House of Commons

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

Thursday 20 March 2014

The House met at half-past Nine o’clock

Prayers

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to relieve congestion on roads.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

The Government are committed to reducing traffic congestion and investing in our road infrastructure. Spending on strategic roads over this and the next Parliament will be £24 billion. A £500 million programme of pinch point schemes specifically targeted at tackling congestion is being progressed on both the strategic and local road network and a further £800 million is being invested in 25 local authority major road schemes. I am sure my hon. Friend will also join me in welcoming the additional £200 million that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced in yesterday’s Budget for pothole repairs.

[Peter Aldous]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that answer. The Prime Minister visited Lowestoft in January and saw for himself the fantastic opportunities in the offshore energy sector. Unfortunately, they could be choked off by congestion such as that experienced in the past fortnight. The problem could be solved by a new crossing at Lake Lothing. Suffolk county council, with the help of the local enterprise partnership and Waveney district council, has commissioned a study to come up with the right solution. Will the Secretary of State visit Lowestoft to see the problem for himself?

[Mr McLoughlin]

It has been a considerable time since I last visited Lowestoft, but following my hon. Friend’s invitation I shall certainly do so. Ministerial colleagues, including the Prime Minister, have visited. My hon. Friend’s points are well made, and they have been made to me by other colleagues.

[Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)]

Congestion would be much improved if the potholes in the roads were removed. Although I welcome the money that was made available yesterday, how will it be distributed? How much of it is coming to Scotland?

[Mr McLoughlin]

Scotland will get its share according to the Barnett formula as part of the announcement made by the Chancellor yesterday. It will be up to the Scottish Government to decide how they share the money between the authorities in Scotland.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that the A12 through Essex and into Suffolk and Norfolk is a main road to the ports at Felixstowe and elsewhere? Given that a significant proportion of it from the M25 to Chelmsford is already three-lane, would it not be sensible to relieve congestion into the East Anglian hinterland by turning it into a motorway?

[Mr McLoughlin]

My right hon. Friend makes an interesting suggestion. No doubt he will pursue that argument with me and the authorities on a number of occasions to come.

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

What is the Secretary of State doing about the congestion at Tollbar End, which is affecting businesses, particularly those in the export market, and people getting to work? I contacted his Department last week but I still have not had an answer.

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am very sorry that the hon. Gentleman has not had an answer. I could compare the time delays in reply to correspondence under this and the previous Government, but instead I will try to get the hon. Gentleman an answer as quickly as possible. We are investing significant amounts in road infrastructure, more than that invested by the previous Government. That shows this Government’s overall commitment to infrastructure investment in the United Kingdom.

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

One of the worst sections of road for congestion is the A27 from Eastbourne to Lewes. It has been appalling for many decades and I know that it is being considered by the Department for Transport. Does the Secretary of State agree that the best way to solve the congestion would be a new dualled trunk road?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has met the Minister responsible for roads, my hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill), to make that point, which has been made to me, too, by other people in Eastbourne. However, there is some controversy, not least because the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) has a different view on the matter.

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

Traffic jams cost UK motorists 30 hours each last year and were often made worse by a £10 billion backlog in the road repair programme. As local road maintenance was cut by nearly a sixth between 2010 and 2013, is the Secretary of State surprised that the Chancellor’s announcement yesterday of a pothole challenge competition hardly has many motorists shouting “bingo” today?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman makes such a point, because I do not know whether he can get the shadow Chancellor to commit to investments such as those we are putting into this country’s road infrastructure. As I understand it, he is not allowed to make any commitments whatsoever. I am very glad not only that the Chancellor yesterday announced an extra £200 million to invest in our roads but that later today I will announce the allocation of the £140 million that I announced a few weeks ago to all local authorities. I hope that they will use the £140 million along with the £200 million announced yesterday to make significant improvements to our roads.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

2. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of public transport links to Durham Tees Valley airport.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

My assessment is that public transport links to Durham Tees Valley airport are very poor. However, we stated in the aviation policy framework that we will work with airports, transport operators, local authorities and local enterprise partnerships to improve surface access to the UK’s airports.

[Ian Swales]

In the year to last March, the station at Durham Tees Valley airport had eight passengers—not per hour or per day, but in the whole year. Only one service a week stops there, cynically avoiding the costs of a real closure. This is a symbol of the long-term neglect of the area and its airport. Will the Minister require the airport operators to link their passenger terminal to proper public transport services, timed to serve their flights?

[Mr Goodwill]

I know that this is what is known as a parliamentary service, which does save the cost of closure, but given that the passenger numbers were 900,000 in 2006 and 161,092 in 2013, action on more than just public transport links will be required to ensure the airport’s future.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that the Tees Valley metro was seen as a key component in establishing better links to the airport. That concept appears to have slipped somewhat. Will he meet me to discuss the viability of the Tees Valley metro so that we can pursue our economic ambitions right across the Tees valley?

[Mr Goodwill]

I will be more than happy to do so, and ensure that Teesside has the same good transport links from which many other parts of the country benefit.

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

3. When he next plans to meet representatives of the Passenger Transport Executive Group.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

There are no arrangements in place at present. However, while it has been some time since my last meeting with the group, I have met representatives individually in the intervening period. I would therefore welcome the opportunity to meet PTEG or indeed with representatives of any of the local government organisations from Newcastle.

[Mr Brown]

There is quite a lot to discuss—for example, quality contracts—but of immediate concern is the impact of the new combined authorities on the existing joint boards. Can the Secretary of State say anything today that would reassure the employees of the existing joint boards, who are uncertain about their future?

[Mr McLoughlin]

The proposals for the combined authorities would see the passenger transport executives continuing to provide an executive function on transport issues across the board. The exception to that is west Yorkshire, where the local authorities have decided to dissolve their PTEs in addition to the integrated transport authority. The powers and duties of the PTE will be transferred to the new combined authority. I am more than happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman to discuss his worries.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

The next time my right hon. Friend meets PTEG, will he invite representations on the progress of the Dover Priory railway station project, which is being held up by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs?

[Mr McLoughlin]

If my hon. Friend had not asked that question, I do not think that I would have done, but as he has, I will certainly look into it and write to him.

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

When the Secretary of State next meets representatives from PTEG, they will no doubt tell him that bus fares are rising year on year and that routes are being cut. Should not operators such as Stagecoach, which make a huge profit off the back of the taxpayer subsidy, start behaving more responsibly, rather than threatening legal action at the prospect of a quality contract in Tyne and Wear?

[Mr McLoughlin]

We want to see good co-operation between the passenger transport executives, the combined local authorities and the bus operators that provide the services in their area. They need to work together to give the best services to local people. Bus services are incredibly important to people and are vital in enabling them to go about their daily business and to get to work and to their leisure activities.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

4. What progress he has made on implementing recommendations of the “Get Britain Cycling” report of the all-party parliamentary cycling group. [R]

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

My hon. Friend chaired the all-party parliamentary cycling group yesterday when I outlined the Government’s commitment to cycling. With regards to the all-party group’s recommendations, the Government provided an update to Parliament last month.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the Minister for coming to speak to us yesterday. We made a number of recommendations, which were endorsed by this House when we debated the subject. Two of those would have a cross-departmental action plan and sustained funding at £10 per head. We have had some pots of money, but not at that level. Will he update us on those two issues?

[Mr Goodwill]

The first point that needs to be made is that, compared with the previous Government, we have doubled spending on cycling. Indeed, the eight cycling ambition cities have benefited from that funding, and Cambridge is one of them.

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

If we are to get more people cycling, the physical fear—real or imagined—must be removed, particularly on busy roads such as those near my constituency where a number of people have died. How can the Government address that and take away the physical fear of cycling on busy roads?

[Mr Goodwill]

The Highways Agency is spending £40 million on cycling improvement schemes. I think that some of the media coverage, particularly in London last year, gives the impression that cycling is more dangerous than it actually is. It is safer now than it ever has been.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Local communities in Northumberland are keen to access the future cycling fund. Will the Minister meet me and representatives from Northumberland to discuss how the local enterprise partnership and individual communities can access future funds, and when that will happen?

[Mr Goodwill]

We are certainly always keen to meet local authorities and local enterprise partnerships to look at imaginative ways of encouraging more cycling. Indeed, we will publish our cycling delivery plan later this year.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

5. What assessment he has made of Network Rail’s planned control period 5 investment programme.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

Network Rail is about to embark on CP5, which runs from 2014 to 2019, during which it will spend £38.5 billion on the railways—a significant increase on the £32 billion spent in the previous five-year period.

[Stuart Andrew]

May I begin by thanking my right hon. Friend for ruling out the introduction of car parking charges at stations in west Yorkshire and by congratulating him on the significant amount of electrification that is taking place on our railways, compared with the pitiful amount under the previous Government? Does he agree that if he wanted it to be really impressive, to put the icing on the cake, electrifying the Caldervale line through New Pudsey would make it even better?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am very glad that car parking charges have been ruled out, despite some people’s claims that they would be introduced. It was partly my hon. Friend’s vigorous campaign that led to that decision. He is absolutely right about the huge amount of electrification taking place on our railways—over 800 miles, compared with the 9 miles electrified during Labour’s 13 years in government.

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

The planned investment is very welcome, but what will the Secretary of State do to ensure that the correct rolling stock is available when electrification is completed so that we do not have a repeat of the current fiasco with TransPennine Express?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I think that it is absolutely right that we get rolling stock. I am sure that the hon. Lady, and indeed the whole House, will join me in welcoming the announcement made by Hitachi overnight that it will base its world headquarters for rail development in this country. That is incredibly good news and I am sure it will be welcomed by all. The point she makes about rolling stock overall is important. It shows the kind of development that is needed in railway rolling stock orders.

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

My right hon. Friend will be aware of the campaign in the Humber to bring electrification through to Hull. Does he have an update on that important project for our area?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I have met hon. Friends and other hon. Members from the Hull area to discuss the representations they have made. I am very pleased to be able to announce today that I can make available the £2.5 million to take this project up to GRIP 3—governance for railway investment projects. That notification will be going to Network Rail and I will write to colleagues today to tell them that I am making the money available.

[Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)]

Although we all welcome investment in Network Rail, does the Secretary of State think that it is acceptable that the procurement programme for traffic management is going forward before a full and independent review can establish whether £1 billion of savings is possible?

[Mr McLoughlin]

The right hon. Lady has written to me on this matter, and I have not only corresponded with the company concerned and other interested Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), but visited the company. Anna Walker, who chairs the Office of Rail Regulation, has written me a letter showing how it will investigate the points that have been made by DeltaRail.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

What proportion of the money that the Government are spending and plan to spend on the railways is being spent on schemes that were initiated or started under the previous Labour Government?

[Mr McLoughlin]

The schemes that have been put forward in CP5 have been approved by this Government.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

We welcome electrification of the railways, but not if there are no trains to run on the tracks. One of the achievements of this control period will be the electrification of the Liverpool to Manchester line, which should mean better services, but the Department’s incompetence on franchising has put that progress at risk, as some TransPennine Express trains will transfer to Chiltern Railways next year. What is the Secretary of State going to do about it?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I realise that the hon. Lady has to try to find some things to attack and criticise us on, but I would have thought she welcomed a very significant increase in the investment into the railways. There were 9 miles of electrification during the 13 years of the previous Government; there will be 880 miles of electrification under this Government. Of course it is absolutely right to get the rolling stock right. Part of the problem with rolling stock has been the dismal performance of the previous Government in ordering it.

[Mary Creagh]

If it was so dismal, I do not understand why Hitachi has moved here because of the intercity express programme, but we will move on from that, because it was a Labour decision that caused that announcement today. [Interruption.] It was an order made under a Labour Government, not a Conservative Government.

The point of railway investment is to make life better for passengers, not worse. The Secretary of State talks about the electrification of the midland main line in control period 5, but again there are no answers on which trains will run on those tracks. Handing down older trains from the east coast line will lead to slower journeys on midland line trains than with the current diesel trains. What reassurance can he give the House that his botching of the TransPennine Express and Northern Rail franchises will not happen again in his own backyard?

[Mr McLoughlin]

The simple fact is that rail usage in this country has been a tremendous success that should be celebrated across the House. There were 750 million passenger journeys when the railways were privatised; there are 1.5 billion rail journeys now. I am very pleased about that. We are investing huge amounts in the railways. Of course there will be some problems with rolling stock, but it is this Government who have confirmed the intercity express programme orders for the east coast line and the great western line, and this Government who are signing off the contracts.

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

6. What estimate his Department has made of the number of people who will be killed or injured in road traffic collisions in the UK between 2014 and 2030; and if he will estimate the economic value of preventing such casualties.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

Road casualties have followed a declining trend over recent decades. With unprecedented investment in roads and continued improvements in vehicle technology, there are signs that this trend will continue. The economic cost of each casualty has been calculated at £1.7 million.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister knows of my long-term interest in road safety as chairman of the parliamentary advisory council for transport safety. Are we not in danger of becoming complacent? From now until 2030, it is likely that a third of a million people will be killed and seriously injured on Britain’s roads. The cost to families, to communities and to the national health service is going to be dreadful. Should we not act now to improve our performance?

[Mr Goodwill]

The UK leads Europe in road safety. Only Malta has a better record, and our record is twice as good as that of France. However, that is no reason for complacency or for letting up in the measures that we can take further to improve road safety.

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

My hon. Friend’s constituency and mine are served by the A64, and there will inevitably be casualties and fatalities on that road. Will he take this as a representation on improving it to reduce the likelihood of any such future casualties or fatalities?

[Mr Goodwill]

There are a number of single-carriageway trunk roads where we have particular concerns about the fatality and casualty levels. The Department collates data and produces a list of the worst blackspots which we can then identify for future investment.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

7. What plans he has to review funding for mountain rescue teams.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)]

I am pleased to inform my hon. Friend and my hon. Friends the Members for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) and for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart)—and the whole House—that we have listened carefully to the concerns they have raised and will therefore provide in 2015-16 grants totalling £250,000 to mountain rescue organisations in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland for use towards the cost of their equipment and training. That is in addition to the grants totalling £600,000 that we have made available over the past three years and the £200,000 to be payable this year for 2014-15.

[David Rutley]

I welcome the Minister’s announcement today and the support that he is showing mountain rescue teams across the country. In Macclesfield and other constituencies where outdoor activities in the hills play an important part in the lives of residents and visitors, mountain rescue teams may be seen by many as a fourth emergency service. Will the Minister join me in thanking them for their important work and recognising what the all-party mountain rescue group also does in supporting them?

[Stephen Hammond]

My hon. Friend is right. I am happy to commend his and all local mountain rescue teams throughout the country. I recognise and commend the work of the all-party group.

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

I add my voice in thanks to the Minister for this wonderful announcement. May I please remind him of two things: first, the important work also done by cave rescue, in addition to mountain rescue; and secondly, that all the work of the mountain and cave rescue teams is entirely voluntary, notwithstanding the compensation for VAT on their equipment?

[Stephen Hammond]

I am duly reminded. Undoubtedly, it was my hon. Friend’s campaign and those of my hon. Friends the Members for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) and for Macclesfield (David Rutley) that made us consider the grants that I announced today.

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

It will be not just mountain rescue but cave rescue organisations in Grassington and Clapham in my constituency that benefit. The Transport Secretary has been on his bike in Skipton and Ripon. Will he now commit to coming down a cave with me in the near future?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman poses a very serious challenge to even the most vivid imagination in the House.

[Stephen Hammond]

I really wonder whether I can answer the question better than Mr Speaker. I am loth to commit my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, but between us I am sure we will find someone who can join my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon.

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

8. What plans he has to review MOT tyre requirements for buses and coaches.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)]

Buses and coaches are inspected annually from the anniversary of their date of registration. Tyre condition, wear and their suitability for the vehicle are all checked at that time. Tyres are also checked routinely as part of the safety inspections undertaken by traffic commissioners who manage the licensing of such vehicles.

[Steve Rotheram]

The Minister may be aware of the tragic death of three people in a car crash on the A3 in September 2010, when a 19-year-old tyre burst on the front axle of their coach. Early-day motion 1166 calls on the Government to commission urgent research into whether legislation can be enacted to limit the age of a tyre on a bus or coach. Will he confirm that the Government are taking this issue seriously? When will they commission such a study?

[Stephen Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman will know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State met the previous shadow Secretary of State, along with one of the mothers of the people who were tragically killed in that coach crash. As an interim measure, the Department has already published guidelines to the bus and coach industry recommending that tyres of more than 10 years old are not fitted to the front axles of such vehicles. That was in December 2013, and I can confirm that we are in discussion with the tyre organisations about the product and about whether age and maintenance are the key factors and how they should be addressed.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

9. What his plans are for the Severn bridge tolls when the current operator’s licence ends.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

The UK Government are committed to the continued successful operation of these vital crossings. No decisions have been taken on future management or tolling arrangements on the crossings after the end of the current concession. However, any future regime would need to recover the costs it has incurred relating to the crossings, make provision for maintenance of the crossings and reflect the interests of roads users in England and Wales.

[Kevin Brennan]

If the toll since the first bridge was built in 1966 had increased simply in line with inflation, it would be just over £2 today, yet it is now £6.40 for a car. That is a tax on the south Wales economy, as the tolls operate only in one direction. Should the Government not give careful consideration to reducing the tolls when the opportunity arises or getting rid of them altogether?

[Mr Goodwill]

At the end of the concession period VAT will no longer be payable, so the Government of the day could take a decision based on that. Tolls for heavy goods vehicles are comparable with those at other crossings. For example, after taking account of the fact that crossing is free in one direction, the toll at the Humber crossing is £12 to save 45 miles, and the toll at the Severn is £9.60 to save 52 miles.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

The Minister will know from the recent debate in Westminster Hall that the old Severn bridge is entirely in England and half of it is in my constituency. When he is considering the future use of toll revenue, will he bear in mind my request for consideration of a third Severn crossing to relieve traffic congestion in my constituency, and whether toll revenue may be used to part-fund that if that is entirely necessary?

[Mr Goodwill]

The Government should certainly consider that. Indeed, the announcement in yesterday’s Budget on the Merseylink crossing indicates that there can be some cross-subsidisation of crossings to fund new provision.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

10. What steps he plans to take to improve road and rail infrastructure into Devon and Cornwall.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

My Department is reviewing the resilience of the transport network to extreme weather events. This will include the south-west. The current priority is restoring rail services through Dawlish. We have announced £31 million for 10 resilience projects and commissioned Network Rail to identify a resilient rail route west of Exeter. There is £183.5 million available nationally to help repair local roads and we are undertaking a feasibility study to improve options for the A303.

[Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend will be aware of the proposal for a new railway line from Exeter to Plymouth via Okehampton and Tavistock. May I urge him to take it very seriously and perhaps to visit Okehampton with me to meet local business people and others in order to have the case for the economic advantages of that route presented to him?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I have asked Network Rail to do a substantive piece of work, which I expect to get this July and which will address some of the options. I very much hope to visit Dawlish shortly and if a visit to my hon. Friend’s constituency can be arranged at the same time, I will try to do so.

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

I will not go down the route of disagreeing with the hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) about the Okehampton option. The Secretary of State knows of my support and admiration for those involved in keeping the south-west open for business. There are, however, some issues: there was nothing in the Budget for road or rail transport in the south-west and, to be frank, we have a franchising dog’s breakfast which has cost the taxpayer £55 million. People and businesses in the south-west deserve better. Will the Secretary of State press his colleague the Chancellor to ensure that commitments for finance for investment will be made either before or during the next autumn statement?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I hear what the hon. Lady says. I was able to announce some improvements that were welcomed with regard to an early service from Plymouth to London. I hope that goes some way to answering the question. I appreciate the points made by the hon. Lady and the way in which this particular incident had a dramatic effect on the south-west. We need to look at resilience down there. We also need to look at what we can do with regard to both rail and road, and we have already committed ourselves to an intensive investigation of the A303.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Further to that, it is important that we get a resolution on the temporary franchise as quickly as possible. In congratulating my right hon. Friend on getting a solution in Dawlish, may I ask which Government Departments contributed the finance to ensure that that very expensive project was brought to a conclusion?

[Mr McLoughlin]

May I use this opportunity to place on record my thanks to Network Rail—I am sure that I speak on behalf of colleagues in the south-west as well—for responding magnificently to the problems that were faced in Dawlish? Anybody who has read about the continuing work to restore that link will be only impressed with the work that has been put in by Network Rail, which is often criticised for actions on the railways. I hear what the hon. Gentleman says about finding the funds. The Government will find them and I am not too worried about which Departments they will come from.

[Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to support the take-up of low- emission vehicles.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

The Government have committed up to £900 million to promote the uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles. Measures include a £5,000 buyer incentive and funding for charge points, including at people’s homes and locations such as train station car parks and the public sector estate.

[Mike Thornton]

I welcome the pioneering initiative the Government have put in place and the efforts to ensure that this country becomes a global leader in the field. However, I recently met representatives from the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, who brought to my attention the danger that these very quiet vehicles can hold to those whose sight is impaired and to older people and children. These people rely on vehicle noise to help them judge whether it is safe to cross the road. Is the Minister aware of the research that shows that such quiet vehicles are involved in 25% more pedestrian collisions than conventional vehicles?

[Mr Goodwill]

The latest advice I have is that there is not a higher level of accidents involving these types of vehicles. We have an awful lot of vehicles that make no noise on our roads—they are called bicycles and people have to be aware of them as well.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Minister initially said that the Government would spend £400 million supporting low-emission vehicles. Answers to parliamentary questions have shown that £170 million of that will not be spent by the end of this Government’s life. Last year, the Chancellor cut the first-year capital subsidy for low-emission vehicles, as a result of which no right-handed vehicles are being produced in the UK. What will he do to incentivise this industry, and to ensure that the emissions causing the deaths of 29,000 people each year are cut down?

[Mr Goodwill]

As more manufacturers produce these vehicles, they are becoming much more mainstream, and people are getting used to the issues about range anxiety. As a Yorkshireman, I was particularly pleased to hear that the new Volkswagen model is to be called the e-up!

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

12. What steps he is taking to ensure adequate supply and stability of rolling stock until 2018.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)]

The Government have embarked on a programme of rail capacity increase greater than anything seen since the Victorian age. More than 3,100 new carriages will be in service by the end of 2019. Through the franchising programme, we expect the market to deliver additional rolling stock solutions, building on the possibilities created by the rail investment strategy, electrification projects and capacity increases. I am confident that a solution will shortly be found to enable diesel trains to be released to address the capacity issues in Bolton.

[Julie Hilling]

My constituents are fed up with jam tomorrow and playing sardines today. With diesel trains in great demand but short supply for the next four or five years and with services for my constituents being some of the most overcrowded in the country, what is the Minister doing to prevent other companies from snatching more of our trains from Northern Rail and First TransPennine Express?

[Stephen Hammond]

I was pleased to meet the hon. Lady and other Members from Bolton recently. She knows that commercial leases are a matter for the operating companies, but also that, as I said a moment ago, I have worked with operating companies to reach a solution to ensure that there is extra capacity on the line in Bolton from Christmas onwards.

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

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

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

Following the wettest winter on record, I recently announced an extra £140 million for urgent repairs to local roads, bringing the total fund to more than £170 million. Today, I am announcing the individual allocations of that funding among local authorities. Some £47 million will be allocated to councils in the south-west that were particularly badly affected. I expect councils to spend the money wisely and quickly, and councils that do so will be particularly well placed to bid for additional funds for road repairs in the next financial year from the £200 million pot announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in yesterday’s excellent Budget.

[Mr Bain]

Thirteen months ago, the Public Accounts Committee told the Secretary of State that serious fundamental errors in the franchising process for the west coast main line had led to more than £55 million of public money being flushed down the drain. What action has he taken to make sure that that Tory franchising fiasco never happens again?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I announced a number of follow-ups that I took as a result of that particular franchising problem—I was incredibly open with the House about it—through both the Laidlaw inquiry and the Brown inquiry. I do not recognise the £55 million figure that the hon. Gentleman talks about.

[Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)]

T3. Will the Minister commit to looking at the electrification of the Penzance to Paddington route, a scheme which, at a fraction of the cost of HS2, would benefit everyone in the south-west, unlike some of the other promoted schemes that would benefit only some people at the expense of others?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Hammond)]

In 2012, the Department commissioned a study from Arup to look at electrification to the west of Newbury. We have already seen some of that study’s results, which indicate that there is a very good business case for going to Bedwyn, and further results from that study are being considered by the Department.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

First Great Western was originally due to pay more than £800 million in premium payments over the years 2013 to 2016, but the Government have now handed over the franchise for just £17 million a year. If there is now a further five-year extension on the line, with no competition, at the same time as Ministers are selling off the successful East Coast operator, will not taxpayers once again pay the price for this Government’s incompetence and ideology?

[Mr McLoughlin]

The hon. Lady should be careful about the points that she makes about that matter. She talks about First Great Western’s right to cancel the contract, but that right was given to it by the last Government when they negotiated the franchise. All it was doing was exercising an option that the last Government gave it. If she is saying that the last Government made a mistake in dealing with that matter, she might be right. I am determined to ensure that the people who are served by that franchise on that route get better services. That is why we will insist that first-class carriages are converted to standard class to provide more capacity on the line, and why we are improving the sleeper services down to Cornwall—something that has been welcomed widely.

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

T5. I am a big supporter of high-speed rail, but it has to link to the north and then to Scotland to bring benefits. May I ask the Secretary of State to do what the previous Government failed to do, which is to look at the viable alternative to HS2, “High Speed UK”, which would cause less environmental damage, would be £14 billion cheaper and would connect more cities than just Birmingham and London?

[Mr McLoughlin]

What we have to do with high-speed rail is vastly to increase capacity, which HS2 does. That is vital. I think that HS2 is the right scheme to go ahead with. Of course it has to link in. In the excellent report that was published this week, David Higgins showed how we will do that and how we will get a train service that is adequate for this country not just for 10 or 20 years, but for the next 150 years.

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

T2. This morning, like many Members, I caught a London bus on my way to work. Quality contracts are one reason why London has bucked the national trend of rising fares and falling passenger numbers. Will the Secretary of State join me, Tyne and Wear public transport users group and his friend, the Mayor of London, in supporting quality contracts for quality bus services?

[Stephen Hammond]

There are many ways of developing quality bus services up and down the country. The Government are making a huge commitment through grants to bus operators and have reformed the bus service operators grant so that local authorities are now in charge of it. We believe that partnership is the best way forward and I am convinced that it still is.

[Mr Simon Burns (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State agree that it is somewhat surprising that more has not been said in this Question Time to congratulate Hitachi on its decision to bring its rail business headquarters to England? Does he agree that, ever since he gave it the contract for the intercity express programme rolling stock, it has gone from strength to strength? The irony is that, in some years’ time, we could be a net exporter of rolling stock, rather than having to import it.

[Mr McLoughlin]

I have mentioned that once or twice, and I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for mentioning it again. It is fantastic that Hitachi has announced that it will locate its headquarters in London and that it is building its manufacturing plant in Newton Aycliffe. That follows the contracts to build the new IEP trains that were awarded and signed by this Government.

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

T7. The Government say that there is no time in the next 14 months to bring forward a dedicated taxi Bill. Instead, they are pushing through proposals to lower standards and deregulate the taxi market outside London in the Deregulation Bill. Given that there is so little for Parliament to do most weeks, will Ministers explain their actions and say why they cannot take a taxi Bill through the House in the next 12 months?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am not in a position to announce what will be in the future legislative programme for this House. It is no secret, given that it has been announced by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, that the state opening of Parliament will be in June. There is certainly no time left in this Session.

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

The Institute of Directors surveyed more than 13,000 directors for its spring report to gain their views on HS2. More than half of them thought that it was poor value for money and more than 60% thought that the budget that is earmarked for the project would provide a better return if it was used to improve the existing road and rail networks. Why do the Government not listen to the wider business community, rather than to the lobbying of businesses with vested interests, such as the High Speed Rail Industry Leaders Group, most of whom turned out to be on the Government payroll?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I listen to the Institute of Directors, and I also listen to the CBI, which supports HS2, and to the British Chambers of Commerce, which has written to the Prime Minister about it. I also listen to the local authority leaders, who are united in their view that HS2 is the right thing to do to close the north-south divide in this country and provide the north with the type of rail services that it deserves. I would also point out that we have had significant investment in London transport, and it is about time that the rest of the country got some of the investment as well.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

May I join the Secretary of State in welcoming Hitachi’s announcement that it is moving its global rail operation to the UK? That will create a lot of jobs in my constituency. Will he acknowledge two things, however? The first is that Hitachi had identified Newton Aycliffe as its manufacturing base before the last election because of Labour’s intercity express programme, and the second is that it has moved here also because we are in Europe, and it would be a disaster to leave the European Union.

[Mr McLoughlin]

One reason why this country has been so successful in getting inward investment is the long-term market changes that we have made in the United Kingdom, which were started by Baroness Thatcher. I well remember when Toyota came to this country, which was the largest single investment ever made here at more than £800 million. I also remember when Nissan came here. I very much welcome Hitachi, but it follows a number of other Japanese companies in coming to this country, investing in it, providing good, long-term employment and doing very well for the United Kingdom.

[Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)]

Yesterday, the owner of Manston airport in Kent announced the proposed closure of that important airfield. Given that Manston has the fourth longest runway in the country and is a major diversion field and a search and rescue base, will the Secretary of State review the matter in the national interest to see how Manston may be kept open?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

It certainly is disturbing news, given the importance that we place on regional airports. It is disappointing that Manston has not been able to attract some of the low-cost carriers that it hoped to, but I am certainly happy to meet my hon. Friend to see whether there is a way forward.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the Secretary of State make bus driver disability awareness training compulsory in his Department’s review of the EU bus and coach regulation this month?

[Mr McLoughlin]

That has been mentioned to me, and I will certainly want to look into it. I will write to the hon. Gentleman in more detail.

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

Pokesdown railway station, in my constituency, is in dire need of upgrade. The lifts have not worked for a number of decades. In response to a parliamentary question, the Minister said that we should blame South West Trains. I wrote to South West Trains, and it said that we should blame the Government, because that is not part of the franchise agreement. All that the people of Bournemouth want is for the lifts to be working. May I invite the Minister to come to Bournemouth to take a look at the situation?

[Stephen Hammond]

My hon. Friend will know that the Government support local decisions by local communities on improving local connectivity, but I am happy to accept his kind invitation.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry to disappoint colleagues. I recognise the level of demand, but we must move on.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, representing the House of Commons Commission, was asked—

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

1. What assessment the Commission has made of the potential implications for the House Service of the establishment of further parliamentary commissions.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)]

The establishment of a parliamentary commission would be a matter for the two Houses. Should a motion to establish a commission be tabled in this House, the accounting officer is required under Standing Order No. 22C to provide an assessment of the financial implications. If a parliamentary commission were established, the funding and practical arrangements would then fall within the remit of the House of Commons Commission, advised by the Finance and Services Committee and others. Parliamentary commissions are relatively rare, and the implications will depend on the details of any specific proposal.

[Natascha Engel]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his answer. Does he agree that it should be down to the House to decide what the remit and resources of any parliamentary commission or Joint Committee should be, to ensure that it does not cut across the work of departmental Select Committees but instead complements it?

[John Thurso]

The hon. Lady puts her finger on an extremely important point, which is that the merits or otherwise of commissions and Committees are a matter for the House, or for the two Houses in the case of a parliamentary commission. Should a commission or Committee be appointed, it would be for the House authorities, including the House of Commons Commission, to make the arrangements for it to be properly resourced.

[Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Would it not be sensible if the House of Commons Commission were involved in the preparation of the note to be prepared by the Clerk of the House about the costs of such a parliamentary commission, so that it could give its view on the matter? Is it not the case that the additional net cost to the House of Commons of about £175,000 is pretty much de minimis in our budget of £215 million? After all, spending money on scrutinising the Executive is what the House of Commons is for, and cost would be a poor excuse from the Government not to have a parliamentary commission.

[John Thurso]

I do not quite share the hon. Gentleman’s definition of de minimis. Standing Order No. 22C would take de minimis as below £50,000, and I think that saving, or spending, £175,000 would be above de minimis. However, his point that the resource required would be well within the scope of the resources provided is a good one. As I say, it would be for the House and its relevant Committees to make the necessary decisions, following which the House of Commons Commission would undertake the necessary work on resources.

The Leader of the House was asked—

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of Government Departments’ performance in answering written parliamentary questions on time.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

My office collates departmental performance information for ordinary and named day parliamentary questions for each Session, which are submitted to the Procedure Committee. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House provided data relating to the last Session to that Committee in July 2013, and those data are available on the parliamentary website.

[Nic Dakin]

In January, the Procedure Committee published a report which demonstrated that five Departments are deteriorating in their performance of answering named day questions. What is the Deputy Leader of the House doing about that?

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. Clearly, the Government want to ensure that best practice is spread to ensure that all Departments are performing at a very high level. If five Departments are deteriorating, a greater number are improving, and we know that even big Departments such as the Department of Health are able to achieve a fantastic score of responding to 99% of ordinary questions within an appropriate time.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Which is the best performing Department, which is the worst performing, and would the Deputy Leader of the House consider drawing the attention of the Prime Minister to the worst performing Department on a quarterly basis?

[Tom Brake]

Indeed, I am happy to draw the Prime Minister’s attention to Departments that are not up to scratch. It may impress the hon. Gentleman if I tell him that the Department for the Leader of the House of Commons performs the best.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

3. What steps he is taking to encourage his ministerial colleagues to make Government amendments to legislation in the House rather than in the House of Lords.

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

7. What steps he is taking to encourage his ministerial colleagues to make Government amendments to legislation in the House of Commons rather than in the House of Lords.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

All will be well—[Interruption.] There are so many questions. [Interruption.] Inspiration is to hand; I thank the Leader of the House. It illustrates just how well we work together.

It is usual practice for the Government to make amendments, where possible, in the House of introduction. However, the Government are rightly expected to listen and respond to debates on Bills in both Houses of Parliament, and it is, of course, the core strength of our Parliament that any amendments made to Bills in the House of Lords must also be agreed by this House.

[Mr Speaker]

I call Nic Dakin—sorry, I mean Debbie Abrahams. We remember his pearls of wisdom.

[Debbie Abrahams]

That is a disappointing response from the Minister. The Government are increasingly bypassing this Chamber by introducing Bills in skeleton form and then pushing them through the House of Lords. The Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill left this Chamber 29 pages long, and ended up with more than 200 pages in the Lords. Other examples include the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013, and so on. Will the Leader of the House commit to ensuring that that does not happen to future legislation?

[Tom Brake]

I am disappointed with what the hon. Lady has to say. Clearly it is appropriate to ensure that Bills that start in the House of Commons are appropriately considered, and that those which start in the House of Lords are appropriately considered. It may be of interest to the hon. Lady to know that the number of amendments passed in each House is roughly of the same order.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

The Agricultural Wages Board was abolished last year by an amendment added to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill at the last minute in the House of Lords. The Bill was then scheduled so that there was no time to debate the move in the Commons. Does the Leader of the House agree that the Government are deliberately weakening the ability of the House of Commons to scrutinise the Executive, especially on an issue such as this, which undermines workers’ terms and conditions at one fell swoop?

[Tom Brake]

I do not agree. One of the biggest changes the Government have made is to provide much more time, for instance on Report, to ensure that Bills are appropriately considered. If the hon. Gentleman goes through the history books, he will find that he has to go back a very long time under the previous Government to identify when this level of scrutiny was given on Report.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I commend the Government on that and draw attention to the increasing use of draft legislation, on which this Government have done so much better than the last one. Opposition Members should remember the 2005 to 2010 Parliament; by comparison, this Government have been a paragon of virtue.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful comment. Clearly, this Government have put great emphasis on pre-legislative scrutiny, another area where we have performed outstandingly well in comparison with our predecessors.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Does the Deputy Leader of the House recall, as I do, the Opposition’s many attempts in the House of Lords to muzzle time and again our tradition of a free press, for example in the Crime and Courts Bill? Does he agree that people who sit in glass houses should not necessarily throw stones?

[Tom Brake]

I am very happy to support what the hon. Gentleman says. I am very proud of our record of ensuring that the right level of scrutiny is available for Bills and ensuring that the right number of Bills are going through the House. The Opposition often criticise the Government for what they allege is a light programme. We have a programme that is delivering the goods.

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

This morning’s written ministerial statement on drafting guidance for Government Bills represents a missed opportunity to address the Government’s dismal record on drafting legislation. Will the Deputy Leader of the House tell us how he and the Leader of the House plan to ensure that their Government’s Bills are more thoroughly drafted and scrutinised, especially by this House?

[Tom Brake]

I do not know, frankly, what the hon. Lady is referring to. This Government have put great emphasis on ensuring that Bills are effectively drafted. For example, we support the good law initiative, which ensures that Bills are clearer. We have done a considerable amount on explanatory notes to ensure that Members have a better understanding of Government amendments. I would appreciate it if the Opposition joined in that process, for example on the Deregulation Bill, to ensure that there is clarity on what their amendments are suggesting.

[Mr Speaker]

The exchanges are very protracted at the moment. I want to get through some more.

[Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)]

4. What steps he is taking to encourage Ministers to make announcements to the House before their release to the media.

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

The ministerial code is clear: when Parliament is in session the most important announcements of Government policy should be made in the first instance to Parliament. I regularly remind my colleagues of this.

[Pat Glass]

The Chancellor came to the House this week and announced a Budget that had been largely pre-announced through a series of press releases. I hear this complaint all the time in the House and the usual playground response is, “Well, the Labour Government did it.” May I remind the Minister that, whatever happened in the past, this practice is wrong? What is he going to do about it?

[Mr Lansley]

I think the hon. Lady may have prepared her supplementary question before the Budget took place. The Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box yesterday and announced some of the most important reforms to pensions in nearly 100 years, and benefits for savers. As far as I am aware, there was not even speculation on what he was going to do before he announced those measures. She should know that under the terms of the Macpherson report, which the Treasury adhere to, we are clear on not providing advance information on tax and fiscal measures. That was adhered to in the Budget.

[David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)]

5. What steps the Government have taken to improve opportunities for scrutiny of legislative proposals.

[The Deputy Leader of the House of Commons (Tom Brake)]

The Government have improved opportunities for scrutiny by publishing more draft legislative proposals in each Session than the last Administration did. We have also piloted public readings in respect of two Bills, and have frequently allocated more than one day for remaining stages: that includes seven Bills in the current Session alone.

[David Rutley]

What steps are the Government taking to make legislation clearer, more straightforward and easier for the public as well as parliamentarians to understand, in order to facilitate better scrutiny?

[Tom Brake]

As part of the good law initiative, the Government are taking a number of steps to promote law that is clear, necessary, coherent, effective and accessible. For instance, we are considering how we can improve the drafting and presentation of Bills and supporting documents such as explanatory notes, as well as access to and navigation of existing legislation online.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

6. What steps he is taking to improve opportunities for the scrutiny of draft statutory instruments.

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

The Procedure Committee heard evidence on delegated legislation from the Hansard Society on 29 January this year. I am sure that the Committee would welcome the views of the hon. Lady and others when considering whether to undertake a fuller inquiry.

[Kerry McCarthy]

One of the problems of discussing statutory instruments is that we are often given very little notice of them. We have heard that a statutory instrument on fox hunting may well come before the House. Will the Leader of the House tell us how much notice we will be given, how much time will be allowed for a full debate, and whether the statutory instrument will be debated in the Chamber?

[Mr Lansley]

There are requirements relating to notice in Standing Orders, and I try to give the House notice of business on a provisional basis if it is to be dealt with on the Floor of the House. I looked at statutory instruments from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs this morning, and, as far as I am aware, no statutory instrument of the kind described by the hon. Lady is before the House.

The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, representing the House of Commons Commission, was asked—

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

8. What is the latest estimated cost of the proposed education centre in Victoria Tower gardens.

[John Thurso (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)]

The latest estimate of the cost of constructing and equipping the education centre is £6.93 million, excluding value added tax but including the usual provision for contingencies.

[Mr Chope]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell me how expenditure of some £7 million on what will be a temporary building can possibly be justified? Would it not be much better to put the education centre into the space that is currently occupied by the loss-making day nursery overlooking Parliament square?

[John Thurso]

The hon. Gentleman and I served together on the Administration Committee during the last Parliament, and I know of his enthusiasm for the education centre. We considered a wide range of options, all of which we have considered again during the current Parliament, and this option provides by far the best value. It allows us to increase the number of children who go through the education centre from 45,000 to 100,000, which is a significant advance.

A teacher who had taken children around the Houses of Parliament said that it had been a

“fantastic experience that allowed children to have firsthand experience of how the Houses of Parliament work. It was great for them to see it as a working building—online it is static and empty. They were very much struck with awe and wonder.”

Engagement with children is the future of our politics.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that it is very important for children from outside London, particularly those from my constituency, to be able to come and see what goes on in Parliament, and engage with the democratic process? Can he tell us when the first sod will be turned, so that we can have the centre as soon as possible?

[John Thurso]

I cannot at this moment give the hon. Lady an exact date, but it is hoped that the centre will be open in 2015, probably just after the election. As for her first point, as one who represents the most northerly constituency on the mainland of the United Kingdom—and long may it remain united—I must say that it was a tremendous pleasure to welcome children from Kinlochbervie and Wick high schools two weeks ago who made two separate visits. I am sure that we wish to continue to do everything possible to enable constituencies such as hers to benefit from these resources.

Tributes to Tony Benn

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

On Monday 17 March, I informed the House that there would be an opportunity today for right hon. and hon. Members to pay tribute to the right hon. Tony Benn. I call the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Nick Clegg.

10:34

[The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr Nick Clegg)]

May I, on behalf of the House, commence the tributes to the right hon. Tony Benn, following the warm words from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition yesterday?

As others have already commented, Tony Benn will be remembered as a dedicated constituency Member of Parliament, a tireless campaigner and, of course, an astute political diarist. He once described being an MP as the only job with 70,000 employers and only one employee. Our sincere condolences go to his family—including, of course, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn)—and his friends and colleagues at this difficult time.

Countless people, regardless of whether they knew Tony Benn well personally or by reputation alone, have spoken of his kindness, charm and sense of humour. It was these qualities which, among so many other achievements, helped him get the better of Ali G in a way that very few people have before or since. I am sure I am not the only one who remembers watching and admiring Tony Benn in that interview.

Many of the battles Tony Benn fought were very much of their time, such as for renationalisation and turning back the tide of globalisation. Yet on so many other issues, Tony Benn was far ahead of his time. This includes his passionate commitment to protect civil liberties, promote equality and secure political reform in Britain; I could have done with him being here when we last discussed House of Lords reform. His campaign against Britain’s membership of the European Union—something I, of course, did not agree with him on—will loom large in this year’s European elections.

Above all else, Tony Benn was a dedicated democrat. He never forgot the struggles of those who, down the years, have fought for the right to vote, speak and be heard, as his now famous memorial to the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison in a broom cupboard nearby so wonderfully demonstrates, and this uplifting idea to help people realise the power they have to change the world for the better will be his lasting legacy.

Everyone who heard Tony Benn speak, whether they shared his views or not, could not help but admire and learn from the passion and conviction he brought to the causes he believed in. Over his lifetime, Tony Benn went from being vilified to being lauded by the press; perhaps there is hope for all of us. [Interruption.] Okay; perhaps not. He had mixed feelings about this. He once said:

“If I’m a national treasure in the Telegraph, something’s gone wrong.”

This modesty and humour was typical, but as I learned as an East Midlands MEP, representing Tony Benn’s constituency in Chesterfield, the public had a deep respect and affection for him. He had a genuine interest in people and time for everyone he met, and thanks to his diaries people will continue to be inspired by his life and work for many years to come.

10:37

[Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)]

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his generous and thoughtful words on Tony Benn.

This is a parliamentary occasion to remember Tony Benn, but it was a parliamentary occasion every time Tony Benn spoke in this House, and before the House was televised I well remember that when we saw the name “Tony Benn” on the monitor we would all stop what we were doing in our offices and rush into this Chamber to hear him. All those who passionately agreed with him and those who passionately disagreed with him would be here to listen.

He was a great orator both inside and outside this House, and what made his oratory great was not just his formidable intellect—although he had that—or his great historical knowledge, although he had that too: it was that he spoke out of conviction and he always spoke from the heart.

