which is 35 miles from west to east, with one manager and two deputy managers. That inevitably means that some vulnerable families will fall through the net.

Generally, these are successful universal services. For example, Wells children’s centre had 539 children registered in the past three months and 332 using at least one of the services in the same period. In October alone, 195 children and 304 parents and carers came to the centre. There are eight to 10 open cases with specific interventions in place at that single children’s centre.

There have been repeated promises since November for a new consultation. I hear repeatedly that the council has not yet made a decision about individual children’s centres, but its failure to make a decision about their future means that significant numbers of referrals are falling away. Why would an agency refer parents and carers to children’s centres, possibly for a six-month programme, when the service’s existence past 31 March is under question?

The council has moved on apace with the restructuring of children’s centre services. However, it keeps having to amend and revise its plans, because it finds that its proposals will not work. Fortunately, the council seems to have started to understand the importance of supervision and management, but that adds extra staffing costs to its model, and it cannot explain which budgets will need to be cut to meet the extra costs.

[Mr Jeremy Browne (Taunton Deane) (LD)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. She is talking about cost, and I wonder whether she will momentarily engage with this thought of mine? Everybody understands that the county council needs to be as cost-efficient as possible and, on the face of it, there may be some short-term savings to be made. If, however she looks at a town such as Wiveliscombe in Taunton Deane, which has a purpose-built children’s centre, with a new doctors’ surgery being built next to it, a whole apparatus of services are available to people in that small town and the surrounding communities, of which the children’s centre is an integral part. There may be some short-term savings, but my suspicion and fear is that, overall, there will be long-term costs that are not just social, but financial, from having buildings empty and services not fully utilised.

[Tessa Munt]

I could not agree more. In a number of cases across Somerset, children’s centres are next to surgeries and schools. With a universal service, it is very easy for children and parents to get used to accessing the services that they need on an ongoing basis. Children get used to going into the surgery or the school, and it is an easy move for people to access everything that they might possibly need.

A county council report has revealed that, as many contracts are due to end in March, there is not enough time to investigate any alternative provision. Incompetence and a lack of planning mean that provider agencies are pulling away, and are quite rightly refusing to deliver services on a month-by-month extension. No one can be expected to work with such a level of uncertainty. I understand that the agencies are handing services back to Somerset, which means further costs, because partner agencies pay their family support workers more than the council does and such transfers mean that salary arrangements have to be honoured.

One of the main planks in the argument for change was the promise that there would be 30 more front-line family support workers. However, the proposed job description has added a new line, stating that family support workers are to work with children and young people between the ages of nought and 19. The county council had promised 30 more support workers for children between the ages of nought and four, but it is now watering down that service even further. The council promises one thing, and then once again cuts back on its promises behind closed doors.

[Mr Browne]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for indulging me for a second time. On those promises, it seems extraordinary to me that elections for Somerset county council were held only just over six months ago, and I do not recall that any leaflets came through my door from the party that now runs the county council promising that if it had a majority, it would close children’s centres. That seems to have been sprung on the people of Somerset, after we had the opportunity to vote, when I assume that most people in the county thought that they were voting for a programme for four years, and we are now only six months after the election.

[Tessa Munt]

I have to agree again. It is fair to say that from what one can discover, the plans to cut £1.4 million from the children’s centre budget were brought forward in January or February last year, but were suppressed prior to councillors achieving re-election to the county council. It was only—very shortly—after that that the plans became evident. It seems desperately unfair on the electorate, and on the most vulnerable people who need to access the services.

Family support workers need a different skill set when they work with older children and young adults. Although I acknowledge that working with such young people is terribly important, to ask a family support worker who is gifted, skilled and qualified in working with nought to four-year-olds to work across a much larger age range dilutes their expertise and devalues their work.

It has been suggested that the decisions have already been made and that councillors have instructed officers not to work on extending the contracts because the children’s centres are likely to close. I wonder how the county council can say that it is putting £1 million into front-line services, while at the same time it is making a cut in funding of £1.4 million. Savings are being made by cutting senior service managers, children’s centre managers, day-to-day line managers and lead centre officers, as well as by reducing the number of buildings that are used. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne) pointed out, many of those buildings were specially designed and are adjacent to schools and doctors’ surgeries so that children are familiar with where they will start their education and become used to popping into the surgery.