He was first elected to this House in 1950 but was concerned that upon his father’s death his inheritance of a peerage would disqualify him from serving his constituents who had elected him to this House. On his father’s death in 1960 he was disqualified, but fought his way back to this House through the Peerage Act 1963 and a by-election.

When Labour formed a Government in 1964 he became Postmaster General and then Minister of Technology, and with Labour in power again from 1974 to 1979 he became Secretary of State for Industry and then Secretary of State for Energy, and he encouraged a number of workers’ co-operatives, the most notable of which was Meriden in the midlands, which continued to produce Triumph motorcycles for another decade.

What drove him on was his belief in the power of people, as the Deputy Prime Minister said: the power of ordinary people, through their trade unions and their votes, to bring about change—and change for the better. His commitment was to the historic fight against social injustice, but he was never locked in the past. He embraced myriad new movements, such as the green movement and the women’s movement. Because he believed in movements—the power of people working together to make change—he was always encouraging people and giving them the confidence that they could do that.

Everyone who ever met Tony has their own story about that, and this is mine. Back in the mid-1980s, as the only woman MP with very young children and finding it quite impossible to cope, I was sitting by myself in the corner of the Strangers caff. It was 11 o’clock at night and we were still waiting for a vote, and I was feeling terrible. Tony came and sat down next to me, and said, “You look exhausted. You should be at home.” I said that I could not go home, because I had not been let off by the Whips. He said, “I can give you a really important piece of advice for your future. You do not have to worry about the Whips; I never do.” So I was sent home to my family by Tony Benn, himself a great family man.

The public know Tony Benn for his passion for politics, but his other great lifelong passion was his family: his wife, his children and his grandchildren. He proposed to Caroline only nine days after meeting her, explaining that it would have been sooner but he was quite shy. He later bought the bench on which they were sitting when he proposed, and it remained in their garden until the end. He was enormously and justifiably proud of his children: his daughter Melissa, so like her mother, and his sons Joshua, Stephen and Hilary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central, so like him. His legacy is not just to the House and to progressive politics in this country, but in the values and commitment taken forward by his children and grandchildren, to whom we extend our sympathy and with whom we share the grief of the loss of a great parliamentarian and a great politician.

10:42

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

I am the only Member still in the House who voted in favour of the 1963 Peerage Bill, which enabled Tony Benn to renounce his distinguished father’s Stansgate viscountcy and return to us here. At the time, it was a controversial vote. Earlier, he had been elected as a Member of Parliament at the age of 25, when I, just back from the Army, was in my first year at Oxford. Very shortly after his election he came, in full evening dress, to debate at the Oxford Union. He was strikingly handsome. The president of the Union introduced him to us with the words, “I call upon the honourable Anthony Wedgwood Benn, Member of Parliament, New College, Ex-President, to address the house.” He made a stunning speech. I remember thinking to myself, “How am I ever going to be able to compete with that?” Of course, I never was able to. Very few people were ever able, as orators, to do so.

Tony Benn was always kind to me, particularly at the time of the debates on the Maastricht treaty. I even had the privilege, over the years, of occasionally being invited to drink his strong, unsweetened Darjeeling tea from one of his huge tin mugs: the Benn equivalent of a companionship of honour. In private life, he was a gentle, sweet, charming man, with perfect manners. His personality changed a little when he had an audience to address. He was a brilliant, rather demagogic speaker—fluent, witty, forceful and above all, passionate—as much a master of the public platform as of the Chamber of this House. I would rank him, with Nye Bevan, Michael Foot and Enoch Powell, as the four finest parliamentary debaters during my half century in the House. At his best, he was spellbinding, so that listening to him one was sometimes in danger of being intellectually swept towards some of the wilder shores of politics. Harold Wilson—they were chalk and cheese—famously said of him that he was the only man he had ever known who immatured as he grew older, but that was his great charm: he always retained his youthful enthusiasm and boyish zest, and the conviction that his words could make the world a better place. Those are qualities that many women, in particular, find attractive. My French wife thought that he was delightful and great fun. His enchanting American wife adored him as he did her. Tony Benn was a great parliamentarian and a good man. England will remember him.

10:46

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

Tony Benn was a widely misunderstood and misrepresented man, as visionaries have always been down the ages. But the ideas for which he stood— democracy against corporate domination; national sovereignty against globalisation; transparency of the workings of power; the need for accountability in all institutions; and the rights of the industrial working class against an oppressive economic system—will live on after him and are as vibrant today as they were when he first entered public life.

Tony Benn was the architect of the big picture—the ultimate fundamental goals to which politics should aspire, beyond the day-to-day detail. Like reformers before him, he asked uncomfortable questions and he challenged a cosy consensus in which perhaps too many around him seemed to be cocooned. At its most poignant, he would press whether the Labour party was really fulfilling the role for which it was founded, and whether its MPs and trade union leaders were really accountable to those they represented.

Fundamental to Tony’s beliefs was his insight that real and lasting change comes about only from below; the role of Parliament, all too often, is largely to ratify what was already inevitable. That is certainly proving to be right in respect of the biggest issue in contemporary politics: the clinging on by the political establishment to an irretrievably broken system of neo-liberal market capitalism. The public are deeply opposed to a harsh, unjust and seemingly endless austerity and to its exploitation by a greedy and selfish 1% who are super-rich. But it seems that nothing much is going to happen on that score until there is an explosion in the streets, just like the anti-poll tax riots that brought down Thatcher. Tony Benn would have understood that all too well and he would have agitated for it.

It was that which led him to support many strikes and acts of civil disobedience. His dramatic intervention in the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders strike in 1971 forced Heath to change direction—to move away from deflationary policies and begin to pull unemployment down below 1 million. But of course such things were not always successful. The National Union of Mineworkers strike in 1984-85 was a turning point, both industrially and politically, and Benn lent it his wholehearted support. It is only now becoming fully clear just how far the illicit machinations of a semi-militaristic state were brought to bear to thwart the legitimate rights of the trade union opposing the wholesale closure of the mines. The strike failed, but just as the Astbury judgment and the Trade Disputes and Trade Unions Act 1927 led ultimately to the full reinstatement of the unions’ role in industrial life by the Attlee Government of 1945-51, so the illegitimate use of the instruments of tyranny against the miners three decades ago may yet again see the restoration of the unions to their central role in this nation’s industrial and economic life.

Benn also realised that the Labour party would only ever fulfil its fundamental role in championing the industrial working class if power was shared between the parliamentary Labour party on the one hand and the national executive committee, constituency parties, trade unions and annual conference on the other. The devolving of power to the grassroots—in particular the Wembley conference of 1980 on the electoral college to elect the leader—proved too much for the right wing of the party, which defected to set up its own party, the Social Democratic party, which soared and then crashed. It is often said that that split, for which, on a wholly lopsided view, Benn was held responsible, paved the way for the Thatcherite ascendancy. That is nonsense. Thatcher won the following election in 1983 for quite different reasons. The economy was already recovering strongly after the deep recession of 1980-81, and Thatcher herself had become a transformative heroic figure after the Falklands.

Some unsympathetic commentators have also observed, rather gleefully, that Tony failed in the practical achievement of his goals. Well, here again, I think that Tony may well have the last laugh, as we may, in other respects, see many of his aspirations coming to fruition after his death. Polling shows clearly huge majorities today in support of taking back rail and energy into public ownership, imposing rent controls to stop ever-rising and unaffordable rents, building a crash programme of social housing for the near 2 million households on council waiting lists, cracking down hard on industrial-scale tax avoidance and evasion, and making the 1,000 most ultra-rich persons contribute a fair share of their £190 billion ill-gotten gains in wealth since the 2008 crash, which I might add that many of them helped to cause.

We have also seen mass movements beginning to influence the politics of this country, which certainly reflects the Bennite inheritance. A range of different organisations such as the Occupy movement against the stock exchange, UK Uncut demonstrations against massive tax avoidance and the People’s Assembly Against Austerity all represent collective action from below, forcing issues up the political agenda and compelling those with wealth and power to respond and to make concessions and change direction. They are proving Tony Benn right about how politics is driven.

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, Tony said, “that I have given people hope”. There is already anger enough in this country at how it has been dragged into the deepest abyss for a century. What people want today is hope that a different and better world is possible. Tony Benn, as a charismatic and inspiring leader, gave that hope to millions of people. His unremitting campaigning for the rights of workers, for accountability and for democracy and redress against wealth and power leaves a demand for justice and a legacy of hope that will inspire generations to come.

10:54

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

Had the late Tony Benn been making the speech of the right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), this Chamber would have been full. I trust that the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) will not think me impertinent for intervening. I did not know Tony Benn as well as many Members on the Opposition Benches did nor as well as my right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) did, but I want briefly to recognise his huge humanity and conduct as a Member of this House. I did not share his politics—I fundamentally disagreed with more or less everything he ever said—but I got to know his humanity.

After he had left this House, he and I very occasionally spoke on the same platforms—at meetings of Liberty, for example, discussing the previous Government’s proposals on identity cards and other forms of, as we thought, excessive Government interference in the life of the individual. There were occasions when we would walk back from halls to the tube station or bus stop and he would talk to me as if I had known him for ever, utterly without side and utterly unconcerned that I was a member of the Conservative party and he was not, but the occasion I remember most clearly is the one when he stood at that Dispatch Box with his son, introducing him to this House. The sheer pride of a father for his son was palpable. That is evidence, it seems to me, that we were looking not just at the typical two-dimensional modern politician but at the three-dimensional transparent decency of a very great man.

10:56

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I am incredibly proud, as the Member of Parliament for Chesterfield, to add a few words of tribute on behalf of the people of Chesterfield. I know that many people in the Chamber will have known Tony better individually and others can do better justice to his overall history and politics, but I want to get across why people in Chesterfield felt so immensely proud to have Tony as our Member of Parliament. He arrived in Chesterfield in 1984 and, unusually, at the time he became our Member of Parliament he was already famous. Most new MPs are at the start of their careers, but of course he had had 30 years in Parliament and was already very much a national figure.

His becoming the Member of Parliament for Chesterfield at that time could not have been scripted by a Hollywood director. Of course, we had had the catastrophic 1983 election in which he had lost his seat, and who knows how different the history of the Labour party would have been if he had been in this place for the subsequent leadership contest. Eric Varley, who is also remembered tremendously fondly in Chesterfield, stood down as our Member of Parliament and Tony was the overwhelming choice of the members. The shortlist of candidates was very strong, but he was the choice.

Just days after he became the Member of Parliament for Chesterfield, the miners’ strike started. To be in Chesterfield is to understand the totemic nature of the miners’ strike in the history of the town, because it challenged everything that people in Chesterfield considered Chesterfield to be all about. The work that Tony did with my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) to support the miners, keep people’s spirits up and show a sense of pride in, and solidarity with, the miners enabled him, as an outsider in a small northern town who did not have a connection with the town, to build up a connection with the town in the space of a year that would otherwise have taken 10, 15 or 20 years to build.

What has come across strongly to me as the Member of Parliament in the past few days is the sense of pride that everyone had in having him as our Member of Parliament. Government Members have said a couple of times, almost apologetically, that they did not agree with much of his politics, but that was the point. He knew that they did not agree with his politics and there is no need to apologise for that. Many people in Chesterfield who also would not have agreed with his politics still had a tremendous sense of pride about having this national figure as our Member of Parliament, and in having someone who had such obvious warmth and affection for everything that a working-class town such as Chesterfield stood for. He was constantly there in the Labour club at weekends, even though he was not a drinker. He would attend the May day marches and rallies that we have in Chesterfield and give the most wonderful inspirational speeches. The right hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Sir Peter Tapsell) spoke about how people could be swept away by his spellbinding oratory into almost recognising everything that he said and wanting to jump aboard. I have been at general committee meetings of Chesterfield Labour party when I have thought, “I know I don’t agree with this stuff, but it kind of sounds convincing.” He had immense power and ability, which so very few people have, and which is being strongly reflected here.

The other point that came across when people in Chesterfield came into the Labour club to sign the book of condolences was, yes, we had this national figure, yes, the moment we said “Chesterfield” everyone thought of Tony Benn, but we also had someone who an old lady could come and talk to about what to many would seem a trivial matter. He would stop everything, and for that 10 or 15 minutes, the old lady sitting in front of him was the most important thing in the world. Some people said, “I bet he was interested in huge national causes and changing the face of the Labour party but not in the constituency,” but nothing could be further from the truth. He was absolutely committed to fighting for the individual rights of people who came to see him, and he saw the clear link between parliamentary democracy, the huge state occasions and the importance of this place, and making sure that it meant something for the individuals back in the constituency that he was proud to represent.

One of Tony’s greatest gifts was as a teacher. Whether one agrees with his politics or not, there is a huge amount that all of us can learn. His five questions to the powerful are enduring questions that not just we in this place but everyone throughout the world should reflect on and think about, because they are incredibly important. Those five questions to anyone who is powerful are: “What power have you got; where did you get it from; in whose interests do you exercise it; to whom are you accountable; and how do we get rid of you?” Those questions, in themselves, show the brilliance of the man and that is why Chesterfield was so very proud to have him as our Member of Parliament.

11:02

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I too rise to speak as one of Tony Benn’s successors as a Member of Parliament, in my case for the constituency of Bristol East, which he represented from 1950 to 1983, with a brief interregnum when we had the bother about the hereditary peerage and he had to fight two by-elections. He probably holds a record in that he was elected on a by-election when Sir Stafford Cripps retired in 1950 because of ill health, and then fought two by-elections, at one of which he was disqualified. The people of Bristol, South-East, as it was then, knew perfectly well that he was not entitled to be elected to Parliament, but voted for him nevertheless. Two years later, when he managed after a bitter battle to get the law changed and the Peerage Act 1963 introduced, he then fought another by-election, and he also fought the Chesterfield by-election, which, as I said, must be something of a record.

I am also here to speak on behalf of Madam Deputy Speaker, who, I think, first met Tony Benn at the age of 21—when she was 21, not when he was 21; she does not go back that far—and worked for him as an assistant and eventually joined him as a colleague as the MP for Bristol South from 1987.

Tony Benn was a man of the establishment. He came from a privileged—dare I say “posh”?—background. He was privately educated, he read PPE at Oxford, he was president of the Oxford Union, and apart from two years serving in the forces during the second world war, the only other job he held was at another bastion of the British establishment, the BBC. His father was an MP and both his grandfathers were MPs.

Despite that background as a man of the establishment, Tony was also a man of the people. That came out strongly in what my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) said. Describing it as the common touch makes it sounds quite patronising, but there was nothing condescending about it. So many people have stopped me in the street in recent days—the same has happened to Madam Deputy Speaker—to offer their personal accounts of his kindness and friendliness. The leader of Bristol council’s Labour group told me about a time he came over to her house. Her two young children had just been given bicycles for their birthdays, and he insisted on riding them up and down the hallway on their tiny bikes. It is little things like that we remember.

Madam Deputy Speaker and others have talked about the contraption he rode around in at election times, a chair strapped to the top of an old Austin Cambridge. He would be driven around the streets, precariously perched on top of the car with a thermos flask in one hand—he was never without his tea—and a megaphone in the other. It is amazing how many people remember him doing that. It is not something I care to replicate—I do not think that I would last very long up there. There is also a brilliant picture of him from 1957, up a ladder decorating the constituency office in just a little pair of shorts. The office needs decorating again, but I do not think that I will be going up a ladder.

I want to mention some of the key things for which he is remembered in Bristol. He supported the Bristol bus boycott in 1963, which was inspired by the civil rights movement in America. There was a colour bar on black workers being employed by the bus company. He was very supportive of Paul Stephenson and others who led the boycott. Eventually, two years later, it led to the passing of the Race Relations Act 1965. People still remember his role in that. He said, “I will not use the buses. I may even have to get on a bike.” He is also remembered for Concorde, of course, the 45th anniversary of which is coming up. A permanent memorial to it will be placed in Filton, just outside Bristol. A civic memorial service will also be held for Tony Benn soon.

In the tributes that followed his death, he was quoted by Madam Deputy Speaker as having advised her, “People will attack you because they want to deflect you. You ignore the attacks and get on with understanding the people. You were put there by the people and they can take it away, so stay close to them.” I think that sums him up. As the Deputy Prime Minister said, he never lost sight of the fact that he was one man with many employers. In that regard, too, he was a man of the people.

My last memory of Tony Benn—I did not know him very well, because our times did not overlap—was when I had the somewhat dubious honour of being invited to be on the Left Field stage at Glastonbury last year. I say that it was a dubious honour because the three of us on the stage were Billy Bragg, who of course is an absolute idol of the Glastonbury audience and a national treasure, Tony Benn, and if anyone could command more adoration at Glastonbury than Billy Bragg it was him, and me, feeling something of a spare part. It took so long for the session to get going because he of course received a standing ovation as he was led up to the stage. So many people wanted to shake his hand and show how much they admired him and respected his views.

He was obviously in frail health and I do not think that he could hear the questions he was being asked all that clearly, but he spoke about the power of politics to effect social change. Those in the audience were probably quite hung over, having been up all night listening to music and doing various other things, but it was clear that he totally inspired them, because despite his physical frailty and advanced age, he was still saying, “You can do something. You can achieve something, just by getting out there and keeping at it.” I think that is his lasting legacy, because he believed in politics. There is so much cynicism about politics these days. He was a rare creature, as he was able to persuade people not to be cynical about politics and to believe that politics can actually change things.

11:09

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

I hesitate to join in this business, because in many ways I thought of Benn in the early Labour party conferences as somebody who, unlike those of us who came from the trade union movement, was part of the English radical dissenting left. He was at that time a member of the national executive committee.

I think there were some significant changes that took place in the early 1970s that changed his life; I may be wrong. In early 1970, when I came into Parliament, we had about five or six years of constant demonstrations. I used to go on these demos, and there would be a gang of people from the TUC—they were all recognisable—and I would be telling Tony Benn all about this. Then I went to Pentonville, where six dockers were in jail because the Industrial Relations Act had been passed—it had got Royal Assent—and they had been on a picket line and they were not supposed to be there. So I went to Tower hill with Eric Heffer, and then Eric said, “Are you coming back to Parliament, Dennis?”, and I said, “No, this is the most important demo I’ve ever been on. The TUC have declared a day of action—who knows what will happen at the end?”, and off I went.

I told Tony Benn all about it the following day, and he said to me, “You know, they might have to get them out.” I thought, “Well, that’s asking a bit too much”, but I repeated it to Eric Heffer and Stan Orme. I said to them, “Those six dockers will be in Strangers Bar tomorrow night”—I thought I would embellish it—and they were. The official solicitor had to go to Pentonville jail and get them out. Is it any wonder that a dissenting English radical began to change his mind a little bit more? That is what really happened.

Then the miners won in ’72, and then they won again in ’74, and we marched again as the people from the Daily Express in Fleet street were cheering from the windows—yes, I said it right: the Daily Express—and Tony says to me, “Look at them at the Daily Express.” I said, “Yes, sadly it’s not the owners, Tony—it’s SOGAT and NATSOPA.” They were heady days. Then there was what happened at the Upper Clyde shipbuilding, which has already been mentioned, and on it went. The truth is that those of us who were in the thick of it knew that it was having a major effect on him. Let us just examine what we are saying about Tony. He was shaped by events all his life. He had an environment that was different from mine as a kid, but then, as I say, it all changed.

Then I got elected to the national executive and he would come armed with amendments every month. I did not have to bother writing amendments; they were already displayed and distributed to the six, seven or eight people who might be allowed to read them.

He was a clever man as well, wasn’t he? That’s what he was—he was clever, and he was industrious. He had got all the abilities. I used to say to him, “By the way, you know about so and so—put that in the diary tonight.” He actually did it on one occasion—he got fed up of hearing me. He said, “Skinner said I’ve got to put this in the diary.”

I had some enjoyable times with him—most of the time; almost all of the time. He was very intelligent as well, you know. He knew all about loads of subjects. He had a pager before MPs had them. He knew all about technology: it wasn’t just Concorde. He knew about it; he probably could have built it. He had a mobile phone before anybody else, and he was talking a language that I still do not understand. He could have built a computer.

He was very knowledgeable—except that he did not know much about competitive sport. I finished up at the Labour party conference—I think it was down at Brighton—and he said, “You’re late.” I said, “I know I’m late, Tony—there’s a reason.” He said, “Yes, there’s a Tory mayor and you didn’t want to be here.” I said, “Well, that’s part of it. But the most important reason is that I was watching Cram and Elliott”—on the telly in the “mile of the century”, as they said. He said, “Cram and Elliott? Are they your delegates?” I said, “Tony, do you know who Ayrton Senna is?” I had watched him win the Formula 1. “Ayrton Senna? Who’s he?”

You had to like somebody like that—somebody who kept all the lists of all the results of everything. You did not have to go far to find out. Now we look for things on the computer. I could ask Tony Benn and he would tell me. I had a lot of enjoyable times with him. He was industrious, he was clever, he was a great diarist—he had a lot of qualities that all of us in our hearts really admire, don’t we, and wish we possessed them all. That is why I constantly wanted to see him in these past few years. I did not see him on the last occasion when he went to Charing Cross hospital, but I did last autumn after the Labour party conference, when I heard that he had been in the hospital, out of the hospital and back in again. I thought I had better go. The day after the conference I went to find him.

In typical Tony Benn fashion, when I got there, room K was empty. I feared the worst, but somebody quickly said, “I saw somebody wheeling him down in a wheelchair.” I went outside and in a lovely little park in the autumn sunshine, just like as in his last book, there he sat in the wheelchair with a fellow who had helped him with some television business or other, smoking his pipe. For three quarters of an hour the Tony Benn I knew and will always admire was sat in that chair, lighting up three times, and we talked about the Labour party conference. It was one that he had not been able to attend because he was in hospital. So I told him the whole story about what happened. It was a bit biased, but he did not mind that. He expected it from me.

Yes, that was the Tony Benn I knew—a wonderful man, and we should always remember that. As for the longest suicide note in history, let me put that to bed. By 1983 the left had lost control on the executive. Check the facts. The chair of the election committee was John Golding. You all remember him, don’t you? The right had taken control. There was only one member of the left on that election executive committee—Eric Heffer, by virtue of being chairman. I wanted to put that to bed.

I also remember what my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) said about the election at Chesterfield. What a wonderful campaign. Literally thousands of Labour party members came. I have never seen so many at any by-election. It was great throughout that whole period of two or three weeks. Tony Benn said to me when I met him in Chesterfield market square, “How do you think things are going?” I said, “Tony, we are going to win. We have an army of people coming. We have nothing to worry about. There will be Elsie Tanner, Tony Booth, the vicar from “Emmerdale Farm”—they all came, and I introduced him on the minibus. Then he asked, “Is there anything else I should do, Dennis?” I said, “Yes. Put a tie on. You are the ambassador of a market town.” And Tony Benn—the Tony Benn—turned up the following day in a tie. How could I do other than love the man? [Applause.]

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. A great many colleagues are still seeking to catch my eye and I want to accommodate everybody. I appeal to colleagues to have some regard for the other pressures on our parliamentary day.

11:19

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

Tony, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), founded the Socialist Campaign Group, of which I am the chair. I apologise on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who cannot be here today because he is in Geneva as part of a human rights delegation.

Tony inspired my generation. We did not just respect him; as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover said, we loved the man. I want to go back to what my hon. Friend said about the longest suicide note in history, because it is interesting that it has come up time and again among the commemorations of the past week or so.

I want to go back not to the manifesto of 1983, but to Labour’s programme of 1982, which was the Bennite programme, and virtually all of it was written by Tony Benn. It is worth looking back at what it said. It was absolutely prophetic. It basically said, “We will create a society that is more democratic, more fair, more just and more equal.” How would we do it? Tony’s ideas in that programme were straightforward: we would undertake a fundamental, irreversible shift in the redistribution of wealth and power. How would we do that? Through a fair and just tax system, tackling tax evasion and tax avoidance, taking control of the Bank of England, preventing speculation in the City and the banks because it could be dangerous to our long-term economic health, and creating full employment. That is what he was about. That is what he inspired us to do.

It is interesting that he said we should invest in housing, health and education; give all young people the opportunity to stay on at school with an education maintenance allowance; and make sure that they had a guarantee of an apprenticeship or training and the opportunity to go to university, not by paying a fee but on a grant. That was his programme in 1982. It was prophetic and years in advance of its time. He said that what we needed to create the wealth was an industrial strategy—a manufacturing base based on new technology and skills. Actually, I remember him talking in one of his speeches about alternative energy sources, well in advance of the debate about climate change. The programme also included equal rights for women and for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

What else was he committed to? He lost a brother in the war, so he was committed to peace. And bravely, courageously, he called for inclusive talks in Northern Ireland—for everyone to get around the table to secure peace. He also said that we needed to control the arms trade and that no more arms should be sold to dictators in the middle east for them to use as weapons against their own people and to destabilise the region. Of course, he also argued for unilateral nuclear disarmament, which I continue to support and which remains a popular cause for many.

He was a European—sceptical about the European Union, but a true European. I found that inspiring. He inspired my generation and he inspired generations to come. What a world we would have created if we had listened to him. But more important, what a world we can create now if we listen to him.

Solidarity and go well, comrade. You made a significant contribution to all of our lives. I hope we will be able to implement the lessons you taught us, when Labour next gets back into power.

11:22

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I am very grateful indeed for this opportunity to pay tribute to a great democrat and to say how much I appreciated him. Every time he came to the House of Commons after he had left Parliament, I would speak to him in the Tea Room—he loved coming to the Tea Room. He was so amiable and he was a great orator. He was a great democrat and he really believed in this House of Commons.

As a Conservative, I had a completely different philosophy from his background as a profound but great socialist. He was one of the old school, if I may put it that way, ranking with the Bevans of this world and all the really great figures of the Labour party of those days.

I well remember the coal strike. I opposed the closure of the pits when the now Lord Heseltine was the Secretary of State. I took the view that it was completely unjustified. I had mines near my constituency and knew quite a lot about it. Tony Benn got up and challenged Michael Heseltine on his credentials for closing those pits. I well remember that it had the most devastating impact on Michael Heseltine, who sat down, but it got through by one vote, I think, with only four Government Members opposing the legislation. It could be said that some of us take views that are not always those of our Whips or those of our own side, and I must say that Tony Benn took exactly the same line.

I take the point made by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about Tony Benn being a true European. I agree, although he was not what some people might take that to mean. I took exactly the same view as him, and still do, about what the European Union meant and means to the people of this country. When he and I shared a platform together in Trafalgar square, he turned to me and said, “Bill, I think you are the only Conservative MP I have ever shared a platform with or ever will.” To me, at any rate, that was a very great tribute.

I remember sitting with Tony Benn in your house, Mr Speaker, and having a conversation with him only a few months ago. He was so delighted to be there, although he was obviously getting much weaker at that stage. It was a tremendous privilege for me to sit down and have a really good chat with him in Speaker’s House about the things we shared a belief in, even though we were completely different philosophically and disagreed with one another on certain matters.

When it came to representing his constituents, or when it came to this House of Commons—I am thinking of his dedication to the ideas of the Levellers—it always struck me that Tony Benn really knew and understood what had happened at the moment when the House of Commons became the House of Commons during the Cromwellian period. He really believed in it passionately, and I will always remember him for his passion, beliefs and conviction. It is a fitting tribute to him that so many people have been able to speak at what is a moment of sadness, but also a moment of pride.

11:27

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I first encountered Tony Benn when I was a starry-eyed young activist at mass meetings. He was on the platform and I was among the audience. It is impossible to convey what it was like to be at a mass meeting addressed by Tony Benn in his prime. I would come reeling out the meeting, believing in a new heaven and a new earth. It was truly extraordinary.

As this is a parliamentary tribute, I first want to say—I hope that my colleagues will forgive this old-fashioned phrase—that Tony Benn was a great House of Commons man. He loved the House. He was one of the few people in the House of Commons whom hon. Members from both sides of the House would return to hear speak, because he had such mastery of the Chamber. It is significant that when he was given the freedom of the House, he mainly used it to come back to the Tea Room to meet and talk to colleagues and comrades.

We cannot talk about Tony Benn without mentioning his love of family. I remember that when my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) gave his maiden speech, Tony Benn sat a few Benches in front of him, and as Hilary spoke, his face streamed with tears. It was the most moving thing. It would also not be right to talk about Tony Benn without mentioning his wife, Caroline, because she was not just his life’s partner but his comrade in arms. To my mind, he was never quite the same after her tragic death. Some of us used to tease him about my right hon. Friend, suggesting that my right hon. Friend was perhaps fractionally less left wing than he was himself, but he would just smile serenely and say, “Benns move left as they get older.”

People have spoken about what Tony Benn believed in, and about whether he was right or wrong. I would say that very many of his ideas have stood the test of time. He believed strongly in parliamentarians and MPs being a voice for the voiceless. Many black and minority ethnic people have said to me, “Please let people know how much black and minority ethnic people loved Tony Benn.” That is because they saw him as a voice for people who did not otherwise have a voice.

On civil liberties, he has largely been proved correct. On the Iraq war, on which he made some of his most moving speeches in this House, he was certainly right. He talked about inclusive talks with Northern Ireland. At the time, he was accused of being a loony for talking about that. It is now completely mainstream.

For his critique of the markets, he was judged to be

“the most dangerous man in Britain”.

After the collapse of Lehman’s, can we say that he was completely wrong to criticise the working of markets and market-based mechanisms being the main organising factor in our society?

Trade unions are a hugely unfashionable subject, but I would argue that if we had stronger trade unions today, we would not see the super-exploitation of immigrant workers, we would not have seen the rise and rise of agency workers, and we would not see the abuse of zero-hours contracts. I think he was right in always wanting to stand up for the right of ordinary people to organise in the workplace.

I would call myself pro-European, but his cynicism about the European project and his undying concern about the lack of democratic accountability in European institutions have been proved correct. Anyone who saw what happened to the Greeks last year, when a handful of Brussels bureaucrats were almost able to run their country, must remember some of the things that Tony Benn said about the EU.

Finally, we live in an era when very many people—particularly younger people—are cynical about politics. We live in an era when politicians are cynical about politics. Too many people on both sides of the House study polls and endeavour to repeat back to people what the polls have said they believe. Tony Benn believed in a different type of politics, in which people knew what they believed and were prepared to argue and campaign for difficult and initially unpopular causes for however long it took. Some things have been said about him that are not quite right—that he was divisive and that he was this, that and the other. Tony Benn did not just inspire the generation of political activists of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell); he continued to inspire generation after generation of young activists, because he was a man who stood up for what he believed and a man who was willing to fight the fight even in adverse times.

Tony Benn was an inspiration to me, and I am very grateful to have been able to make my own small tribute.

11:32

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

It was a heart-sinking moment when Tony announced that he was leaving the Commons, but he did not retire from his convictions—that is not part of the Benn DNA.

We are right to see Tony as somebody who did not allow himself to be tyrannised by the traditions of this House. This morning is a unique occasion in many ways. Thanks to you, Mr Speaker, we are allowed to express, as every human community wants to do, our regret, admiration and gratitude. In the past, there was just a bald announcement when we lost a Member or a former Member; there was no chance to pay the sort of marvellous tributes that have been paid this morning.

I want to make one point, which is about the contribution that Tony made to trying to change the face of this place, including the way it looks. Aneurin Bevan gave this advice to working class MPs who came here: “When you walk down the corridors of power, you are walking in the dust of history, but it is not your history; it is not the history of your class or your people.”

Against all the rules, Tony fixed up a plaque to Emily Wilding Davison. No one allowed him to do it. He went around with his screwdriver and installed a plaque that he had made himself in a much sought-after spot in the House where people like to go. He did the same for other celebrated people. He spoke too of the many who not only were not friends of democracy but who actually obstructed the democratic process but who are recorded and celebrated in statues and other works of art throughout the House.

Some time ago, when a new name was sought for St Stephen’s tower, Big Ben, some people suggested that we should call it the Chartist tower, or the Suffragette tower, or, even better, Big Benn. Alas, we did not.

I rejoice in Tony Benn’s final book. We remember that lovely evening in your house, Mr Speaker, when we heard him speak about “A Blaze of Autumn Sunshine”, which was an inspired title. The book was lovingly edited by Ruth Winstone and is a story about the purgatory of the human condition. It is a story about this House, written in a manner superior to any other—yes, the dark side, the malice and the treachery are there, but those long pages also express the nobility of the political vocation that we all have. That is something that we should bear in mind.

He had a marvellous career. It is with great sadness, but also celebration and gratitude, that we say: “Farewell, Tony—orator, teacher, friend, inspirer. Rest in peace, comrade.”

11:36

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

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for giving us the opportunity to say a few words in tribute to Tony Benn today.

I only met Tony Benn when I was elected as a Member in 2005, but I had heard him speak and seen him at labour movement events over two decades. I probably first saw him speak in Ayrshire during the miners’ strike, but I saw him regularly at events in Scotland over many years, whether in Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Glasgow or Aberdeen. He was a man of huge energy and an inspiration to many people of many generations.

It was a pleasure to listen to what the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) said about the miners’ strike. I come from the south Ayrshire mining communities, and when I was at school there were 10,000 miners working at the Killoch pit in south Ayrshire. That pit closed as a result of Government policy, and Tony Benn was with us, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner), who will recall attending a number of rallies in Ayrshire in defence of ordinary working people, particularly the miners in the south Ayrshire coalfields. Tony Benn was there standing up for communities, wherever they were, when they needed him.

Tony Benn would always speak about his connections with Scotland. We have heard a number of references today to English social history, but when he came to Scotland, he spoke about his connections to communities there. I believe that his mother came from Paisley, and that one of his family members was the Member of Parliament for Leith, and he would speak about that when he came to Edinburgh. Of course, his wife, Caroline Benn, spent a great deal of time in Ayrshire, particularly in Cumnock, researching the life of Keir Hardie, who was born in Cumnock and spent a great deal of time in both south Ayrshire, where he was born, and north Ayrshire, where he was a miners’ agent and a journalist for the Ardrossan and Saltcoats Herald. Tony Benn knew all about that—he knew about the history of the social working class and the Scottish working class, and he would speak about that when he came to Scotland.

I saw him speak on many occasions. He was clearly an incredibly inspirational speaker who knew how to connect with ordinary people and speak in a language that they understood. Perhaps not many of us can do that, but he was clearly a wonderful example of it.

The significance of Tony Benn is that he believed that another world was possible. He believed that the way in which we organised our society is not the only way that we can do so. He was interested in history because he believed we could learn from it, and that we had changed the world because we had believed it was possible to do things better. When he came to Ayrshire, he would talk about thirlage, which was how mining communities operated in Scotland—you were not born a slave, but if you went to work in the mines, you did not have the right to leave. It was this House that voted through the thirlage Act, which meant that if you escaped for a year and a day, you won your freedom and did not have to return to the gated communities of the mines in Scotland. Tony Benn would speak about things like that. He would inspire people and try to make them understand how we could actually get social change.

I spoke at the Oxford union a number of weeks ago along with my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), and we were successful that evening in our debate about whether socialism worked or not. A young comrade in the audience reported to Tony Benn what had happened that evening, and I got a text saying that Tony had been delighted to hear that 65 years after his presidency, the Oxford union had eventually come round to his way of thinking. I say that because one thing that amazed me about Tony Benn was the relationships he had with so many people, and the fact that a young student from Oxford would go to see him to tell him about an event he had been to. Tony Benn was interested in everybody and in every cause. He continued to be involved in setting up organisations and trying to organise people for a better world, whether for a small or large group of people.

The Deputy Prime Minister said he thought that some of Tony Benn’s causes were causes of the past, of nationalisation and looking at globalisation, but I think the complete opposite is true. The more we look at what Tony Benn said—not just Tony Benn but others who have spoken about such issues and the way that markets and our country operate—the more that over time I think we will realise that in many ways he was right when he questioned whether we actually live in a democracy. We will see that voting every five years is not what democracy is about because we need a lot more than that. I believe that if we look at the ideas of Tony Benn, we will have the kinds of ideas we need to create a true democracy in this country.

11:42

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Last week was a really sad, bad week. It started with the sad loss of a great comrade and great friend of Tony Benn’s, Bob Crow. Tony sadly passed on, and just at the weekend so did another close friend of his, Stan Pearce, a man who worked hard in north-east England as a miner. It was a really bad, sad week for lots of people with regard to untimely departures.

Tony was fond of saying that Labour MPs normally started on the left and ended up in the Lords, while he took the opposite path in his political career. I first knew Tony when I was a young miner. I was 19 years of age in 1984 in the lead-up to and during the miners’ strike, and he was such an inspiration. I have heard lots of Members speak today, and most have said, “Tony was a great man although we did not agree with a lot of what he said.” I am probably the only one who will say that I agreed with most of what he said, and he was a tremendous inspiration to me. The support he gave to the miners has been mentioned in many contributions, but his support for the working class and people in dispute was absolutely fantastic and unswerving.

Tony Benn became very friendly with me, my wife and my kids as well. I knew Tony personally and he was a really good friend and comrade. He was somebody who I began to have a great liking for many years ago, and when anybody asks me, as an MP or a trade unionist, who my inspirations were in life, Tony would certainly be No. 1—perhaps No. 2, depending on what my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) had said in Parliament the previous week.

Tony Benn was a brilliant, fantastic orator and he could change people’s minds—at least for the time they were in the room anyway. It is a shame that people did not take Tony’s views away from the meetings he so eloquently addressed. He was a man of tremendous kindness, and that goes right through Tony’s family through his children. We used to be delighted if we could get Skinner or Benn or someone like that to the coalfield. We used to pack the halls to the rafters and enjoy every single moment. We admired them so much, and they oozed a natural presence. We wanted to be so much like them. Unfortunately, I have not in any way achieved anything like that at this point in time. They were dark days in the mining communities, but Benn was there and he made sure that people were revitalised and back up for the battle.

He had a tremendous affinity for the north-east. He was a major speaker at the biggest trade union gathering in Europe, the Durham Miners’ Gala, on more than 20 occasions—more than anyone else, perhaps other than my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover. He spoke at all the events. He understood the culture of the work force of the north-east, and he understood the traditions and the culture of the people of the north-east. He was a personal inspiration. Quite simply, Tony Benn was a legend and a giant among men.

I read with great affection an article written in the moderate Morning Star only this week by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) about when they put up a plaque for Emily Wilding Davison in a broom cupboard in the Crypt. The connection there, of course, is that Emily Wilding Davison was from my constituency all those years ago. It is amazing to think of Tony and Jeremy hiding with a drill in the broom cupboard in the Crypt screwing the plaque behind the door, but it was worthy of Tony’s belief in fighting with every fibre of his being for equality and against injustice. Miners, trade unionists and workers across the globe have had their lives enriched by just knowing Tony and understanding the support that he gave them. Together, we all pass on our condolences and sympathy to Tony’s family. We understand how much of a family man Tony was and how much he loved his family.

I conclude with the great song of days gone by: simply the best. He was, perhaps, better than all the rest.

11:47

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

I am very glad to be called to pay personal tribute to Tony Benn and to pass on the thanks of many of my constituents who were inspired by meeting him during the miners’ strike and before that.

I have to say that I did have a cat and he was called Tony Benn, and he was just as feisty as the person he was named after, whom I did admire greatly. If we went on holiday and put him in a cattery for two weeks, he would then disappear for about two weeks just to get his own back, causing my wife a great deal of distress. Tony could also trouble people. Some people never recovered from being challenged by him, because they did not have the logic to stand against him.

I will tell one story. It has been said that Tony was great with technology. I am an honorary member of the Free Colliers, an organisation in my constituency set up after the 1799 Act that freed colliers from bondage in Scotland. The Act provided that if they were found meeting other colliers to discuss terms and conditions of employment they would be returned to the colliery from which they were freed. The Free Colliers march every year to commemorate setting up this secret society, which was a precursor of the National Federation of Coal, Iron and Lime Miners, which became the National Union of Mineworkers. Tony always said that he wanted to come and I gave him some material on it for him to read. One day we met at the ATM in this building and he started to discuss it with me. Having got some money out of the machine, he did not take it and for some reason it swallowed his money. He was totally perplexed—he could not understand where his money had gone. Although he knew about technology, even he was befuddled by that. I hope he got his money back. He was always willing to enter into a debate on important topics, sometimes in the strangest places.

The Free Colliers were very sad that Tony Benn never went to speak to them. They said that they had always wanted him to go and address them, because they held him in high regard. He was held in high regard outside the House: that is the point about Tony Benn. He was held in high regard here, by us who view things through the prism of Parliament, but people outside took a much wider view, and his heritage will last a great deal longer outside, affecting and influencing politics in the outside world. I thank him for his clarity of analysis and his support for democratic solutions. He always looked for the benefit of all in everything, even if that meant that he had to challenge the compromises of the establishment.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) mentioned Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. In 1971, I was the president of Stirling university students association. There is a BBC video—I have a copy; I hope that it is the master copy—showing me in my office with long hair and a Karl Marx poster behind me, calling for the students to organise buses so that people could go and stand by those who were “working in” to save their jobs. That was the first occasion on which I met Tony Benn. I did not get to know him, but I met him, and found him a great inspiration.

When I was the leader of Stirling council, we changed the standing orders—which had to be approved by the national executive committee—to bind councillors to the manifestos on which they stood. There is a unique idea! Imagine making people carry out the manifestos on which they stand! Tony persuaded the national executive committee to approve our standing orders, and they became the standing orders of our council, which meant that we had to deliver on the manifestos on which we had been elected. Unfortunately, being Tony Benn, he decided that this was the solution for all councils, and tried to introduce the same standing orders for every council in Britain. Of course, that frightened the horses and it never happened, but at least those in my council, during the 10 years for which I was leader, were bound by the manifestos on which we were elected, and that was approved by the national executive committee of the Labour party. Would it not be wonderful for every aspect of politics if everyone stood for election on that basis?

I became the Scottish secretary of the Labour co-ordinating committee, which had been set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton at a meeting in Glasgow—on his son’s birthday, if I remember rightly. He had to rush back home after launching it. It was a bulwark against Militant, the ultra-left of the party. It was not an attack on the establishment, although some people saw it as such; it was an antidote to the anti-democratic, out-of-touch elite that ran the Labour party. For instance, I was nominated by my constituency’s branch of the GMB, which sent the form down to the national office. When it came back, my name had been not taken out but scored out, and someone else’s name had been inserted and signed by the national secretary of the union. That was a total denial of the democracy of the people in Scotland who had chosen me as a candidate. I won anyway, and I am here as a consequence, but Tony Benn was against what had happened in that instance as well.

Some people later tried to distance themselves from the distorted “bogey man” image of Tony Benn by saying that they were not Bennites, but belonged to some other kind of “left”. If I had been asked, I would have said that I was of the Bennite left, because that Bennite left was not militant, it was not Trotskyist, and it was not a compromising position in the Labour party. I hope I still stand by those principles today in the things I do, including wanting Trident to be banned. Tony wanted that, although his intelligence and logic had led him to support nuclear power. The anti-Trotskyite movement in Scotland saved the Labour party in Scotland in the 1980s, and was the driver for the devolved Parliament that we have today. All that was a part of the philosophies that Tony Benn understood. He understood Scotland in a way many politicians down here did not.

I was speaking to Tony Benn’s son Stephen last night in Portcullis House, and I now want to say a few words about the other part of the Bennite heritage. My wife Margaret Doran and I—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to be very brief. We should be grateful for a very few words on that point, because others wish to make contributions, and we need to move on.

[Michael Connarty]

I am conscious of that, Mr Speaker, but I am talking about a long life and a long friendship.

My wife Margaret Doran and I also knew and dearly admired Tony Benn’s wife Caroline. She was a great inspiration and support, and was a vibrant, lucid and deeply compassionate educationist. She was president of the Socialist Educational Association, and my wife and I have both been, at different times, presidents of the Scottish SEA. We often talked to her at length when we came to London for SEA meetings. I was with Tony and Caroline on the Terrace shortly before her passing. I agree with what was said earlier: a light went out of his life when Caroline died. But what was amazing was that he went on. Many of us would have been destroyed by losing such a life partner but he was inexorable, and that was a tribute to what they both stood for together and what their family stand for and what will be carried on.

When he left Parliament he spoke from outside this House. People have said he left politics. He did not leave politics. His thoughts reflect where the people are. Most of the people in this country are not with us in this House: they do not regard us highly; they think we are often irrelevant to their lives. They go day to day trying to make ends meet and they look to the words of Tony Benn and people like him to give them hope. If we could learn something from him and reconnect with those people we might actually carry forward something that would be beneficial to this House. That is what Tony Benn has given people: hope, and we are not giving people hope at this moment. Maybe in the future it is his words that will give them hope, and not ours.

11:56

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

I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak in this special and important debate, and I want to say a few words of my own and put on record the thoughts of the members of my local Labour party, the constituency and my family on Tony Benn’s sad passing and send our very best wishes to his family, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), whom I am sitting next to today.

Tony Benn was more than just a politician. I believe he was a man who truly wanted to change Britain, and in his own way he did. One aspect of his legacy that has been discussed today is how he stayed in touch with people—and people across generations. He truly cared about whoever he came across. I was lucky enough to meet him on a few occasions, the last one being when he came to the House to listen to the tributes to Nelson Mandela.

I want to share a couple of stories about him. The first shows how his diaries reached the front rooms of many households across this country, not least my own. My sister, Neeraj, absolutely loved his diaries and there have been several Christmases in the Malhotra household where her favourite extracts have been played to everybody.

He was also a serious democrat and he wanted people to understand politics, not just be told about politics or be told what politicians thought. He wanted politics to be done with people, not to people. His sense of commitment to different generations was also marked in a conversation I had recently with pensioners, who spoke of how they would pack out the town hall teas he held every year. The fact that people who were not interested day to day in politics were completely interested in everything he had to say, in that spellbinding way in which he said it, is truly a tribute to the man.

Politics is nothing if it is not for a moral purpose. Whether or not people agreed with how he went about his politics, they cannot deny what he stood for and what he fought for: liberty, equality, democracy. He was a man who had a true passion for progress. He was a thoughtful man and a kind man, and a man who lived what he believed, and a man who, in my view, truly touched the heart of this nation.

11:58

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

First of all, may I say on behalf of my sister Melissa and my brothers Stephen and Joshua and the whole family just how much the words we have heard today mean to us?

I do not propose to add to what has already been said, and indeed written, about my father’s political legacy—apart from anything else, everyone already seems to have their own opinion, as today’s debate has demonstrated—but I do want to say a few words about what Parliament meant to him, because it was the centre of his very long life. He won 16 elections, proudly representing first Bristol South-East and then Chesterfield. Fifteen of those elections enabled him to walk through those doors and take his place in this Chamber. One of them—the by-election he fought after the death of his father—did not. He was barred from entry to the Chamber on the instructions of the Speaker because, it was alleged, his blood was blue. His blood was never blue; it was the deepest red throughout his life.

That moment taught him that the right of people to choose who will represent them here in this place—the very foundation of our democracy—was never, ever granted by those in power. It had to be fought for. That is why democracy is so precious.

His fight to stay in the Commons had, I think, a marked and profound effect on his life. It was why he was so determined to support others in their struggles: to bring an end to apartheid and the death penalty; in support of the miners, as we have heard; and to campaign for peace, because it was war that had taken from him his beloved elder brother Michael.

It was also why he was so determined to commemorate in Parliament the history of those struggles because, as he would often say, all change comes from below. That is why, as we have heard from many Members today, he went down into the Crypt with his screwdriver and put up that plaque in the broom cupboard. He wanted to teach us: why did that brave suffragette spend the night in the broom cupboard in 1911? The answer is because it was census night. What do you do in a census? You fill in a form, and she wanted to write: “Name: Emily Wilding Davison. Address: Houses of Parliament.” Why? Because she believed that a woman’s place was in the House—the House of Commons.

He was very fond of challenging those in authority, assisted by “Erskine May”. He once even moved a motion of no confidence in the Speaker. But he also had a great sense of fun. On one occasion, he was part of a group of Labour MPs who had decided to delay a Division in the Lobby because they wanted to make trouble for the Government. The Serjeant at Arms was dispatched in order to investigate and told them that if they did not move he would have to take their names. My father looked at him and, as his diary records, said, “But that would be completely contrary to Mr Speaker’s ruling of 1622.” After the Serjeant at Arms had departed from the fray, Dad turned to his fellow conspirators and, with that mischievous twinkle in his eye, admitted that he had just made that all up but it seemed to have done the trick.

He loved this place, the people who built it and those who help us in our work. He loved the debate and the argument. But he did not idealise Parliament. He saw it as the means to an end: to be a voice for the movements outside these walls that seek to change the world for the better, as well as being a voice for the people who send us here and whom we all have the privilege to represent.

That was the essence of his character. Yes, it was shaped, as we have heard, by events and experiences but also, as for many of us, by his childhood. He was, at heart, not just a socialist; he was a non-conformist dissenter. His mother taught him to believe in the prophets rather than the kings, and his father would recite these words from the Salvation Army hymn, which I think best explain what he sought to do in Parliament:

“Dare to be a Daniel,

Dare to stand alone,

Dare to have a purpose firm,

Dare to make it known.”

If we are not here to do that, what are we here for? Well, he was. He knew what he thought. He was not afraid to say it. He showed constancy and courage in the face of adversity. Whatever the scribes and the Pharisees may have to say about his life, it is from the words and kindnesses of those whose lives he touched that we—those who loved him most—take the greatest strength.

After all, any life that inspires and encourages so many others is a life that was well lived. [Applause.]

12:04

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Today, we have had the chance to pay tribute to the life and work of Tony Benn, one of the greatest MPs and certainly one of the greatest orators of his generation. He would have been gratified that Parliament has had this chance to recall his long involvement in our national political life in this way, despite the fact that he was neither a Head of State nor royalty. He did, however, serve in this place—with a couple of unintended interruptions—for more than 50 years, and was granted the freedom of the Commons when he retired as an MP.

As we have heard over and over again today, we never got doubt or ambiguity with Tony Benn. We have heard many moving anecdotes and tributes to him, and many Members have pointed out that he had strong views, and more talent than most for getting them across to his audience, either from a platform or in a book. He was passionate, and he was a lifelong socialist who never lost his appetite for the battle, even though he waged it in distinctly different phases during his long and fulfilled life.

Tony Benn was an assiduous Back Bencher, and the first to table a motion against apartheid. I last heard him speak during the Remembrance service for Nelson Mandela, held in Westminster Hall at your suggestion, Mr Speaker. He opposed capital punishment, and he championed human rights long before it was fashionable to do so, introducing his own human rights Bill in 1957. He also championed divorce laws, although he enjoyed a 50-year marriage to his beloved wife, Caroline. I can attest to the fact that she was a formidable campaigner in her own right. He was the Peter Mandelson of his day, demanding that Labour modernise its communication strategies, especially where television was concerned, although it is fair to say that his political journey took him in a slightly different direction thereafter.

Tony Benn served, as a junior Minister, as Postmaster General: as a republican, he tried and failed to get rid of the Queen’s head, but he did manage to shrink it down to a much smaller size. As technology Minister, he oversaw the development of Concorde, but I think he tired of the constraints of ministerial office. Instead, he decided that he needed to range more widely to change the political terms of trade by sheer rhetorical force. As we have heard today, he had plenty of sheer rhetorical force. It was for doing that that he came to be regarded by the media as “the most dangerous man in Britain”.

First and foremost, however, Tony Benn revered the House of Commons as the crucible of our democracy, as we have heard over and over again in today’s tributes. He said that it was the place where kings and tyrants could be tamed and revolution averted. This was in contrast to the House of Lords, which he described as the

“British Outer Mongolia for retired politicians”.

His solution to most problems was more accountability and more democracy. Let’s face it, that is never a bad place to start.

Tony Benn fought a determined campaign to renounce the peerage that he had reluctantly inherited on the death of his father in 1960, and it was those sad circumstances that threw him out of the Commons for the first time. His ultimate success in renouncing his hereditary peerage had at least one unintended consequence. The Peerage Act 1963 allowed him to return to the Commons. It also allowed Sir Alec Douglas-Home to renounce his peerage so that he could mysteriously emerge as leader of the Conservative party and succeed Macmillan as Prime Minister, much to the chagrin of Rab Butler, who many still believe was robbed of the premiership in this dubious way. Such was the fuss that the Conservative tradition of allowing leaders to emerge without any obvious voting by anyone had to be abandoned.

Tony Benn was subsequently to lead another successful campaign to extend the franchise of Labour leadership elections beyond the parliamentary Labour party, which was to culminate in the creation of the electoral college at the Wembley special conference in 1981. He lived long enough to see the Labour leadership election franchise extended further to one member, one vote at the special conference that I chaired this March. So it is possible to argue that it was campaigning by Tony Benn that caused the methods of electing the leaders of both the Tory and Labour parties to be reformed, and in both cases it was to move them in a more democratic direction. Of course, his determined opposition to Britain’s membership of what was then called the Common Market helped to give us our first referendum, too.

Tony Benn was a mesmerising speaker in any context: in the Commons; on a platform; and, latterly, on a theatre stage or in the Left Field tent at Glastonbury. He followed in the footsteps of the Levellers and the Chartists. He was a true English radical, evangelising, teaching and persuading generations of left activists about the power and potential of politics to change things for the better. Even when he was making a case with which I did not agree, I marvelled at his formidable communication skills; he had a way of making complex ideas seem simple, and a memorable turn of phrase ensured that his observations stayed with you long after the meeting had ended.

He revelled in social progress. I remember talking to him 20 years ago about the ordination of women into the Anglican priesthood. He had been down especially to watch the first women vicars being ordained and was delighted at the joyful occasion he had witnessed, and he was aware of its significance in the battle for women’s equality. I remember going as a young activist to campaign in the Chesterfield by-election in 1984, in which Tony was seeking to return to the Commons for the second time. My sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), and I went over to help with a contingent which included Allan Roberts, the then Member for Bootle. Things were looking a bit wobbly and the stakes were high. We were sent off to try to remove from a tower block, strategically placed on the main road into the town, a forest of Liberal posters, which had suddenly appeared, causing much consternation in the campaign headquarters. My sister discovered that the posters were down to a disgruntled Labour voter who had decided to switch sides. This lady had demanded, “Get that Tony Benn down here if you want me to change my mind.” By coincidence, we bumped into him a few minutes later and so my sister carted him off to the woman’s front door. She invited him in and he reached over to an old photograph that she had on her mantelpiece. It was a group shot of Labour politicians and he named every one of them, except one, which he correctly surmised was her husband—a former local Labour councillor. She was utterly charmed, and the Liberal posters all came down and were replaced by Labour ones. The tide turned and it was said that in the Labour club that weekend my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) started singing again.

The leader of the Labour party has paid a fulsome tribute to Tony Benn. He leaves behind many memories, and his fascinating and honest diaries, a legacy of which we have heard some today. Most of all, he leaves behind his devoted children, Stephen, Hilary, Melissa and Joshua, to whom we extend our sincere condolences. I believe that the tributes we have heard today do a great service to the memory of a great man who lived a long and fulfilled life. May he rest in peace.

12:13

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

Today, this House has had its opportunity to bid farewell to one of our own—someone who gave so much to this House of Commons and who so passionately believed in the centrality of this House to our democracy. The debate has been full of memories. For one Parliament, I served in this House with Tony Benn. Even then, we knew that he was a great parliamentarian, one of the central parliamentary figures of the second half of the 20th century. I want to add my condolences to his family. There is no doubt that the sense of loss is great when one loses someone whose presence and character has been there throughout one’s life—we feel for them.

As a Member of this House for nearly 50 years, Tony Benn was a champion of the rights of Members to hold the Executive to account. He said in his book, “Arguments for Democracy”:

“We need a strong government to protect us; and those who see that need must also be most vigilant in seeing that it is, itself, fully democratic in character.”

I hope that he would approve and applaud the changes that we make in this Parliament to promote the interests of Select Committees, which he called for in the 1980s, and indeed the rights of Back Benchers.

Tony Benn was also one of the central influences on the character of our modern Parliament, including in his role in the disclaiming of peerages. His views on reform of the House of Lords were trenchant from his early days in the Commons, as the shadow Leader of the House recalled. He consistently believed in the primacy of the Commons and argued strongly for the abolition of the Lords. He said:

“I am not a reluctant peer but a persistent commoner.”.

A commoner yes, but never commonplace.

Beyond this place, his influence was far-reaching. Even for those who did not share his ideology, the power of his speeches, the intellectual challenges of his views and the originality of his world view, provoked, inspired and always engaged.

Tony Benn himself said:

“I think the most important thing in life is to encourage. If anybody asked me what I want on my gravestone, I would like, ‘Tony Benn, he encouraged us’. That would be all I need!”

He can rest in peace in the knowledge that he did indeed encourage generations of his fellow commoners.

[Mr Speaker]

Right hon. and hon. Members might like to know that Her Majesty has agreed that Tony Benn’s coffin will be brought to the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, the Crypt chapel, on Wednesday afternoon next to rest overnight before being taken to St Margaret’s church for his funeral service. The Speaker’s Chaplain, Rev. Rose Hudson-Wilkin will undertake an all-night vigil. The private family service to receive the coffin in the crypt will be followed by a period when parliamentary passholders may file past his coffin to pay their respects.

Business of the House

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

12:16

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

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

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

The business for next week is as follows:

Monday 24 March—My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will update the House on high-speed rail, followed by a continuation of the Budget debate.

Tuesday 25 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.

Wednesday 26 March—My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will update the House following the European Council, followed by a motion relating to the charter for budget responsibility, followed by consideration of Lords Amendments to the Gambling (Licensing and Advertising) Bill, followed by remaining stages of the Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Bill [Lords], followed by a motion relating to the appointment of electoral commissioners.

Thursday 27 March—A general debate on the background to and implications of the High Court judgment on John Downey. The subject for this debate was determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 28 March—The House will not be sitting.

The provisional business for the week commencing 31 March will include:

Monday 31 March—Second Reading of the Wales Bill.

Tuesday 1 April—Second Reading of the Finance Bill.

Wednesday 2 April—Opposition Day [Un-allotted half day]. There will be a debate on an Opposition motion, subject to be announced, followed by a motion to approve a statutory instrument.

Thursday 3 April—Business to be nominated by the Backbench Business Committee.

Friday 4 April—The House will not be sitting.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the Leader of the House for announcing next week’s business. I also thank him for his written ministerial statement on the drafting of Government legislation today. There was great promise in the title given this Government’s woeful record on drafting legislation, but, as usual with this Government, the content was a complete disappointment.

The situation in Ukraine has continued to worsen. Crimea has been annexed and Russian troops appear to have taken control of several Ukrainian naval bases. During Tuesday’s debate in the House, there was cross-party agreement that the UK response needs to be much more robust than it has been so far. Will the Leader of the House confirm that if President Putin persists, the UK Government will support wider economic and financial sanctions against Russia? There is a meeting of European Council leaders in Brussels later today, and President Obama will be travelling to Europe next week. I ask the Leader of the House to confirm that there will be a statement from the Prime Minister on any developments.

I thank the Leader of the House for granting my request last week for an extra Opposition day to help fill the gaping holes in his increasingly threadbare legislative programme. Apparently, the void is now so bad that the Whips have resorted to e-mailing Tory Back Benchers to ask for suggestions to fill in the time. I think they might have forgotten what happened with last year’s Tory Tea party tendency’s alternative Queen’s Speech. Can the Leader of the House tell us whether, apart from our new Opposition Day, the rest of the time will now be filled with Europe, Europe and more Europe? Perhaps he is safer given all the yawning gaps he has left in the parliamentary timetable to us.

After the Prime Minister’s assurances that the House will have a say on his plans to bring back fox hunting, the Leader of the House keeps getting hon. Members excited by announcing unidentified statutory instruments. Can he tell us when we can expect the hunting debate to take place and how he and the Prime Minister will be voting when it does?

This week we learned the breathtaking extent of the hypocrisy on pay shown by this Government. Cabinet Ministers have been approving huge pay rises for their special advisers while imposing real-terms pay cuts on millions of public sector workers. The coalition agreement promised to cut the number, and cost, of special advisers, so may we have a statement from the Government on why they have done precisely the opposite?

Yesterday, the Chancellor delivered the Budget and hoped that no one would notice what is going on with his failing economic plan. He said that he had cut borrowing but now he is set to borrow £190 billion more than he first forecast. He said that the economy would grow by more than 8% but it has grown by less than 4%, and he said that he would eliminate the deficit by 2015 but now he has admitted that it will take until 2018. Only this Government could announce a five-year plan that, as they have now had to admit, is already four years late and only this Chancellor could expect us all to congratulate him for it.

Last night, the Conservative party released an ad that reveals what was really meant by its claims to be the workers’ party a few weeks ago. Even the Chief Secretary thought it was a spoof. The reality is that the Tories are patronising and have an insultingly clichéd view of working people. All I can say is that what was trending last night on Twitter showed their view of workers. Posh boys’ den, No. 10; bankers’ heaven, No. 11. It is all about bingo, this Budget.

I do have one positive thing to say about the Budget. It was good to see the Liberal Democrats’ role in the coalition memorialised with the new pound coin. It has about as many sides as they have Members and it has two faces, just like them.

Last Saturday was the ides of March, and our classically trained Education Secretary took the opportunity to strike. He criticised the number of Etonians in No. 10 as “preposterous” and, after a few glasses of fine wine, he waxed lyrical about the Chancellor’s prime ministerial potential to Rupert Murdoch. I think, Mr Speaker, you would need more than a few glasses of wine to think that.

[Mr Lansley]

I am grateful to the shadow Leader of the House for her questions, and particularly for her welcome for my written ministerial statement. We are pushing forward with the good law project to improve drafting. I am sure that Members will appreciate that after many years in which there has been a degree of confusion about the distinction in legislation between regulations and orders, we will be clear in future when they are regulations to avoid confusion and duplication of terminology.

On Ukraine, we have had the debate that Members sought, and it was right for us to have done so. In future business, I and my colleagues will ensure that the House is regularly updated and, if it becomes necessary, we will look to secure a further opportunity for Members to give their views on the situation. The House will know that after the Prime Minister secured a strategy at the previous European Council, he will be trying at the European Council today to secure the strongest sanctions as regards the Russians’ interventions in Crimea and their transgression of international law and the territorial integrity of Ukraine. He will get the strongest sanctions for which agreement can be secured and, as I told the House on Tuesday, there will be a meeting of G7 Ministers at the nuclear security summit in The Hague early next week. As I have told the House, I expect the Prime Minister to update the House next Wednesday.

I have to tell the hon. Lady that the business is not light, not least because I have announced in the provisional business for the week after next the Second Reading of two Bills, the Finance Bill and the Wales Bill. I am delighted to be able to say that the Wales Bill is being published and introduced today.

The reference to statutory instruments in the provisional business is simply to give the House an indication of what the nature of the business might be. When I announce the business next week, I will be able to give more details. I can tell the hon. Lady that they do not relate to a change to the Hunting Act 2004. No such statutory instrument under section 2(2) of that Act is before the House. If it is of any comfort to the hon. Lady, if there were it would have to go through the affirmative procedure and would require a vote of both Houses.

I am surprised that the hon. Lady had anything to say on the Budget, because her leader seemed incapable of finding anything to say about it. His speech yesterday consisted of an end-to-end collection of Labour press releases that we had known and forgotten. The first half tried to reheat arguments that had failed in the past, whereas the second half consisted mainly of things that he hoped we would have said in the Budget but that we had not. His principal attack seems to be, “Why didn’t you say this in the Budget, because then we could have attacked it?” I am afraid that that was not very compelling.

We did begin to get an idea of how the Labour party approaches such matters. Clearly, the Leader of the Opposition did not feel able to comment on the most important potential changes to pensions and savings for nearly 100 years. None the less, by the evening a Labour spokesman was on “Newsnight” giving it straight about what the Labour party thinks should happen in this country. I think it went along the lines of, “You cannot trust people to spend their own money.” That is what the Labour party thinks about the people of this country. We trust the people. The Conservative party has trusted the people and, if I may say so on behalf of our coalition partners, the coalition Government trust the people. We have worked together and I am looking forward to hearing the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), further setting out that pension strategy.

The plan is working and we are sticking to our long-term economic plan. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was able to say that the deficit is forecast to have halved by next year and if one looks at the Office for Budget Responsibility’s report one can see clearly that that is because we have taken the difficult decisions. It is not the product of economic recovery on its own, but is principally about making decisions on public expenditure and bringing down the costs of administration and the extent to which the people’s money is taken to pay for public expenditure and borrowing.

One of the most interesting numbers was the reduction of £42 billion in the cost of borrowing. That is a measure of the advance we have been able to make from the position we inherited from the Labour party, which borrowed so much. The Budget will help hard-working people by bringing 3.2 million people out of income tax altogether, with £800 for all basic-rate taxpayers. It is helping businesses to invest through the investment allowances and helping them to export through the export finance changes, and it is helping people to save through the changes in ISAs, pensioner bonds and other measures. It is giving people who have retired and are not in a position to change their circumstances so readily the security not only of the triple lock and the single-tier pension, which mean that they have a secure basic state pension that does not expose them to means-tested benefits, but the opportunity to use the money they have saved through pensions as they see fit to boost their standard of living in old age.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

“Absolution”, “Atonement”, “The Pickwick Papers”, “A Christmas Carol” and “Clockwise” were all films made in Shropshire. May we have a debate on making Shropshire the pre-eminent and premier—if hon. Members will forgive the pun—film location in England for British, American and international film makers? That will be good for Shropshire, for businesses and for tourism.

[Mr Lansley]

I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I am not as knowledgeable on the relationship of the film industry to Shropshire as I should be. That is interesting. He and other hon. Members might seek such a debate, either on the Adjournment or through the Backbench Business Committee. Certainly, there will be other places in this country that also have a lot to say about the film industry, but I hope that it would also be an opportunity to demonstrate what a success this country now is in terms of our film and creative industries, not only as evidenced by the success of the film “Gravity” at the Oscars, to which the British film industry contributed so much, but by so many successful films that are being made in this country with this Government’s support.

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

Both general debates and votes on Back-Bench motions have led to some notable shifts and changes in Government policy, such as the forcing of the Prime Minister to recall Parliament before going to war in Syria, compensating the victims of contaminated blood, taking action on payday lenders, and the Hillsborough inquiry. What, then, is the criteria that the Government use to take decisions on when to listen to Parliament and when just to ignore it?

[Mr Lansley]

The Government always listen to Parliament, and we are always very clear, often in the debates that take place, about our position. The hon. Lady instanced in a press release of her own that debates on contaminated blood, fisheries policies, high speed rail, metal theft and fuel prices have led to Government responses and changes of policy. She will no doubt have noted in yesterday’s Budget that the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the Government will refund VAT on fuel for air ambulances and inshore rescue boats. That, of course, follows a review established after an e-petition on the subject, which had more than 150,000 signatures, and a debate held through the Backbench Business Committee’s decision in the House in July 2012.

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

May we have an early debate on the proposed teachers’ strike for next Wednesday? The National Union of Teachers is calling out on strike many fine and hard-working teachers next Wednesday, which will cause huge disruption to school children coming up to the exam period, and it is difficult for parents to find child care at short notice. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be helpful if all parties in the House strongly urged the NUT not to go ahead with that action?

[Mr Lansley]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. I hope that between now and next week it will be possible, as he says, for not only Government Members to be clear that whatever one’s disputes may be, it is wrong to pursue those grievances by damaging the education of the young people whom we are there to look after. I hope that the Opposition spokesman will do exactly the same thing and advise the NUT not to proceed with this.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Leader of the House will know that next Tuesday marks the third anniversary of the launch of the responsibility deal, of which he was the architect. He will also know that of the 40 pledges that businesses have to sign up to, none relates to a reduction in sugar. May we have a debate or statement on the progress of the responsibility deal to see whether we can include the reduction in sugar as one of the pledges that should be made?

[Mr Lansley]

Yes, I am very familiar with that, and I am proud of what the responsibility deal has been able to achieve in terms of the further reduction in salt content and the calorie challenge, which is relevant to the point to which the right hon. Gentleman alludes. The calorie challenge in itself—the reduction of the equivalent of 100 calories per person per day in this country on average—would bring the population to a sustainable weight, broadly speaking. That would make an enormous difference to our long-term prospects on morbidity in older age. There are other responsibility deal achievements that are too numerous to mention, but questions on the levels of consumption of fat and sugars are part of achieving that calorie challenge.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

With the CBI noting that we need even more engineers to strengthen our already powerful, long-term economic plan, may we have a debate to encourage school governors to think more in terms of business links and developing relationships with businesses so that we can get schools to fill these extra engineering places?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is quite right. It is very important that every school should engage fully with local employers and the professional community to get real work connections with employers. As my hon. Friend mentioned, employer involvement in school governing bodies, is one way of achieving that. The Government are funding a range of programmes to encourage young people to consider careers related to science, technology, engineering and manufacturing. The stimulating physics network aims to increase the take-up of physics A-levels, particularly among girls, and the STEM ambassadors programme raises awareness of the range of careers that science, technology, engineering and maths qualifications can lead to.

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

May we have a debate in Government time to educate those on the Government Benches that working-class culture is not just about beer and bingo, or for that matter, pigeon fancying, wearing a flat cap or having a whippet? If they are left in any doubt, perhaps a visit to Hull for city of culture 2017 might be in order.

[Mr Lansley]

I look forward to the opportunity to visit Hull as the city of culture. I would certainly appreciate that, but I am afraid I cannot agree with the hon. Lady on her first point. It does not patronise or disparage anybody to recognise that in a Budget we address the issues that people care about. We talked earlier about Back-Bench motions. There was a considerable Back-Bench effort on the part of Government Members to secure a reduction in bingo duty, and they got what they were looking for. In fact, they got more than they were looking for from the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is in the context of a Budget that was about supporting hard-working people, not least because all of those who are basic rate taxpayers, by virtue of a personal tax allowance rising to £10,500, will have seen their tax reduced by £800.

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

I was recently in a pub enjoying a pint with local farmers, and I am delighted that I will go back and do it again. The topic we discussed then was water abstraction and the changes that are coming into force. Will my right hon. Friend find time for a debate to discuss that matter, which was not particularly considered during the Water Bill?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is the very person, in the sense of having recently had a debate on bingo duty. I congratulate my hon. Friend.

My hon. Friend will be aware that the House of Lords is completing consideration of the Water Bill, and the future of abstraction reform may well arise on consideration of Lords amendments on that Bill.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Leader of the House look into the case of my constituent Gordon Mansbridge, who is 90 and has terminal cancer. He flew some 33 Wellington bomber missions from an Italian airbase during the second world war. Sir John Holmes is investigating the possibility of recognition in the form of a medal clasp, but that review is not likely to be completed until the end of the year. Given the circumstances of my constituent, might the right hon. Gentleman explore with the Ministry of Defence whether that could be speeded up?

[Mr Lansley]

I will of course do that. I am pleased to be able to help the hon. Gentleman in relation to his constituent. In recent years, like many hon. Members, I have appreciated the recognition, through the Bomber Command medal and the Bomber Command memorial here in London, and in other ways, of the courage displayed by those who were part of Bomber Command in the second world war.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

North East Lincolnshire council is proposing to close the youth centres under its control, which—needless to say—is extremely unpopular. The overwhelming local view is that the council is not using its resources wisely. This highlights the limited scope local authorities have in determining their budgets, because most of the services they have to provide are statutory. Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate either on giving councils more freedom or on reducing the amount of statutory provision?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend will recall the debate on the local government finance settlement, during which it was illustrated that although every bit of the public sector, including local government, must do its bit to pay off the budget deficit we inherited from the previous Government, there are particular ways in which all administrations can focus on cutting waste and making savings in order to protect front-line services. Of course, we are enabling local authorities to keep council tax down. In particular, our “50 ways to save” document contains practical tips and guidance on making sensible savings and highlights how councillors can challenge officers to deliver savings and how taxpayers can challenge councils. I hope that he, along with his constituents, will be challenging his council to protect the front-line services that are most important to them.

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

My constituent Robert Barlow graduated with an honours degree and worked for some years as a microbiologist. He was then diagnosed with a serious heart defect and told that his working days were over. He was sent to Atos for an assessment. They stopped his benefits, which ended his access to free prescriptions. He was too ill to appeal. Robert died at the age of 47, struggling to get by. May we please have an urgent debate on the impact of too many of these Atos decisions on sick people, particularly when access to free prescriptions is taken away?

[Mr Lansley]

As the hon. Lady will know, the House has had many opportunities to debate how we are proceeding with welfare reform, and rightly so. I hope she understands that we are proceeding on the basis of reforming what we inherited, because it was the previous Government who put work capability assessments in place. We have gone about ensuring that they work more effectively for the future, which is a continuing process. Welfare reform, and indeed the need to maintain the downward pressure on what would otherwise be escalating welfare budgets, which were not controlled under the previous Government, is not the issue. We need to focus resources on the people who are most in need, and that is what we are doing. I will talk with my right hon. and hon. Friends at the Department for Work and Pensions about the circumstances of the case she describes—[Interruption.] I completely understand that, but I will talk with them so that she can have a response on the circumstances and how we are addressing those issues.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Crawley borough council on its plan to plant Flanders and wild flower poppies in every single neighbourhood and park in my constituency later this year to mark the centenary of the first world war? Will he ensure that there are ample opportunities throughout this year for the House to commemorate that most important event in our history?

[Mr Lansley]

I applaud my hon. Friend and Crawley borough council for the way they are commemorating the first world war. I can remember talking with my grandfather about the great war, so in a way I can conjure up a sense of what it must have been like. Younger generations should also have an opportunity to understand the nature of what happened, the character of those who went from this country to fight and what they achieved. I think that is well worth commemorating. The House had an important and constructive debate on the first world war at the end of last year, and I hope that we will have another opportunity between now and August to debate how to commemorate it.

[Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)]

On that issue, the European Scrutiny Committee has asked for a debate that would have freed up the Europe for Citizens programme, which is now frozen for the whole of Europe because we are the last country that has not had that debate and lifted the scrutiny. The House has passed a Bill to allow the programme to go ahead, and it has been granted Royal Assent, but it appears that since November neither the Leader of the House nor the Department has been able to find time for a debate to allow the programme to go ahead across Europe.

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman will know that, contrary to some impressions, we have had difficulty scheduling a number of debates on the Floor of the House. I hope that the issue he raises can be considered in one of the European Committees very shortly.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I know that the Leader of the House has found time for debates on the Budget, but if he can find more time, I think that the full quotation he referred to earlier could be exposed more thoroughly. It was from a Labour party adviser, who said that

“you can’t trust people to spend their own money sensibly, planning for their retirement”.

He was an adviser at the beginning and end of the previous Labour Government, including several years in No. 10 advising Tony Blair. That sentiment says everything we need to know about that party and about the parties on the Government side of the House, because we trust people to spend their own money sensibly. The more times we say it, the better.

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I wish that we had more time to debate the Budget, not least because the longer we debate it, the greater the chance that at some point we might find out what the Opposition’s alternative would be. I agree about the sentiments of the Labour party, as expressed in the claim that people cannot be trusted to spend their own money. That has been true in the past, is true today and, no doubt, will be true in the future.

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

May we have a debate on the pressures caused by councils such as Oxford and Newham relocating their homeless people to Birmingham while the Government simultaneously relocate Birmingham’s resources to places such as Oxfordshire and Surrey?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot promise a debate on accommodation issues for people who are dependent on local authority housing. Of course, one of the answers to the hon. Gentleman’s point is our ability to build more houses. He talks about Newham. Just imagine what kind of progress we could make with the Government support the Chancellor announced yesterday for substantial additional developments in Barking and Barking Riverside.

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

The Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Rutland air ambulance flies out of East Midlands airport in my constituency. It is funded totally by charitable donations and saves countless lives across the region each year. May we have a debate on the value that air ambulances add to our emergency services and the impact on them of the excellent news announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor yesterday that VAT on the fuel they use will be scrapped, something for which I and many colleagues on the Government Benches have been campaigning for some time?

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend has indeed fought that campaign successfully, along with other Members, for which I applaud him. As there is a Budget measure providing for the relief of VAT on fuel for air ambulances, I hope that he and other Members might find an opportunity to raise the matter during the Budget debate.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

May we have a statement on the delivery of the Department for Work and Pensions? Following big problems with the Work programme and universal credit, it now appears that the personal independence payment has dreadful teething problems.

[Mr Lansley]

We will have an opportunity in the Budget debate to look at some aspects of the Department’s delivery. As its title indicates, the Department is there to get people into work and to reform and improve pensions, and I think that it can be immensely proud of what it has achieved. We have 1.6 million more people in private sector employment—[Interruption.]

[Andrew Selous]

It is now 1.7 million.

[Mr Lansley]

Of course, because we had data yesterday showing that it has gone up. There are something like 1.4 million more jobs in this country—I will be corrected if I am wrong—and the smallest number of workless households. Our pension reforms, which the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), has been steering through, are delivering for the people of this country the triple lock, the single-tier pension, auto-enrolment and, following yesterday’s Budget, a dramatic new potential for people to use their pensions funds as they think best. We are also ensuring that where we are reforming—this is true of personal independence payments—we are doing so carefully and steadily, recognising where there are difficulties and addressing them.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

On Tuesday, the Work and Pensions Committee published a report which, in addition to reporting on the delays in assessments, also showed that the Department for Work and Pensions is distorting statistics, which is denigrating to people such as the person my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) mentioned. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has been rebuked by the UK Statistics Authority at least twice. Does the Leader of the House agree that the ministerial code of conduct is not worth the paper it is written on unless it is enforced, and will he report back to the House on exactly what he is going to do about this matter?

[Mr Lansley]

No, I do not agree with that. I cannot see any evidence that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has breached the ministerial code of conduct. There are often, rightly, debates about policy and, indeed, about the statistics that support policy, but I do not see any basis for the accusation that, in using the arguments that he has, he has in any way breached the code.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

May we have a further debate on the effectiveness of the green deal? In Wales this week, we have had figures showing that with a population of almost 3 million people, only 4,202 green deal assessments have taken place and only 382 projects have been signed off—fewer than 10 per constituency. Providers in my constituency are now saying that the Conservative coalition has wasted two years, with fewer homes being insulated and real damage being done to the insulation industry.

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot offer the immediate prospect of a debate. In any case, one has to look very carefully at the way in which the green deal is developing. It is developing in terms of assessments, which are not always turning into contracts, but that does not mean that, as a consequence, people are not taking the energy-conserving and carbon-reducing measures that are the basis of the assessments.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

May I refer the Leader of the House to early-day motion 1156?

[That this House congratulates Age Cymru on its timely and vital campaign to protect vulnerable older people in Wales from scams, such as postal scams, nuisance calls, investment scams, fake PPI recovery offers, internet repair scammers, courier scams and internet scams; and calls for the Government to examine the case for drastically increasing the scope and the scale of No Cold Calling zones to protect older people from rogue traders and high pressure salespeople on their doorstep and for internet service providers to work with other service and product providers to supply easily and affordably higher levels of security capable of blocking or quarantining scams.]

The EDM supports the campaign by Age Cymru to draw attention to the many callous and cruel scams against the vulnerable and the elderly to try to rob them. May we have a debate so that we can find out how to publicise the nature of these scams, some of which are very subtle and very clever and which do so much damage and rob so many elderly people of their hard-won money?

[Mr Lansley]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I recognise that his EDM has secured support from a number of Members on both sides of the House, and rightly so, because it is a concern for our constituents that they are not subject to these exploitative and damaging rogue traders and others. I cannot promise a debate immediately, but I will of course raise the matter with my hon. Friends to see whether they can reply to him and other Members or inform the House a little more about how they are addressing some of these issues.

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

Last week the Government announced that they plan to introduce an early access to medicines scheme. Such a scheme was a central point in the recent report by the all-party group on muscular dystrophy. Will the Leader of the House provide some time to debate the scheme, and will he ask the relevant Minister to meet me, patients and representatives from the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign to discuss it further?

[Mr Lansley]

I will of course ask my hon. Friends at the Department of Health whether they might be able to meet the hon. Lady. I cannot promise an immediate debate, but this is an important issue, and I hope that we may have such an opportunity before too long. The early access to medicines scheme, like the breakthrough fund in America, raises the real possibility that, in addition to what we have already done through the cancer drugs fund, which provides the ability to access licensed medicines, drugs that have evident efficacy and safety can be made available through the NHS, even before the point at which they have been through all the formal licensing processes, for patients who often have relatively few other opportunities.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The United Nations Human Rights Council is currently in session, as it has been throughout most of March, and there are a lot of important issues on the agenda. Will the Leader of the House advise on whether there will be a mechanism for us to debate what is decided at the HRC? Will the Foreign Secretary be making a statement, or will there be any other opportunity for us to discuss its outcomes?

[Mr Lansley]

I cannot say that there will be a statement to the House, but I will talk to my hon. Friends at the Foreign Office to see how the House might indeed be informed of the outcomes of the Human Rights Council.

Pensions Strategy

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

12:55

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement setting out the Government’s strategy for future pension provision in the light of the Chancellor’s bold and radical reform proposals announced in the Budget statement yesterday.

Our first priority has been to do the right thing by people who have already retired—people who have spent a lifetime paying in to the system and who now have a right to expect a decent income in retirement. That is why one of the first measures taken by this coalition Government was to implement the triple lock policy, which ensures that the basic state pension increases each year by the highest of the growth in earnings or prices, with a minimum increase of 2.5%. As a result of this policy, the basic state pension is now a higher share of the average wage than at any time in the past two decades. But we also need a system that works for tomorrow’s pensioners. That is why we have introduced the single-tier state pension. This will provide a simple, single, decent state pension, set above the level of the basic means test, so that working people will know what they will get in retirement from the state and can plan accordingly.

We also needed to reverse the decades-long decline in workplace pension provision. With barely one worker in three in the private sector building up any pension provision at all, urgent action was required. That is why in 2012 we began the process of automatically enrolling more than 10 million people into workplace pensions. That programme has been a stunning success. Last week, we announced that over 3 million workers have already been automatically enrolled. Only about one in 10 workers is exercising their right to opt out of the scheme, as most realise that the combination of an employer contribution and tax relief from the Government make this a very attractive proposition. Figures published at the end of last week for April 2013 showed the biggest rise in workplace pension coverage since figures began in 1997, and we expect the figures for 2014 to show a much bigger increase.

We need to make sure that these pension savings are invested in value-for-money schemes that are well governed, and we plan to publish next week measures to deliver this policy goal. We will also ensure that individuals do not build up multiple stranded small pension pots but that their pensions follow them when they change jobs so that they build up a worthwhile sum in their current scheme. In addition, we will create a new “defined ambition” framework for workplace pensions, enabling new forms of risk sharing between employers and employees.

Having ensured that the vast majority of workers build up a worthwhile pension pot on top of a simplified state pension, we now have a new opportunity to think about the choices people have in retirement. In the past, retirement was often a relatively short period of time, and the priority for most was to turn their pension savings into a regular income for as long as they lived. But in a world where people will routinely live for 25 years in retirement, we need to think more creatively and give people new options about what they will do with their own money. In the past, Governments were concerned that if people had freedom over their pension pots, they would run them down too quickly and then depend on state support in later life. The single-tier pension provides a game-changing opportunity to rethink this model. With people receiving a full single-tier pension already clear of the basic means test, the state need be much less prescriptive about how people use their accumulated pension savings.

That is why the Government have announced a plan for radical liberalisation of the retirement savings market with effect from April 2015. Gone will be the detailed rules on how quickly people can turn their pension pot into annual income. Instead, for the first time, we will treat people as adults, giving them the flexibility to choose how best to use their hard-earned savings in the way that suits their personal circumstances. People will still be free to take a tax-free lump sum and turn the balance of their pension pot into an annuity, providing a guaranteed income for life, but they will also be able to withdraw the whole of their pension pot as cash to spend as they see fit, subject only to taxation on the balance in excess of the tax-free lump sum. Or they can decide to allow their money to go on growing, drawing cash as and when they wish, perhaps as part of a phased retirement—something that we have talked about for years and are now delivering. By lifting the rules, we anticipate that industry will respond with new products that meet consumers’ income needs in new and innovative ways.

These reforms will increase the attractiveness of saving for retirement, and will allow people to shape their finances in retirement as they see fit, not as the Government tell them. To support people in making good choices we will introduce a guidance guarantee—a legal requirement on pension schemes to offer all scheme members a conversation about their options with someone who is impartial. This may lead them to take full independent financial advice, or it may enable them to make informed choices without further advice. As a down payment on these increased flexibilities, we will dramatically relax the rules on turning small pension pots into cash and the rules on existing drawdown products with effect from 27 March.

We anticipate that annuities will continue to be an important part of retirement provision and the FCA will continue with its review of the workings of the annuity market, to ensure that consumers get maximum value for money from their hard-earned pension savings. But we also expect that our reforms will pave the way for new financial products which will give people new freedoms over how they turn their retirement savings into quality of life in retirement, as well as potentially link to options for funding the long-term costs of social care.

The pensions system that was inherited by this coalition Government was broken. Declining coverage of workplace pensions and a declining basic state pension meant that mass means-testing had become the order of the day. We were determined to reverse that spiral of decline. We have done the right thing by today’s pensioners by starting to restore the real value of the state pension through the triple lock. We have reformed the state pension to provide a simple, decent foundation for retirement saving and have implemented automatic enrolment, leading already to millions more in workplace pensions. And now we have ripped up the red tape that prevented people in retirement from making their own choices about how they want to spend their own pension pot. This is truly a pensions revolution, and I commend this strategy to the House.

13:01

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

No one can say that pensions is not a fast-moving and exciting world. The Minister was halfway through his statement before yesterday’s announcements were mentioned. The reason for that is straightforward. The announcements yesterday cannot be bold and radical and also be a logical extension of the Government’s existing pensions policy, as the Minister strains to claim. Let us be clear about that.

There is a wider context to the statement. Given that so much time was spent on the wider pensions strategy, it is surprising that the Minister made no mention of his retreat, so far at least, from clamping down on fees and charges in individual pension schemes. The stridency of the Minister’s statement results from the fact that he knows that on that fundamental issue he has not delivered for the millions of people saving in the new pension schemes for which he claims all the credit. It is important to put that on the record.

We welcome greater flexibility and choice, especially in the announcements— which are easy to understand and the impact of which is easy to interpret—regarding the changes from 26 March this year. It makes sense to allow greater flexibility, particularly for those with small pots, which the new auto-enrolment system is producing. An annuity will not deliver value for money for these small pots, so we welcome the changes. With the increase to £30,000 in the trivial commutation rules and the changes to the number of pots that can be taken in cash, some individuals will be able to take, by my calculations, up to £60,000 as cash. That is to be welcomed.

Let us probe a little more deeply, especially the new developments surrounding the changes from April 2015, which the Minister dealt with in the second half of his statement. He made great play of the fact that there will be a statutory right to guidance via pension providers. We welcome that. It is our policy, which the Government have taken. After all, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Is the guidance to be mandatory for all those approaching the point where they turn their pension pot into retirement income? If not, how does it deal with the cardinal feature of the current annuities market, which is that the majority of people do nothing other than take the current offer from their provider? Government Members have gone quiet now. When we get into the detail, which they do not understand, the picture looks a little different.

We need clarity on that guidance. We need to know what protections there will be for savers in the new investment products that are to be developed. What is the track record of the investment industry in delivering innovative new products that deliver value for money at low cost? [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says something but he has no idea of what he speaks.

What will be the safeguards around the guidance? Will it be mandatory? Will it ensure that people get the best possible deal for their cash? These savings measures are supposed to be part of a Budget that is meant to be for savers. Why, then, does the OBR forecast that the savings ratio will fall? Will the Minister tell us what these changes will mean for savings in future? There is nothing in the Budget about the savings ratio. More widely, how many people will continue to annuitise? The Minister talks of a radical liberalisation, but if a significant number of individuals continue to annuitise, surely the priority should be to ensure that that annuity market also delivers value for money.