Not even the data quoted by the council are accurate. The council’s report states that the new Mendip east area will have 1,655 children aged nought to four. However, the data provided by the county council to the children’s centre state that there are 2,189 children of that age. Either the county council has lost 534 children in one district or the council is over-reporting the number of children in a district to the children’s centre, making it utterly impossible for the centre to reach its 80% registration target.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

The hon. Lady will recall that when there was a statement about flooding in Somerset this afternoon, there were several Members who represent Somerset in the Chamber. However, now that we are debating the scandalous, treacherous cuts that are being made, there is not a single Conservative Member from Somerset in the House.

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

To be fair, there is only one!

[Tessa Munt]

Yes, exactly. We do have one Conservative Member in the Minister, although she is not from Somerset. I thank the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) for pointing that out.

On the 80% registration target, it seems likely that the county council is aiming to make it appear as though the children’s centres are failing and to thereby make cuts a more attractive outcome.

Questions are being raised about the proposed savings. My personal feeling is that consideration should be given to the fact that the county council is sitting on massive reserves. That is money that we pay in council tax to the county council, among other councils, for it to deliver services, not to become a bank or a savings institution.

Alongside the savings that the county council is proposing, there will be additional costs, such as mileage claims from staff who have to travel across vast rural areas, additional insurance costs and hall hire. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane pointed out, buildings that were designed specifically to be children’s centres will also be wasted. Those elements will far outweigh the money that will be saved on the heating and lighting for 18 modern, purpose-built children’s centres. Closing those buildings is an absolute waste of taxpayers’ money. A better option, which I do not think has been pursued, might be to offset some of the costs of the children’s centre buildings by hiring out rooms to other providers, such as those who provide music lessons.

The county council considers that it can use other venues to deliver children’s centre services. We need to know whether proper risk assessments have been carried out because most community buildings are not fit for that purpose. That is why the children’s centres were built specially in the first place. Most community buildings do not have the levels of security and privacy that are needed for the sensitive work that has to be delivered.

The county council’s consultation was described by some as farcical and its independence has been questioned. The questions were not objective or fairly balanced, but were heavily loaded to make people say yes to cuts and yes to cutting rural centres in particular. There were questions such as, “Should we place resources in places where there are more children?” That will of course produce an answer that favours urban children’s centres. However, users in such areas can often walk to services or take a bus, unlike children who live in rural and isolated places in our county. The consultation was more concerned about ethnicity, sexuality and spirituality than the services delivered by children’s centres themselves. Many participants commented, but their comments have gone unanswered, and were not shown in the text of the report.

Rather than cutting funding and services, Somerset county council needs to engage actively, and to value and support the vital work that children’s services are doing in Somerset to improve the lives of young people. What has worked well locally has been early identification for families in need of universal services when access to those services has no stigma attached. Many of those services will not be available following the proposed changes. In rural areas, that will mean that many families will not have access to any services. With more family support workers and fewer managers to support the care, guidance and support given to targeted families with the greatest need, children could be put us at risk. With so many department leaders at the county level on temporary contracts, there is a lack of stability, the effects of which are felt at all levels.

I would like to quote from three letters I have received. One is from Hayley, who describes herself as

“a mum who’s feeling let down and helpless”.

She described the marvellous service at the Valley children’s centre in Cheddar, which was earmarked for closure by Somerset county council, and wrote:

“I went along to the informal ‘drop-in’ meeting, which I saw at least 40 families attend…When we asked the staff there what was happening, they told us they couldn’t discuss anything as they had been told by their bosses that they couldn’t get involved or share their opinions at all, which I found awful as their jobs are on the line here too…I was told that all services would be diverted to Highbridge as our area apparently ‘doesn’t have enough families in need’…As a non-driver, there is no bus from Cheddar or Axbridge to Highbridge at all. In fact, we’d have to take three buses to get there, and even that wouldn’t work as, like me, many of us need to be back by 3 pm to get our other children from school. I found the Cheddar children’s centre a lifesaver. I live in an isolated, very small town and don’t drive, so the children’s centre was, and still is, the only place I can get to within walking distance, as I cannot afford the buses.”

The second person I will quote is Victoria. She was really pleased that, after just three weeks, 400 signatures had been gathered to stop the Valley children’s centre from being closed. She said there had

“been no direct contact from Somerset County Council…nor any further information given about decision making…We have invited Councillor Nicholson”—

the lead member of the council on this—

“to a community cafe on Wednesday 5 February…but the invite has gone unanswered.”