Finally, the Minister made great play of his defined ambition agenda, which is buried in his statement. How can one develop the collective pensions to which he subscribes when they depend on intergenerational risk-sharing? As we understand it, intergenerational risk-sharing becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, if people exit the system at the age of 55. On all these questions—the safeguards surrounding the guidance, and the recognition that the Minister has, to some extent, taken our policy, which we welcome—how do these reforms marry with the wider pensions agenda? We look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his wholehearted endorsement of our plans. The guidance guarantee is as it says on the tin: it is guaranteed. It is a right of members of the scheme. It is a duty on schemes to make sure, for the first time, that people coming up to retirement have a conversation with someone who is independent and who is on their side, and the schemes will have to make that happen. The Financial Conduct Authority will oversee that process. We will look into whether we can involve the voluntary sector and the advice sector in that.

We often hear the phrase “advice gap”. The hon. Gentleman suggests that we started from a blank sheet of paper, but we did not. We started from a situation where many people coming to retirement were making the wrong decisions and buying poor value products. This is the sort of thing that we have had to address.

The hon. Gentleman asks whether the Budget was really one for savers. To me the increase in ISA limits sounds like good news for savers. The new pensioners bond coming in next year sounds like good news for savers. New freedoms for pensioners with regard to how they can use their pensions sounds like good news for savers. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman wanted still more, but I quote to him Dr Ros Altmann, who said that yesterday was like London buses—all the good news for savers came at once.

The hon. Gentleman asked the question I thought he might ask. If I paraphrase it loosely, his question, as a former academic, was on “the consistency of the defined ambition framework with liberalised decumulation”. I think that is what he wanted to know about. It is perfectly reasonable for people to have collective provision in accumulation. People can build up pensions collectively and many people will go on buying annuities. Many people will still want an income, but we are giving them new options. Plenty of people will want a scheme in which to go on investing their money into retirement. That will be their choice. Our whole agenda is about new models and new options, not just going from one extreme to another.

The hon. Gentleman asked about action on charges. I assume that he had written his questions before he read my statement. Given that we gave him the statement well before the speech, I am surprised at that. I confirm that next week we will announce the conclusions and the action we are taking—action to tackle problems that were never tackled in 13 years of a Labour Government.

The hon. Gentleman says that guidance is Labour’s policy. I am delighted to hear that, but why was there none in place when his party was running the country? It is good of him to support the plans.

This is bold and radical stuff. People will have guidance for the first time and new flexibilities. Some Labour MPs are saying that this should be blocked because we cannot trust people to spend their own money. I think we should.

[Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham) (Con)]

I welcome the reforms announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor yesterday and the further detail my hon. Friend the Minister has given today. I urge him not to overlook the Pensions Advisory Service and the Money Advice Service as potential sources of advice for people approaching retirement. How will he take forward discussions with the industry and the regulator to ensure the availability of good quality products for new pensioners that not only represent good value for money but are properly regulated?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend has great knowledge of these matters from his time at both the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions. He is absolutely right to say that we need to make sure that people have guidance that enables them to make informed choices. They will still be able to proceed to formally regulated independent financial advice, but the industry will have to up its game, because now people will have much more choice to take cash, and if they want to take an annuity they will have to be persuaded that it is good value for money. That will be a market impetus to provide better quality products. We have asked the FCA to make sure that a good guidance regime is in place, potentially involving groups such as the excellent Pensions Advisory Service, to which my hon. Friend referred.

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

As a result of these changes, will taxpayers pay more or less to the Exchequer?

[Steve Webb]

The beauty of theses proposals is that individuals will choose: if they want to spread their income over their retirement they will pay less tax, and if they bring forward their cash they will pay more tax. We think people will take advantage of those freedoms, which will bring forward taxation revenue in the shorter term, and there will be a reduction later on. People will be able to make free choices, something I hope the hon. Gentleman is in favour of.

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

I am genuinely not sure what the previous position was on whether the pension pots of elderly people going into residential care contributed towards the total assets they were allowed to retain before they got help from the state. If that was separate and did not count, will the fact that pension pots can now be turned into cash disadvantage people going into residential care in terms of the assets they can retain, or will the situation remain unchanged from their point of view?

[Steve Webb]

The interaction between these measures and the funding of long-term care is important. There are various rules. If someone takes their pension pot as income, it will be counted as income in the means testing for residential care. If they have capital assets, we assess them on a different basis. We have to make sure that these measures are joined up with our policy on long-term care so that we have the right outcome. What we hope will happen is that new financial products will allow people to use their pot to possibly get care insurance as well. The industry has asked for this; now it has to raise its game.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Beyond the guidance guarantee, will the Minister assure us that when these innovative products are offered for sale, the regulator will be able to guarantee that it will in effect have pre-assured them, not least regarding the transparency of charging schemes?

[Steve Webb]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are taking steps to make sure that charges in the pension sphere are made much more transparent. Any new products, particularly if they are sold, will be regulated by the FCA. The guidance is simply a conversation, as it were, with someone who will enable people to get basic information. People will still be able to take regulated independent financial advice, and that will be a regulated process.

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

The Minister has rightly championed the triple lock, making sure that the pension goes up by whichever is highest: earnings, prices or 2.5%. That is making a huge difference to pensioners in my constituency and, I suspect, the constituencies of hon. Members across the House. Will he confirm that it is the Government’s intention to make that very important change a permanent feature of the pension landscape so that it gives people certainty for the future? As part of the guidance guarantee, will he ensure that a linkage is made to the duty in the Care Bill to provide information and advice in respect of care?

[Steve Webb]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making the crucial point about the link between this new freedom and the level of the state pension. If we are able to keep the triple lock going, what will happen with a means-tested earnings-linked pension credit is that there will be more and more clear blue water between the means test and the triple-locked pension, which will greatly reduce the risk of anyone falling back into means testing in retirement. I would certainly like to see that continue beyond this Parliament.

On guidance on care, we will liaise with our colleagues at the Department of Health to make sure we are taking best advantage of this conversation.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Given the track record of the DWP and the Government on universal credit, the employment and support allowance, the personal independence payment and universal jobmatch, I think people might be a little sceptical about a proposal that appears to have been drawn up on the back of an envelope. The Red Book expects the savings ratio to fall from 7.2% to 3.2% by 2018. How will these proposals help savers?

[Steve Webb]

We heard earlier that these are Labour policies, but now we hear that they were drawn up on the back of a fag packet. Perhaps both statements are true—I do not know. Just to be clear about what the Labour party has been demanding: it has been demanding not a guidance guarantee, but annuity brokers. It wanted everyone to buy an annuity. This is about freeing people up. That is why it will be good news for saving. Let me give the hon. Lady a brief example. Under auto-enrolment, the people most likely to opt out are the oldest—people in their 50s and beyond—partly because they do not want to tie up their money late in life. This will give them a guaranteed return, in cash, within a few years, and we think it will lead to more pension saving and that it will be a boost to savers.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

The older someone is, the higher their cost of living. Does the Minister agree that our reforms of the state pension and these new freedoms in private provision should result in increased income and opportunities for people in retirement, and that it is therefore vital that they get good quality financial advice?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is right. The key word she used was “opportunities.” If people want to take more of their pension wealth earlier in retirement—perhaps when they are more fit and able—they should be free to do so. As she says, however, they need to make informed choices, which is why the guidance guarantee is so important.

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

Although I am generally supportive of the changes to the private pension—they are sensible, especially for those with smaller pots—I wonder what the difference is between one of these new pensions and other savings vehicles. Will there be any impact on the assessment of someone in their late 50s who unfortunately finds themselves seeking means-tested benefits? Will they be looked at differently compared with the current pension plans, given that they will now be able to draw down money at any time and it will no longer be necessary for them to purchase an annuity at the end of the scheme?

[Steve Webb]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we are going to have to think about pensions and retirement saving in a new way. One of the differences between workplace pensions and other forms of saving is the employer contribution. Whereas someone of working age can save through any savings vehicle they like, it is only through workplace pensions that they get not only tax relief but the employer contribution. They will, therefore, remain particularly attractive products, including for people on low wages.

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Thousands of people in my constituency work in this industry, from the blue-chip leaders working for Legal & General and for Fidelity to those working for two companies that have led the way in innovative products, namely Partnership and Just Retirement, whose share prices took a hammering yesterday because of the language being used about the future of annuities. Will the Minister make it absolutely clear that the delivery of good guidance is essential—that would reinforce the position of those who are delivering innovative products—and that annuities will be an extremely important part of the industry in future provision?

[Steve Webb]

We know that many people will still choose to have an income for life rather than a capital sum, so we do not think this is the death of the annuity. We think it will give a bit of a jolt to the annuity market and make providers do better. For example, Standard Life, a major annuity provider, said yesterday:

“Today’s wide ranging reforms of the UK savings and pensions regime have the potential to provide the simplicity, choice and flexibility for savers we have been calling for.”

A representative of the Association of British Insurers was on the radio this morning, and the providers are realising that this is an opportunity. They will have to up their game, but this is a chance for them to provide new and innovative products and we are happy to work with them on that.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

How will the Government’s measures protect people like a constituent of mine who is a baker in his mid-70s? He had a lump sum pension pot of £250,000 and received independent advice, but that advice was poor and he lost almost everything. He is in his mid-70s and does not think he will ever be able to retire.

[Steve Webb]

As the hon. Lady knows, there are redress mechanisms for people who receive poor quality independent financial advice. It is a regulated process. [Interruption.] I cannot hear what she is shouting at me. When there is a process of regulated advice, there are compensation mechanisms, which is right and as it should be.

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

I have to thank my hon. Friend because the statement and what was announced in the Budget yesterday take pensions to a whole new level. Now we have the single-tier state pension, we can free people to make their retirement decisions. Frankly, the Opposition do not seem to recognise the issues that people on defined contribution schemes have had or how annuities have fallen, so I really welcome what he has said today. In particular, will he tell us a bit more about when pensioner bonds will come into effect?

[Steve Webb]

Certainly. My understanding is that National Savings and Investments will bring forward pensioner bonds next January. The Chancellor has indicated that the gross interest rate will be about 2.8% for a one-year bond and about 4% for a three-year bond, but that will be reviewed later in the year. It depends on market movements between now and then, but it is designed to be a market-leading rate to recognise that people who have worked hard and saved hard should get a decent return on their money.

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

It is interesting that the consultation is coming after the facts in this case. Will the Minister place in the Library a list of all the people he consulted prior to the announcements today and yesterday, as well as the risk assessment of where the Treasury will benefit or lose out from the proposal and, importantly, of the impact on women, because I suspect that women will yet again be net losers?

[Steve Webb]

There is a risk of being rather patronising to women in saying that giving them new freedoms will somehow result in their losing out. The hon. Lady will have seen that the markets moved following the announcement yesterday, so there is a sense in which such decisions have to be made through a confidential process. We are in constant dialogue with trade bodies and providers, and we will continue to be so. It is a three-month consultation, so we want to ensure that we get it right. On the principle of giving people freedom, she is shaking her head; I think that Labour Front Benchers might support it, but I really cannot tell.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the reforms, which are a great step forward for the pensions industry. The solution to the annuities problem is perhaps more radical than even the Work and Pensions Committee envisaged. May I urge the Minister to make sure that the new guaranteed guidance arrives before people reach retirement age, so that they can have a plan in their mind about what they want to do and what is there for them to choose before they reach that date?

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is a distinguished member of the Select Committee, which has scrutinised the issues very effectively. He is quite right that the guidance must come at the right time. We want people to think about their retirement planning much earlier. Certainly, when they are thinking about buying financial products—or, in the jargon, decumulating—we need to make sure that there is someone on their side to give them impartial guidance. We will make sure that that happens.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Financial Conduct Authority is not only a process regulator but a product regulator. Will the Minister ensure that it is seized of the need to look carefully at new, innovative products, because the group of people with whom it is dealing are very vulnerable, and it is important for the regulator to keep an eye on the market?

[Steve Webb]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right that products must be properly regulated. The difference between the current situation and what we propose is that, under our proposals, before going to independent financial advisers, people are guaranteed to have a conversation with somebody who is independent and on their side to talk them through their options. All too many people simply do not get that at the moment, and they risk making the wrong choice as a result. We will put that right.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Despite the Labour party’s scaremongering since the Budget yesterday, will my hon. Friend confirm that other countries—such as the United States, Australia and Denmark—do not restrict access to pension funds for those seeking to access them on retirement?

[Steve Webb]

Yes. My hon. Friend is quite right. Many countries have different systems, but the presumption that as soon as someone has a pension pot, they are forced to take annual income is far from universal. We clearly need to make sure that people have proper guidance before they do so, but giving people freedom is what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s announcement was all about.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I welcome the further detail given by the Minister on the savings and pensions elements of yesterday’s Budget. By contrast, we have had the bizarre spectacle of the shadow Pensions Minister chuntering—yak, yak, yak—like an excited tourist on a Tibetan plateau. Clearly, there are huge elements that will help savers in all our constituencies. Will the Minister say a little more about one of the most important of those elements, which is the axing of the 10p tax rate on savings income of up £5,000, which I believe will affect 1.5 million low earners in all our constituencies?

[Steve Webb]

Gladly. My hon. Friend is quite right. The Opposition have asked, “Where are the measures for savers in the Budget? How does it help savers?” We have already gone through a list, and he has kindly added another element, which is the abolition of the 10p tax rate. As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor said yesterday, when this Government abolish a 10p tax rate, we take it to zero, not double it as others have done.

BILL PRESENTED

Wales Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Secretary David Jones, supported by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Alistair Carmichael, Secretary Theresa Villiers, Danny Alexander, Mr David Gauke and Stephen Crabb, presented a Bill to make provision about elections to and membership of the National Assembly for Wales; to make provision about the Welsh Assembly Government; to make provision about the setting by the Assembly of a rate of income tax to be paid by Welsh taxpayers and about the devolution of taxation powers to the Assembly; to make related amendments to Part 4A of the Scotland Act 1998; to make provision about borrowing by the Welsh Ministers; to make miscellaneous amendments in the law relating to Wales; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 24 March, and to be printed (Bill 186) with explanatory notes (Bill 186-EN).

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

We now come to the main business of the day, but may I ask for brevity? There are 30 Members down to speak, so I also make that appeal to Front Bench speakers.

Ways and Means

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

Amendment of the Law

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

Debate resumed (Order, 19 March).

Question again proposed,

That,—

(1) It is expedient to amend the law with respect to the National Debt and the public revenue and to make further provision in connection with finance.

(2) This Resolution does not extend to the making of any amendment with respect to value added tax so as to provide—

(a) for zero-rating or exempting a supply, acquisition or importation;

(b) for refunding an amount of tax;

(c) for any relief, other than a relief that—

(i) so far as it is applicable to goods, applies to goods of every description, and

(ii) so far as it is applicable to services, applies to services of every description.

13:25

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

Yesterday’s Budget was the Chancellor’s last chance to make decisions and announce measures that will make a difference before the general election. For all his boasts and complacency, the Budget did nothing to address the central reality that will define his time in office—the fact that for most people in our country, living standards are not rising but are falling year on year, and that working people will, in fact, be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010.

Yesterday the Chancellor tried to claim that everything is going well and according to plan, but millions of working people on middle and lower incomes are still not feeling any recovery. Young people stuck on the dole for months are not feeling it. Pensioners seeing their gas and electricity bills rise each year are not feeling it. Parents facing child care costs so high that it barely adds up for them to go to work are not feeling it. People aspiring to own their own home but finding that rising prices have put that beyond their dreams are not feeling it. Small businesses struggling to get a loan from the banks are not feeling it. Nurses who have been told that they will not even get the below-inflation pay rise they were promised certainly are not feeling it.

With wages still rising slower than prices, and working people worse off than they were when this Chancellor took office, the Office for Budget Responsibility revealed yesterday, in table 3.6 of its economic forecast, that real wages will be 5.6% lower in 2015 than in 2010. [Interruption.] I will tell the House what is awful—that people are not better off under the Tories; they are worse off under the Tories.

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

Does the shadow Chancellor agree with the former Labour adviser who said about pensioners last night that

“you can’t trust people to spend their own money”?

[Ed Balls]

I do not agree, but I will come on to that in a moment.

We will study very carefully the proposals put on the table for discussion. We have just had a statement. The proposals are important, and it is important to have more flexibility and choice. We have been calling for reforms of the annuities market: to be honest, the price of annuities and competition in the market have not been good enough over the past few years. I must say that we all remember the pensions mis-selling of the early 1990s, and we need to make sure that there is a tight grip on tax avoidance. That is why we will look carefully at the proposals.

I must tell the hon. Gentleman that if he looks at table 3.6 on page 87 of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s report on this so-called Budget for savers, he will see that the savings ratio was 7.2% in 2012 and 5% last year and—here is what will happen to savings in the next five years—then goes from 4.1% to 3.6% and down to 3.2%. The Budget for savers will see savings fall every year in the next five years, with each of the figures revised down by the OBR in its latest forecasts. I must say that I am not sure whether this is quite the Budget for saving that it is stacked up to be.

What we desperately needed was a Budget that delivered for the many, not just a few at the top. What a wasted opportunity it was. The annual increase in the personal allowance is outweighed completely by the 24 tax rises that we have seen since 2010. The Chancellor’s welcome conversion to the importance of capital allowances for business investment means that he has reversed the cuts to capital allowances that he made in 2010. Let me tell him what the OBR says in the Budget documents about the overall impact of all the Budget measures:

“The measures in the Budget are, in aggregate, not expected to alter the OBR GDP growth forecast.”

This Budget will have no impact on growth at all.

As for the Chancellor’s 1p cut in beer duty, welcome as it is, it means that people have to drink 300 pints to get one free. This morning’s Tory poster says:

“Bingo! Cutting the bingo tax & beer duty to help hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy”.

How patronising, embarrassing and out of touch that is. The Tory party calls working people “them”—them and us. Do the Tories really think that they live in a different world from everyone else? Does that not reveal just how out of touch this Tory Government are? It is no wonder that they do not understand the cost of living crisis and no wonder that the Chancellor did nothing in the Budget to tackle it.

We are told by the Chancellor that he did not know that the poster was coming out. The Tories’ chief election strategist did not know about the ad campaign that came out straight after his Budget—pull the other one! It gets worse. I hear that the Prime Minister did not properly understand what the Chancellor was saying. Apparently, when he told the Prime Minister that he wanted to cut taxes for Bingo, the Prime Minister thought he was referring to an old school chum: “Hurrah, another tax break for millionaires. Bingo, Bingo!”

It is okay though, because we know that the job of the chair of the Conservative party is safe. No. 10 says that the Prime Minister has full confidence in the Tory party chair. That’s the end of him then! According to The Sun, the Tory party chair is currently on a tour of northern cities, presumably to see how the other half live. I wonder how it is going. Can you imagine, Mr Deputy Speaker? “Goodness me, the houses even have indoor toilets these days.” I wonder whether he is looking for pigeon fanciers up north. My advice to him is to change his name back to Michael Green. That was a bit safer.

The problem with the Budget was not what it did, but what it did not do. Where was the freeze on energy prices that Labour has called for? Where was the 10p starting rate to cut the taxes of 24 million working people? Where was the expansion of free child care to 25 hours a week for working parents? Where was the compulsory jobs guarantee, paid for by a tax on bank bonuses? Where was the cut in business rates for small firms? Where was the new investment in affordable housing? Where was the reversal of the £3 billion top rate tax cut to balance the books in a fair way? We got none of Labour’s cost of living plan to balance the deficit in a fairer way, just more of the same. Working people are worse off, while millionaires get a tax cut—just more of the same from the same old Tories.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

If I may gently return to the Budget, I understand that the Labour party accepts the welfare cap—that is fair enough—but that it wants to restore the spare room subsidy, which would cost £465 million. Will the shadow Chancellor explain to the House what other bit of welfare he would cut?

[Ed Balls]

I will. We have said very clearly that we would take the winter fuel allowance away from the richest 5% of pensioners, which would be a saving. We would also invest in affordable housing to get the housing benefit bill down. I do not know whether the Chancellor gets to read the OBR report. I think that he should listen to what it says:

“The rising proportion of the renting population claiming housing benefit may be related to the weakness of average wage growth relative to rent inflation. This explanation is supported by DWP data, which suggest that almost all the recent rise in the private-rented sector housing benefit caseload has been accounted for by people in employment.”

People in employment are seeing their wages fall and are having to claim housing benefit. It is no wonder the welfare bill has gone up by £13 billion since 2010.

It was not supposed to be this way. We all remember what the Chancellor promised in 2010: he would make people better off, balance the books by 2015 and rebalance the economy for the future. We know that people are worse off. We also know, after three years of flatlining growth, that his commitment to balance the books in 2015 is in tatters. He does not expect a balanced budget in 2015, but a deficit of more than £75 billion. It is all in the OBR report. There will be £190 billion more in borrowing than he planned in 2010. The national debt is rising this year, next year and the year after.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ed Balls]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would like to explain why the national debt is still rising.

[Mr Jackson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his helpful suggestion, but I will ask my own question. As we are on the subject of history and mea culpas, would he like to apologise for running a structural deficit for the entire period of his Government’s administration?

[Ed Balls]

The Chancellor promised that he would abolish the structural deficit in this Parliament and he is going to fail absolutely. We went into the financial crisis with a lower national debt than America, France, Germany and Japan. The deficit went up because of a financial crisis and the failure of the banks. There was a recovery in 2010 and his failed policies choked it off. That is the reality. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman the facts. The Chancellor has already borrowed more in the three years of this Government than the last Labour Government borrowed in 13 years. Perhaps he should be apologising for his abject failure on the deficit, the debt and growth. That is what we should be hearing from him.

It will take the next Labour Government to clear up the mess left by this Chancellor. The Government have failed to get rid of the deficit. We will have to do the job. That is why we have been clear that we will balance the books in the next Parliament. We will have the current budget back in surplus and the national debt falling as soon as we can and before the end of the next Parliament. We will abolish his discredited idea of rolling five-year fiscal targets, which he never meets, and instead legislate for tough fiscal rules.

I will tell you what else we will do, Mr Deputy Speaker. I hope that the Chancellor will reflect on what I am about to say and think again.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

I don’t think so!

[Ed Balls]

I do not think he will either. May I ask the Financial Secretary how it is going since his comments on women and the Monetary Policy Committee? Is he still revelling in that? If things were done on merit, he would be out on his ear.

I hope that the Chancellor will think again and join me, the Chair of the Treasury Committee and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in supporting reforms to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to audit independently the spending and tax commitments in the manifestos of the main political parties before the next election. We know from the head of the OBR that that can be done. Let us be honest: it is all a matter of political will. The problem with the Chancellor is that he wants to set traps, but he cannot be transparent on the matter of OBR audits. Why does he not think again, join the cross-party consensus and do the right thing?

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

Why was the right hon. Gentleman formerly so keen that the OBR should not do that? Why did Labour members of the Treasury Committee argue in 2010 that it should not happen?

[Ed Balls]

The irony is that back in 2011 the Chancellor was in favour of it, and now he has changed his mind. The OBR, which we supported from the outset in this Parliament, has established a good track record, and we are happy for our manifesto to be audited. What is it about the Conservative Front Benchers that means that they are scared of independent OBR audit of their manifesto? Who knows?

I return to the welfare cap, and I will give a bit more detail for Government Members. We have had a lot of tough and divisive talk from the Chancellor on welfare over the past three years, but it cannot hide the fact that social security is up by £13 billion compared with his plans, particularly because of his failure on housing benefit. We have called for a cap on social security spending, and we will support the welfare cap next Wednesday, but we will make different and fairer choices to keep the social security bill down. We will introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee to get young people back to work. We will scrap the bedroom tax, which is not only unfair but could end up costing more money, not less. We will also scrap the winter fuel allowance for the richest 5% of pensioners, get more houses built and tackle the low wages that have pushed up spending on housing benefit. That is the fair way to ensure we get people back to work and get welfare costs under control.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

What I have heard from the shadow Chancellor reminds me of the words of Errol Flynn, when he said, “I find difficulty in reconciling my gross habits with my net income”. The right hon. Gentleman has just made promises to the tune of £465 million of spending. How is he going to find that money and still not breach his welfare cap?

[Ed Balls]

When the hon. Gentleman referred to my gross assets, was he making a personal point? I am running the marathon in four weeks’ time, and I was rather hoping the Chancellor might join me, but unfortunately his assets do not seem to be up to it.

The hon. Gentleman made an important comment just two months ago, saying to the Tamworth Chronicle:

“There are too many young people without employment and there are too many in longterm unemployment.”

I agree. Why will he not back our bank bonus tax to get young people back to work? That is what he should be doing. The Chancellor has failed on living standards growth and deficit reduction; he has also failed to deliver the balanced recovery that we need.

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

The right hon. Gentleman has just touched on banking. The Opposition constantly belittle our financial services industry. J. P. Morgan is an important bank, one of many in Bournemouth, with 5,000 employees who are not all millionaires. Every time Labour does that, all those companies think a little bit more about possibly leaving the UK and moving elsewhere, and that would be devastating for the economy.

[Ed Balls]

Jobs in our banking and financial services industry are very important indeed. We need to ensure that we have reforms that strengthen our banking industry rather than undermine it. Many hard-working people on ordinary salaries in our banks feel let down by the mistakes made in the banks and by the bonus culture. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman, though, that I have checked the figures in Bournemouth East. He opposes a tax on bank bonuses to get young people back to work, but in his constituency there has been a 1,000% rise in long-term youth unemployment since 2010. He is not willing to act.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am not sure where the right hon. Gentleman is getting those figures from. The figures released this week show that the number of people in employment has risen by 400 since a year ago. Employment is doing well in Bournemouth, as it is right across the country.

[Ed Balls]

Can the hon. Gentleman tell me how many people are long-term unemployed in his constituency? No? If I were him I would not try, because he would almost certainly get it wrong.

The Chancellor has failed on living standards, growth and the deficit, and he has also failed on balanced recovery. When the country is crying out for reforms to our banks to balance the recovery, back wealth creation and get an economy that works for all, not just a few, all that he seems to do is say that we can wait for the wealth to trickle down. Why are apprenticeship numbers for young people falling? Why is bank lending to small businesses still falling? Why are the Government planning to cut infrastructure investment next year?

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Is my right hon. Friend aware that today, Hitachi has announced that its global rail building capacity is moving to the UK? Is he aware that the factory where the trains will be built is in my constituency, and that it was a Labour Government who had the wherewithal to bring about the intercity express programme to ensure that Hitachi came to this country?

[Ed Balls]

The site for that new and welcome investment was designated under the last Labour Government as a result of my hon. Friend’s campaigning. We all want manufacturing investment to rise, but what worries me is that over the past two years, since the Chancellor’s “march of the makers” speech, manufacturing output has actually fallen by 1.3%. That is the reality.

As for house building, it is at its lowest level since the 1920s. We believe that the new Governor of the Bank of England is right to be worried that the recovery is not yet secure or balanced. That is why it is vital that the Chancellor does more to get more homes built for millions who aspire to get on to the housing ladder but find it hard at the moment. I have to say to him, we backed Help to Buy, but he should have reduced the limit from £600,000. There should not be a taxpayer guarantee for people buying homes for £500,000 or £600,000. We also need to do more to invest in affordable housing. That is the only way to avoid a lop-sided recovery, demand running ahead of supply and rising prices, putting pressure on the Governor of the Bank of England to slow the housing market through higher mortgage rates earlier than we need in the recovery. That would put business investment at risk and undermine the budgets of hard-working people across our country.

The Chancellor should have listened to the CBI, the International Monetary Fund and the Opposition and acted more boldly to boost investment in housing supply. He should have listened to Labour, and he should have listened to the Business Secretary, too. We have both warned of the danger of lop-sided and unbalanced growth. Like us, the Business Secretary was right to warn back in 2010 that the pace of deficit reduction risked choking off recovery. The Prime Minister was wrong last autumn to dismiss the Business Secretary as a Jeremiah when he warned about the unbalanced nature of the recovery by saying:

“We mustn’t now settle for a short-term spurt of growth, fuelled by an old-fashioned property boom…there are already amber lights flashing.”

I also remind the House of what the Business Secretary said about unbalanced growth just a few weeks ago:

“The shape of the recovery has not been all that we might have hoped for”.

He was right to make those warnings, but time after time over the past few years when he has publicly made such warnings about the risks, he has been ignored. The problem is, the Business Secretary is a member of the Cabinet that is doing the ignoring. How can he keep on ignoring himself again and again?

As for the top-rate tax cut, which I know a number of Government Members have criticised, I remind the Business Secretary that he said at the weekend:

“I don’t understand why people need a million quid a year.”

What we do not understand is why he has given people on a million quid a year a tax cut of £42,500 each and every year. He asks for sympathy—he told The Guardian a few weeks ago that

“since being in government I have become much more enslaved these days”.

I say “Free the Cable One”. Is it not the sad truth that he is not enslaved but in hock? He is not captive, he has capitulated. It is a Tory agenda, and he is part of it. He knows it, and he should get out of it before it is too late.

As for the Chancellor, he has certainly been busy in recent weeks, and not just preparing his Budget. The manifesto is being written, the team is being assembled, the campaign is under way. But the enemy is not called Ed, and it is not the general election that is preoccupying him. He has his eyes on a different prize. This is what his new best friend, the Education Secretary, said to The Mail on Sunday—[Interruption.] Government Members do not want to hear what he said, do they? [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I think we do want to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has to say.

[Ed Balls]

They do not want to hear this, so before I remind people of what the Education Secretary said, let me tell the House what was said yesterday about the cost of living, the Budget, and all those matters, by the outgoing Conservative hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price): “The biggest impediment”—[Interruption.] I really think that hon. Members, especially those with small majorities, should listen to what she said.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

That’s you!

[Ed Balls]

I have read it, and I think maybe you should too, my son—[Interruption.] I think they should listen. The hon. Member for Thurrock stated:

“The biggest impediment that this Party has when trying to secure a majority at the next election is that on one key question we constantly perform badly. That is on the issue of whether the Party is in touch with ordinary people.”

That was before the poster. She said that

“while people are worrying about whether they are keeping their jobs, whether they will be able to afford the electricity bill and how much it costs to fill the car these days,”

all the Tories seem to be doing is “talking about Boris.” She went on:

“We need to stop talking about ourselves and talk about the things that really matter to people. Otherwise we will be seen as out of touch, and Labour’s message will resonate.”

It certainly will, Mr Deputy Speaker.

In the light of the advice from the hon. Member for Thurrock about the cost of living, let me remind Members what the Education Secretary said over a wine-fuelled dinner with his old boss, Rupert Murdoch. He said that Boris Johnson “has no gravitas”, that the Home Secretary “has no friends”, and that only Osborne is “fit to lead.” Only Osborne is fit to lead? How did the Education Secretary explain his comments? He said he was “tipsy”. Tipsy? He must have been completely legless.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

rose—

[Ed Balls]

Does the hon. Lady want to intervene? Does she think the Education Secretary was tipsy, legless or just deluded?

[Penny Mordaunt]

If press reports, which are what we are talking about, are to be believed, the right hon. Gentleman was critical of the Leader of the Opposition and his speech yesterday for not responding to a single measure in the Budget—there was nothing on support for manufacturing or reforms to pensions. The right hon. Gentleman is well into his speech, which is incredibly amusing, but does he realise that he is in danger of doing exactly the same thing?

[Ed Balls]

It was very interesting because we scoured the Chancellor’s speech and all the documents for one mention of the cost of living and living standards, and there were none at all—none! Conservative Members say that we are not talking about what is in the Budget, but they are not talking about what is undermining the living standards of people up and down our country.

Last year, the hon. Lady said:

“If we do not believe that the poorest are best served by our policies, we might as well give up and go and do something else.”—[Official Report, 20 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1023.]

I am afraid we are going to ensure that she has to give up and do something else.

It has been hard to understand what has been going on, but it is starting to make sense given all the Chancellor’s rebranding of recent weeks and months: the new less foppish hairstyle, the 5:2 diet, the new estuary accent, even photo opportunities down a coal mine—all part of his leadership business; the new working-class hero, not Gideon but George these days.

This weekend the Education Secretary took a further step in the Osborne rebranding. He said that it is “ridiculous”, and “preposterous” that Downing street is governed by a tight clutch of Etonians, and that that has got to change—we say “Hear, hear” to that, Mr Deputy Speaker. However, we all know what he was really trying to say through the pages of the Financial Times. He was saying, “Boris is a toff because he went to Eton, but George is a pleb because he only went to St Paul’s.” The Tory party is having a class war with itself. An Etonian elite has grabbed hold of the commanding heights of the economy, opposing the masses of Tories who went to lesser public schools. Old boys from Harrow and St Pauls, throw off your chains. What are they going to call themselves? The Bullingdon Bolsheviks? The Trust Fund Trots? Posh boys of the world unite?

In all seriousness, does the Chancellor really think that he can stand up for the interests of the energy companies, the hedge funds, Tory donors, deliver a massive tax cut to people earning more than £150,000, and then claim to be on the side of hard-working families—the party of the workers—just because he did not go to Eton? Posing as the posh boy proletarian will not wash when his own Budget ad campaign refers to working people as “them”, and when he will be remembered only as the Chancellor who cut taxes for millionaires while everyone else was worse off.

I know that many hon. Members wish to speak so I will conclude my remarks.

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

I do not think this clownish class warfare is fooling anybody, but does the right hon. Gentleman welcome the fact that 472 of his constituents will no longer pay income tax as a result of yesterday’s Budget?

[Ed Balls]

The problem is that they are all worse off because VAT went up to 20%. Is the hon. Lady worried that in her constituency there has been a 600% rise in long-term youth unemployment since 2010, which she is doing nothing about? As for the idea that class war will not wash, if I were the Chancellor I would try to find a different way to take on Boris, as I do not think this way will work.

There is a cost of living crisis, we do not have a balanced recovery, and all this complacent Chancellor does is play party politics in the Tory party. What a mess—a right old Eton mess! Surely we can do better than this. This was the Chancellor’s last chance, his final opportunity to tackle the cost of living crisis and make decisions that will directly affect people before next year, and he has blown it. Working people will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010, and the country now knows, especially after today’s patronising “them and us” advert for the Conservative party, that it will take a Labour Budget to put things right.

13:57

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

I have calculated that this is the 18th Budget to which I have responded in some capacity, and the fourth directly to the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls). However, since he wrote many of the others, I was probably responding to him indirectly. Having heard the right hon. Gentleman over the years, I have picked up on some traits. First, he obviously has a capacity for a crunchy, memorable soundbite that often turns out to be wrong. I think he was the author of the phrase “No more boom and bust”, the consequences of which we are still living with. I also think he was the author of “triple-dip recession”, which of course we never had.

When we first had these exchanges a couple of years ago, the right hon. Gentleman had a very good football chant going on the Back Benches behind him: “Growth down, inflation up. Unemployment up.” Now of course we have growth up, unemployment down and inflation down. His current favourite is the “millionaires’ tax cut”, which I would find a little more persuasive had I not sat on on the Opposition Benches for 10 years being lectured by him and his boss that any increase in the top rate of tax above 40% would be counterproductive and damaging to the economy.

One feature of the right hon. Gentleman’s speeches that we all look forward to is the annual conjuring trick, and the 10 different ways we could use a bankers’ bonus tax. The rabbit out of the hat trick gets progressively more difficult because the rabbit gets bigger and the hat gets smaller as time passes, so I shall remind him of some of the figures.

When the right hon. Gentleman was City Minister and presiding over all of this, the total bankers’ bonus pool was something in the order of £11.3 billion, and it was £11.5 billion the following year when the Labour Government brought in a bankers’ bonus tax. According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which monitors these things, the bankers’ bonus pool was £1.6 billion last year. In the current year, it is estimated to be £1.3 billion. That is one-tenth of the size of the bonus pool on which the original tax was placed. We are then left with the question that is at the core of his fiscal policy: how is he going to get £3 billion in tax out of a £1.5 billion bonus pool? The charitable way to describe that is as a mathematical puzzle. We ought to refer it to the new Turing institute to investigate.

I should perhaps declare one self-interest. I do not have an interest in the millionaires’ tax, but compared with both the shadow Chancellor and the Chancellor I am more likely to take advantage of the relaxation in the annuity rules. It is worth recalling that over many years I came to this House on many Friday mornings, with Back Benchers from my own party and Conservative Opposition MPs, to try to achieve this reform. We were confronted with relentless stonewalling by the Labour Government of the day, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a part and in which he participated directly, with the very simple message that pensioners were far too stupid and irresponsible to be trusted with their own pension savings. This is one of the really big, major positive changes to come out of the Budget.

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

I hope the Secretary of State can explain to me and my constituents, who have seen their average gross weekly earnings decline by £160 since the general election, when adjusted for the consumer prices index, how they will be able to afford to exploit the new annuities rules on pension savings?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman poses an issue that I am coming on to immediately, which is why we are a poorer country. There are people who have saved and have annuities, and there are many middle-income occupational pensioners who will take advantage of that. The central economic question raised is this: why are we a poorer country and how has that affected our living standards?

The question goes back to the financial crisis, which occurred when the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues were in government. The Chancellor reminded us yesterday of the brutal fact that the British banking collapse and rescue was the biggest in the world. It was the biggest collapse in our history, going back not just decades but centuries, and it has done enormous harm. It has made the country poorer. The immediate after-effects of the collapse were to reduce output in this country by 7.5%, which is more than in the great depression. Not surprisingly, that has affected living standards in a radical way. It has impaired our capacity to recover from the damage inflicted on the banking system. It has required our country and the United States, but particularly here, under the right hon. Gentleman’s Government and the coalition Government, to resort to very unorthodox monetary policy. That has had a major impact on savings—which the Chancellor is now trying to remedy—asset prices and other factors. Opposition Members are surprised and indignant when they tell us that people are poorer than they were before the financial crisis. What are they comparing it with?

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State seems to be avoiding the fact that people are poorer not since the financial crisis, but since 2010. Changes to tax credits, benefits uprating and so on have, for the lowest paid workers, more than outweighed any advantage gained from raising the tax threshold.

[Vince Cable]

The distributional analysis, which I am sure the hon. Lady has studied, suggests that the biggest impact of this shock has been on the highest 10%. That may be surprising, but that is what has happened.

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Vince Cable]

Let me just take apart particular aspects of the argument that has been put forward: how it relates to jobs, production and earnings. Let me start with jobs.

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[Vince Cable]

I have taken an intervention.

Let me start with employment. What could well have happened, as a result of the financial crisis and its aftermath, was mass unemployment of the kind we had in the 1930s. We could very easily have got up to 20% unemployment, but we did not. We now have the lowest unemployment of any major country except Germany—lower than France and Sweden. This is partly a reflection of Government policy, but it is mainly a reflection of the common sense and flexibility of British workers, who accepted that in this crisis it was most important to be in work. We are now seeing the success of employment policy in the fact that we have had an enormous growth in employment, with 1.25 million net of public sector job losses and a gross increase of 1.75 million. Roughly five private sector jobs have been created for every one lost in the public sector. These are predominantly, in fact overwhelmingly, full-time jobs. The Opposition’s argument has been, “Well, okay, there are lots of jobs but they are part time,” but last year, in 2013, there were 460,000 new jobs, of which 430,000—95%—were full-time jobs.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Since this Government came to power, the number of zero-hours contract jobs has trebled to more than 500,000. In 2012-13, some 3.48 million people had an average national insurance liability of £172 and were earning less than the lowest income tax threshold. That is an indicator of the type of work that people are having to take now, and they are still having to pay national insurance contributions on income below the income tax rate.

[Vince Cable]

We are well aware of some of the problems that arise with zero-hours contracts. That is why, as the hon. Gentleman knows, some months ago I commissioned a full consultation on dealing with abuses. What has come out of that consultation suggests that it is actually a very complex story. A lot of workers benefit from being on zero-hours contracts and want them to continue. Many do not and do encounter abuse. I am sure that before the end of this Parliament, Members will have an opportunity to vote on measures designed to deal with those abuses.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm what his colleague, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, had difficulty in doing the other day: confirm that the employment rate is still below pre-recession levels?

[Vince Cable]

My understanding is that the employment rate, if the hon. Lady is talking about the total adult population in work, is now at its highest level ever—higher even than in the United States, which is famed for a flexible labour market.

I am surprised that Opposition Members feel that there are issues to pursue. [Interruption.] Somebody muttered “Immigration”. Last year, overwhelmingly the largest number—well over 90%—of jobs went to British workers. I do not know if they have studied those figures.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Does my right hon. Friend not think it disingenuous, given the Government’s inheritance of a 7% reduction in GDP presided over by the Labour party, for Opposition Members to categorise changes in personal allowances, which will affect 25 million people and take 3 million people out of tax altogether, as having nothing to do with the cost of living?

[Vince Cable]

Yes. I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has raised that point, and I was going to dwell on it more later. It is a considerable achievement of this coalition that we have delivered, and indeed over-delivered, on the commitments I and my colleagues made before the previous general election. That helps people who are relatively low paid by lifting them out of tax, not just because they pay less tax but because it reduces the tax rate at the margin and provides a significant incentive to work.

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

Will the Secretary of State address the issue of youth unemployment? In my constituency, 825 under-24s are out of work and almost 200 of them have been out of work for almost a year.

[Vince Cable]

Yes, I will address the issue of youth unemployment and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise it. This is an issue that has, of course, been with us for many years, including under the previous Government when economic conditions were much more benign. Youth unemployment is currently at about 20%, but of course that includes many full-time students. The key trend is that youth unemployment is now declining rapidly. It is certainly less now than the level we inherited, and we have a whole set of policies designed to deal with it in a systematic way.

The shadow Chancellor put forward the idea of a youth guarantee. The problem that that presents is this: how can a job be guaranteed other than through the public sector? Of course guaranteeing a public sector job takes people off the dole, but it also creates a permanent need for subsidy and support. What we have done is create a route that allows people who are not going into full-time higher education to develop the preconditions for proper apprenticeships through traineeships, basic academic requirements and work experience, and then find their way into true apprenticeship training, which has been an enormous success: it has doubled since we came to office. The measures announced in the Budget statement yesterday will enable a further 100,000 people under 24 to be given apprenticeship training, and the quality improvements that we have made are driving up demand and supply at the same time. This is a much better way of dealing with young people who are out of work than creating artificial jobs.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Many Labour Members are very pleased about the improvement in the employment situation that has taken place over the last six months or so—indeed, over the last year or so. However, is not the big issue—apart from the caveats relating to short-time working and zero-hours contracts—the fact that the productive capacity of the economy seems to have shrunk, and productivity per worker has certainly shrunk? That is casting a very grave shadow over the length of the recovery that we might have expected. What are the Government planning to do about it?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman’s analysis is spot on. Of course that is what has happened. We have managed to avoid mass unemployment, but the average productivity level has fallen. If we are to grow, and if living standards are to grow—that seems to be the focus of the debate—productivity must rise, which prompts the question of how we do it. We are currently doing it in an environment that is severely constrained. We must remember—and I think that the shadow Chancellor often forgets this—that one of the massive legacies of the crisis was the structural deficit. A deficit of that kind does not go away when growth increases; it is there, it is structural, and it will have to be dealt with. The structural deficit, defined as we defined it when we formed the coalition, has fallen from about 5.4% of GDP to 2.7%. We are nearly halfway, but we have to continue the job, and the next Government will have to continue the job. In that context, we must proceed with an agenda of raising productivity and growth.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State acknowledge that a particularly serious problem is long-term unemployment among both young and older people, which, according to the figures released yesterday, has increased? Does not more need to be done to tackle that problem?

[Vince Cable]

It does, but the figures produced over the last year suggest that long-term unemployment is falling, along with unemployment in general.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech in favour of hard work. I read in the papers yesterday—so it cannot possibly be true—that the Chief Secretary had boasted that he had personally vetoed any indexing of relief for higher-rate taxpayers. Surely my right hon. Friend, who is pro-enterprise, cannot think it right that a police sergeant is paying higher-rate tax.

[Vince Cable]

I listened carefully to what was said, and I thought that there was an acknowledgement of the position of the people on the top-rate threshold. This is a modest increase, but there is a recognition that marginal rates of tax are beginning to bite on middle earners, and I think that that issue is now being addressed.

[Mr Ellwood]

My right hon. Friend has alluded to the important point that the figures for long-term youth unemployment—which was mentioned by the shadow Chancellor—include young people who are engaged in full-time study. Perhaps he will join me in congratulating Bournemouth, where Arts University Bournemouth, Bournemouth university and the Bournemouth and Poole college have doubled in size. Because of that, the figures suggest that long-term youth unemployment has indeed increased, which is not the case.

[Vince Cable]

I believe that about a third of the total number who are classified as “youth unemployed” are, in fact, engaged in full-time study. One of the big changes for which the coalition Government should take credit is the continued expansion in higher education: despite all the doomsday predictions from Opposition Members about the radical higher education reforms, the number of people going into higher education, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, has risen.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the issue of our productivity is linked directly to skills? Is it not rather ironic that the shadow Chancellor, who was Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, signally failed to help the nation to secure the right degree of skills—unlike us, with our long-term economic plan?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, indeed. I think that the apprenticeship model which we are now developing and expanding rapidly, in terms of both quality and quantity, is the remedy for the long-standing neglect to which my hon. Friend has rightly drawn attention.

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

Is it not a fact that the British car industry will produce 1.6 million cars this year, and that Jaguar Land Rover alone will export 13.5 billion? Is it not also true that the Budget, with its help for manufacturing and exporters, is bound to help such industries and produce a good British success story?

[Vince Cable]

I had intended to say something about manufacturing incentives, but let me now emphasise a point that my hon. Friend has made very well. Some of our manufacturing industries, including the car industry, are expanding rapidly, and showing very high productivity and rapid export growth. The aerospace industry is another example. I was delighted to learn this morning that Hitachi, the leading Japanese company, is to establish the global headquarters of its railway manufacturing business in the United Kingdom on the basis of its existing investment in the north-east of England, and it is expanding and seeking business opportunities from the rail revolution that is taking place here. Manufacturing industries such as those, which were previously in decline, are now beginning to become resurgent in some key sectors.

[Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Vince Cable]

I will take one more intervention, but then I must press on.

[Mr Love]

Is the Secretary of State confident about the sustainability of the recovery, based as it is almost entirely on consumer expenditure at a time when living standards are declining?

[Vince Cable]

That is not actually true. All recoveries tend to start with consumer spending, but lack of investment is a deep-rooted problem in the United Kingdom, and it is a problem with which we are trying to deal. However, if the hon. Gentleman studies the figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility, he will see that business investment increased by 7% last year, and the CBI projections for this year are higher than that. Business investment is beginning to take serious shape.

I think that, when we speak of growth, recovery and productivity, it is worth our while reflecting on some of the 18 Budget statements to which I have listened and responded in the past. For more than a decade, Budgets were introduced by the present Opposition, and there was a very positive story every year until we reached 2008. We had 2% growth, and there was enormous triumphalist cheering about the wonders of the brilliant Government economic policy that had produced that achievement. Comparisons were made with the past which suggested that this was the greatest economic performance, if not since the Victorians, probably since the Georgians, the Tudors or even the Romans. However, we had to go back to the Greeks to find the word that captured the spirit of those early Budgets. It was the word “hubris”, which encapsulated the Opposition’s simple inability to understand that weaknesses were building up during that growth.

Our Government are confident that we now have recovery. We are positive about it, and proud of our contribution to it. However, we acknowledge that there are some deep-seated historical weaknesses that now need to be addressed, and the Chancellor did address them in a systematic way in the Budget yesterday. The first and most important way of dealing with those weaknesses—and the driver of productivity—is, of course, higher levels of investment. That is why the extension of investment allowances, which will substantially increase the incentives for small and medium-sized companies, particularly those in the manufacturing sector—over time and in terms of scale—is such a big step forward, and is so welcome.

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

The Business Secretary is clearly confident that he could have run the economy better than Labour during the 13 years during which it was in power, and I suspect that that enthusiasm and confidence have continued into the present Parliament. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman could outline some of the ways in which the economy would be run differently if he, rather than the right hon. Member for Tatton (Mr Osborne), were Chancellor.

[Vince Cable]

I find that many of my ideas have been incorporated in Government policy, and I am very pleased about the progress that we are making in that respect.

Of course, increased investment depends on business confidence. Because we are approaching the election season, a danger is posed by some of the comments being made by the Opposition. Sir George Cox, who used to be at the Institute of Directors and is now an adviser to the Opposition, suggested recently that the business-averse policies of the shadow Chancellor and his leader were doing serious damage not to their own credibility, but to confidence in the country. I would underline that. If we have policies that appear to commit future Governments to energy price freezes that prevent new energy investment, we are undermining investment. Of course it is not just the Opposition; the people who want to take Britain out of the European Union and want to take Scotland out of Britain are also undermining investment confidence. Political certainty requires at least literate policies from the Opposition, which in the area of price freezes certainly is not the case.

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

I think the Secretary of State will know that that is not an accurate representation of what was said. May I ask him to comment on net lending particularly to small businesses, which is a concern? Why does he think that has continued to fall on his watch, and what is going to be done about it?

[Vince Cable]

Yes, there has been a continuing decline in net lending to small business. We think it is bottoming out, but it has happened and it is damaging. It is a consequence of the near-collapse of the banking system and the fact that some banks are now responding to much tougher regulation by being much more conservative in their lending. That is not true in all cases: Lloyds and Santander are increasing their net lending to small businesses, but many are not.

In response, the Government are establishing institutions, particularly the business bank, which are developing new flows and types of finance—internet-based lending, asset-based finance, invoice finance—in areas that hitherto were deficient, as well as supporting the establishment of new banks. About 20 new banks have been licensed over the last year, and that deals with the issue of bank competition that should have been dealt with when the last Government were in power and we had the Cruickshank report. That is now happening, however, and I therefore think we will begin to see the net lending trend becoming much more positive, but there is no underestimating the enormous damage that was done to the British economy as a result of the collapse of the banks, over which the last Government had responsibility for many years yet did absolutely nothing.

[Mr Love]

The biggest lender to small businesses is Royal Bank of Scotland, which has had particular difficulty in re-energising itself. What discussions is the Secretary of State having with RBS to try to get it to increase the level of net lending to small businesses?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is right: compared with other institutions, RBS is particularly remiss in its lending policies, and that relates to the seriousness of its balance-sheet position and its failed attempt to become a big global bank. I meet the chief executive from time to time and I think he is trying to change the culture of the bank in a positive way, and move it in the direction of some of the other banks, such as Lloyds, which have already achieved that transformation.

The first priority has been to develop business investment and the Chancellor’s initiatives help with that. The second, and extremely important, priority, which has already been hinted at in interventions by Government Members, is in relation to manufacturing industry. It is important to take stock of the context here. We have had a catastrophic decline in manufacturing industry over a long period of time. Some of that is driven by technology and some of it is driven by international trade over which we have relatively little control, but certainly in the period after 1997 we saw the share of the British economy accounted for by manufacturing shrink from 20% to 10%, a decline that was even more rapid than in the mid-1980s, when policies were considered to be unfriendly to manufacturing. We lost 1.6 million jobs in that period.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

The Secretary of State will be aware that the work force at the Redcar steel plant in Teesside fell from 25,000 to 5,000 between 1987 and 1992, with several on-site plants being closed, but what is different now is the carbon price floor. Would the Secretary of State like to take credit for the Chancellor’s policy on that, which this Government brought in and which has led to the closure of Alcan in Northumberland and has put severe pressure on the steel industry in particular? In this context, will he bring the programme forward by two years so we do not have to wait another two years?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman has anticipated the point I was about to make. One of the really positive announcements the Chancellor made yesterday recognises the difficulties facing the energy-intensive industries. I am aware that the Alcan smelter closed. I was there; I talked to the management about it and they acknowledged that although energy prices in the UK were one factor in their decision, it was by no means the only one. However, our energy-intensive industries are crucially important and it is not clever for them to close and migrate overseas, as we then simply get carbon leakage and do not do anything to improve the environment. It is therefore very important that they are protected from the increased costs that result from green taxation. The interventions the Chancellor made yesterday, which are very radical and meet the concerns of the industry, primarily centre on the renewables obligations and the feed-in tariffs and giving the industry effective compensation for those costs. I shall now be pursuing that with the European Commission, trying to ensure we get state aid clearance. The feedback we have had this morning from the engineering employers and other manufacturers suggests they are satisfied that the Government have taken a radical step that overwhelmingly meets their concerns.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is making powerful points about the importance of supporting manufacturing. Under the last Government, the city of Gloucester lost 6,000 jobs. We have created 2,500 jobs since this Government came in, quadrupled the number of apprenticeships and seen manufacturing increase in a way that has not happened for about 30 years. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Opposition simply do not understand what manufacturing needs, and that the doubling of the capital allowance is a huge step forward?

[Vince Cable]

That is right, and the industrial strategy we are following across government gives particular priority to the aerospace industry, and I know my hon. Friend’s part of the country has benefited considerably from the development of the aerospace supply chain.

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

The Secretary of State touched on the compensation scheme announced yesterday. For the sake of clarity, will he inform the House how much of the compensation scheme announced in November 2011 and which was due to come in in April 2013 has so far been paid to energy-intensive industries?

[Vince Cable]

The element that relates to the European emissions trading scheme has already been paid. The companies have already received the cheque. The sums are not large because the ETS scheme proved to be pretty ineffective, but none the less the compensation is being paid and it is now being extended to a wider range of costs. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman seems to be indignant, but I think he should talk to his local manufacturers who have expressed full satisfaction with what we are doing.

[Chris Kelly (Dudley South) (Con)]

The Secretary of State is talking about energy-intensive industry and there is still a great deal of that in my constituency. Does he agree we do not want these industries going offshore where environmental legislation may not be as stringently enforced as it is in the UK? We need to keep those industries here in the UK, and yesterday’s Budget helps us to achieve that. [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before the Secretary of State answers the intervention, I should say that there are far too many conversations on the Back Benches. The House is getting restless. If the House does not calm down and let the Secretary of State get on with it, he will never come to the end of his speech.

[Vince Cable]

I am trying very hard, Madam Deputy Speaker, to take as many interventions as Members wish to throw at me.

In relation to Dudley and manufacturing, my hon. Friend is right that it is not sensible to lose manufacturing overseas as we will get carbon leakage and lose the production and the jobs. It is very much in our interests to stop that happening and we are doing so. There is a lot of evidence of the reshoring of production, including to the industries in the west midlands to which my hon. Friend refers.

The priority the Chancellor has given to manufacturing, to investment and the savings that lie behind investment, and to exports through the expansion of export credit are absolutely appropriate to getting long-term growth and the productivity that that entails. There is a lot more to be done. We still have serious constraints in terms of skilled labour. There are still problems in opening up business finance. We have to invest much more in science and innovation, although we are doing that. However, the themes that run through yesterday’s Budget of support for investment, for savings and for exports are absolutely right and they will take this country to the right place.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. It will be obvious to the House that a great many Members wish to speak and there is very limited time available. I must therefore impose a formal time-limit of five minutes per speech. I appreciate that if Members take interventions—which of course is necessary in a lively debate—that five minutes is likely to grow to seven minutes, but if Members wish to be courteous to fellow Members, as I hope they will, they will remain within the five minute limit.

14:30

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

At the start of his speech yesterday the Chancellor drew attention, naturally enough, to the fall in unemployment announced yesterday morning. That is unequivocally good news, but it has been a very long time coming. We were told after the general election that the new Government’s policies would lead to steady growth and falling unemployment. In fact, for three years there was hardly any growth, unemployment remained high, and only now are we finally starting to see unemployment coming down.

That three-year delay has meant that the promise to eliminate the deficit within this Parliament will not be delivered either, and an important part of the legacy of that three-year failure will be in the labour market. Because the economy did not grow for three years, a large number of people are now long-term unemployed, and those long-term unemployed will not be the ones who move into the new jobs finally now being created. The long-term unemployed face much higher barriers to getting into work than others.

A striking detail in the labour market statistics yesterday, which I mentioned in my intervention on the Secretary of State, is that the number of people out of work long term—more than two years—went up. In his response a moment ago, the Secretary of State said that overall, long-term unemployment is coming down. In fact, it went up yesterday to exactly the same figure as a year ago, namely 450,000. That is the central challenge for labour market policy in the next few years: how do we bring people who have been out of work for a long time, and who have the biggest barriers to contend with, into productive employment?

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

We have noticed the thirst for work in the job fairs that we hold collectively in our constituencies. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government are simply not meeting that thirst for work?

[Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is huge enthusiasm for getting back into work in our area and across the country. It is absolutely clear that the answer to long-term unemployment is not the Work programme. The Chancellor rightly identified in his spending review statement last summer that it falls into the category of “underperforming programmes” in the Department for Work and Pensions. Figures today show that the Work programme’s performance has got worse.

I want to talk about the compulsory jobs guarantee, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) has referred to and which he and the leader of our party set out at the beginning of last week. The proposition is for every young person who has been out of work for more than a year, and every older unemployed person who has been out of work for more than two years, to be guaranteed the offer of a choice of jobs. In some cases, a training place will be one of those offers. The jobs will consist of at least 25 hours a week for at least six months, and will pay at least the national minimum wage. The way in which we will deliver the guarantee, as in the future jobs fund before the election, is that the Government will pay the wages.

A fortnight ago, the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and I visited a software company in Cardiff, which employs 150 people. The company is growing fast and things are going well. It recruited 12 young people under the jobs growth Wales programme, which works on the basis that I have described. The Secretary of State commented in the House a few weeks ago on the fact that labour market performance was better in Wales compared with the rest of the UK. He is right, and jobs growth Wales is an important part of the reason for that. The company that my hon. Friend and I visited told us that it would never have been able to take the risk of taking on those 12 young people had it not been for the support of jobs growth Wales. That is why the Federation of Small Businesses in Wales is a champion of the programme. The subsidy for those 12 young people is long since finished, and they have been in their jobs for a year or so. Of the 12 young people who were taken on, 11 are now in permanent jobs with that company. The twelfth was not kept on by that company but has a job in a different company not far away. That is the kind of success that we can deliver with the approach that we are describing. We want to see the job guarantee delivering right across the country.

What a contrast that is to the wage subsidies under the Government’s youth contract, which has been a complete damp squib. We are about 60% of the way through the three-year programme, and only 7% of the budget has been taken up. More than 900,000 young people—nearly 20% of young people—are still out of work. We must do a great deal better than that.

On Wednesday evening, at the invitation of Colin Crooks, the social entrepreneur in residence at the London borough of Lambeth, I attended a reception at Brixton East for a couple of dozen start-up enterprises in Lambeth that were being mentored, with support provided by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, by Tree Shepherd, the organisation that Colin leads. It was a great evening with a tremendous buzz as imaginative and creative people presented their products, food, crafts and fashion. There are now opportunities for people to take the risk of starting up new enterprises. The Government must get behind them and support them particularly at the key moment when they take on their first employee. That is one of the key things that our guarantee will do, and I urge the Secretary of State to support it.

14:36

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

It made a pleasant change to listen to a Budget that had not been pre-announced in the previous day’s newspapers. That is as it should be, and it is a welcome change from what went on in the past, when details were leaked and briefed beforehand.

Parts of the Budget are absolutely magnificent, and I am particularly pleased about the decision to raise the income tax threshold. Many of my constituents are on relatively low incomes. Before 2010, people paid income tax after the first £6,500 of income, but now they will pay it only after the first £10,500. It is absolutely right that people be allowed to keep more of the money that they earn. It is absolutely fair to have this tax break—it is a tax break for everyone—and it does the right thing by incentivising work. It helps to end the crazy situation that has been engineered whereby the state takes tax from families with one hand and gives handouts with the other—a bizarre situation that got vastly worse between the years 2001 and 2010.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the £10,500 limit, but will he spare a thought for the thousands of workers on Teesside, and millions more across the country, who do not earn anywhere near £10,500? They are seeing a rise in the cost of living, energy bills and everything else, and they are not benefiting at all from the Budget. Has he got something to say to them?

[Mr Carswell]

I would love to cut tax right across the board on a whole range of things, which would help people in that situation. The reduction in income tax for people on relatively low incomes will undoubtedly be welcomed.

I am also thrilled and delighted—it warmed the cockles of my free-market heart—to hear about tax breaks for savers. With interest rates having been so low for so long, it has been a pretty torrid time for savers. The raising of the personal tax-free savings allowance is fantastic news. So, too, is the removal of the artificial distinction between different types of ISAs. The more we can encourage people to save, the better. One person’s deferred consumption and saving is somebody else’s loan or credit.

I cheered, too, when I heard about giving folk flexibility as to how they use their pension pot. The implications of that are potentially profound and radical. It could mean that pension pots no longer die with people. It could mean that they become a vehicle for passing wealth down the generations. The implications are potentially huge and welcome.

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

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. I agree with him that it is absolutely right to allow people to have their own pensions and spend their own money. Will the changes not also deliver better annuities for those who want to buy them, by introducing more competition into the financial services sector?

[Mr Carswell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The need to buy an annuity was something that troubled a lot of my constituents, and I am pleased about this change. The fact that the Government are no longer going to presume, rather paternalistically, that they know best how folk should manage their pension pots will have big implications, and we need to reflect on them. The change will have big implications, not least for the people who will now be taking steps to plan for their own financial security.

I was encouraged to hear the Chancellor talking about energy costs. He was absolutely right to say that the low energy revolution was helping to re-industrialise the United States, and that that could happen here too. However, rather than simply reining in the worst excesses of the carbon price fixing scheme and other corporatist market-rigging systems, I would like us to abolish some of those schemes entirely.

I was slightly less enthusiastic about one or two aspects of the Budget, and I shall talk about those now—albeit briefly, those on my Front Bench will be delighted to hear. First, I am concerned that the Budget is fiscally neutral. We have relied for the past few years on cutting the deficit by increasing spending in cash terms and hoping that tax receipts will rise faster. I do not think that that is the best way to do it. We need to take a slightly more robust approach. As a result of the approach that we have taken, the deficit has fallen from 11% in 2010 to approximately 5%, which is good, but we said in 2010 that we would close the gap within four or five years. We are still saying that today. It means that we are still borrowing more than £100 billion a year—money that we do not have. That will have enormous consequences when this cheap money merry-go-round comes to an end and interest rates rise.

I am also baffled that the Opposition are unable to ask the obvious questions about this. Perhaps that is because they have no coherent alternative, or because their policy is simply to borrow more. However, as someone who occasionally opposes his Government on certain things, I find it extraordinary that the party whose job it is to ask the awkward questions seems to be unable even to understand the questions.

I am delighted that the Government are taking action to encourage exports, but I am not absolutely convinced that giving cheap credit to exporters is the only way to do it. I wonder whether this country’s relatively poor export and productivity performance over the past decade is partly a consequence of malinvestment, and whether that in itself is a consequence of cheap credit. Perhaps we need to flush out malinvestment and remove what is, in effect, the cholesterol in our economic arteries. Cheap credit can boost exports, just as it can boost the housing market in the short term, but I wonder whether it can have those effects in the longer term.

I shall spend the minute I have left making a wider point about economic output. It will soon exceed the pre-crash peak, which is wonderful news. The revision of output to 2.7% is impressive, but I ask the House to bear two things in mind. I say this in a spirit of non-partisanship. First, we are seeing a massive fiscal stimulus in this country, even though we do not call it that. We do not call it a massive Keynesian fiscal stimulus; we all prefer to pretend that it is not happening. By definition, however, if we spend £100 billion more each year than we take in tax, that is a Keynesian fiscal stimulus, and it is happening on a vast scale.

At the same time, we are having a massive monetary stimulus, with record low interest rates, cheap credit and quantitative easing. Without question, fiscal and monetary stimulus will raise output. I want to ask whether that is sustainable. I am genuinely baffled—I say this frankly and honestly—as to why the Opposition are unable even to ask these questions. Overall, I think this is a good Budget and it is to be welcomed, but I am genuinely surprised by the response of the party opposite.

14:44

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

This is a budget that does little or, in many cases, nothing for the millions in the lowest income groups in this country. Unsurprisingly, the chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said:

“This is a Budget for the people who already have, not the people who need to benefit most from the return to growth.”

It is a lost opportunity to help the 13 million people on low incomes, who are unlikely to see any benefit from these measures. That assessment fits in with the analysis of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which shows that more than 300,000 children will be pushed back into absolute poverty over the course of this Government and that, on present trends, 900,000 children will be returned to relative poverty by 2020. That will undo everything that the last Labour Government did to tackle poverty. The Budget sets a cap on overall social security spending while doing little or nothing to tackle the drivers of rising social security spending, especially among working people who are being squeezed by rising housing costs.

I want to talk about two policy areas that lie behind these failures. As we have heard, households have suffered the longest period of falling living standards and squeezed wages since the 1850s. We have had 50 consecutive months of a wage squeeze below inflation. I came into politics because I was driven by concerns about unemployment, and the growth in job numbers is undoubtedly good news, but it would be completely wrong to see the growth that has been achieved in recent months as an unalloyed success story. Among other things, one third of a million families are now working fewer hours than they want, with more people being forced into part-time employment. The latest job figures show 211,000 people entering self-employment, which represents a large proportion of the recent jobs growth. Self-employment is undoubtedly a good thing for many people, but one problem is that it is strongly associated with low pay. Low pay is part of the crisis that is underpinning the fall in living standards.

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend has quoted one organisation; let me quote another. Gillian Guy of Citizens Advice has said:

“The chancellor talked about making, doing and saving. This budget needs to work for those who are making do and can’t save”.

Are those the people that my hon. Friend is talking about?

[Ms Buck]

I am talking about the 13 million people on very low incomes, many of whom have incomes that are so low that they will not benefit from the change in the income tax threshold, welcome though that is. It will do nothing for the people whose earnings are already below it.

There are 5 million workers on low pay in the UK—one in five of the work force. That is one of the highest proportions in the developed world. The academic consensus shows clearly that the minimum wage, although fiercely and wrongly opposed by the Conservatives, boosted earnings without causing unemployment. It has all but abolished extreme low pay, but in recent years there has been an increasing spike in the number of workers on the minimum wage. The proportion of workers on the minimum wage has grown by nearly 60% in the past five years. Rather than being part of a continuous process of uprating the pay of those on low incomes, it is now becoming the going rate in many sectors. That is one of the causes of falling living standards for millions of people and of increased social security spending.

This is a particular challenge for London. Londoners did not benefit as much from the introduction of the national minimum wage as did people in many other parts of the country, because of the slightly higher wages. The trend towards more workers earning at or just above the level of the minimum wage has exacerbated the crisis in living standards in London.

As well as low pay, another challenge—and another driver of social security spending—is housing costs. It was interesting to see that yesterday’s report from the Office for Budget Responsibility stated:

“The largest driver of the rise in spending on housing benefit has been caseload growth in the private rented sector…The rising proportion of the renting population claiming housing benefit may be related to the weakness of average wage growth…almost all the recent rise in the private-rented sector housing benefit caseload has been accounted for by people in employment.”

The relationship between low pay—and a failure to uprate pay over a number of years—and rising housing costs is driving more and more people, particularly working people, into dependency on housing benefit.

None of us wants to see expenditure on keeping people unemployed or lining the pockets of private landlords by subsidising higher rents. We all want to see a fall in social security spending on these things, but while pay is low, while average living standards are not rising and while rents are rising, we are going to see more costs and expenditure in that area. But there is a solution. The Chancellor promised a rise in the national minimum wage to £7, but we saw a 17p increase. Many employers across the country could pay more than the national minimum wage and they should be encouraged to do so.

We will not see a cut in social security spending unless and until we reverse the calamitous fall in the building of social housing, which is the only safe and secure means of ensuring that low-income people have low housing costs. Combine those two things and we will see a major shift away from the social security spending, which we would like to see fall, into a rise in living standards for millions of people. This Budget has not been able to provide that.

14:50

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I hope that the House will excuse my slightly husky voice and cough, which I hope to get past in making my comments.

I welcome this Budget. The Chancellor is right to be focused on getting Britain to

“out-compete, out-smart and out-do the rest of the world.”—[Official Report, 19 March 2014; Vol. 577, c. 789.]

I, too, want the best for Britain and for Norwich in that sense. That kind of ambition is the only way to get economic security, and the single biggest risk to it would be to abandon the plan and listen to Labour’s calls to borrow more, spend more and put up taxes. That would, of course, land hardest of all on the next generation, who would only have to pay back those debts that Labour wants to dodge. This Budget is great news for businesses in Norwich. Those who are looking to invest and export will welcome measures to cut energy bills, to double the tax allowance for investing and to boost support for exporters. I know from my work in leading a project called Norwich for Jobs that businesses do want to invest and to grow. I hope this Budget will help them to do that and make the Norwich economy more resilient. I hope that that translates into more jobs locally, because that is one thing that economic security is all about. I also welcome the previously announced measure, coming into effect next month, of the employment allowance, which will particularly help small businesses.

I welcome the increase in the personal allowance, because it leaves more of people’s money in their pocket as they go out to work. It is worth up to £800 for more than 80,000 people in Norwich. I am a Conservative for that very reason: I believe that people are individual, responsible and free to spend their own money in line with their best decisions. I also support the Help to Buy scheme and running that for longer until 2020 could mean that many more families in Norwich get on the housing ladder. I strongly support the tax-free child care scheme that has been announced. Importantly, that scheme will particularly help basic rate taxpayers, who often find that the cost of child care outweighs the financial benefits of both parents working. It is important to give families greater stability and the flexibility to make their own choices. The Budget is also good news for pensioners, providing the flexibility and reward that has been discussed in this Chamber earlier today, and for the 24 million people who hold individual savings accounts.

Let me make two further constituency points before addressing a slightly more meaty topic. It is particularly good news for my constituency that the Chancellor is going to slash the tax on bingo by half. Mecca Bingo and all its employees and customers on Aylsham road in Norwich were celebrating that overnight. I also welcome the removal of VAT on fuel for air ambulances, as the East Anglian air ambulance has its headquarters in my constituency.

I wish to add my support for the nearly 12,000 workers in my constituency who are struggling in work on rates a little above the national minimum wage. The Chancellor has been right to call for a higher minimum wage, and I support that. This Budget statement has shown that the economy is recovering; jobs are up—1.3 million more people are in work now than there were in 2010. People are also looking to have more money in their pocket. On that point, I have dealt with the personal allowance. I mentioned my work on Norwich for Jobs, which helps to get young people into jobs and apprenticeships, and that helps more families get security, too. The project has helped nearly 600 18 to 24-year-olds in work over a year. We set ourselves the goal of halving Norwich’s youth unemployment in two years. We can see the effects directly in the employment figures, and I am sad only that the shadow Chancellor is not here to hear this. We set out to halve Norwich’s youth unemployment from 2,000 to 1,000. It has come down by 670 since we began the project, and every one of those figures is a young person taking home a pay packet and gaining experience. That is thanks to the local firms that have pledged to help them.

I give that example to show that firms want to employ great people, but it is also in the interests of a business to retain them, and paying the living wage can help to do that. As hon. Members will know, the living wage campaign asks for a voluntary commitment from employing organisations. Some would like Norwich to declare itself a living wage city. Norwich has demonstrated, through the firms that are pledged to Norwich for Jobs, that it is a city that cares. It is a city with a sense of pride. It will achieve things for its young people and for its strong industry.

Whether those same firms are all in the position of being able to pay more, as the living wage campaign asks, is for them to decide in respect of whether they can retain those jobs. Small firms are wary of being placed in an impossible competitive situation against larger firms that can absorb costs. The Federation of Small Businesses reports that more than two thirds of staff in an average small business are paid at or above the living wage already, but it believes that that should remain a voluntary decision for employers, and I support that view. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), a keen supporter of the living wage, has noted that there is a “lack of detailed analysis” behind it. The argument for the blanket rise does need more explanation. In broad terms, I support the campaign—I only wish I had more time to discuss it.

14:55

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), both of whom spoke about the minimum wage and those on low wages. What the hon. Member for Norwich North forgot to say is that this Budget does absolutely nothing for the millions who are paying no tax at all, and that is our principal criticism of it.

Before I deal with that, may I just say a few words about the speech by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, who reminded us that he has seen 18 Budgets? I have seen nearly all of them with him and I remember many of his trenchant criticisms in the past, particularly in the first decade of this century. He seems, as the Tory party wishes to do, to have airbrushed out of his history—and certainly out of his memory—exactly what this Government’s so-called economic plan has achieved over the past four years. It is no good saying that the plan worked, because the plan did not work on any of the measures it set out to measure itself by.

Let us discuss these things one by one: we have had three and a half years of flatlining; we have had growth which has achieved less than 50% of the Government’s plan; we have had investment that is below 50% of what they set out to achieve; and on exports—exports investment was at the heart of the plan—they have achieved less than 50% of the plan, as Members well know. That is some plan, given what has happened on all the key indices.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman address the issue of 1.3 million private sector jobs created?

[Mr Robinson]

I will come to that in a moment, although the hon. Gentleman may have been here when I intervened on the Secretary of State on that precise point.

Let us examine the borrowing record, as borrowing should have been central to all this. Because we have been able to have more investment and more exports—capital investment and exports—we should have growth, which would reduce the borrowing. In fact, over the four-year period, with us now entering the five-year period, we are going to borrow nearly £200 billion—the figure is £190 billion—more than we projected. We were to reduce borrowing as a percentage of GDP, but even in the next two years—years 5 and 6—it is projected to go up as a percentage of GDP. As for balancing the budget, that has been pushed out by a further two years. This is not a plan that has succeeded; it is a plan that has failed in almost every respect.

There is one exception—the hon. Gentleman referred to it and I also challenged the Secretary of State precisely on it during his speech: the employment record, particularly in the private sector, is remarkably and surprisingly good. I do not want to get into how many jobs are part-time, zero-hours contracts and so on. The fact is that the labour market has shown itself to be much more retentive of labour and productive of labour than we expected. For anybody in this House or in the Government, or on any of the other projections indicated from any sector, the performance is quite encouraging, except in one crucial respect: it suggests that, given where output is relative to employment, we have suffered a dramatic loss—probably for the long term, for all we know—in the productive capacity of the economy and in the productivity of our labour force. Unless that can somehow be rebuilt—there is nothing at all in the Budget to address that point—we are in for a much longer and slower recovery than we could have achieved. That is a big disappointment. The Secretary of State analysed it willingly, but the Office for Budget Responsibility itself says, “There’s nothing here that’s going to make any difference to the forecast we made a year or so ago.”

In other words, we have done nothing and are proposing to do nothing, to address the central issue of the productive capacity of the economy, which would underpin, sustain and increase our recovery rather than hold it back. There is nothing in the Budget that will improve that. Of course there are a couple of measures that we welcome, including the increase in capital allowances. I never understood why they were cut in the first year. We viciously opposed it at the time. We also approve of the improvement in export financing. However, there again, the Chancellor and the Government have form on those issues. They introduced two similar export financing schemes, one of which was strangled at birth and the other helped just five firms. I hope the Government are serious this time. We do not want to see imaginative and quite substantial measures being choked off by the bureaucrats.

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Gentleman has been making many predictions. The shadow Chancellor said that our policies would mean 1 million fewer jobs, and yet we have created 1 million more jobs. Will he comment on that 2 million credibility gap?

[Mr Robinson]

We are very pleased to see employment increasing. What the hon. Gentleman needs to understand is that there is a problem of productive capacity in the economy, and we have done nothing to address it. Labour was challenged to spell out its criticisms of the Budget. The central point is that we are opposing the Government by saying what they have not done. We are in a cost of living crisis—probably the worst that any of us will witness in our lifetimes—and yet the Government have done nothing to alleviate the position of the worst off in this country. That is our principal criticism of this Budget. The Government show no indication of wanting to address that matter, which is why we will oppose the motion when it comes to a vote. It is a pity because there is an opportunity for the Government now, with a relatively stable economy—our outlook is better now than before—to show that they can get their priorities right. It should not be just those on £150,000 a year or more who benefit, or those who can save £15,000 a year—some families have to live on £15,000 a year, let alone save it. The priorities are wrong. We welcome and support the boost to the manufacturing sector, and hope that it will be carried through.

15:02

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

In contrast to the economic amblyopia of the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), I honestly believe that there are many things to welcome in this Budget. Chief among them is the greatly improved economic situation in which this country now finds itself. I must say that I had my doubts that we would achieve our employment objectives, but we have, and in full measure. Unemployment in my constituency is now at 1.6%, compared with 17% in the mid-1980s. That shows just how far we have gone. I am also enormously encouraged by the 1.5 million new apprenticeships that have been put in place by this Government, because that seems to be at the core of our economic recovery.

There is a strange process in this House by which the Budget is separated from the autumn statement, which is not entirely logical. I find it difficult to talk about the money-raising capacity of the Government without mentioning where that money will be spent. May I give due notice that when we come to the autumn statement, I will expect to see clear commitments to flood alleviation schemes, such as the sluice on the River Parrett, and the long-term changes for sustainable maintenance of our flood systems. I will expect to see the A303 explicitly mentioned as part of the capital programme. I will also expect to see the long-promised improvements in our rail infrastructure in the west country, including the opening of Somerton and Langport stations, which will offer long-term economic benefits to our area.

Let me deal with what is in Budget. I wholeheartedly welcome the increase in the tax threshold, which is a commitment that I made before the election. Not only does that take millions of people out of tax altogether, but it represents, by 2015, an £800 tax cut for people on modest incomes in my constituency and across the country. That is enormously important. From a parochial point of view, I would have welcomed the freeze in cider tax, except that I felt it was slightly undermined by the cut in beer duty, and I felt that perhaps cider drinkers did not have parity with beer drinkers. None the less, the freeze is welcome.

I welcome the changes announced by the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb). We have campaigned for many years for this straitjacket of the annuity-buying system to be released.

I welcome the industrial strategy that the Business Secretary has developed over recent years. I am talking about the encouragement to invest and the support for exports. One sector in which I have had direct involvement is the food and drink sector. That is the biggest manufacturing industry in this country, with a £90 billion turnover and 400,000 workers engaged in it. Exports form a key part of the sector, providing £9.3 billion, which is a 5% increase year on year. None the less, we still have far more to do. There are still many opportunities that need to be realised. The fact that 90% of small and medium-sized enterprises that produce food and drink still do not export suggests that we need to do an awful lot more in the way of encouragement.

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

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that investment and exporting are key to our growth. Does he therefore welcome the other announcement that was made yesterday, which is the doubling of the tax allowance when it comes to capital investment, from £250,000 to £500,000?

[Mr Heath]

Absolutely. We are getting an industrial strategy that makes sense for this country. The point was made that we need to offer direct encouragement to firms to export, but what is lacking is aspiration. What we need to do is increase the level of aspiration of many of our smaller firms.

There has been mention of the national minimum wage and the difficulties caused by not uprating it. May I remind the House that there are still abusive employers who do not even pay the national minimum wage and who are not investigated and prosecuted? There are also many abusive contractual relationships, especially in some sectors. That is not to damn every employer in those sectors; a lot of them are very good and conscientious employers. However, it worries me that in the catering and entertainment, care and construction sectors there are still bad employers who need to be brought to book. We already have a model to deal with them. It has been shown to be successful and I used to use it when I worked with the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. I do not believe that the GLA can simply expand into other sectors; that would be beyond its capacity. It also runs the risk of breaking an organisation that is doing a very good job in its sector. We need to replicate that in the other sectors because, for me, avoiding abusive relationships between employers and employees is one of the key issues that remains. Some of the virtually indentured labour that goes on is linked to our work on modern-day slavery. I believe that the Government can and should take action to end it once and for all.

15:08

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

First, I want to discuss the effects of the Budget on the steel industry. I welcome the news that the Government have announced their intention to introduce relief against the rapidly rising costs of carbon levies, and the mitigation of the renewables obligation is a particularly good step forward. As chair of the all-party group on steel and metal related industry, I, along with colleagues from the group, trade unions and the steel industry, have been campaigning hard on that for a long time. Having said that, however, I do have some concerns. The compensation is still two financial years away and the steel industry will continue to face considerable challenges in the interim given that the international demand for steel is still at mid-financial crisis levels and is probably worsening. Will the Minister clarify whether state aid clearance will take those two years and is there any way that the Treasury can bring the compensation forward so that the steel sector and other foundation industries do not have to wait?

I remind the House that the carbon price floor, which hits UK manufacturing four times as hard as our EU competitors, was introduced by this Chancellor and this Government. That has led to a number of jobs being lost, particularly at the Tata Steel site in Newport where 200 jobs were highlighted for potential redundancy last week. We have also seen the loss of Alcan in Northumberland as well as other manufacturing sites in the foundation sector.

I am similarly cautious about the Government’s proposals to increase the personal allowance. Although on the face of it that is an attractive policy, I am wary as increasing the personal allowance for income tax will do nothing for the millions of low earners who earn less than the current personal allowance.

It has recently been reported in the press that the Chancellor is considering renaming national insurance in the run-up to a potential merger with income tax, so I am surprised that the Budget does nothing to address the anomaly faced by millions of people who earn less than the annualised primary threshold and still face a class 1 national insurance contribution liability. For example, despite earning less than the annualised primary threshold in 2012-13 some 3.48 million people had an average national insurance liability of £172 simply because of the distribution of their earnings across the year. The anomaly is caused by the fact that national insurance liability is calculated per pay period rather than annually. That is particularly problematic for the 583,000 people working on zero-hours contracts—a figure that has trebled since the general election—whose pay varies significantly week to week. I urge Ministers to revisit this subject in addition to considering raising the personal allowance, as it would be a positive step to take those very low earners out of an unpopular and regressive tax. I also want to see an update from the Chancellor on his 2011 proposal to merge national insurance and income tax.

I also have some concerns about the Government’s proposed changes to ISAs and the proposed introduction of a pensioners savings bond. I have tabled a number of written questions on these issues, but I hope that Ministers will be able to address them today. As many hon. Members have stated, increasing the ISA limit does little to help those who could not dream of saving £15,000 a year. I think that is a legitimate concern, but I am also somewhat concerned by the removal of the distinction between a cash ISA and a stocks and shares ISA. My fear is that it might nudge savers to move investments from stocks and shares ISAs, the contents of which often include the more speculative investments necessary to allow for innovation and growth, to low-yield cash ISAs. Although savers have differing personal risk appetites, it would be interesting to see what assessment the Treasury has made of the effects of ISA simplification on capital markets.

I am also concerned about the pensioners savings bond. Although of course we all want pensioners to get the best possible deal, I am curious about how, at a time of austerity and cuts, the Treasury can fiscally justify paying 4% annual interest on a three-year bond for pensioners when a three-year gilt yield is less than 1.2%. I am also curious about how the Chancellor feels that it is justifiable to offer the product only to those who are over 65 and not to younger hard-working families who might want access to such a market-beating preferential interest rate or who, for reasons such as early-retirement caused by workplace injury or other anomalies, might financially depend on income from savings. I have tabled questions to ask how the Government will account for that and whether they will consider the 4% annual interest they will pay on the debt under the debt interest headings they use in their analyses. Furthermore, has the Treasury considered whether it will crowd investment out of the private sector by offering such an interest rate when banks and building societies are offering, at best, a 2.7% fixed annual interest rate on three-year bonds? In previous Budgets from this Government, we have heard arguments about the public sector crowding out the private sector. I would like to see a Treasury assessment of how the policy might crowd out the private sector.

15:13

[Chris Kelly (Dudley South) (Con)]

I welcome the Budget statement. It is a Budget that will help us build a resilient economy and it is part of the Government’s long-term economic plan to put this country back on the path to sustained growth, a path that was deviated from by the Labour party with the debt-fuelled politics of the final decade of its time in office.

I commend my right hon. Friend the Chancellor who, since coming to office, has been proved right on all the big calls of the past four years. He correctly identified the problems and was right to set out a clear plan to address and then overcome them and equally right continually to stress that there was no alternative to plan A if Britain were to turn the corner. The deficit is down by a third, and in the coming year it will be down by a half. But it is still one of the highest in the world, so the Government are right to be taking action to bring it down further.

I will now deal with some of the detail of the Budget, but in the light of the number of Members who wish to speak, I will limit my remarks to three or four main areas. First, this was a Budget for savers. Social media has been awash with the hashtag #savingsupported, and with good reason. The reforms to individual savings accounts and raising the limit to £15,000 could benefit up to 513,000 ISA holders in the west midlands alone. Cutting the savings income tax to zero on up to £5,000 could benefit up to 131,000 savers in my region.

The Budget will help more of my constituents to save for a home, save for their retirement and save for their family. I welcome the additional support for savers, so that more people can provide a secure future for themselves and their families. Although we are getting on top of our debts as a nation, for many decades Britain has borrowed too much and saved too little. It is therefore right that hard-working people keep more of what they earn, and of what they save. Support for savers is, rightly, at the centre of the Budget.

The personal tax changes will also be widely welcomed in my area. The increase in the personal allowance in 2015-16 will lift 27,000 people out of income tax altogether, and 2,120,000 people will see an average real terms gain of £62. Again, these are west midlands numbers and the national figures are, of course, even more impressive.

The next area I want to deal with, after help for savers and cutting taxes, is the welcome news on pension flexibility, particularly with the fundamental reform of the taxation of defined contribution pensions. As the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) has just said, from April 2015, the Government will legislate to remove all remaining tax restrictions on how to access defined contribution pension pots, which means that no one will have buy an annuity if they do not want to. Those who still want the certainty of an annuity, as many will, will be able to shop around for the best deal. There will be no punitive 55% tax rate for those who take more than their tax-free lump sum. It will still be possible to take 25% of the pension pot tax free on retirement, but what is taken above the tax-free lump sum will be taxed at normal marginal rates, not 55%, as at the moment. We will have a new guarantee, enforced in law, that everyone who retires on a DC scheme will be offered free, impartial, face-to-face advice. As economist Ros Altmann summarised:

“No more annuity will be required. No 55% tax charge, only marginal rates. Everyone will get access to face-to-face advice to make the right choice for themselves and their family.”

As the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills said earlier, we now know that manufacturing halved under Labour, with all bets effectively being on the City of London, and look where that got us. Now manufacturing is growing again, and jobs are being created in Dudley and the black country, and across the country. Week in, week out, I visit businesses, often in manufacturing or engineering, or connected to those industries, and the optimism I am finding is reflected in the figures, with 1.7 million new private sector jobs having been created since May 2010. Investment and exports are also up. But we have 20 years of catching up to do, so the Government are right to be backing businesses that invest and export. With the help of the British people, the Government are turning the economy around. The reward is economic security for the families of Britain. The Budget is part of the long-term economic plan—a plan that is delivering economic security for families in my constituency and throughout the country.

15:18

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

My first comments are about the nature of growth and the Chancellor’s triumphalist approach to the growing economy. Yes, it is growing, and that is welcome, but this is not economic growth led by sustainable increases in investment—that has been pretty stable during the last few years. It is not led by an increase in exports; again they have not reached anything like the level needed to get us out of recession. Rather it has been led by an increase in consumption and household debt, and by a housing-fuelled boom in London and the south-east.

Of the job growth in the private sector, 80% has been created in London. That totally contradicts the Prime Minister’s assertion yesterday in Prime Minister’s questions when he claimed that it was the other way round. I checked with the Library to see whether my insight into this was incorrect, but it referred me to the Centre for Cities study, which clearly says that 80% was concentrated in London. I hope that the Minister can explain the apparent contradiction between the Prime Minister’s assertion and the best available evidence.

I would like to focus for a few moments on what I consider to be a huge potential black hole in the Budget projections. In the autumn statement—the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) commented on the connection between the autumn statement and the Budget—the Chancellor announced funding for an additional 60,000 higher education student places, funded by the sale of the student loan book. He said:

“The new loans will be financed by selling the old student loan book, allowing thousands more to achieve their potential.”—[Official Report, 5 December 2013; Vol. 571, c. 1110.]

When the Minister for Universities and Science appeared before the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, he was questioned about what appears to be an inherently risky way of funding a long-term commitment. He informed us that it would be fully funded irrespective of the sale of the student loan book. That is welcome, but it has not been factored into any OBR predictions I have seen. The cost could be as much as £12 billion. The Government’s own advisers, Rothschild, said that without sweeteners and some form of subsidy, only £2 billion might be reclaimed.

That leaves a potentially huge hole in the Budget predictions, and I have not seen it adequately covered by the OBR or in the Red Book. When challenged on that, the Minister said that the Rothschild report is old and that market conditions have changed. If that is so, I would reasonably expect the Government to be confident enough about their assertion to put forward the figures and funding bases on which the policy has been built.