Finally, Sue wrote:

“Children’s Centres give parents the tools for those relational building blocks and many other life changing benefits too, influencing two generations simultaneously, in a way that no other infrastructure organisation is set up to do. In Somerset I suggest that Children’s Centres are being deliberately set up to fail, or at the very least to be subsumed into the nebulous recesses of the ‘Early Help Strategy’ and disappear without trace in a couple of years’ time, without having delivered the promised improvement in services…but it is clear that wholesale reduction of numbers of Children’s Centres and their scope and influence is either planned or already taking place.

If the government is to seriously explore and address big social questions like family and community relationships, it doesn’t need to re-invent the wheel. The infrastructure is broadly there, but it needs to be understood, valued, nurtured and funded. So many people making crucial decisions at the moment really have no idea what Children’s Centres are or what they do, or the long-term cultural changes that they can bring about—but this needs time. If they are abandoned now, the waste of investment over the last 6 and more years will be absurd. They must be provided in the same way as schools, social services or health services, and accessible to all families. The inspection parameters are as stringent as any of the above!”

In Somerset, unfortunately, the county council’s child protection services’ Ofsted rating is the lowest, at inadequate, following an inspection in the middle of 2013. That is a catastrophic fall from the outstanding rating at which Ofsted inspectors judged child protection under the previous Administration in 2009. The whole closure plan is ill-conceived and, frankly, dangerous, so serious questions need to be asked of Somerset county council.

I wish to ask the Minister about how the county council responds to the Government’s assurances on their family, children and young people webpage that finances have not been cut, and that enough funds are available to councils to maintain children’s centre services as they are. Will she intervene and satisfy herself fully that the children of Somerset are best served by the county’s obsession with cutting services and costs, and banking the savings?

21:16

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) on securing this important debate. I am afraid that Somerset has been in the news rather too much recently—certainly as far as Parliament is concerned —and for all the wrong reasons. The debate ties in with today’s earlier proceedings about the neglect of our drainage systems.

The tragedy of being around for rather too long is that one sees good ideas introduced, nurtured and expanded, but eventually undermined and destroyed. Back in the ’80s, when I represented Frome as a county councillor and was leader of Somerset county council, I recall working with the then National Children’s Home to introduce one of the first children’s centres in Frome. It was a breakthrough in dealing with the huge social need that had expressed itself, particularly among vulnerable families in Frome, and I believe that the development of that essential service set a pattern for a large part of the rest of the country. However, the network that has been built up across the county is now under serious threat.

My hon. Friend is right that the consultation was, frankly, dishonest. In a way she was actually too kind to the county council. She cited the phrase

“some Children’s Centres are not performing…well”,

and said that that was not accurate, but the original consultation did not even say that—it was changed halfway through. The original consultation said, “At the moment children’s centres are not performing well”, and it was pointed out that that was simply inaccurate, wrong and prejudicial to the consultation, and the council was forced to change it. The county council consistently ignored the performance of really good children’s centres, working with outreach into the community and with vulnerable families. One of the best examples of that in my constituency is the Balsam centre in Wincanton, which has a superb range of provision, but is now under threat.

What really concerns me—my hon. Friend touched on this at the end of her comments—is that this issue is of a piece with what the county council has done across the board in its provision for children. I cannot accept that a county council should, under any circumstances, be in a situation where child protection services were outstanding four years ago, but are now so far destroyed—I can use no other word—that they require direct support from Government Ministers under special measures and, I think, will eventually have to be taken in hand by the Government. That is a dereliction of duty by the county council, and it affects the children of some of the most vulnerable families in the county. This situation is part of that same dereliction of duty.

Government policy on supporting children’s centres has been clear. It has been said time and again by Ministers of the most senior level from the Dispatch Box that the Government are providing funding and encouragement for children’s centres across the country, so why is it that we in Somerset have a county council that is so myopic that it cannot see that the closure programme and its proposed changes will be enormously damaging to not just the fabric of support in my county, but the reputation of the Government? It is making Ministers appear duplicitous, and I do not believe that that is the case. I believe that the Government are absolutely genuine in their support for this sector. I implore the Minister to tell her colleagues on Somerset county council where to get off, and to tell them that this is important not just to us, but to the Government, and that the council needs to change its mind.