The other part of the potential black hole is the increasing resource allocation budget charges on the student loans arising from the increase in default rates. It is estimated that if those reach 47%, the cost of the current student-funded scheme will outweigh the old system. We are already at about 40% to 42%, and the latest predictions indicate that it will reach the threshold very shortly. That is acknowledged by the OBR, although there is no acknowledgment of how this will be funded.

I believe that there is a huge potential hole in the Government’s Budget predictions, because they are locked into a financial funding model for higher education that is increasingly becoming unfunded. Furthermore, they have grafted on to it a welcome commitment to funding extra places, but on the basis of a model that does not appear to be viable and a funding regime—the sale of the student loan book—that looks unlikely to realise the necessary amount of money.

I would like to have been able to talk at some length about exports. I will simply quote a press release from the Black Country chamber of commerce:

“This was nothing more than a political budget with a nod to Scotland and another example of the disconnect between politicians and the world of business”.

The fact is that the rhetoric does not match the reality on the ground.

15:23

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I may not agree with all that the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) says, but he always speaks with calm courtesy and forensic good sense, so we are grateful for his comments. I am also grateful that my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary is sitting on the Front Bench. I hope that what I am going to say is not entirely off message from what the Government believe. Because I respect and admire him so much, I have a sneaking suspicion that privately he might agree with much of what I will say.

The fact is that, for all the huff and puff, when it comes to what it actually puts into and takes out of the economy, the Budget represents a 0.3% change—£2 billion out of £732 billion of spending. That is somewhat worrying when we consider the very big challenge we face on deficit reduction and, following what the hon. Member for West Bromwich West said, what could be a debt-fuelled boom, which is the traditional British way of climbing out of recession.

I wanted to try to start on a positive note, however, so I should quickly say that I think this Budget will be remembered for its entirely freedom-loving, Thatcherite, people-trusting measures on annuities. However, those points have been made repeatedly, so I do not need to labour them.

I want to talk about what is happening to higher rate taxpayers. The top 5% pay 45% of all income tax. The top 1%—just 30,000 people—pay 30% of all income tax, which is more than the lowest 50%. Let me say gently to the Business Secretary—he is not here, but I am sure he will read Hansard avidly—that I think he was being slightly disingenuous when he replied to my intervention in which I bemoaned the fact that we are not indexing the higher rate tax. He said, “Well, we’ve made a start”, but it is a very small start. Under this Budget, 400,000 more people will still be dragged into paying higher rate tax. Some 1.4 million middle-earners—small business men; managers; hard-working nurses, matrons and teachers at the top of their professions; police sergeants—have all been dragged into this higher rate of tax during this Parliament, on our watch.

The higher rate of taxation is almost turning into the standard rate. The top half of taxpayers contribute 90% of all tax intake. When Nigel Lawson introduced the 40p rate in 1988, it was paid by just 1.35 million people. Now, 4.5 million people pay the higher rate of tax, and by 2015 that figure will have risen to nearly 5 million. I personally do not believe that this is what the higher rate of tax was designed for. It should attack people on higher rates of earnings, and that means those who earn a reasonable amount of money; it should not attack police sergeants, senior matrons or classroom teachers. That is wrong and inequitable.

We need from the Government a sense of mission and direction, and the sense of mission and direction that I want to see is one that is aimed at simplifying all taxation. After every Budget speech—rather like the Secretary of State, I think I have now sat through 18—I make the point again and again that simplification pays off. When we reduce taxation on the top earners, as we saw when we reduced the top rate of tax from 50% to 45%, we encourage enterprise, remove avoidance and even evasion, and generate more income and growth. This is a Conservative philosophy of enterprise and rewarding hard work, and that is what a Conservative Government must be about. I earnestly enjoin the Government to try to right this inequity against higher rate taxpayers in their next Budget, or, if not, in the manifesto.

15:28

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

I want to touch on a couple of issues in the brief time available.

The first of those is the changes to the carbon price floor, on which I intervened on the Business Secretary earlier. I probably should not be surprised, but I am concerned, that he did not appear to know that the compensation scheme for the carbon price floor announced in November 2011 and due to come into effect in April last year has so far paid out precisely nothing to energy-intensive industries. When energy-intensive businesses such as the brickworks, steel plant and glass fabricator in my constituency hear that there will be a compensation package in relation to the renewables obligation and feed-in tariff, it is not surprising, given that it seems highly unlikely that the back-dated scheme that they were previously promised is going to be delivered, that they are dubious about whether they will ever receive this benefit.

There is, overall, a supreme irony in the Government’s moves to limit the impact of the carbon price floor, characterising it as a green tax. At last year’s Conservative party conference, the Energy Minister, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), referred to it as “assisted suicide” for manufacturing industries, seeming not to realise that it was his Chancellor’s policy and that his party voted for it, whereas we opposed introducing it without an assessment of the impact on manufacturing industry.

The Chancellor was at it again yesterday when he implied—the hon. Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell), who is no longer in his place, said this in his speech, too—that the answer is shale gas and that it could have the same impact in the UK as it has had in the US. That is a simplistic and highly misleading extrapolation of the US experience, given the different geology, land rights and, crucially, the US’s inability to export shale gas. Those simplistic extrapolations are either ill informed or spectacularly and deliberately ignorant.

The Office for Budget Responsibility figures for oil revenues are not just a salutary warning against the danger of over-reliance on a resource that is by definition declining and by record volatile. The Scottish National party is engaged in a process of taking the most optimistic assessment of gross value and suggesting it as state revenue in order to seek to persuade my constituents and others to vote to leave the UK, but the lesson from the figures is that the pooling and sharing of resources is a much more stable proposition with regard to maximising economic recovery from what Sir Ian Wood’s report, whose recommendations the Government seem to accept, rightly refers to as a mostly mature basin.

The Chancellor also referred yesterday to the extension of the film tax credit, which is welcome, but many British films today are co-productions. Indeed, the critically acclaimed “Under the Skin”, which was filmed in and around Glasgow, stars Scarlett Johansson and was released last week, is just one recent example of a stunning co-production from Britain and other countries. The marginal extension of the tax credit has been hindered by the news that just last week Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs issued a clarificatory note stating that co-productions are excluded from access to funding from the enterprise investment scheme. I asked the Minister responsible for the arts, the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), about this during Culture, Media and Sport questions last week, but he did not appear to know anything about it. A theme is developing of Ministers not knowing the impact of their own policies, and that is a concern.

I want briefly to refer to changes to gambling. Increasing the tax take from fixed odds betting terminals does nothing to deal with the adverse effects those machines have on many communities up and down the country. Indeed, it may have the opposite effect and put the Treasury in the box of those defending the vested interests in high-stakes, fast-pay gambling machines that are ruining many lives.

Finally, I welcome the change to the bingo tax, but the Tory party chairman—who will, I am sure, shortly be promoted to a senior ministerial position—let the cat out of the bag last night with his post, infographic or whatever he is trying to call it referring to bingo as something that “they” enjoy. I say to the Financial Secretary that I am a fairly frequent visitor to the Mecca bingo club in Rutherglen, which is a very good community institution to which many of my constituents enjoy going to interact socially as well as to gamble as a leisure pursuit. They tell me that what they wanted from this Budget was some real action on energy bills, particularly given that they have gone up by £300 at a time when, latterly, gas wholesale prices have been largely stable. They want to know why it is that the bankers bonus culture has been extending and deepening in this country. They want to know why it is that the primary act of this Chancellor and his ministerial team is to institute a tax cut for millionaires rather than for hard-working people. For them, this Budget has precious little.

15:33

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I welcome the Budget, not just in and of itself specifically, but because it is part of a long-term economic plan. It is important that Governments look at issues on a long- term basis. I think we sometimes forget the depth of the crisis of 2008. There was a 7.5% fall in output and it was the biggest recession in British history, significantly worse than that of the 1930s. On top of that, there was a major banking collapse and, following that, a euro meltdown and crisis. Therefore, the stability provided by the coalition Government’s steady plan to rebalance the British economy is a sensible and welcome development.

We have been blessed over the past three or four years by lower levels of unemployment than might have been predicted and we have started to see a recovery and higher levels of employment. The reason for that is that British workers have reacted in a rational and sensible fashion and have tried to price themselves into jobs. The consequence of that is that living standards have fallen and, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said, the fall from about 2007-08 until last year was about 7%. If there is a massive fall in output, it is inevitable that living standards will fall.

We are now starting to see much more evidence of a proper recovery, with pay picking up, inflation coming down—they should cross during the year—and the Government making a great priority of raising tax thresholds. If we are reforming welfare to encourage people to take jobs, it is both logical and sensible to make many jobs more attractive by reducing tax. I have heard some of the criticisms, such as, “What if you don’t pay tax?” Part of the problem of the Government taking 3 million people out of the tax system is that fewer people will pay tax at lower levels. However, it is good to provide more incentives within the British political system.

We are getting more growth, and we are starting to see a recovery in investment. If the eurozone, which could still be problematic, settles down, there is a prospect of higher exports. I welcome what the Government have done in providing more export credit. I also welcome what they have done for manufacturers by addressing some of the problems with the EU carbon floor price, which would have made many of our heavy or energy-intensive users uncompetitive. The key point is that the Government have listened to representations and made adjustments to help British business.

My principal point is that I welcome the changes in savings and pensions. Throughout most of my time in the House, people approaching the age of 65 have come to me to bemoan the fact that they are forced to buy an annuity, and that it will remain with the insurance company when they die. We are giving people the real freedom for which we campaigned in opposition and that we had in our manifesto, and it is absolutely right to do so. Moreover, we are allowing people to make their own decisions about how they spend their own money. It seems to me rather bizarre that people have a pension pot, but then have the problem of trying to calculate at the beginning of the year how much they can take out. I see no reason why we cannot just trust people, and ensure that they can make their own decisions about their retirement. That requires a bit of maturity and we will provide more advice, but it will be a very real freedom for many pensioners in Poole.

In addition, I welcome the Government’s proposal for the bond that, at least for a time, will give a higher rate to many pensioners who have not had a big rate of return on their savings. Quantitative easing has made life very difficult for pensioners with savings, and the bond is one way to offset that in these extraordinary financial times. Again, the Government have listened and have responded to that particular problem.

We are encouraging savings. We are giving pensioners more flexibility. We are addressing the needs of and helping exporters; we have seen many good examples in the car industry and aerospace. We are helping heavy manufacturers, who have real problems with the carbon floor price. The Budget will help jobs and growth. We are seeing the start of higher productivity and higher investment. I hope that that continues, and that our country goes from success to success.

15:38

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

It is extremely gracious of you to call me to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I want to say a few words about a genuine long-term plan—Government Members seem to use the phrase “long-term plan” quite a bit—for work. It is clear that this Budget has ducked the key challenge of how we ensure that as the number of jobs in the economy increases, the quality of those jobs improves at the same time.

There has been much talk in this place over many years—not only by Government Members but by Opposition Members—about where improvements to the British economy will come from. There has been a lot of talk about entrepreneurialism, finance and different sectors of industry, but we tend not to step back to talk about the quality of work, even though work is fundamental to how we generate growth in our economy and how people find dignity during most of their waking hours in the day.

My broadest concern is that as we talk about the effects of this Budget—fiscal measures here, changes to taxation there—we may to a degree miss the point. We know that what makes work satisfying to people is autonomy, mastery and purpose. I fear that those three values are getting lost in the recovery that is under way. I shall suggest a few ways in which we might respond through policy to improve the quality of work for millions of people up and down the country.

It is a tragedy when people find themselves unemployed and when there is long-term unemployment. In Luton, 950 young people are without work and are claiming jobseeker’s allowance, and 1,300 people of all ages have been out of work for more than 12 months. Behind each figure is a human tragedy that affects many families. Older people who find themselves out of work find it incredibly difficult to get a job, and we know that many of them will not find one in the current economy.

At the same time, there is a cost of living crisis. Wages and prices have become decoupled. It is estimated that it will take 15 years for wages to recover and get back to the consumer prices index level of inflation. It is debatable whether they will ever reach the retail prices index level.

We need to tackle the issue at both ends: work and the quality of that work. On the quality of work, we have seen a tripling of the number of zero-hours contracts. More people are working in the economy, but many of them are on zero-hours contracts and have little job security. Those who are still in work have had their rights taken away. For example, there are the challenges with tribunals, which we have discussed in the House before. We cannot win in a race to the bottom. Many people still cannot get a job. There is a lack of dignity in not having a job, but there is also a lack of dignity in having a poor quality job. This is a long-term challenge not just for this Government, but for whichever Government find themselves in power next.

Labour’s jobs guarantee could be a necessary first step in allowing young people in particular to find work and get back into the rhythm and dignity of work. We then need to look at the quality of the work and the remuneration for it. That is why we need an expansion of the living wage. Our policy of a 12-month tax rebate for low-paid workers who are bumped up to the living wage for the first time, which would pay for itself over time, would be extremely helpful, as would the reintroduction of the 10p rate. That would be hugely important in encouraging people to get back into work.

We need action to meet the challenges of our economy. An alarming statistic that other Members have talked about is the productivity gap. Output per hour in this country is 21% lower than the G7 average. That hints at a lack of business investment in machinery and so on.

I return to autonomy, mastery and purpose. Where will the high-skilled jobs come from in this economy? When will we recognise the cost of living? Many people will look at the actions of the Government and conclude that in the Budget they have ducked the challenge. If they were running a business the way they are running the economy, they would be sweating the assets to get growth. I think it is fine to sweat the assets for a period, but we must recognise that the greatest asset we have is the people of this country, and they will not put up with a Government who sweat the asset that is their work.

15:43

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), not least because he and I will be working together on the all-party group on polar regions, which is absolutely fabulous.

The Budget is a staging post in the mission to rescue the British economy. It is an important staging post and it signals some important messages. First, I will introduce some thoughtful points on productivity, which we have discussed from time to time in the Chamber. Increasing productivity is the way to deal with the cost of living crisis, because we need a work force who are skilled to such a level that we can enhance our capacity in manufacturing, engineering and related activities. The importance of ensuring that we have a skilled work force is embedded in our long-term economic strategy and is part of the Budget because, as I have said, it is a staging post.

In my constituency, I have promoted manufacturing and engineering through the festival of manufacturing and engineering, which is designed to ensure that young people are introduced to the advantages of working in manufacturing and the opportunities that are provided by a career in engineering. They will end up dealing with the cost of living crisis by contributing to increased productivity and an economy that blasts forward by competing powerfully not just in the EU, but in the global economic race that we are undoubtedly in.

I am pleased to welcome the changes to pensions, annuities and so forth. Encouraging people to save is a really important part of our strategy, because the savings ratio in this country has never been worse. The Chancellor has recognised that and taken steps to encourage people to save. That is what the changes to pensions and annuities are fundamentally all about. We should welcome them as a huge step in the right direction, not only in ensuring that elderly people have choice but in improving people’s overall capacity and willingness to save. They are great news.

Something else that is important and relevant to my constituency is the framework that we have already created to encourage investment in infrastructure. We really need to do that, and I could mention a lot of projects in my constituency that will need investment in the immediate future. One is a potential new bridge across the Severn to ease congestion on both the Forest of Dean side—my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) has made that point several times—and my side, where such a development would enhance economic growth opportunities in an area where they need to be created.

The changes to ensure that firms that are high energy users will benefit is great news for my constituency. We have a lot of companies that have a huge appetite for energy. BPI, a recycling firm, is a case in point. It has sites across the country, which will all benefit from the changes.

We have to ensure that our overall package is continued with, and that is why it is important to talk about the long-term economic plan as frequently as we do. Part of that plan is to reduce the deficit. Of course we are disappointed that the deficit is not as small now as we had hoped, but we are travelling in the right direction and can say that it will be further reduced in significant chunks. That is what the Chancellor has promised and will now deliver. That is the bedrock of our economic plan, because we cannot have sustainable growth if we are constantly threatened with high interest rates and constantly undermined by having one of the largest deficits in the western world. That part of the long-term economic plan must not be forgotten and must be promoted whenever possible. The real economy, which I have been talking about, is the key to delivering jobs, tackling the cost of living and putting Britain back into the competitive place that it should hold globally on the economy and growth.

15:48

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

It is disappointing that this has turned out to be a Budget for the few, not the many. I am particularly concerned that it has delivered nothing to support young people and the long-term unemployed, and it is on that point that I wish to make a few remarks.

We all know that young working families are struggling. Last week I met Sarah, a young mum of two, in a local supermarket. Two years ago, the jobcentre forced her to go on a course at a time when she was very ill during her first pregnancy. The tutor on the course sent her home almost as soon as she arrived, and her doctor then signed her off work for the pregnancy lest she even lose the baby. Her partner has been out of work for three years, which has had a knock-on effect on his self-esteem. He is a young man struggling to find work and wanting to support his young family, and he has felt that the courses being offered to him are well below what he needs and are doing little to increase his chances of work.

I met a mum who was concerned about her son’s future. He has been on a zero-hours contract with no certainty about what work he will get or on what day. The stress that it has caused the family is enormous. Imagine not being able to plan if and when to do a course of further learning, or when it might be possible to see a doctor, care for a family member or go out on a certain day. Zero-hours contracts definitely need reform.

More than 1 million 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK are not in education, employment or training. Long-term unemployment is up more than 300% since 2010, and long-term youth unemployment has almost doubled in that period, yet pay is still rising faster for bankers than for the average worker. This was not a Budget for those such as the disabled man I met recently who was hit by the bedroom tax; for the families and parents struggling with rising child care costs; or for small businesses struggling to pay their business rates.

I welcome the reduction in bingo duty and I am pleased that the Government have listened to calls from Labour and the public about reducing that duty. I thank many of my constituents, including Mike Ellis, a bingo club manager in Feltham, for their work on that matter. The fact remains, however, that the recovery is not yet reaching the many. The Chancellor and the Prime Minister often talk about getting young people into work, but I am concerned that there is no actual plan for young people. Making school-based work experience optional rather than compulsory, as the Government did in September 2012, is one shocking example of that—a move that was opposed by Labour and by 89% of those who took part in the Department for Education consultation. In the past year alone more than 64,000 fewer young people have been able to take part in work experience, compared with the previous year.

The young people of today are the taxpayers and leaders of tomorrow, and we have a responsibility to hold open the doors so that they can succeed. That is why getting young people back to work is a priority for Labour. It is about our duty to the next generation, to give them the chances they need, and confidence that the Government are on their side. Labour would put young people back to work with a job for every unemployed young person, paid for by a tax on bankers bonuses. Young people also need a place to live and bring up their families, and Labour would build up to 200,000 homes a year by 2020. Tackling the housing crisis is not just about fuelling demand, but building new homes and increasing supply.

We would freeze energy prices to help tackle that modern scourge: the cost of living. Labour would get finance flowing again to businesses, with a proper independent business investment bank and a network of regional banks to support businesses that need finance, not just in London but in our industrial centres in the north that have been so neglected by the Government and on which our national economy depends.

This country needs an active Government with the courage to bring forward bold policies to build a strong, sustainable economy that generates wealth for the many, jobs for the unemployed, and prosperity for all. Instead, it is a shame that this out-of-touch Chancellor, and Prime Minister, has delivered a Budget that caters for the privileged few, while working families and mums like Sarah fight for scraps from his table.

15:53

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) because it gives me an opportunity to let her know that in my constituency, youth unemployment has fallen by 40% in the past 12 months. I am also pleased to speak in this Budget debate on business because as we all know—at least, as we should know—it is business, not the Government, that generates wealth. Wealth generates jobs, and jobs lift people out of despondency and dependency.

[Chloe Smith]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is also possible for Members of the House to work with businesses in their constituency and do something about unemployment? I gave the example of Norwich for Jobs.

[Christopher Pincher]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I hold an annual jobs fair, and last year 300 to 400 jobs were available to the 176 people who came to look for them. There were more jobs available in my constituency than jobseekers at the job fair, which is an indication of how our economy in the midlands, and particularly in Tamworth, is developing.

I agree with the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston about bingo and the change to gross profits tax. That tax was introduced in 2009 and created an anomaly because it meant that that soft gambling industry was taxed at 20%, compared with most of the rest of the industry at 15%. Added to the fact that bingo operators cannot reclaim VAT on their investment or refurbishment costs, it means that many operators have to carry a cumulative and punitive tax, equivalent to VAT of 32%. That was stifling the industry, with one bingo hall per week going to the wall. The Chancellor’s changes will mean more money for stakes, which is good for punters, and more investment in bingo halls and more jobs—a good thing that will also increase tax yield.

I am very pleased to see the changes to air passenger duty and start-up support for new routes. Birmingham airport, my local airport, will benefit from that. It is currently extending its runway so that it will be able to take long-haul flights to and from major markets in China and India. If the Treasury is listening, it can provide further support by adding Birmingham airport to the regional air connectivity fund list.

I hope the Treasury will work closely with the Department for Transport to consider the Whitacre link, a railway line axed by Dr Beeching. The line runs through Tamworth to Birmingham airport, and new track would reduce travel time from Tamworth to Birmingham airport from 40 minutes to just 18 minutes. That is the sort of local, sensible infrastructure development that business people in my constituency want to see. My hon. Friend the Minister knows my views on HS2. If it goes ahead, it will not be enough for it just to link our major cities. We need to improve the infrastructure around those major cities to realise the potential benefits of HS2. Building the Whitacre link would be one way of doing that.

I welcome the continued drive down of corporation tax. That will help to expand businesses and create jobs. I hope the Chancellor will not see the 20p rate as an end in itself, but as a means to an end: matching the Irish 12.5% rate of corporation tax. If we can get down to such a level, we will attract businesses to Britain that currently go to Ireland, and build a better and stronger economy. That is what business folk in my constituency would like to see.

Despite the rather gloomy concerns of the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), I support and approve of the Government’s determination to drive down the cost of energy on businesses. The carbon price support rate, at £18 per tonne of carbon, is a good move. I think the Liberal Democrats would prefer to see about £30 per tonne by 2020, but capping it at £18 will reduce about £50,000 of cost for small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency.

There is, however, an energy elephant in the room: the huge amount of infrastructure spend we need to undertake in the next 10 years to keep our lights switched on, our water warm and the wheels of industry turning. The big six, which are already highly leveraged, can probably add no more than £70 billion to the £110 billion cost. If we are to get the £40 billion we need from independent players, and not rely on the taxpayer or the consumer to foot the bill, we need to ensure that electricity market reform and the signals to investors are right, otherwise there will be a cash crunch.

In general terms, the Budget was good. It was a Budget for business. In my constituency, businesses are upbeat and they say that they expect to grow. BMW is coming to Tamworth this year with 100 new jobs. Let us have more of the same: let us have more Budgets for business.

15:59

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I welcome one measure in the Budget that has had relatively little publicity: start-up support for regional airports to link up with future markets by supplying new routes. Manchester airport and other regional airports are key drivers of local economies. Encouraging new routes and businesses into the regions is vital, and I look forward to seeing more details on that.

I want to move on to one of the central planks of the Budget: the measures for savers. Help for savers is welcome, but this help does not target those with little or no savings. A report produced by HSBC last year showed that 25% of people across all age ranges have little or no savings. Indeed, 33%—a third—of people in the 18 to 44 age range have no savings at all. On the basis of that evidence, HSBC estimates that 8 million people in the United Kingdom have no savings.

Many of my constituents can relate to that. They are indeed the “makers and doers” referred to by the Chancellor, but they are not making do. They are juggling their finances, with no spare money to save for a rainy day because there has never been enough sunshine. These are the people who turn to payday lenders when there is a broken washing machine, or when the children need new shoes and school clothes. If the Chancellor is serious about keeping people out of the hands of the payday lenders or “pay weekly” stores such as BrightHouse, they should be helped through savings measures. They are the people most at risk of descending into a spiral of debt and who end up seeking help from citizens advice bureaux or StepChange. In fact, figures from StepChange show that only 5% of people who have sought its help have any savings.

Simplifying and raising the limits for individual savings accounts are likely to make little difference to those in middle and low-income households who have few if any savings. Just one in four households with incomes of less than £400 per week has an ISA, compared with half those with incomes between £700 and £1,000 a week. Research shows that matched savings and savings account bonuses give lower-income households a much stronger incentive to save than interest rates or tax reliefs.

The additional ISA changes will have cost the Exchequer £565 million a year in lost tax on savings by 2018-19. Surely that money could be better spent on providing savings account bonuses or matched savings targeted at those in lower-income households, who have the least resilience to financial shocks. In fact, the matched savings schemes introduced by Labour were one of the first things to be abolished by the coalition Government in 2010, on the grounds that “the country could not afford them”. As the money and the will to encourage savings clearly now exist, why do the Government not consider reintroducing, and even expanding, such schemes? A savings target of just £500 for low-income households, which represents just below the average payday loan debt owed by StepChange clients, could be just that “rainy day” buffer that people need to keep the wolf—or perhaps I should say the shark—from the door.

Yet again, we have a Budget that does little for those on the very lowest incomes. Raising the income tax threshold to £10,500 will do significantly more for those who are paying the higher rate of tax and earning up to £100,000 a year. They will gain £1.92 per week, whereas those who are working full time on the minimum wage are highly likely to be receiving housing and council tax benefits, and will therefore gain just 29p per week. At this rate, even if they saved every penny of the increase, it would take more than 100 years for them to be able to take advantage of the new ISA limit, and 33 years for them to have the buffer of £500. No wonder unexpected expenditure falls hardest on those households, making the need for incentives to help them to save more urgent than ever. No wonder a payday loan is taken out every four seconds in this country.

This is not a Budget that helps the hard-working families in my constituency who face a cost of living crisis. It is not a Budget for those who are struggling to get by, and to whom saving even £500 seems an impossible dream. The Chancellor could have helped those people, but he chose not to. He could have taken on the payday lenders by helping to eliminate the need for them, but he chose not to. This is not a Budget for the many in my constituency; it is a Budget for the few.

16:04

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Yesterday we heard a Budget which, as The Sun put it, we can all cheer—but not quite all, because the response from the Leader of the Opposition was a litany of class warfare slogans, along with the line “You’re worse off under the Tories”, which, as The Sun rightly concluded, could convince only those with the memory of a goldfish. Today we had another goldfish to entertain us. The shadow Chancellor was more entertaining than his boss, but there was little danger of the truth interrupting his cracks; for he has form, and—whether we are talking about his claim of an end to boom and bust, his prediction of a triple dip, or the flatlining gesture that we saw for nearly three years—the truth has consistently been the opposite of what he says. So when he claimed there was nothing in this Budget to help with the cost of living, he only confirmed to everybody listening that there was, in fact, plenty, and that the statement was consistent with his role as the best reverse indicator in politics.

My constituents in Gloucester will have been absolutely delighted with another axing of Labour’s hated fuel escalator. Some 25 million people around the country will keep £800 more a year from their earnings and 1.5 million lower-income pensioners will not pay 10% tax on their first £5,000 of savings: these things make a difference.

The Opposition is off the mark not just on those changes, but also in their response to some of the smaller, but symbolic, steps, like the changes in bingo tax and the beer duty escalator. I am sure the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) supports his constituents who play bingo and recognises the social benefits of that, but can he explain to them why his Government taxed bingo more than any other form of gambling throughout their 13 years in office?

The shadow Chancellor derided the cut in beer duty. I invite him to come to the second Gloucester beer festival on 4 April this year. The Gloucester brewery was created three years ago; for all 13 years of the Labour Government we did not have a brewery at all, but we do now. Let him come and meet the beer lovers in Gloucester and try to convince them we should get back on to his hated beer duty escalator.

The truth, too, is that we know what manufacturing needs, whereas under the previous Government manufacturing halved. My city, the city of Gloucester, has always made things. We have always manufactured, but manufacturing was the main loser when we lost 6,000 private sector jobs under the previous Government. Between 1997 and 2010 the number of apprentices went down so sharply that by the time of the change of Government there were only 25 people going into Gloucestershire engineering training. Today the figure is more than four times greater.

The changes in the carbon pricing for heavy energy users and the extension and doubling of capital allowances to £500,000 a year are incredibly important to a city such as Gloucester, because our engineering is close to capacity and it needs the stimulus to invest and the opportunity to expand and to grow. If it gets that, it will go on creating more jobs and more opportunities for the young people of my city. Already the numbers of new apprentice starts are four times higher than in 2009-10. This is not about cost of living in terms of energy prices miraculously suddenly being halved; it is about cost of living in terms of the opportunities for young people.

The shadow Chancellor recently came to Gloucester. He did not stay for long and he did not visit a business—he certainly did not visit a manufacturing company and see the transformation that has taken place in that sector over the past four years—but he did make a speech to Labour party members and he spoke briefly to the press afterwards, telling them he was deeply concerned about the rate of youth unemployment in Gloucester. In one respect he was correct in saying that because we always need to do more—we must go on bringing it down—but actually the figures have come down sharply and are some 25% lower than they were at the last general election. Youth unemployment is coming down and will go on coming down.

Today we have been discussing a Budget for people who make things, and in a city that makes things, such as Gloucester, that is good news indeed.

16:08

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

The Chancellor talked about an economy that is now improving and I do not think anybody would be so churlish as not to acknowledge that there is some improvement, but he also suggested there is further pain to come and it is clear to everyone outside this place, if not to those on the Government Benches, which people and families are going to bear the brunt of the prolonged period of austerity. It will not be millionaires; it will be low-income families, who are not actually terribly impressed by the raising of the tax threshold when the overall cost of living increases are hitting them a great deal harder and when, for those who will be in receipt of the new universal credit, almost every penny will be clawed back.

Citizens Advice tellingly confirms that those earning around £100,000 will benefit more than those earning the minimum wage. What we need, and what was missing from the Budget, is positive news about infrastructure investment in our region, such as the building of homes that families and first-time buyers can afford to rent or purchase, and major projects such as the diversionary rail line to ensure that the region is resilient in severe weather events. I agree with the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) that expectation is elevated in the south-west about what the autumn statement might contain.

The Labour leader of Plymouth city council has made it clear that investment in new signalling to increase line speeds, new rolling stock and improved rail resilience would help to generate some 32,000 new homes and 42,000 new jobs in the south-west. That investment would bring work, taxes would roll into the Treasury, the south-west economy would benefit and large and small firms would feed into the procurement process, supporting all that growth.

Such investment would undoubtedly support the excellent work of our universities, which could without doubt do even more to support entrepreneurs. Plymouth university is working closely across local enterprise partnership boundaries in support of the work being done by Sir Andrew Witty to drive economic growth.

There were some positive measures in the Budget to help business. I welcome the support for exports, as I welcome the reduction in bingo tax, because it is something on which I have campaigned under both the previous Government and this Government. Devon air ambulance will be much better placed to continue to offer its life-saving service following the changes to VAT on fuel. There was no mention of the business rate change, which many small businesses in Plymouth would have liked to see. I have concerns about the pension proposal, given the history of mis-selling and given personal experience of someone who was persuaded, with expert advice, to take equity from their mortgage while they were seriously ill in such a way that after their death, their partner was left in a dire position. The quality of the advice offered is a serious matter. There is also the question of whether people can get advice on more than one occasion.

I was accused by the Pensions Minister, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb), of being patronising because I dared to ask whether women of a certain age—roughly my age—would face disbenefits as a result of some of the pension changes. He failed to answer that question, and he also failed to offer to place the evidence, particularly that concerning women and the wider risk assessment, into the Library for hon. Members to see.

My colleague the Labour candidate for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport, Luke Pollard, yesterday produced figures showing that in Plymouth the average family is about £1,800 a year worse off because prices are rising much faster than wages. When we consider that the average income in Plymouth is about £20,000, not the £100,000 mentioned by the Chancellor yesterday—he is clearly very out of touch if he thinks that that is an average wage—£1,800 is a huge loss. How is it fair that nurses in Derriford get only a £250 pay rise, while higher- rate taxpayers become significantly better off?

It is the same old Tories. I look back at my father’s election address from February 1974, in which he highlighted tax cuts for the rich paid for by price rises for the rest, rising house prices and rents, and the worst house building record since 1963. Of course, we are now facing the worst housing building situation since the 1920s. The attempts to rebrand the stalled Ebbsfleet development would be laughable if the problem were not so serious. Initially, the Minister without Portfolio, the right hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) talked about building 22,000 homes there, but we are now being promised only 15,000 homes on a site that has little inherent land value.

If the Chancellor is serious about ensuring that the economy continues to grow and does not falter, he must consider the measures proposed by my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order.

16:14

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) has just mentioned her father’s election address, and I am reminded of my father’s election addresses about how Conservatives had to clear up the mess that Labour left behind.

Like many Members across the House, I am passionately focused on employment. We needed the Budget to encourage business investment and help the recovery, which is gaining pace, to deliver more and higher-quality jobs. The hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) made an interesting point about ensuring that those jobs deliver greater productive capacity, and I agree with him that we need to do that.

The claimant count in my constituency of Worcester is down from 2,545 immediately before the election—and from a peak of 2,700 under Labour—to around 1,900 now. Youth unemployment peaked at 800 under Labour and is now below 500. That is much better, but there is no room for complacency. In fact, we have seen some small rises in unemployment in recent months, which I abhor. I have said that we need this Budget to deliver investment in jobs.

When I talk to local businesses, especially manufacturers, about what they need if they are to invest in jobs, they tell me that they need support to invest in plant and machinery, which can raise the productive output of each job. We have seen that support in this Budget. They also want support for research and development that will anchor manufacturing jobs in this country, including the jobs at Yamazaki Mazak, which has its European research headquarters in Worcester. They need help with the cost of employment, and this Budget has introduced the implementation of the employment allowance, which will provide a huge boost to businesses large and small in regard to the number of people they can employ.

It is interesting that, at the start of this Government, we got rid of Labour’s jobs tax—an increase in the cost of national insurance for every business and employer—and that, as we come towards the end of this Government, we are taking a further step forward in the form of the employment allowance. It will provide a real incentive to take young people on, and taking people under 21 out of national insurance will help more young people to get into the businesses of the future.

Crucially, we need to drive forward the skills agenda. Many of the engineering businesses in my constituency—including Yamazaki Mazak and Worcester Bosch—are great supporters of apprenticeships. Many small and medium-sized enterprises are also beginning to take on apprentices. I am glad to see in the Budget the £85 million extension of support for SMEs to take on apprentices, and to see the £20 million increased funding for degree level apprenticeships. The Business, Innovation and Skills Committee, on which I am proud to serve, has challenged the Government to deliver on both quality and quantity for apprenticeships, and so far they have an excellent record on both.

I must mention some of the spending measures in the Budget that could directly benefit Worcester. The £20 million cathedral fund will be very welcome in many of our county towns, and the horse race betting levy extension will support Worcester race course. The cathedral and the race course are two vital landmarks in the city, and I am delighted that both could benefit from the Budget. The extra £140 million of flood funding is also extremely welcome for reasons that will be all too obvious to anyone who has watched television in recent months. It is also great news that we have seen progress on the question of VAT for air ambulances. That is a huge achievement following campaigning by many Members. I would now like to see progress on the question of VAT for hospices.

The Budget did not mention delivering fairer funding for schools, although the Chancellor did mention it in his autumn statement. We also had a statement on it last week, and a huge step forward has been taken on that issue for the first time in decades. This is a cross-party campaign in which many hon. Friends and hon. Members from across the House have taken part.

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the Campaign for Fairer Funding for Education is a great cause, and I congratulate him on championing it. Does he agree, however, that in so far as the fairer funding has been spread around the country, it seems to have overlooked Staffordshire?

[Mr Walker]

I do agree with my hon. Friend, whose intervention has given me the extra time I need to make the point that, for many years, that campaign was led by the former Member for Stafford, David Kidney, who spoke passionately about the issue. I have said to the Education Secretary and others that it would be unfortunate if Staffordshire were passed over in this regard, but £350 million represents a big step forward for the lowest-funded authorities and, by my calculations and those of f40—the Campaign for Fairer Funding in Education—Staffordshire is among those lowest-funded authorities and deserves help.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid) is on the Front Bench today, and he is a Worcestershire colleague. I am delighted that Worcestershire will be receiving £5 million to help schools that have been underfunded for a long time. The long-term economic plan to take our country forward must focus on skills and on preparing young people for the future. Fair funding for education is a vital part of that, and I am grateful for the enormous support that colleagues have given me during this campaign. Indeed, most of my colleagues sitting on these Benches at the moment have supported the campaign and spoken passionately about it. I am grateful that it is a cross-party campaign, and one that we have been able to take forward significantly this year, and in this Budget. This is a Budget for jobs and for the future, and it allows us to take a significant step forward in achieving fairness for our country.

16:19

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

When the Chancellor rose to his feet yesterday, people across the country hoped he would have something to offer on the escalating cost of living and an economy that has seen the value of wages shrink. People in the north-east hoped he would offer help to do something about the highest unemployment levels in England. Nearly 1 million young people out of work, many for more than a year, hoped for some kind of job guarantee that would see them earning a living and learning along the way, and public sector workers hoped for a better deal and a fair reward for their work, but it was not to be. Instead, as we heard my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition say, we have a Government who are able to give millionaires a £200,000 tax cut but cannot increase nurses’ pay by £250 a year. This is a Budget with inequality written all over it.

By failing to address the growing problems of inequality, higher prices, falling real wages and catastrophic housing shortages, the Chancellor has confirmed that any recovery that exists is being felt only by the privileged few. I have already alluded to the comments from Citizens Advice chief executive, Gillian Guy, who said:

“The Chancellor talked about making, doing and saving. This Budget needs to work for those who are making do and can’t save.”

She continued:

“We’re halfway through the austerity programme and many spending cuts have yet to bite. Families are feeling the cumulative impact of the stripping away of support and services from all sides.”

Citizens Advice tells us that

“3 in 5 people worry about the effect rising household bills will have on their finances over the next year…Half of UK adults— 27 million people—will have to cut their spending to cope with household costs. 1 in 4 people coming to Citizens Advice have some kind of debt problem”

and that 40% of them have dependent children.

That tells a tale not of a country where people are benefiting from the Government’s policies, but where inequalities are growing and families are suffering. Nowhere is that more the case than in the north-east, which, having contended with colossal cuts in the public sector and minimal investment, continues to have both the highest rate of unemployment and the lowest average weekly earnings in England.

Working people are already £1,600 worse off under the coalition Government than they were before the general election in May 2010, but that is exacerbated in the north-east by wages that are about £50 per week less than the UK average and almost £200 per week less than wages in London. Yet the Chancellor’s announcements yesterday do nothing to address this unfairness. While some will feel the marginal effect from the tweaks made to the personal tax allowance, thousands of hard-working and low-paid people across Teesside, striving to eke out a living for their families, will be even worse off as their limited incomes are stretched even further to meet rising energy, food and other bills. Many in my constituency simply earn too little to benefit from the Chancellor’s tax cuts, and can only dream of earning the £1,250 per month that can now be saved tax-free in ISAs, let alone being able to save this amount.

Let us not forget that while the Chancellor was making heedless efforts to encourage saving, Britain’s household borrowing is at a record high, equivalent to an average household debt of £54,000. So while the chairman of the Conservative party tediously patronised hard-working people by lauding minuscule cuts to the costs of beer and bingo, more families owe more money than ever before. This low-wage recovery means many have to deplete any savings they may have had, driving greater inequality and fuelling a growing demand for extra support—most worryingly, in the form of food banks.

Such naivety is just another demonstration of exactly how out of touch the Conservative-led coalition is with hard-working families. But too often the north-east is characterised precisely by the challenges that inequality poses, and not by the potential that exists in the region were it to be given the right opportunities to thrive and flourish. It is those opportunities that the Chancellor failed to deliver. Enhancing the mix of skills and knowledge within the regional economy, aligning them with those needed by businesses in the north-east, would be the first step to closing the skills gap.

While businesses such as Sembcorp on Teesside are managing to create jobs and recruit apprentices, many smaller firms struggle to share their expertise and skills owing to the lack of support they need to make a real impact. We have had some help from the regional growth fund money and an enterprise zone, and the Budget contains some welcome, albeit limited, positive news for energy-intensive industries on Teesside. But welcome as those things are, their value pales into insignificance in comparison with the support and investment for the north-east each year from 1997 to 2010. We really could have done with something in the Chancellor’s Budget to stimulate growth in the green economy on Teesside, an area that holds great potential both for growth and investment. Companies such as Air Products and INEOS are investing on Teesside, despite ongoing and tedious regulatory hurdles, but the Chancellor yesterday offered no incentive for others to follow suit. As a result, potential investors have been deterred and we have seen a large-scale investment slump from an all-time high of £7.2 billion in 2009 to £3 billion in 2012. This Budget comes back to one word: inequality.

16:24

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

I wish to reflect on one or two significant changes that this Budget and the Government’s long-term strategy are delivering, and to look at how they impact on the businesses and the people in my constituency.

First, I welcome the further steps that have been taken on tax-free personal allowances. Some 39,000 people in my constituency will benefit from the £800 tax cut. In addition, my local council has frozen the council tax for the fifth consecutive year, which is good news for local families. None the less, we still need to go further. In due course, I hope we will be able to align the tax-free personal allowance with the national minimum wage, so that no one on the national minimum wage pays income tax.

Secondly, I want to welcome the pension changes that were announced yesterday. The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb) has his fingerprints all over those proposals. Pensioner security has been his goal for a very long time. Linking the basic pension to rises in prices or earnings or 2.5% whichever is the higher has delivered an extra £650 to 14,879 pensioners in my constituency. That feature of our pension system should be made permanent. It would help to guarantee the foundation on which individual retirement savings are built. I also welcome what my hon. Friend said in response to me earlier on when he made his statement.

That leads me to the radical change to the way in which people take their pensions. The change is the most radical for nearly a century, giving people greater choice on how to access their defined contribution pension savings. The current arrangements are complicated and leave pensioners feeling short-changed. By lifting restrictions on individuals who have made the right choice to save can empower people to plan for their later life. The changes reflect the longevity revolution that is taking place in our country. As life spans increase and healthy life expectancy rises, we need our pension system to adapt to support people in their third age.

The quality of the guidance available to people when taking decisions will be critical. The fact that this guidance will be free and face to face is good news. I hope Ministers will take the opportunity to join up later life planning. The way in which long-term care is paid for in this country introduces a duty to provide information and advice, including financial advice. It must surely make sense to ensure that people are presented with a rounded picture of their later life needs. We all want to plan for our third age of active retirement, but impartial guidance should also help us to plan for our fourth age of frailty, when we sometimes need support and care. I welcome what my hon. Friend said on that, too.

It is great news that the UK is forecast to grow faster than any other G7 economy in the first half of this year. Sustainable growth will come from a more balanced economy. We want to prosper from what we make and from our ability to translate scientific discovery into jobs and growth for UK plc.

In my constituency, we already have a world leader in the life sciences—the Institute of Cancer Research. The institute discovers more new cancer drugs than any other academic centre in the world, as well as generating more invention income per capita than any other UK higher education institution. My council’s Successful Sutton growth plan, which has already attracted £319 million of inward investment and created many more new jobs, will form the heart of an extraordinary life science campus. What makes that plan so exciting is that the institute shares its Sutton home with the Royal Marsden, which is one of the world’s best cancer hospitals. That ability to translate discoveries from the lab bench to the bedside and to operate a close collaboration between clinicians and scientists provides a huge competitive advantage.

[Mr Heath]

I am interested to hear what my right hon. Friend says about the investment in his constituency. It is exactly what the Science and Technology Committee, on which I serve, is looking for in terms of the correlation between original research and market-ready bioscience and high-tech solutions, which we can use both in this country and abroad.

[Paul Burstow]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The two organisations in Sutton have an exceptional working relationship, which makes the site unique in the UK and up there with the best organisations in the world, such as MD Anderson in Houston and Sloan-Kettering in New York. My right hon. Friend the Business Secretary is aware of these emerging plans, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury was very impressed when he visited the Institute of Cancer Research in January. The potential from the site is huge. There is space for life science businesses to cluster; 10,000 direct jobs; a £350 million contribution to the economy; and increased research income. These are huge opportunities and I hope that the Business Secretary and his colleagues in the Department will ensure that his officials fully engage with them so that we can realise the full potential of the project.

Let me end my speech by making some comments about housing. What was announced in the Budget was welcome, but I think it missed an essential ingredient—a focus on the fastest-growing source of demand for housing, people over the age of 65. There is a chronic shortage of the right housing options for people in the second half of their lives. Too often, moves in later life come as a result of a crisis rather than an attempt to fulfil aspirations for a better quality of life. The Help to Buy scheme and the rules governing the community infrastructure levy need to be reviewed to help grow the market for later life housing. The impact on the housing supply chain could be profound, freeing family homes, creating jobs in renovation and helping people to make the most of their third age.

In conclusion, there is more to be done, but the Government have ensured that growth is back, employment is rising, unemployment is falling and inflation is under control. The Government are doing the right thing and providing a sound platform for this country to move forward and that is why I support the Budget.

16:30

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

People in Croydon North were looking to this Budget to help them with the cost of living crisis that has hit them so hard since this Government were elected. Wages are down £1,600 a year since 2010, long-term youth unemployment remains unacceptably high and people are struggling with the Government’s VAT hike and failure to restrain energy price rises. They looked to this Budget for change, but I regret they found precious little.

Instead, the Budget simply ignored the real problems facing people in Croydon North. With the average national income around £26,000, very few working households have a spare £15,000 a year to invest in ISAs. The issues that concern them are how to put food on the table, how to pay the heating bills and how to stay in employment, but on the things that really matter there was precious little help on offer from the Chancellor yesterday.

There is a desperate housing shortage across London. Croydon North has extremely high numbers of people living in substandard overcrowded private rented housing and what is needed is an urgent increase in the building of affordable and social housing. The proposals for Ebbsfleet, although welcome, are just a drop in the ocean compared with what is needed.

One of the most painful of all the challenges facing Croydon North is the scandal of long-term youth unemployment. Week after week in this Chamber I watch Tory Ministers’ complacency about that issue. In Croydon North, more than 1,000 young people have been unemployed for more than a year. That figure remains unacceptably high and the statistic masks the tragedy of individual young people growing up to be told that the society around them thinks that they have nothing to offer. It is a waste of their talent and of their ability, of their present and of their future. A national house building programme at scale could have helped to provide the jobs that those young people need, but that opportunity, alas, was missed yesterday.

One of the most welcome proposals for my party is the youth jobs guarantee. What a difference that would have made to those young people’s self-esteem and dignity and what a crying shame it is for every unemployed youngster in Croydon North that this Government will not introduce it.

Hard-working people are not obsessed with beer and bingo, in the way the Tories like to caricature them. Instead, they care about jobs, homes, education, health and how to pay their ever-rising household bills. The Tories can put out condescending adverts as much as they like, but they cannot hide from the fact that people are worse off, not better off, after four years of Tory rule.

16:33

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

It is the afternoon after the day before. The metaphoric bunting has gone, the media have left Westminster Green and the Chamber and, indeed, the Galleries have emptied—but that just might be because I am on my feet. This is the point at which enough time has elapsed to appreciate the full impact of the Red Book. If the newspaper headlines, radio interviews and a very weak Opposition response are anything to go by, this Budget is standing up to scrutiny and is already being recognised as a significant statement of intent, building on this Government’s long-term economic plan of reducing the deficit, creating more jobs and making people more financially secure.

The Chancellor began his speech by reminding us of the scale of the economic mess we inherited, caused by banks lending funds they did not have to people who could not afford it in ways they did not understand. It has taken a new Government completely to reform the regulatory system and to introduce the necessary changes to make Britain competitive again. Unlike the predictions from the Opposition, this was achieved without any double or triple-dip recessions in sight, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) said.

The first primary indicator for the economy is employment, and a record number of people are now in work. The figures from my constituency point to the fact that the number of unemployed claimants for last month fell to 1,785, down 487 from a year ago. The shadow Chancellor tried to suggest that youth unemployment had somehow increased. He wants to be Chancellor. He wants to be the person in charge of the numbers, but he fails to mention that the figures include full-time students. I am pleased to say that the number of students at Bournemouth university, the Arts University Bournemouth and Bournemouth and Poole college have increased. They are included and he should know that.

[Neil Carmichael]

The same is true in my constituency. We have falling unemployment and we are looking for more people with engineering skills. Does my hon. Friend agree that the real success of this Government is the way in which they have stimulated the real economy?

[Mr Ellwood]

Absolutely. I concur with my hon. Friend, and that is one reason why more money has gone into apprenticeships as well.

My second point concerns GDP growth. A year ago, the OBR predicted growth for 2013 at just 0.6%. In fact, it came in at three times that level, and the forecast for next year has changed from 1.8% to 2.4%.

Thirdly, inflation now sits at 1.9%, well within the range set by the Bank of England. Fourthly, thanks to our low interest rates, the cost of borrowing by individuals, banks and the Government is low. But, of course, low interest rates are not so welcome to savers, hence this important announcement to end compulsory annuities, making it cheaper and simpler for pensioners to draw down their savings.

[Christopher Pincher]

My hon. Friend mentions that inflation is low. Is it not the case that wage inflation this year is likely to be higher than inflation, which means that finally we will see an end to the wages crunch?

[Mr Ellwood]

Again, my hon. Friend makes a valid point.

Finally, I come to the deficit, and how much the Government must borrow to balance the books. The OBR predicts that the deficit will continue to fall. We should remind the Opposition that when they took office in 1997, they inherited a sound economy. Up to 2002, the Labour Government made a surplus. Then the wheels came off, one by one. By 2004, the deficit was up to £33 billion, by 2008-09, it had increased to £69 billion, and in their final year of office, they had to borrow £156 billion to balance the books. Thankfully, a change in Government brought in a new economic strategy and our deficit has reduced to £108 billion this year, which will drop to £95 billion next year. If we stick to this economic plan, we will balance the books by 2018.

Of course, productivity, exports and savings figures are not what they should be, and the Budget addresses that. Time is limited and I cannot go into the details, but I welcome greater incentives.

[Richard Graham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the remarks from the shadow Chancellor earlier, and indeed some of his colleagues, about the long-term unemployment situation, are important, but only as a proportion of the total unemployment rate in our constituencies, which has come down sharply in most cases since the last election? Those who are long-term unemployed were often not very well educated under the previous Government.

[Mr Ellwood]

Again, my hon. Friend makes a valid point, which is why we now see record numbers of people coming in to work.

I welcome greater incentives to save, with the ISA limit increase, the abolition of the 10p rate and the introduction of the new pensioner bond. The personal income tax allowance rise to £10,500 is also welcome, as are the larger and cheaper loans for companies seeking to export. Coming from Dorset, I of course welcome the freeze on cider duty, and I also welcome additional funds for apprenticeships, pothole and flood repairs, and regional theatres and airports.

Today’s Budget builds on the Government’s objective of securing the recovery and building a resilient economy. The job is not yet done, but the big question looming is whether we want to continue with a proven economic plan that is seeing Britain stand head and shoulders above any country in Europe, or risk returning to No. 10 the very team, the very people, who were responsible for the scale of the economic crisis in the first place.

16:39

[Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)]

What is clear from the debate we have had today and the Budget statement we heard yesterday is that this Government are hopelessly out of touch. There was no mention from Government Members, either yesterday or today, of the central fact that after four years of this Government ordinary working people are £1,600 a year worse off.

The Chancellor said yesterday that his Budget was for doers, makers and savers. Well, it might help some doers, some makers and some savers, but one would not want to bet the house on it. That is because of the Government’s record. In 2010 he said that he would eliminate the deficit by 2015, but we now know that he does not plan to do that until 2018. The Government have borrowed £190 billion more than they originally planned to. Indeed, they borrowed more in three years than the previous Labour Government borrowed in 13 years.

In 2011 the Chancellor announced his Budget for growth, but we saw his growth forecasts revised down. In 2012 he said that he would tackle tax avoidance to raise billions of pounds, but the UK-Swiss tax deal raised only a fraction of the money the Government promised. The truth is that he is way out on his own forecasts of where he said we would be when he came to power. He has failed on the terms he set for himself, and ordinary people are paying the price.

The Chancellor would have us believe that his Budget will improve the lives of ordinary working people at some point in the not-too-distant future, but I am afraid that it is a future that is just out of reach—it is not now. There is nothing in the Budget that will help the ordinary person in the ordinary family in the here and now. In the here and now, wages are down for the ordinary working person, bills are up and the economy will not return to pre-crisis levels until 2017.

Sure, for a doer earning £150,000 or more, or a banker taking a big bonus, this is a Budget and this is a Government for them. The Chancellor has already given a huge tax cut to people earning over £150,000, and bankers’ bonuses are rising. People earning over £1 million have received a tax cut worth, on average, £100,000. But what about the rest of the doers? The average wage in this country is £26,500. There are no meaningful measures in the Budget to help them. What is gained by the increase in the personal allowance has already been more than wiped out by the cost of living crisis affecting millions of people across our country. The truth is that this Chancellor has given with one hand but taken away far more with the other. There is nothing in the Budget for the millions of hard-working doers up and down our country.

As for the makers, there was some welcome news in the Budget, but I am afraid that it is a case of far too little, far too late. On both energy and business investment, the Chancellor was simply putting right the mistakes that he made in his 2010 Budget, especially the cut in capital allowances, a fact that he conveniently forgot to mention yesterday. In 2010 he hit businesses that wanted to invest. It is good that he is starting to put that right, but it is very late in the day and a lot of damage has already been done to the economy.

On exports, again there were some welcome steps, but revised export forecasts show that the Chancellor is set to miss his 2020 target. In fact, the Budget suggests that he will not even get halfway. Again, his own record does not give us a great deal of hope. The Government’s export enterprise finance guarantee scheme helped just five firms before it folded, and the export refinancing facility was still not operational over a year after it was first announced. That is not a record to be proud of.

On science and research—this relates to the discoverers and inventors that the makers of this country rely on—once again we saw the Government’s characteristic approach: a little bit here and a little bit there, but nothing in the co-ordinated and planned way that this country’s science community is crying out for. There is no long-term science framework, as was delivered by the previous Labour Government, and as will be delivered again by the next Labour Government in 2015. Everybody knows that this country’s science, research and innovation base, which punches well above its weight on the global scale, needs a long-term plan for certainty and to build the critical mass from which great innovation occurs, but this Government have once again failed to deliver it.

As for savers, we will have to look at the detailed proposals, but the Budget itself shows that the forecast savings ratio has been revised down for every year from 2013 to 2018. So much for a Budget to encourage saving! This afternoon, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has told us that the changes are based on “highly uncertain assumptions” and could create people who lose out. What of the millions of people in this country, in the here and now, who cannot save because of the cost of living crisis? Saving will be a luxury for the hundreds of thousands of people relying on food banks to survive and the tens of thousands of people who are being pushed into debt by the bedroom tax.

In this debate we have heard many examples of the effects of the Government’s failure in powerful contributions from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) and my hon. Friends the Members for Westminster North (Ms Buck), for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), for Luton South (Gavin Shuker), for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham), and for Croydon North (Mr Reed). Every single Labour Member spoke of what the Government should have addressed in their Budget yesterday. This Budget is yet another missed opportunity to deal with the cost of living crisis.

[Christopher Pincher]

If the hon. Lady is concerned about the cost of living crisis, as we all should be, why did her party support an amendment to the Energy Bill in the other place that would have added £150 to energy bills? How would that help with the cost of living crisis?

[Shabana Mahmood]

The truth is that we have called for a freeze on energy bills, which are going up under this Government. Perhaps the Government might understand the cost of living crisis better if they had more women on their Front Bench. I notice that once again this afternoon there is not a single female Member on the Government Front Bench.

The cost of living crisis has meant that child care costs have spiralled by 30% since 2010. Energy bills are up by almost £300 since the election, with consumers having no way of knowing whether the bills are fair, owing to weak competition and poor regulation. Rent is using up more and more of people’s incomes, with rent arrears becoming the fastest growing debt, and food prices have risen by over 4% year on year, putting a huge squeeze on family finances. The Government know that this is not about choosing between bringing the deficit down and dealing with the very serious cost of living crisis. That is simply a false choice that they choose to hide behind, because this Budget could have addressed these things.

Labour Members have put forward a number of fully costed proposals that would deal with the cost of living crisis and get help to families here and now. On child care, we would use a levy on banks to provide 25 hours of free child care a week, worth £1,500, for working parents with three and four-year-olds. The Government’s proposals, which will not even kick in until after the election, will give most benefit to the highest earners, who tend to have the highest child care costs. On housing, we have committed to getting 200,000 homes a year built by 2020, whereas this Government have refused to take the action that is needed and are presiding over the lowest levels of house building in peacetime since the 1920s.

On energy, as I said to the hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), we would freeze energy bills until 2017, and, importantly, reform the energy market to stop consumers being ripped off. We would cut taxes for 24 million working people on middle and low incomes with a lower, 10p starting rate of income tax. We would put young people back to work with a job for the long-term young unemployed that they had to take, paid for by a tax on bankers bonuses. We would balance the books in a fairer way by reversing the £3 billion tax cut for people earning £150,000 a year, which this Government sought to prioritise ahead of any action to help hard-working families in our country.

Yesterday the Chancellor had an opportunity to help people who are struggling in the here and now, and he refused to take it. This Government’s so-called long-term economic plan has failed on its own terms, and people on middle and lower incomes are paying the price. People know that this is not about how the pound looks but how many they have in their pockets. Today they have fewer than they did in 2010, and in 2015 they will have fewer than they had in 2010. It is the same old story—you are worse off under the Tories.

16:49

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sajid Javid)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood). This is the first time I have had an opportunity to speak in this House since learning of the sad death of the right hon. Tony Benn. With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I would like to pay a short tribute to him. As a young boy growing up in Bristol, even though I did not necessarily agree with much of what he said, I admired him as a man of principle, passion and compassion. I extend my condolences to his family and friends.

I begin by thanking hon. Members from both sides of the Chamber for their contributions this afternoon. It has been good to hear some Labour Members actually offering opinions on the Budget’s measures, given their leader’s failure to do so yesterday. In 15 minutes at the Dispatch Box he more or less failed to acknowledge that the Budget even happened.

We should not be surprised. Not a single Labour Member seems to acknowledge the facts when they left office. They left the country with its biggest post-war recession, the largest budget deficit in the G20 and the largest banking bail-out in the world. Their policies destroyed the living standards of millions.

[Shabana Mahmood]

The Financial Secretary is talking about facts, so will he confirm one fact that his colleague the Chief Secretary to the Treasury failed to confirm yesterday, which is that working people are £1,600 a year worse off under this Government and that they will be worse off in 2015 than they were in 2010?

[Sajid Javid]

What I will confirm is that people in this country have been hurt because of the great recession that took place as a result of the Labour party’s policies. It was the biggest decline in our GDP in more than 100 years.

I am sure Labour Members will acknowledge that the best way to get our country back up on its feet and to improve the living standards of everyone in the UK is to have a growing economy that creates jobs. That is exactly what yesterday’s Budget continued to do. It is part of our long-term economic plan to give economic security to families across Britain and, through our increase to the personal allowance, to put more money back in the pockets of hard-working people.

Yesterday’s Budget sent a very clear message to all those businesses that are driving our economic recovery that, if they want to invest in new machinery, then, through our extension and expansion of the annual investment allowance, which will give 99% of businesses a 100% allowance, this Government will support them; if they want to manufacture but are concerned about the cost of energy, then, by capping the carbon price support rate, this Government will support them; if they want to export to emerging markets, then, with higher lending at lower interest rates, this Government will support them; and, crucially, if they want to employ, then, not just through our employment allowance, which comes into force next month, but through our extension of the apprenticeship grant for employers—which my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) has referred to—this Government will support them. Those are measures that will help businesses to invest, manufacture, export and employ. As such, I hope that everyone in this Chamber will support them.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

On the subject of fairness, which I am sure my hon. Friend is alluding to, is he as pleased as I am that it is the Conservative party in a coalition Government that is tackling tax avoidance by reforming stamp duty in relation to shell companies with residential property? The Labour party did nothing about that in 13 years and it also increased pensions by 75p and cut expenditure.

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is under this Conservative-led Government that the rich are paying a higher proportion of tax than in each year the previous Government were in office.

Yesterday’s Budget also provided targeted support for some of those industries that are critical for our economy. It showed that we are supporting our construction sector by offering £500,000 to small house-building firms; that we are supporting our oil and gas sector by introducing a new allowance for ultra-high pressure, high-temperature fields, a measure that will increase investment and jobs; and that we are supporting our creative economy by introducing a theatre tax relief and extending our film tax credit, a measure that will build on the astronomical success of films such as “Gravity”. All those measures will put money and trust back into the hands of businesses, and give them the power to invest, expand and employ.

Yesterday’s Budget was all about trust—trust in the imagination and hard work of the British people to turn our economy around, and trust in the fiscal prudence of the British people to take their hard-earned pensions when they want, and to invest and spend them how they want.

[Alex Cunningham]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sajid Javid]

I am afraid that I do not have time.

Most importantly, the Budget was about trust in British businesses, as was highlighted by my hon. Friends the Members for Dudley South (Chris Kelly), for Poole (Mr Syms), for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) and for Norwich North (Chloe Smith).

[Alex Cunningham]

rose—

[Sajid Javid]

I will give way quickly.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am grateful to the Minister. The IFS has said today that the pension changes are based on “highly uncertain assumptions” that could lead to “market failure”. Would the Minister care to discuss that?

[Sajid Javid]

The pension changes will give people a choice that they have never had before: it is their pension, and it is their choice.

Our businesses are not, as the Opposition would have us believe, the enemy; they are the reason why our economy is growing faster than any other advanced economy. They are the reason why more than 1.6 million jobs have been created in the private sector during the past four years. Many Opposition Members have spoken today about the importance of bringing down unemployment, on which they are absolutely right to focus. They might have some good ideas about how to do it, so I thought that I would look at the facts. I can report that unemployment went up during Labour’s last term and has fallen under this Government in the constituency of every Opposition Member who has spoken today. For example, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), who is not in his place, unemployment went up 98% under Labour, and is down 29% under this Government. In the constituency of the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), it went up 96% under Labour, and is 17% down under this Government. Which Opposition Member saw the largest increase in unemployment? The right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) saw a record increase of 184% in unemployment in his constituency during Labour’s last term, when he was in office, but it is down 21% under this Government. As expected, Opposition Members know how to create problems, but they have no idea how to solve them.

This Government trust businesses and want to help them, and we want to help the savers, the doers and the makers. This Budget does all those things, and I commend it to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.— (Mr Gyimah.)

Debate to be resumed Monday 24 March.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

If the shouting across the Chamber can stop—perhaps Ministers would like to go outside to do that—we can move on to the Adjournment.

Hinkley Point C (Infrastructure Projects)

Thursday 20th March 2014 Commons Chamber

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

17:00

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

I want to thank Mr Speaker for granting this opportunity to debate the new Hinkley Point C nuclear power station, which, as I am sure hon. Members will have noticed, is somewhat remote from my Romsey and Southampton North constituency. In fact, it is more than 90 miles away. However, such a major infrastructure project, which will generate electricity and distribute it around the network, will have an impact on Romsey and Southampton North. Despite the distance, a group of residents in my constituency have valid concerns that Hinkley Point C has the potential to have a knock-on impact on the village of Nursling and, specifically, on a small group of residents who live near the local electricity substation.

Let me start by saying that I fully support the building of the new reactor at Hinkley Point and that I support an energy policy that is both affordable and diverse. The new power station is essential to keep the lights on. Along with developments in renewable energy, it will ensure that the UK’s energy needs are provided for. This is not, therefore, a speech that is anti-nuclear or anti-Hinkley Point. Neither is it a speech about energy policy.

This afternoon, I wish to give voice to my constituents’ concerns regarding the further development of an electricity substation that was built in the late 1960s and is now a potential part of National Grid’s planned infrastructure to deal with Hinkley Point when it comes online. Thus far, the planning process has denied my constituents that voice.

The Nursling substation is located in an extremely rural setting and occupies roughly a third of a 5-hectare field, the remainder of which has remained untouched since the substation was built. Outline planning permission was granted in 1963 and reserved matters were agreed in 1968. To call it a field is to do it an injustice. It is an important local amenity that enjoys a public right of way and is used by dog walkers and nature lovers from the local area. My constituents accurately call the field

“a piece of open countryside of rural character, which supports a diversity of wildlife”.

Although planning regulations might not regard it as such, that is, in my opinion, an exceptionally accurate description.

Close by sit a number of residential properties. There are two grade II listed buildings and two sites of special scientific interest, including the world-renowned River Test. There is no doubt that the field is a haven for wildlife. It includes a pond, which, along with the surrounding hedgerows, trees and grassland, provides a home for at least 12 species that are considered to be ‘protected’ under several pieces of UK and European legislation. There are slow worms, dormice, adders, water voles and the rare Cetti’s warbler, as well as other important birds and reptiles.

The field has been important in managing the recent floods, which have had a severe impact on my constituency. Recently, parts of it were under a metre of water. That is a subject of some importance, given that my constituency has been described by the Environment Agency as one of the most flood-prone areas of Hampshire. Therefore, it is perhaps not the best place to build a substation of this magnitude. Under the plans proposed by National Grid, the substation would approximately treble in size to accommodate two enormous quad boosters to deal with the electricity provided by Hinkley Point C.

My constituents maintain—and I share their concern—that, quite apart from the short-term nuisance that would be associated with the development, in the long term, the scheme has the potential to have a seriously negative impact on the surrounding area, the natural habitat and the amenity of the local residents. The footprint of the new substation will mean that the public right of way would be lost. This haven for wildlife would be concreted over to allow a dramatic increase in the size of the substation.

I share the concern of my constituents that, although the planning process underpinning the development of the actual power station at Hinkley Point has been absolutely transparent, the process for the development of what the Planning Act 2008 calls “associated developments” has not been quite so see-through in the case of Nursling.

It is apparent that the permission to develop the site, which is allowing National Grid to have an impact on the lives of local residents, remove a significant local amenity and destroy an important habitat, has been granted without those who have the most to lose having the right to be adequately consulted. That might come as a surprise to many who believe that we live in age of localism, in which those who will be most affected have the most say. However, because National Grid owns the field and has planning permissions dating back to its acquisition in the 1960s, the local planning authority has been obliged to issue a certificate of lawful permitted development because it has no choice. The residents can do nothing about it because they have no voice.

My constituents, who have produced an impressive dossier of information and data, assert that the development of the substation has avoided statutory and regulatory consent, and that the local planning authority has acted unlawfully in allowing it to go ahead. They have suggested that the decision should be judicially reviewed, on the basis that it should have been called in by the Secretary of State under the new powers granted to his office in the national planning policy framework. I will not comment on that assertion, but in an age of localism, I do not believe that a planning permission of the 1960s that was never extended over the full site should deny local residents an opportunity to register their objections, not least because the certificate of lawful permitted development means that National Grid is not obliged to do anything to ameliorate the negative impact that its development could have.

It is clear that Hinkley Point C is a development that will benefit the whole country, including my constituents. However, that of itself does not justify denying them a voice when it comes to related or secondary infrastructure projects that could have a negative impact on them.

The project was granted permission by the Secretary of State in March 2013, following a six-month consultation process that was headed up by the Planning Inspectorate and involved a panel of examining officers. There is nothing to suggest that there was anything untoward in the process by which the Secretary of State reached his decision and upon which he issued his consent order. Nor am I suggesting that the local planning authority has acted in anything other than a perfectly correct manner—I will leave others to decide whether that is the case. What is clear, however, is that for right or wrong, there has been not been an opportunity for the people of Nursling to be consulted about the impact of the additional infrastructure that is needed to distribute the power generated by Hinkley Point C, and that is unjustified.

The planning guidance associated with the 2008 Act, which was drafted specifically to deal with large infrastructure projects such Hinkley Point C, clearly lists electricity substations as the type of “associated development” for which planning permission may be granted. Indeed, the guidance states that it is

“designed to help those who intend to make an application for development consent under the Planning Act to determine how the provisions of the Planning Act in respect of associated development apply to their proposals.”

But there we have the nub of the problem—there is no application. That means that there is no opportunity for the local community to be consulted.

The field is subject to a certificate of lawful development granted in 1963, based on an outline planning permission, by an authority that no longer has planning powers. Because of that 1963 planning permission and the subsequent permitted development, the site is not part of the consultation on Hinkley Point C. In planning terms the expansion already exists, so it does not have to be part of the infrastructure consultation. It is a classic Catch-22 situation for my constituents—because there is nothing that can be done to prevent the substation from being built, there is no mechanism by which my constituents can express their view. How can it be right that a major infrastructure project affecting my constituents can go ahead without the need for National Grid to obtain any approvals for that part of it from any local or national Government Department and without any need to consult the residents affected? Does that example demonstrate that the Government need to review procedures for major infrastructure developments to ensure that the public have the right to be consulted in such cases?

I wish to raise several points with my hon. Friend the Minister this afternoon and ask him to consider some actions to prevent such a situation from happening again. First, should there be some sort of time limit for the completion of development for which full planning permission has been granted? In the field that I have mentioned, because the original substation was built in the 1960s and the entire field was included in the outline planning permission, the development is considered to have been started and concluded, but actually most of the site is untouched. A statute of limitation would mean that further development on the field could be subject to a fresh planning application.

Secondly, how is it that in a six-month planning consultation there was no possibility of this associated development being considered or consulted on? National Grid states that proposals of this type “normally” require permission from the Secretary of State, so why should planning permission dating back around 50 years allow this development to proceed without any of the usual requirements that something of this scale and magnitude would normally need? Indeed, I am not sure that the report by the panel of examining inspectors even considered that part of the development. National Grid simply did not include the development at Nursling in its application because it considered, in planning terms, that it already exists when it patently does not.

My constituents ask why the local planning authority was not obliged to screen the development, or to request a screening opinion from the Secretary of State to ascertain whether there was need for an environmental impact assessment. That is a relevant question because the land was deemed to be operational, despite the fact that it had never been used as such, which meant that an EIA was not required. That is a bizarre state of affairs. How can a rural field, full of wildlife, including protected species, within 200 yards of the protected site of special scientific interest of the River Test and untouched by development, be regarded in some way as “operational” land?

My constituents believe that the site should not have been granted a certificate of lawful permitted development, particularly given that in the borough local plan, that field had been designated as countryside for years. Needless to say, they are deeply concerned about potential risks to their health from this development, and complain that they have been give no information about how it will affect them. They feel unconsulted and ignored, denied at every turn the chance to have their voice heard. I thank Mr Speaker for this opportunity to air the concerns of my constituents, and the Minister for any response he may be able to give.

17:11

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) on securing this debate, on raising an issue that her constituents are concerned about, and on describing her efforts to resolve the situation and get some clarity. This debate has raised important issues about the planning process and how it goes ahead with community engagement. I am pleased to have the chance to respond.

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing to my attention this complex planning case in her constituency, because it gives us the chance to consider some of the issues behind it. We are always interested to hear about local experiences of the planning system, and suggestions for how the system could be improved in the future. Her comments are now on the record, as are her suggestions for ways to ensure that situations that create the kinds of problems her constituents feel they are going through cannot occur. I hope that she appreciates that I cannot comment on specific cases because of the Secretary of State’s role in the planning process, but I am more than happy to speak in general terms about the issues she raises.

Let me make it clear that the planning system—which we have greatly improved since we took office—is designed to help secure the delivery of sustainable development. A number of different processes are in place to help to secure that outcome and ensure effective engagement with local people and their accountable councils in a proportionate way. Without commenting on the specific details of this case, as I understand it, the application for a lawful development certificate was with regard to the scope of permitted development, and not to the scope of any earlier planning permission. Therefore it might be helpful if I explain the mechanisms that I think are relevant and, in particular, the scope of statutory undertakers to undertake development without the need for planning permission—commonly referred to as permitted development. I shall also consider the purpose of lawful development certificates, and the process that is followed when an application for a certificate is made.

National permitted development rights allow certain building works and changes of use to be carried out without an application. I stress, however, that those rights are typically subject to a number of conditions and limitations that control impact and protect local amenities. For example, there could be limits on the height and size of buildings. In some cases, based on the scale of existing structures, there are a number of protected geographical areas, including areas of outstanding natural beauty, and national parks, where certain permitted development rights are not available, or size limits are reduced.

I should add that even if a planning application is not needed, other consents, such as operating licences, may be required under other regimes. These rights are set out in the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995, as amended. Members may be particularly interested in part 17 of schedule 2 to the order—I know it is something they will all want to be reading when they get back home tonight. Part 17 permits a range of types of development by bodies such as statutory undertakers, carrying out their functions under statutory powers. For example, under class G of part 17, certain development is permitted for the generation, transmission or supply of electricity. However, in common with most other parts of the permitted development order, there are a range of restrictions on these rights. For example, some of the rights do not apply in a national park, an area of outstanding national beauty or a site of special scientific interest. There are a number of restrictions in relation to the height and volume of the different types of structures that can be erected, and, in some cases, electricity undertakers must seek prior approval of the design and external appearance of certain proposed buildings. These rights provide important flexibilities for statutory undertakers to undertake development quickly and effectively, given the vital role they play in delivering national infrastructure.

It is important to note that although there is no legal requirement on all statutory undertakers to carry out a public consultation for development under permitted development rights, we have it made clear in our planning guidance, which is now available online in a usable and accessible way, that public consultation may be beneficial if development is expected to have a particularly significant impact. In such instances, consultation could be initiated by either the local planning authority or the statutory undertaker. Any consultation should allow adequate time to consider representations and, if necessary, amend proposals. In some cases, where it is not clear whether proposals can be considered permitted development, it is possible to apply for a lawful development certificate for a legally binding decision from the local planning authority. This is often used if there is any ambiguity over whether the proposal is within the scope of permitted development set out in the general permitted development order I mentioned a few moments ago.

Local planning authorities can seek information from the public on applications for lawful development certificates, if they feel that it would help them reach a decision on whether a development meets these legal requirements. I stress that the purpose of lawful development certificates is to confirm what is lawfully permitted already, having regard to existing extant planning permissions and the scope for permitted development. They cannot be used to secure planning permission for a new form of development. In considering whether the proposal was permitted development, the local planning authority would have had regard to the Town and Country Planning (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2011. Permitted development rights cannot be exercised without the local planning authority’s approval in a European site designated under the habitats or wild birds directive.

Clearly, where a proposal is not permitted development, a planning application, as we would expect, is required to be made for permission to carry out development. Such applications would be dealt with in the normal way by the local planning authority, including by providing the opportunity for interested parties to make their views heard. If planning permission is granted, development must take place in accordance with the permission, approved plans and any planning conditions attached to the permission. The development must be commenced within a specified time limit, or the planning permission will lapse.

If a developer subsequently seeks to modify or extend a development that has planning permission, they would need to speak to the local planning authority. Any proposed material change to the approved development, even a minor one, would require the submission of a planning application, which would of course again be subject to public consultation. If a developer constructs something different from the planning permission, including going beyond what is allowed by permitted development rights, the unauthorised development may be subject to enforcement action.

Finally, I would also like to turn briefly to the matter of Hinkley Point C in Somerset. Following extensive community engagement, the proposed nuclear power plant obtained development consent through the nationally significant infrastructure planning regime in March last year. I can confirm that the expansion of the Nursling substation did not form part of the development consent order for Hinkley Point C and it was not an associated development. There are changes in electricity generation in the south-west generally, including at Hinkley Point C, which may require changes at Nursling. As I understand it, however, the Hinkley Point C connector project, which is at pre-application stage, does not include proposals at Nursling substation.

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to a debate about these important matters. Let me again thank my hon. Friend for her contribution, and for the ideas that she has advanced. I hope that we have been able to make clear, in the national planning policy framework and in our new suite of planning guidance, that development —whatever it is, and whatever it ought to be—should receive the scrutiny that it deserves, and that the public locally want to see. However, we must also ensure that the planning process does not impose unnecessary burdens that could prevent development from proceeding. We believe that we have provided a framework that strikes the right balance between protecting public amenities and controlling local impact, and allowing the development that our country needs in order to prosper in the 21st century.

Question put and agreed to.

17:20

House adjourned.

Petition

Thursday 20th March 2014 Petitions

Thursday 20 March 2014

Closure of Skerton Community High School (Lancaster)

Thursday 20th March 2014 Petitions

The Petition of the community surrounding Skerton Community High School,

Declares that the Petitioners believe that Lancashire County Council have not listened to their concerns for the schools closure in the initial round of consultation and that the County Council should not have perused the closure of the school any further.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take steps to support the School in its bid to remain open.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by David Morris, Official Report, 26 February 2014; Vol. 576, c. 377.]

[P001320]

Observations from the Secretary of State for Education:

The Government are committed to transforming the school system to ensure that not only are there a sufficient supply of school places but that these places are of the highest quality.

All decisions related to school closures are taken locally following a well-established five-stage statutory process to allow those directly affected by the proposals to feed in their comments. The process includes an early consultation period to allow those affected by the closure proposals to submit views and comments. The proposals must then be published in a number of places and a formal representation period follows. This allows a further opportunity for views and comments to be submitted.

The decision makers’ guidance document issued by the Department gives a full and comprehensive explanation of all of the issues and considerations which the decision maker must take into account when considering statutory proposals. They must be fully satisfied that the appropriate statutory process has been carried out, that all views submitted have been considered and all issues surrounding the closure, especially alternative and suitable provision for displaced pupils, have been explored and planned.

Lancashire County Council is proposing the closure of Skerton Community High School due to concerns over educational standards, low pupil numbers and a lack of financial viability. The formal representation period ran from 16 January 2014 to 26 February 2014 and the Council is expecting to make a decision on the proposals in April 2014.

As these decisions must be made locally, following the statutory process the Government are unable to influence the outcome. The Secretary of State’s intervention powers in matters such as these are extremely limited. He may only intervene where the local authority has acted in breach of its statutory duties, or in a way that is so unreasonable that no other authority would have acted in such a way. We have no grounds to believe that the Secretary of State can intervene in this case.

Westminster Hall

Thursday 20th March 2014 Westminster Hall

Thursday 20 March 2014

[Annette Brooke in the Chair]

Backbench Business

Thursday 20th March 2014 Westminster Hall

Women’s Contribution to the Ordained Ministry (Church of England)

Thursday 20th March 2014 Westminster Hall

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(John Penrose.)

13:30

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I am delighted that the Backbench Business Committee has granted us the time to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the ordination of women. A number of colleagues to whom I have spoken have been surprised that 20 years have elapsed since the first ordination. Indeed, the first of 32 women priests was ordained in Bristol cathedral on 12 March 1994. Angela Berners-Wilson was the first to be ordained, making history. Since then, more than 5,000 women have been ordained to the ministry. Last month, the General Synod also agreed to fast-track the process towards ordaining women as bishops, so the first female bishop could be chosen as soon as the end of this year, which is to be celebrated.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I warmly congratulate the right hon. Lady on securing this debate on this happy anniversary. Does she agree that given the exciting prospect of the first women bishops by the end of this year, there may be an argument, where sees are currently vacant, to hold them vacant for just a little bit longer in order to give some of the fantastic women in the Church of England who will make wonderful bishops the ability to apply?

[Mrs Spelman]

I had the same idea, and I put it to the Archbishop of Canterbury, but he made an important point, recalling especially his experience. When a diocese is left vacant for any long period of time, life gets quite difficult for everybody else in the diocese. He was speaking, of course, of his experience of moving swiftly to Durham and then almost as swiftly to the top post within the Church. We must recognise that although it is a good idea in principle, because it would be a way to create space for women to move into, in practical terms, we want well-functioning dioceses. However, when the event gets very close, there might be an opportunity to do what the right hon. Gentleman suggests.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

To pursue that thought, it is a matter of chronology that bishops and archbishops must retire at a certain age, although we do not expect the Archbishop of Canterbury to retire for some time. We admire and welcome the continuing services of the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London, but we hope that there is no reason why the committees and councils that nominate people to those offices will not find the pent-up talent of women, which has not been able to be used, and allow one of them to be appointed and therefore come to the House of Lords straight away.

[Mrs Spelman]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about what I would describe as succession planning. Where we know there is likely to be a retirement, with the prospect that a woman might be consecrated as bishop, we should be thinking in terms of those retirement seats. It is known to be done in politics in a similar way. Succession planning ensures a smooth transition, which is always good for the functioning of any institution. If my hon. Friend will bear with me, I will return later to the question of women bishops sitting in the Lords, which I personally hope will happen. There are some aspects that it is important to weave into this debate, and I will refer to it later.

For anyone who is following the debate, the workings of the Church of England can sometimes be a bit of a mystery, so I thought it would be worth while at the start to explain a little bit, in case a lay audience is watching. The ordained ministry consists of deacons, priests and bishops, in ascending order of seniority. Those accepted for ordination as priests are first ordained as deacons. Indeed, before women could be ordained as priests, that was the staging post where women’s progression stopped. The first women deacons were admitted in 1987 and the first women priests in 1994—a total of 1,500 women deacons were ordained as priests in that historic year.

According to statistics from the Church of England, women now make up nearly a quarter of the Church’s full-time paid clergy, at 1,870 out of 7,880. That is an increase of 14% since 2002, and the number and proportion of females is expected to rise further in the next three years. Clearly, the historic moment of ordaining women unleashed a great appetite for more women to enter the ministry. In 2010, for the first time, the number of women ordained was greater than the number of men, at 290 compared with 273.

I was given an excellent suggestion by the Opposition spokeswoman, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), that we as constituency MPs should take the opportunity of this debate to write to the women priests in our constituencies to give them a chance to raise any issues with us, reflect on their role as female priests and help us understand what it is like from their perspective. I thought that that was a really good suggestion, so I did it. As hon. Members will see shortly, I have woven into my speech some of the comments that those women gave me. I have decided not to attribute them—I think it is probably better to protect the identities of people in a public ministry—unless they expressly asked me to put a name to their quote. They made some interesting comments.

During almost 17 years as the MP for Meriden, I have had the privilege of seeing at first hand the vital contribution that many ordained women have made to the life of my constituency. One vicar described the role of women priests as “transformational”, both for the Church and for the work of churches in the local community. There are a number of benefits that come from having priests of both genders. Women bring a different approach to Church governance. Although it is perhaps a bit stereotypical to point this out, the consensual way in which women like and tend to work has resulted in the creation of many more connections at the constituency level between churches of different denominations. I have certainly seen that change led by the female clergy in my constituency. Women are also often able to approach governance issues from a different perspective, with a focus on discussion and practical solutions rather than on necessarily winning the argument hands down. That kind of collaborative approach brings benefits. I have seen increased co-operation not just between churches of different denominations but between churches and other agencies and charities in my constituency. The female priest is often at the heart of the networking process.

Women also bring a particular creativity to ministry. When women first came into ordained ministry 20 years ago, they had only male role models, which required a creative approach to being a woman and a priest. That has had many benefits for local communities. It takes anyone a while to work out how to be themselves in a job, but even more so when they have no similar role models to work from. In every sense, women priests have been trailblazers over the past 20 years.

It goes without saying that women are not the same as men. They often have more responsibility for families, looking after the home at the same time as carrying out a job. Many female vicars are also mothers or grandmothers, and I have seen the benefits that those other duties have had on their ministry. One female vicar in my constituency said:

“In Kingshurst, people call at the vicarage if they need help. I listen to a woman who works in a factory and needs help with improving her reading. I have been doing this for about three years.”

Some of the women in my constituency lack female role models within their own family—perhaps they are estranged from the grandparental generation. A female priest can provide real practical help, advice and support to young women making their first steps in motherhood without a family network around them.

There are other ways in which women priests can show their creativity in ministry. For example, in my constituency, a woman priest was involved in setting up the Seeds of Hope project in 1998. It is an independent charity that continues to flourish. It encourages a range of community activities in the north of the Solihull borough, an area that has three wards in the bottom 10% of socio-economic data. There is real deprivation in that part of my constituency. Seeds of Hope operates out of the church village hall, but remains independent, and its continued success is absolutely central to the ongoing needs of the community. One example of the kind of networking I described is that the charity plays host to a credit union, which operates at the same time as it runs lunches and support clubs for the surrounding community. The female priests have a pivotal role and bring real benefits to that community.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Does the right hon. Lady recall, at the time of women’s ordination, dire predictions from Anglo-Catholics like me that the ordination of women would lead to some terrible rupture in our relations with our Roman Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters? That has not happened. As she said, at a local level, women are often far better at cutting across denominations, working collectively and bringing faith groups together. The hope is that what we have done will spread to other Christian denominations.

[Mrs Spelman]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. The dire predictions about the ordination of women have been proved wrong. The sky has not fallen in. There has been an important cultural shift. For my late father, the idea that a woman would administer communion was strange to begin with, but he quickly came round to the idea that women are good at the job, not least because they listen well to their parishioners’ needs and carry out the office with great dignity. His concerns were blown away very quickly. Cultural acceptance of the ordination of women has been remarkably smooth in most cases.

On women bishops, if we bar women from reaching the top of Church governance, we might not always get the best person for the job, with the honourable exception of Archbishop Justin Welby, for whom I have the highest regard. It is right to place on the record that he has been skilful in weaving his way through this minefield with good grace. I sincerely hope that he will see reward with the achievement of women being consecrated as bishops.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I am sorry to intervene for a second time, but I have to go to a charity meeting, so I will probably be unable to make a speech. I take this opportunity to say that the archbishop, the other bishops and the Synod realised that accepting the Women and the Church recommendation to take away the barrier and sort things out quietly was the right way. That was led by the Second Church Estates Commissioner, who made it absolutely plain, in Parliament, in public and later to the Synod, that the House of Commons would not stand for continued discrimination on baseless grounds.

[Mrs Spelman]

My hon. Friend’s intervention was well worth making before he understandably slips away. I think all of us in this debate would wholeheartedly concur with what he says. Parliament will not stand in the way and we want the change that we support to take place.

The outcome of the General Synod vote last month is also to be celebrated because it has been a long process to get to that point. In July 2005, the General Synod approved a motion to begin the process of removing legal obstacles to women in the episcopate. It was only last month, however, that it voted to approve the process, and the final vote will be in July 2014. The Church of England has stated that it is “fully and unequivocally” committed to all orders of ministry being open equally to all. That is the official position, but some will, of course, remain opposed. Those who minister within the Church of England must accept that the Church has made a clear decision that those ordained are the true and lawful holders of their office and deserve due respect.

I have a number of friends who are female priests and they initially felt a great sense of obstruction and rejection from the views of the Synod following the great setback in progress towards women’s consecration as bishops. It made life very difficult for some of them in their parishes, because those who perhaps did not fully accept the ordination of women in the first place received a certain succour from the reservations expressed through the Synod about women’s consecration. That was a great shame, and I am pleased that progress is being made. That surely must be an encouragement to the women who have been ordained to the ministry.

The Church of England will continue to share the historic episcopate with other Churches, including those who continue to ordain only men as priests or bishops. It must therefore accept that its own decision on gender in the ministry is set within a broader process of discernment within the Anglican communion and the whole Church of God. Those within the Church of England who oppose the ministry of women bishops or priests continue to be within the spectrum of the Anglican communion, and the Church of England remains committed to enabling them to flourish within its structures.

I pay tribute to the work of WATCH, the campaigning organisation to which my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) just referred. It points out that there are still areas of concern about the point at which we have arrived. The first two of the five principles established by the package that the Synod recently agreed contain a clear, uncompromising statement—I have read it out—about women’s ordained ministry, but WATCH has concerns about the other three statements. It recognises that they represent where the Church of England is, both in voting by the General Synod and, to a much lesser extent, on the ground in the parishes. WATCH remains to be convinced that the mutual flourishing called for in the fifth principle is truly possible with that fundamental incompatibility.

WATCH remains concerned about the continuing role of flying bishops, because although the Act of Synod is to be rescinded, most of the arrangements it contained remain in place, including flying bishops. That might result in the continuing tendency for parishes under their care to separate themselves from the mainstream of the Church of England, with consequences for those parishioners who welcome the ordination of women. When the Second Church Estates Commissioner speaks, he might like to reflect on some of the remaining concerns of WATCH, because they are legitimate and important to place on the record, so that we as parliamentarians understand where there is still work to be done. I know that he will place the Government’s position on the record—as will the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant)—but our support for the next step could not be made plainer.