21:20

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) on securing the debate. I agree with her about the vital work that professionals in children’s centres do.

Across the country, we are seeing a record number of parents and carers using children’s centres: more than 1 million last year. That shows the Government’s commitment to children’s centres and their important work. They provide crucial support for children and families: pre-natal and post-natal care, parenting classes, stay and play, and networks for parents. The Government are clear that they should be for everybody in the community, not just for some. In our guidance that we put out last year, we made it clear that local authorities have a responsibility to ensure that children’s centres are accessible to all parents.

There has been a debate on whether children’s centres should be targeted or universal. I believe that unless they are universal, we will not find the parents who need them most, and they may not come to them. It is therefore important that centres are accessible and within easy reach of parents so that all parents feel that they can use them and become part of that network. That is why, in our guidance, there is a presumption against the closure of children’s centres.

I agree, too, with my hon. Friend’s comments about integration with other services. There is clearly a lot of opportunity for better integration with health and education services in the locality. Some children’s centres—for example, one I visited recently in Watford—have a midwifery service for antenatal care. Other children’s centres provide birth registration and post-natal care. That is helpful for parents, because it provides one place for them to go to for help and advice—everybody goes through the door to register a birth, and they then become part of a parental network. That can extend to help on all kinds of issues: employment, finding a nursery place for their child and a place in local schools. All those can be accessed via children’s centres.

We are looking to councils to think of better ways to provide services that are local to parents and that integrate well with health services. With the Department of Health devolving health and wellbeing boards, there will be more opportunities for local authorities to integrate those services better, to get better value for money and to put more services on the front line, rather than spending money on bureaucracy. There is an opportunity —we have seen this across the country—for health services and children’s centres to work more as networks, in hub and spoke models, so that they are accessible to parents, while we gain efficiencies in management and the services they provide. Our guidance was clear that the key focus has to be on improving outcomes for children and families, and that is what the aim of children’s centres should be. However, we want them to achieve that in a universal fashion.

[Tessa Munt]

It is clear that the county council has not supported children’s centres in Somerset with the right data and information, and that therefore they have had catastrophic inspections results from Ofsted, but how can anyone judge how good a service is when it is downgraded because of the administration, yet the service delivered by staff is superb?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I want to come to the point about Ofsted. Last week, I spoke at a meeting of the all-party group on Sure Start children’s centres. At the moment, there is an issue with Ofsted inspections—not with their quality, but with how children’s centres are inspected. I am in discussions with Ofsted, but I think it would be more sensible to look at the overall early years support services provided by local councils through children’s centres, rather than at centres individually. A lot of councils are moving towards more of a network model, but the important thing is that parents and children can access centres and good services, and that centres reach as many people as possible. The current model—where statutory children’s centres, but not branch centres, are inspected by Ofsted—is probably not as effective as a council-based model, and I think that that is pertinent to my hon. Friend’s point. We are working on a slightly different inspection model for precisely the reasons she outlined.

I was asked where budgets were coming from. We have increased funding for early intervention from £2.1 billion to £2.5 billion in this Parliament, while the Department for Communities and Local Government has a fund for which local authorities can bid to reconfigure services in a way that suits local communities, although I have been told by Ministers that not many applications have been received from children’s services looking to reconfigure. This is an opportunity for forward-looking councils to think about how they can do things in a way that suits families, including though better co-location with GP surgeries, schools and local community facilities.

[Mr Browne]

Will the Minister clarify that point? I accept that councils across the country need to find financial efficiencies—everybody is realistic about that—but is she saying that there is no financial necessity on Somerset county council to close any children’s centres? Is she saying that, because more money is available to them, the decision to close a centre is a political decision, not a financial requirement?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I know that my hon. Friend is a voice of reform and that he wants councils to be as efficient as possible. The point is that we have increased investment in early intervention.

[Mr Heath]

rose—

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am terribly sorry, but we have heard several interventions already, and I need to proceed to my final remarks.

I would be pleased to continue the discussion with my hon. Friends about what might be done in the specific case of Somerset. I have outlined Government funding for children’s centres and our expectation of a presumption against closure. We want services that are accessible for all families. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wells on securing the debate and look forward to discussing the matter further.

Question put and agreed to.

21:29

House adjourned.