Although there is much good work on the transformations steering group of the Church of England, it still has some challenges to address. The group was set up after a conference held by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, to raise awareness of the issues faced by women in the Church, and it continues to call for research into strategies to address obstacles that limit the flourishing of women in ordained ministry. We all need to work hard to ensure that the glass ceiling does not remain in place, even once the formal barriers to women becoming bishops are removed. That is important. Inevitably, entrenched attitudes against women might remain, and many women will still not be fully accepted within the Church.

Our next challenge will be getting women on to the Bishops’ Bench in the House of Lords. At present, many ordained women have reported feeling that they are still regarded as second best, which will persist unless we are successful in getting a mix of men and women bishops in the upper House. There are, however, some complexities. It would require a change in the law and an Act of Parliament, so I signal to Members present that an important job of work will be undertaken by Parliament in due course. It would be a shame if the manner in which Parliament was caught up in this led to some obstruction of the main objective of getting women consecrated as bishops. With the expertise and wisdom of the Second Church Estates Commissioner, Parliament can hopefully navigate its way through that aspect of the minefield and achieve what we want.

Other challenges for ordained women come in the language used when talking about ordained women. We cannot necessarily pass a law for this one, but it is indicative of the cultural challenges that persist. One senior female vicar that I know commented that we need to avoid talking of “fast forwarding women”, because the reality is that, had some of those women been men, they would have been in senior roles long ago. The Church of England needs to embrace the gifts that men and women bring. Perhaps there will come a time, as the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) suggested, when, in management terms, the space can be made for women who really deserve the opportunity to rise to the most senior ranks within the Church. There is always a tendency for gender to be blamed for unpopular decisions, and women will continue to face the challenge of being made a scapegoat for all the problems in the Church, but the problem is not unique to the ministry. Women experience it many parts of our society, including politics.

In conclusion, we can celebrate the positive contribution made by ordained women to the Church over the past 20 years. This anniversary year will also be marked with a national celebration at St Paul’s cathedral in May, and I hope that as many of us as possible will be able to assist on that occasion in a spiritual context. This is the first national celebration of ordained women—a first for the Church—and we need to celebrate the women priests who have made such a difference over the past 20 years, and look forward to the changes that are to come with the ordination of women bishops.

I want to finish by reading an extremely well-expressed reflection from a women priest:

“It has been transforming for the church and has started a process of holy orders being fully complete with both women and men, a process which will itself be fully complete when women as well as men are included in the episcopate. For both women and men are created in the image of God. In my experience it is only people inside the church who ever question this process at all. For those whom we minister among, it is normal and expected for women and men to be vicars as well as bishops, and our ministry is accepted and valued without question.”

I could not have put it better myself and it comes better from someone who is in the role, serving the people whom they have been ordained to serve.

13:49

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I had not intended to speak in this debate as I have to shoot off before the scheduled finish, but given the opportunity and as Members are disappointingly thin on the ground, I will just say a few words. I want to reassure those watching the debate that the attendance is no reflection on the issue’s importance. If anything, it shows how far we have come that this is not a controversial issue any more. It is of course also a Thursday and we have only a one-line Whip.

As the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) made clear, something that 20 years ago some predicted would be the end of the world has become a valued, valuable and wonderful part of our Church life. It may amuse hon. Members to learn that I was dragooned into joining the Movement for the Ordination of Women as a teenager, when my father was serving as a canon at Norwich cathedral, by the wife of the dean, Margaret Webster, who was one of the founding members of the movement. We also had in our home at the time a young student called Katharine Rumens, who has become a fantastic priest in the City of London. Along with the Campaign for Real Ale, the Movement for the Ordination of Women was something that I joined long before I joined the Labour party; it is what brought me into political activity and campaigning, and what a good way of learning how to campaign and lobby it was.

After all the terrible setbacks of the ’70s and ’80s, we were ultimately successful, and it fills me with great joy, as a founder member of what was probably called the teenage or young movement for the ordination of women, to be here 20 years on to celebrate something that is now so unremarkable, and to look forward to our first consecration of a woman bishop, hopefully this year,.

I pay tribute to the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), who has performed an absolutely sterling job. After that disastrous vote in the Synod at the end of the year before last, we were in shock. A general trauma made its way through most of the Church of England, and was felt in particular by women priests. How must they have felt at the outcome of that vote? After all the work, after the big majorities in the dioceses and synods, after the overwhelming support in the House of Bishops and the House of Clergy, how must they have felt to have the proposal fall at the final hurdle and miss the two-thirds majority in the House of Laity? There was a great deal of justified anger, but the right hon. Gentleman, supported by Members from across the House, made it absolutely plain to the powers that be over the road that the situation was intolerable and had to be addressed as quickly as possible.

I have been pleasantly surprised by the urgent and effective manner in which the new Archbishop of Canterbury has grasped the matter. I speak as a liberal Catholic, and he is not from my tradition, but I always had a slight inkling that it would require somebody from the evangelical tradition to get this through. He speaks the right language. What he will have achieved—if he, collectively with the Synod, achieves it this summer—will be remarkable and fantastic. After that vote, most of us had given up hope that we would get the Measure through before the next election and before the election of the new Synod.

I urge the Church to consider holding open currently vacant sees for just a little longer than they usually would. Interregnums often go on for several months, as did the recent one in Exeter, so it would not mean people waiting a great deal longer—I hope—before getting a new bishop. That would send out a really positive signal. I should not be rude, as we have a great bunch of bishops who do a fantastic job in the House of Lords, but one hears rumours that we are getting to the end of our talent pool, as regards male suffragans who can be promoted to diocesan bishop. That is certainly not the case when it comes to our senior women clergy, many of whom I can imagine would make absolutely first-class bishops. I want to name just a couple who have a relationship with my constituency. Jane Hedges, whom we exported from the Devon diocese, where she was a parish priest, was recently appointed Dean of Norwich. We have a fantastic canon at the cathedral called Anna Norman-Walker, who is also our diocesan missioner, and there are several other fantastic women priests in a diocese that was traditionally rather conservative.

When I first arrived in Exeter in the early ’80s, it was one of those arch-traditional Catholic dioceses that regularly sent people to Synod to argue against women’s ordination. We had a series of diocesan bishops, regrettably in my view, who opposed women’s ordination and women becoming bishops, including the most recently retired one—he was one of only two bishops who voted against in the vote at the end of the year before last. We now have a new bishop who is clearly and categorically in favour of women bishops. We still have the Chichesters out there, but when a diocese such as Exeter, which had a strong tradition of conservative, traditional Catholicism—if I may put it like that—can move in the way that it has, it shows how the Church of England has moved as a whole.

I want to finish with the point that I alluded to in my second intervention on the right hon. Member for Meriden, which was about the dire predictions made about the disastrous impact that women’s ordination would have on our relations with our sister Churches, the Roman Catholics and the Orthodox. Yes, the relationship has been up and down and bumpy, but I do not detect any serious, lasting and irrevocable damage. Do not forget that we have other important and valuable sister Churches, such as the Lutherans and Churches on the continent, and they welcome the direction in which the Church of England has moved.

I have also been heartened by comments by the new Pope, who is an absolute breath of fresh air after the previous one. He has said some encouraging things about women, gender, the role of women in the Church and how the Church needs to move away from its obsession with sexual morality and move towards issues of justice, gender equality and so forth. That is exciting. At some time, though not in my lifetime, I confidently expect the Roman Catholic Church to embrace the ministry of women, in exactly the same way as the Church of England has done. It is a theological inevitability. It may not happen in my lifetime, but the fact that we have done it, blazed a trail and shown how positive, successful, valuable, wonderful and holy it is will help progressive Catholics on the same road.

14:01

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

As I have said already, I cannot stay until the end of the debate, and I am trespassing on the goodness of the Chamber in speaking now, so I will not speak for long.

When George Bernard Shaw talked about a “realised impossibility”, he was talking about a person: the man who in 1906 was turned down for ordination by the Bishop of Oxford. What was that man doing when he died in 1944? He was the Archbishop of Canterbury. He had found Archbishop Davidson, who trusted that his beliefs about a couple of parts of our creed would come into orthodoxy. The key point is that if someone can become Archbishop of Canterbury after being turned down for ordination, and can become a bishop at the age of 41, we can have no particular problem in filling any vacancies for bishops or archbishops.

Given the time that women have had to wait, were one to be nominated and introduced as Archbishop of York in succession to John Sentamu, whom we all admire and to whom we wish good health and happiness, that would not be looked on as an aberration. It would not be looked on as compensation, but as proper recognition that among the women who have been ordained in the Church of England there are those who can fulfil that role.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) about the breath of fresh air that has come with Pope Francis. Any of us who have known the Roman Catholic Church in central and south America over the years since the conservative priest Oscar Romero was made Archbishop of San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador, also know that he certainly believed in standing up for the oppressed and the poor, although perhaps not in the theology of liberation. He said that unarmed people should not be shot by those who have power. I was out with some of his nuns and catechists, and they would have had no difficulty with the ordination of women. In fact, when Parliament eventually passed the Church of England Measure for the ordination of women, some of the most enthusiastic celebrators outside Church house were Roman Catholic nuns in this country. They said, “It is not a matter of whether we do the same; it is a matter of when.”

The issue of women bishops was described well by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) in her introduction to the debate. I, too, pay tribute to the members of Women and the Church, and to people in the diocesan synods and the General Synod. Although the vote on the pretty compromised suggestion that we are replacing failed, we must remember that the proposal was passed by each House with a significant majority, and only failed in one House by not getting quite a big enough majority. We should not condemn the Synod, because what has followed is an example of something that makes a situation better, rather than worse. The delay is bad, but what the archbishops and facilitators have brought together, and its acceptance by the bishops—not all of whom voted for it, but they have all accepted that this will happen—is a tribute to the Church. When we first discussed this in the Chamber of the House of Commons, I think that I remember saying that we are a bishop-led Church, and we ought to trust the bishops. If we take away the barrier to women, we may then trust the bishops, whether male or female, individually or collectively, to make matters reasonable for the remaining objectors.

Every parish that thinks it is against recognising the ordination of women ought to re-examine whether they want to continue in that way. In my constituency, one parish had a sign outside the church saying, “Be assured that you will not be receiving communion from a woman in this church.” A decade later, that church was up for closure. One of the women who was campaigning to save it asked, “Why have we been picked out?” I said, “I don’t know; ask the bishops, but it is probably because you aren’t very active. By the way, the first time I came to your church, it had this sign.” She said, “I never knew that”, and I suggested that she ought to have a talk with the parish council to see whether that was still valid.

A lot of people simply go along with tradition. Today, I was walking past the Salvation Army headquarters on Queen Victoria street and, of the two churches I passed, one is open to all and the other has a sign stating that it only holds services from the Book of Common Prayer. Perhaps no one realised how controversial that book was when first introduced, but the notice struck me as rather dismissive of all the people who have worked on liturgical commissions over the past 20 years, led by David Stancliffe and Stephen Platten, both of whom have managed to bring to our services glory, and words that are in addition to, not substituting for, those in the Book of Common Prayer.

I look on having women as priests, bishops and archbishops as normal and natural. People might think that I would say that, because I am a member of the Denis Thatcher society of those of us who are married to women more important than we are. My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden was among the first 10 women in the Conservative party in the House of Commons to be a Cabinet Minister. I look forward to the day, if I live long enough, when we can say that we have at least 10 women on the Bench of Bishops in the House of Lords, and I shall stand at the Bar and bow my head.

14:07

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair this afternoon, Mrs Brooke.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) on securing this debate. It is great to have something to celebrate and, given that we have had so many debates in which we have been complaining and anxious about what is going on, it is wholly appropriate also to have a debate to celebrate the good news that is the ordination of women in the Church.

Listening to my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), I realised that I first met him through the Movement for the Ordination of Women at the house of Katharine Rumens, who is an excellent priest in the City of London, as he said. I, too, joined the Movement for the Ordination of Women when I was a student. When I came to London, I ran the Kensington branch with Kate. At some point, Margaret Webster, who by then was the wife of the dean of St Paul’s, decided that we should have London-wide meetings, which took place at 6 o’clock on a Saturday in the crypt. We used to meet monthly, and there might be six or eight people—it did not feel encouraging in the early 1980s, so we knew that this would be a long and slow journey.

In 1994, therefore, for the big service in St Paul’s for the first ordination, I thought, “Well, it starts at 3 o’clock, so if I bowl up at 10 to 3, it’ll be absolutely fine.” I could not have been more wrong. There were 3,000 people queuing several times around the cathedral. I stood in the queue behind a man who said to me, “Oh, I have been involved from the very beginning.” I wonder how many people had their picture of the situation transformed by what happened, and by how happy, pleased and welcoming everyone was about the change once it had happened and we had leapt over that barrier. I therefore agree with the right hon. Member for Meriden that it is good that there will be a service of celebration on 3 May. I hope as many people as possible will be able to go.

The best realisation of our hopes, however, is the work we see women priests doing in their parishes. In my constituency, the excellent Jane Grieve has a rural parish; she does a lot of community development work and has really grown the Church there. In one of the areas of my constituency that has the most problems, we had a priest called Brenda Jones, who struggles against all conflict and is a beacon not just for the Church but for her entire community. Those women have brought something very special to their ministry and have excelled in their roles.

I turn now to the question of whether and when we will take the next step. I should have said before, Mrs Brooke, that my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) sends her apologies. She wanted to be here but was not able to attend. We offer our full support to the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), in giving the message to the Church that Parliament is not content to see indefinite delay—we are 100% behind him. The decisions taken in the General Synod in February are welcome. We look to the July Synod as the opportunity for us to complete this important legislation. As other hon. Members have said, Archbishop Justin has managed the situation quite brilliantly, showing a deft touch that was clear to us all when he was all too briefly Bishop of Durham. That has made a big difference to what has happened.

I agree that it would be unfortunate if it took a long time to get women bishops on to the Bishops’ Bench in the House of Lords. I am not someone who thinks that we should not have bishops in the House of Lords or that we should disestablish the Church. Bishops play a useful role in our Parliament and our constitution. The sooner we have women on the Bishops’ Bench, the easier it will be to defend—at the moment there is a slight awkwardness in defending that special role for the Church of England.

On the question of whether dioceses should be expected to wait a little longer for a new bishop in order that a woman might be appointed, I was completely opposed 15 months ago during our interregnum in Durham. Now we have Bishop Paul, I think that perhaps other dioceses could manage a little interregnum. Obviously it is extremely difficult for any diocese to have to trade off between managing without a bishop for a long period and having more gender balance in the Church. I hope that the way that the Church manages the ordination of women bishops will be swift enough for that not to be a significant problem for very many dioceses.

Today is a happy occasion. We are all pleased about what has happened. We look forward to the next step and to hearing from the Second Church Estates Commissioner.

14:14

[The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Sir Tony Baldry)]

I start by thanking my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) for initiating the debate and providing the House with an opportunity to celebrate the contribution over the past 20 years of ordained women clergy to the Church of England. I also thank her for providing me with an opportunity to advise the House on where the Church of England now stands in respect of women bishops, which I shall do later. We are all grateful for the presence and support during the debate of the Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant).

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

If you will allow me, Mrs Brooke, I wish to apologise to the House and to my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald. I meant to rise to catch your eye after she had, and I apologise for jumping up when I did. If she had spoken, three men and three women would have spoken in the debate, which would have been the perfect balance.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

That is a timely intervention. For anyone reading the debate in Hansard, I should explain that, although I am effectively responding to the debate, I am not a member of the Government. I am by statute appointed by the Crown as Second Church Estates Commissioner, so I am accountable neither to the Government nor to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Indeed, as the Bishop of London pointed out to me shortly after I was appointed, I am, like the Dean of Westminster, accountable only to God and the Queen—that is how he put it. This is not a ministerial response, then, but one I make in my capacity as Second Church Estates Commissioner.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden was absolutely right to say that the ordination of women has unleashed an appetite in other women to come forward for ordination. She was also right to set out some of the many qualitative contributions that women have made to ordained ministry and, indeed, the pivotal role of many women clergy. We were also fortunate this afternoon to have heard some excellent and helpful speeches from the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), all of whom are members of the Ecclesiastical Committee, the Committee of both Houses that considers Church of England Measures when they come to Parliament—as indeed is my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden.

The right hon. Member for Exeter was absolutely right in making clear the urgency and effectiveness with which the Archbishop of Canterbury grasped the issue of making progress towards sorting out the General Synod on the issue of women bishops after its very unhappy vote. The Archbishop clearly recognised that there was a need to get a grip on that issue and get a grip he did.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is going back to Exeter this weekend, and I hope he takes back the good news from yesterday’s Budget that, between all of us, we were able to secure from the Chancellor £20 million towards repair of cathedrals. If I may say so, that indicates that the Church of England is taken seriously by Government. There is a recognition that it is sometimes difficult to raise money to repair the electrics, or the roof or guttering. That fund is meant to be put towards such problems and will be welcome news, I hope, to cathedral cities such as Exeter.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his letter outlining the details of that fund—it was in my postbag this morning. I congratulate him on the successful lobbying he has clearly conducted with the Government to deliver that support.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for those comments. It was a team effort. We also have to thank Lord Cormack in the other place, who brought all the deans together, who then made their views known to the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey). In due course, he made his views known to the Treasury. It was a good example, as so often happens in this place, of the House working across parties consensually and collaboratively to secure a result that we all wanted to see.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West, who is the church warden of St Margaret’s, was absolutely right in his comments that we all now see women priests as normal and natural, and that we all hope to see a situation in which women as bishops will equally be seen as normal and natural.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, who has been a great supporter of women in the Church, appropriately made the point that the best realisation of the hopes of all those who had supported the ordination of women priests, way back when she had done so in the 1980s and earlier, is the work that women priests are now doing in our parishes.

On 11 November 1992, the General Synod passed the measure that would enable women to become priests in the Church of England. That measure then received parliamentary approval in both Houses in 1993 and it received Royal Assent on 5 November 1993. On 12 March 1994, at Bristol cathedral, the first 32 women were ordained as priests to minister to the cure of souls in the Church of England. It had been possible for women to be ordained as deacons in the Church of England since 1986, but it was not until 1992 that the General Synod was able to agree the measure necessary to enable women to be ordained as priests. Since then, some 4,200 women have been ordained as priests.

Today, some 23%, or nearly a quarter, of stipendiary ministers—full-time paid clergy—are women. Just over half, or 53%, of self-supporting ministers are women. At present, some 1,245 people in England are training to become Anglican priests and of those, 594, or 48%, are women.

Therefore, it can be seen that over the past 20 years women clergy have played an important part in the life of the Church and of our nation’s life, and over the coming 20 years, I anticipate that the proportion of clergy who are women will grow. With the exception of women as bishops, which I shall say a little more on shortly, women already make a much valued contribution to every part of the Church.

There are now five women deans of cathedrals—in Birmingham, St Edmundsbury, Salisbury, Guildford and York—and of course, as has been said, Canon Jane Hedges, one of the canons whom we know well from her work at Westminster abbey, will shortly be leaving to become dean of Norwich. There are 16 women archdeacons and 51 women in the House of Clergy, where they make up 27.5% of the House of Clergy. One finds women as stipendiary canons in 16 of the 44 cathedrals and women clergy as chaplains in hospitals, hospices, prisons, schools and universities. As we know well in this House, we are fortunate to have a woman as the Speaker’s Chaplain—Rose Hudson-Wilkin. In the armed forces, four women are serving as padres or chaplains, and of those appointed as honorary chaplains to the Queen, seven are women.

[Mr Bradshaw]

On the Speaker’s Chaplain, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the Speaker deserves a lot of congratulation for making that appointment? It was greeted terribly by some conservative forces in the media at the time, and she has turned out to be the most fantastic chaplain to this House.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

Yes. I entirely endorse those comments and I think that the House would feel that the Speaker’s Chaplain has done what hopefully chaplains do in every institution. As part of the Church of England, the national Church, they are chaplains to everyone involved in the institution. Rose Hudson-Wilkin has made, and is very much making, the Speaker’s Chaplaincy a chaplaincy for everyone working in the Palace of Westminster. We all saw that particularly when—I think for the first time probably since the Reformation, or indeed ever—the Archbishop of Canterbury came to take holy communion in the Crypt Chapel on Ash Wednesday, and people were present from both Houses and from every walk of life in which people work and serve in Westminster. One felt that this was a community coming together to worship.

Women priests are now involved in every part and aspect of the Church’s life, from Lambeth palace where two of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s close team are women priests, to parish priests up and down the country. As time goes on, I think everyone expects that the proportion of women as cathedral deans and archdeacons will grow.

On Saturday 3 May, to mark and celebrate the 20th anniversary of women as clergy, there will be a gathering of ordained women clergy and others at Westminster abbey in the morning, followed by a procession to St Paul’s cathedral, where there will be a service of celebration for 20 years of women’s ordained ministry. I know that many similar services are planned across the country. For example, on 7 June, the diocese of Oxford—the diocese in which my constituency is situated—is holding a service of celebration in Christ Church.

The diocese of Oxford has always had a strong record of ordaining women, starting with 67 women who were ordained in six separate services in 1994. Of those 67 women who were ordained priests in Oxford 20 years ago, nine are still in active ministry in the diocese and many more, although formally retired, still hold permission to preach and are continuing to support parishes.

Among those first women priests still working full time in the diocese of Oxford, we have a school chaplain, an area dean, who has just been appointed our newest archdeacon, a university college chaplain, and priests in rural and urban parishes. Of the four archdeacons in the diocese of Oxford, three are women, and the diocese has seen women ordained in every sphere of ministry. There are ordained women on the staff of all three theological colleges in the diocese. The military bases in the diocese have had women chaplains, as have prisons and detention centres.

From those first 67 women ordained 20 years ago, there are now more than 250 ordained women currently ministering in the diocese of Oxford, and I am glad to say that many more are coming forward to offer themselves for priestly ministry. Every diocese could tell a similar story of the achievement of women over the past 20 years in ordained ministry. It is appropriate to reflect not only on the significant quantitative contribution over the past 20 years that women have made to ordained ministry, but on the qualitative contributions that women in ordained ministry have made to the life and work of the Church.

It is also important to recognise that there are still challenges. For example, there are still relatively few young women offering themselves for ordination—those coming straight from university—and a significant number of the current women priests are self-supporting; in other words, they are non-stipendiary.

In anticipation of this debate, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden, I wrote to several people asking them whether they felt there were observations I should include in the debate, and one of them was the Speaker’s Chaplain. Rose Hudson-Wilkin made the following observations, and as she is our chaplain, I think they are worth sharing with the House:

“As we go forward, the Church must stop leaving women to feel ‘second best’; We are not tainted and the Church leadership must ensure that they do not embed a theology of taint in their keen desire to embrace all. Women must not suddenly become the scapegoat for all the ills of the Church (e.g. talk of the ‘feminisation of the church’. When we were all male leadership, the numbers of women were still higher than men).

We should not be talking of ‘fast forwarding women’—the reality is that if some of these women had been men, they would have been in senior roles! The Church of England needs to embrace the gifts that men and women bring as the future flourishing of the Church depends on this. All dioceses should look at their senior management team and begin to ask questions about what is preventing women from being included...As a Church, we must embrace unconditionally, the reality that women in Leadership is with us to stay (we should not be using the language of discernment)…I am aware of women who go to challenging parishes with very few people and through sheer dedication and the work of the Holy Spirit, make a difference.”

Not surprisingly, those supportive of women’s ordained ministry have for a long time been supportive of women being consecrated as bishops in the Church of England. As the House will know, this has been a long process, with much debate in the Church and in the General Synod. The process has not been without its setbacks and disappointments for those supportive of women being consecrated as bishops in the Church of England, particularly in the General Synod last November, when the appropriate Measure failed by a very small number of votes in the House of Laity.

Following that, the Archbishop of Canterbury invited Canon David Porter of Coventry cathedral to involve, in a process of dialogue and mediation, various groups in the Church that were concerned about both the theology and the practicalities of women being consecrated as bishops. I would hope that in that process of dialogue and mediation, the concerns of every group, including WATCH and others, were listened to and considered and that efforts were made to resolve them. It resulted in the bringing forward of a much simpler, four-clause Measure, which was overwhelmingly endorsed by the General Synod at its recent February meeting.

The General Synod also agreed that dioceses should have three months in which to decide and report their views on the new Measure. So far, 13 dioceses have met and voted on the new Measure. All have overwhelmingly endorsed the new Measure. Indeed, in the diocese of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich, there was not a single vote against the Measure in any of the houses of the diocese.

Last time, 42 out of 44 dioceses supported the Measure. This time, for practical reasons, it will not be possible for the diocese in Europe to meet in time, but if the majority of the dioceses do support the Measure, it will return to the General Synod in July. I hope that if at that General Synod the Measure succeeds in obtaining two-thirds support in each of the three Houses—the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy and the House of Laity—the Measure can be referred to the Ecclesiastical Committee of both Houses as soon as possible. I am sure that that Committee will want to meet as speedily as possible if and when a Measure comes before it and I hope that, if it finds the Measure expedient and approves it, the Measure can then go before each House separately for approval. Every indication that I have had from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House of Commons is that the House will do everything to make proper provision for a debate that is as timely as possible when the time arises. I hope that in way we can have the Measure fully and properly considered, approved and passed into law well before Christmas and that we will see the first women bishops consecrated shortly thereafter.

Right hon. and hon. Members have asked about the situation of women in the House of Lords. This House will not be surprised to learn that I have been discussing that issue with the Leader of the House of Lords and the Leader of the House of Commons. Of course, the position of bishops in the House of Lords—the Lords Spiritual—is that they are Members of the House of Lords. It is therefore a question of who is summoned to Parliament. It is not something that can simply be resolved by a Measure of the General Synod; it will require primary legislation. However, I think that it would be fair for me to summarise the position of the Government, as I understand it, thus. In terms of primary legislation, they will seek to facilitate as speedily as possible what the Church of England feels would be most appropriate in these circumstances. I think that discussions are now taking place within the Church of England. I understand that the Lord Bishop of Leicester, who convenes the Lords Spiritual, is in negotiations with various groups to give some thought to how best that can be achieved.

People have to understand that there are suffragan bishops and there are diocesan bishops. Not all the diocesan bishops sit in the House of Lords; some do so on the basis of seniority. Several issues need to be considered, but I am confident that as and when the Church of England comes forward with a proposal, the Government will give it the most serious and positive consideration.

[Helen Goodman]

If and when the proposal is made, Her Majesty’s Opposition will be as co-operative as possible in expediting it.

[Sir Tony Baldry]

That is a very helpful intervention because by definition, given the parliamentary timetable, it is likely to come towards the end of this Parliament and, as all those of us who have been here for some time know, the usual channels, for understandable reasons, tend to get a bit jumpy as we move towards Parliament being prorogued and so on. However, I think that everyone—including my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who at Prime Minister’s questions made this very clear—wants the consecration of women as bishops to happen at the earliest possible moment and does not want that to be in some way overshadowed by acrimony or a debate about their not being properly represented in the House of Lords.

I make no pretence of seeking to be a theologian, but I have always been struck by the observation of St Paul that

“if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain”.

The resurrection is central and crucial to Christianity, and at the time of the crucifixion, the disciples, for understandable reasons, had fled. It was the women who stood witness to Christ’s crucifixion. It was the women who found that the stone was rolled away, and it was to Mary Magdalene that the resurrected Christ first revealed himself.

I quote from the New Testament:

“Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre,

And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.

And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.

Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.”

The last 20 years have demonstrated that women priests are well able to proclaim the risen Christ throughout the land and, by their ministry, have made and continue to make an enormous contribution to the life of the Church, community and the country. Today’s debate and all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed, from both sides of the House, have demonstrated and confirmed how much women’s ordained ministry is valued and appreciated.

14:38

[Mrs Spelman]

I am very moved by the passage from scripture that the Second Church Estates Commissioner, my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), has read to us. He did well to read it into the record, as we are in the period of Lent; we are coming up to the time when we remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The fact that he revealed himself first to a woman and asked that woman to tell the brethren is very poignant indeed. I thank my right hon. Friend for bringing some scripture into our debate, which has been very encouraging. We hope that the women who are serving in ministry, in what is a difficult job—“the curer of souls” is a resonant phrase to describe one who undertakes the highly vocational service of ministering to great human need—will read the record of our debate and know that Parliament gives its support to their calling, and that we want to go further. We want to see their calling extended to the high governance of the Church of England, and we want to see it soon.

I thank hon. Members for their contributions. I thank the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for staying with us on a busy afternoon. He is a liberal Catholic, and I, like many Anglicans, have been heartened by the hopeful message that the new Pope sent early in his ministry about the inclusive way in which he regards the gospel and his Administration. His inclusion of women at the top of the Catholic Church was a great encouragement to me and others like me.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) for taking up the theme of the support that parliamentarians can give to the important step of women becoming bishops. He spoke of his high aspiration to see one day a female Archbishop of York to follow in the excellent steps of John Sentamu, who holds that office with distinction. He helped us aspire to see a new chapter in the Church of England’s future.

I thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who genuinely was there from the beginning. I applaud and pay tribute to her for that, and for seeing the importance of fighting for this issue with her friends so long ago.

I am sure all hon. Members wish to put on the record their thanks to the Second Church Estates Commissioner—what a title!—who is respected in the House of Commons and across Parliament. He brought the debate about the future role of women in the Church to this important moment just before the significant change with skill, wisdom and discernment. This issue is safe in his hands as our representative—our go- between—in Parliament to the Crown and the Church.

I hope our debate has sent a message to the 4,200 ordained women that we greatly value what they do. The Church is facing an inter-generational challenge, so it is important that it attracts more young men and women. The young generation simply does not understand why we do not ordain and promote women to high office in the Church. The future of our Church is safe in the hands of the new archbishop, but it is important that we take the next step of consecrating women bishops. I am delighted that we have been able to have this debate.

Question put and agreed to.

14:43

Sitting adjourned.

Written Statements

Thursday 20th March 2014 Written Statements

Thursday 20 March 2014

Double Taxation Convention (Germany)

Thursday 20th March 2014 Written Statements

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Mr David Gauke)]

A protocol to the double taxation convention with Germany was signed on 17 March 2014. The text of the protocol has been deposited in the Libraries of both Houses and made available on HM Revenue and Customs’ website. The text will be scheduled to a draft Order in Council and laid before the House of Commons in due course.

Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Team (Closure)

Thursday 20th March 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

On 9 September 2013, I updated Parliament, Official Report, column 40WS, on the work of the Helmand provincial reconstruction team (PRT) as it prepared for closure in late March; this was in line with President Karzai’s request that all PRTs in Afghanistan must close by the end of 2014.

Today is the final working day for the Helmand PRT, having operated for over seven years as a UK-led platform. I would like to acknowledge the team’s accomplishments and the dedication of the staff who served it, in improving the lives of people in Helmand.

Working closely with Afghan partners, the Helmand PRT has helped almost 18,000 young people to benefit from vocational training courses, including 5,000 women. Over 800 community elders involved in mediation have attended workshops in Afghan law and the constitution, with a particular emphasis on the rights of women and children. The teacher training colleges in Lashkar Gah and Gereshk currently have almost 700 students enrolled, 446 of which are female. All health facilities and 61% of schools in the province are now open. Many more advances have been made in the delivery of public services and the PRT has worked closely with the Afghan provincial government to improve administration, planning and budgeting.

The United Kingdom’s presence in Helmand has been part of a wider strategy to help rebuild Afghanistan, which involved 33 PRTs led by 15 different countries. All but three of these PRTs will be closed by the end of March, as part of the political and security transition in Afghanistan.

The UK has put a particular emphasis on the sustainability of its reconstruction work in Helmand to ensure our investment continues to deliver benefits into the future. Training trainers within the Afghan uniformed police and using local designs and materials for infrastructure projects are just two examples. We have also helped prepare the provincial government to assume its full range of responsibilities.

The draw down of the PRT has involved the handover of many activities to the Afghan Government, while other work programmes will be led from the British embassy in Kabul. The UN is also becoming increasingly active in Helmand, delivering programmes including on justice, human rights and gender, supported by UK, Danish and Estonian funding. The PRT has helped to build a strong platform for future governance and development in Helmand. It is right that the Afghans take increasing responsibility for their future prosperity and security and we will continue to support them as they do so.

Closure of the PRT marks a change in the UK’s relationship with Helmand, but does not mark its end. The UK has made an enduring commitment to Afghanistan and the British embassy in Kabul will continue to work with the Afghan Government and the Helmand provincial governor to ensure public services in the province continue to improve.

Afghanistan: Gifting of Bridges

Thursday 20th March 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

UK military operations in Helmand province involved the extensive use of temporary logistical support bridges. While temporary in nature and used to support military movements, the local populations have in some instances become highly reliant on these bridges for access over the Helmand canal and river systems. Ownership of these assets is therefore being transferred to the Helmand department for public works (DPW) to help sustain economic and security benefits made to date in Helmand province. The bridges will support freedom of movement in Helmand, which underpins commercial links and the provision of security and basic services for the local population.

The departmental minute laid today sets out our plans to gift six logistical support bridges, costing £1.633 million; and one spares pack for maintenance of the bridges, costing £1.014 million, to the Helmand DPW. The gift will be acknowledged by a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the UK Government and the Helmand DPW.

In addition to provision of the bridges and maintenance packs themselves, the UK is also providing funding for the Helmand Government to maintain the bridges and other infrastructure. The UK Government are also building the skills of the Helmandi work force to operate and maintain the bridges. This work is part of the Helmand provincial reconstruction team’s “sustaining economic infrastructure in Helmand” project and supports the wider conflict pool objective that,

“effective district administrations ensure that the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan control over districts in the Central Helmand River Valley is sustained without reliance on the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)”.

The gift has been assessed against the consolidated EU and national arms export licensing criteria. The MOD has confirmed that the UK Government have no objections to the release of these items to the Afghanistan Helmand department for public works.

The Treasury has approved the proposal in principle. If, during the period of 14 parliamentary sitting days beginning on the date on which the departmental minute was laid before the House of Commons, a Member signifies an objection by giving notice of a parliamentary question or a motion relating to the minute, or by otherwise raising the matter in the House, final approval of the gift will be withheld pending an examination of the objection.

Advisory Council on National Records and Archives (Triennial Review)

Thursday 20th March 2014 Written Statements

[The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)]

On 17 July 2013, Official Report, column 112WS, the then Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant), made a written statement announcing the triennial review of the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives. I am pleased to announce the conclusion of the review and publication of the report today.

The ACNRA is an independent advisory non-departmental public body which provides independent advice to the Lord Chancellor on matters relating to records and archives in the United Kingdom, and in particular England and Wales. The functions of the ACNRA are written into statute in the Public Records Act 1958 section 1.2 and in the Freedom of Information Act 2000 schedule 5, which amends the Public Records Act.

The ACNRA, chaired by the Master of the Rolls, advises the Lord Chancellor on issues relating to public records that are over 30 years old under the Public Records Act (PRA) 1958, including access to them, under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) 2000. From January 2013, following implementation of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, Government began a 10-year transition to a new “20-year rule”, with the previous 30-year rule being reduced progressively until the new rule is in effect. The ACNRA also advises on general policy issues linked to the public records system.

The triennial review has concluded that there remains a need for the ACNRA to continue its current functions, in its current form and that the current model offers good value for money. The review found that the case for retaining the ACNRA as an independent advisory NDPB is widely and strongly supported. The role played by the ACNRA in the public records system is an essential one and no other model for delivering the statutory duties of the ACNRA offers the same level of assurance to government and the public that these duties will be discharged independently, impartially and with consideration of the public interest as the primary concern.

The ACNRA meets all three of the tests set by the Government for the delivery of functions by an NDPB. The review has also found that the ACNRA may benefit from reviewing its recruitment processes and its reporting arrangements in respect of wider archives sector responsibilities, and has made recommendations to address these.

The triennial review has been carried out with the participation of a range of stakeholders and users, in addition to the ACNRA itself. The review was publicised on The National Archives’ website and stakeholders were invited to contributethrough a call for evidence and through meetings. In addition to the project board which oversaw the review, a critical friend group challenged the evidence used to make conclusions.

I am grateful to all who contributed to this triennial review. The final report has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

Law Commission (Triennial Review)

Thursday 20th March 2014 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)]

My right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Justice, Lord Faulks, has made the following written ministerial statement:

I am pleased to announce the publication of the report of stage 2 of the triennial review of the Law Commission. I have placed a copy in the Libraries of both Houses. When the stage 1 report was published in July 2013 the Government undertook to report back to Parliament on the outcome of stage 2 of the review.

In line with Cabinet Office principal aims for triennial reviews, stage 2 has involved an assessment of the Law Commission’s governance arrangements against best practice standards to ensure that, as a public body, it is complying with recognised principles of good corporate governance.

The review identified a number of areas of good practice by the Law Commission and its sponsor team at the Ministry of Justice. In particular, it commended the Commission’s open and transparent approach to law reform and policy making.

Although there are few problems in practice, the review identified there was scope for improvement in the corporate governance arrangements in place in relation to the Commission and made a number of recommendations. These include developing a framework document that will codify the Commission’s terms of reference and sponsorship arrangements with the Ministry of Justice, as well as updating the Commission’s code of best practice to ensure it is line with current guidance. Progress towards implementation will be reviewed six months after the publication of the stage 2 report.

Government Bills: Drafting Guidance

Thursday 20th March 2014 Written Statements

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

I am pleased to announce that new guidance has today been published by the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel recommending that powers to make delegated legislation conferred by Government Bills should generally take the form of regulation-making powers and not order-making powers.

At the moment, Government Bills often give Ministers the power to make delegated legislation by order or by regulations but there is no clear distinction between these two forms. The guidance, which will affect the drafting of Government Bills introduced in the next session of Parliament, will make a modest contribution to simplifying legislation and eliminating a source of potential confusion for readers who are currently faced with two forms of delegated legislation where one would do.

One area where the new practice may be particularly noticeable is that Bills will provide for commencement regulations rather than commencement orders. The recommendation will not affect rules or Orders in Council.

Copies of the new guidance will be deposited in the Libraries of both Houses. The latest drafting guidance can also be found at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/drafting-bills-for-parliament

EU Transport Council

Thursday 20th March 2014 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

I attended the first Transport Council under the Greek presidency (the presidency) in Brussels on Friday 14 March.

The Council reached a general approach on a proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European Union Agency for Railways. There was strong member state support for the presidency text—it was seen as a key step towards breaking down barriers to a single market and supporting the efficiency, transparency and increased competitiveness of the European rail industry. This important piece of legislation completes the technical pillar of the fourth railway package and will help to further develop the single European rail area. The Commission called on the Council to begin discussions on the remaining market opening and governance pillars to retain the “package” concept of the fourth railway package. I strongly supported this position.

There was a positive discussion on a proposal for a Council regulation establishing the Shift2Rail joint undertaking which resulted in the adoption of the Council position on the proposal. The joint undertaking would lead to the development of a co-ordinated approach to research and innovation in the rail sector, enhance the competitiveness of the EU rail sector and further support the completion of the single European rail area.

A wide-ranging policy debate was held on the Commission communication entitled “Together towards a competitive and resource-efficient urban mobility”. While there were varying views on funding options, there was unanimous support from member states for the Commission’s plans in so far as they remain flexible and respect the principle of subsidiarity. The Commission confirmed that it had no plans for legislative action in this area. I welcomed the communication which provides a helpful framework for urban mobility planning and highlighted that the UK already met most of its objectives.

Under any other business, the presidency provided information on three legislative proposals. First, on the political agreement that was reached on a proposal for a regulation on the establishment of rules and procedures with regard to the introduction of noise-related operating restrictions at Union airports. This was the first political agreement reached on the airports package under the Greek presidency. The European Parliament plenary vote is scheduled to take place in April. Secondly, on their achievement on a proposal for a regulation on community fleet capacity policy to promote inland waterway transport. This regulation does not apply to the UK as we have no inland waterways which meet the criteria for inclusion. Finally, the presidency informed member states that an agreement was within reach on a proposal for a directive on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure—clean power.

Also under any other business, France supported by Germany and Czech Republic urged member states to commence discussions on how best to prepare for and exploit the benefits of using the European Galileo system in civil aviation by 2025. The Commission provided a brief summary on the successful outcome of the EU-ASEAN aviation summit held in Singapore on 11-12 February. Estonia presented a proposal on state aid for rescuing and restructuring non-financial undertakings in difficulty.

I used the opportunity of my attendance to hold bilateral discussions with Transport Secretaries from Greece, Italy and Germany.

Wales Bill

Thursday 20th March 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr David Jones)]

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury and I have today published the Wales Bill and the accompanying Command Paper, “Wales Bill: Financial Empowerment and Accountability”.

The Wales Bill will provide the Welsh Government and the National Assembly for Wales with more levers and incentives to deliver greater economic growth in Wales. The Bill will make the Welsh Government more accountable to the people of Wales, as they will be responsible not only for the money they spend but also, for the first time, how they raise some of that money. The Bill will also provide the Welsh Government with the mechanism to borrow in order to fund improvements in Wales’s infrastructure and reforms the Assembly’s electoral arrangements to make them fairer and more equitable.

Alongside the Bill the Command Paper, “Wales Bill: Financial Empowerment and Accountability” explains the effects of the finance elements in part 2 of the Bill in more detail and sets out further actions that the Government are taking, following the recommendations of the Silk Commission’s part 1 report, that do not require legislation. A Welsh language version will be available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/wales-office

I have also written to my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies), Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee, enclosing a memorandum responding to the Committee’s report on its pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Wales Bill. The Government have accepted most of the Committee’s recommendations, and I wish to place on record my thanks to the Committee for its timely and thorough scrutiny of the draft Bill. For the convenience of the House, and with the Committee’s permission, I have placed a copy of the memorandum in the Libraries of both Houses.

Grand Committee

Thursday 20th March 2014 Grand Committee

Thursday, 20 March 2014.

Health: Women and Low-income Groups

Thursday 20th March 2014 Grand Committee

Question for Short Debate

14:00

Asked by

[Baroness Manzoor]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to reduce inequalities in health affecting women and low-income groups.

[Baroness Manzoor (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to introduce today’s debate. I am also delighted that the subject has attracted such expert speakers and I very much look forward to hearing your Lordships’ contributions.

There have been three key reports on inequalities in health: the Black report back in 1980; the Acheson report in 1998; and, more recently, the Marmot review in 2010. Clearly, health is a key part of social mobility and, although the population has access to the NHS, there is a huge inconsistency in the problems faced by low-income and high-income groups, between men and women, and across ethnic groups. It is often said in international development circles that health is a human right. It is critical to income growth and poverty eradication. That applies just as much in inner-city Birmingham as it does in rural India. Health underpins access to employment, education, engagement with economic activity and quality of life. Low-income groups often report barriers to accessing health services, which drives poor health outcomes. Although life expectancy is going up, so too, unfortunately, is the gap between the rich and poor. The distribution of health and disabling health conditions across the population of England has been shown to follow a sizeable, persistent and incremental pattern: health outcomes generally worsen in line with greater levels of socioeconomic disadvantage.

An analysis by the Equality Trust has found that in the past 20 years alone, the gap in life expectancy for those in different local authority areas has increased by 41% for men and a staggering 73% for women. For example, there is now an 18-year difference in healthy life expectancy between women living in Richmond, where it is 72 years, and Tower Hamlets, where it is 54 years. This has real policy implications for fair and reasonable pensionable ages. Evidence also shows that women suffer more from poverty, gender inequality, gender-based violence and mental health problems.

Investment decisions based on women’s specific health needs are a practical and cost-effective way of delivering the NHS social inclusion agenda. For example, the cost to the NHS of violence against women and girls is estimated to be around £1.2 billion a year. Domestic abuse alone costs a further £176 million a year in mental health services. The return on investment in prevention is therefore significant. I would welcome the Minister supporting investment in the scale-up of dedicated outreach services for marginalised, low-income and hard-to-reach populations in the UK. Charities such as Find and Treat are excellent examples of organisations providing such services.

Reducing health inequalities is one of the NHS’s top five priorities, and rightly so. I welcome health organisations now having a statutory duty to have regard to the need to reduce health inequalities, and congratulate the Government on this. Therefore, health improvement is no longer the only success criterion; reducing differences in health between populations is also a welcome policy objective for NHS England and Public Health England. Not only does economic inequality affect health, but more unequal societies are more likely to experience poorer literacy rates, higher incidence of drug addiction and greater exposure to diseases.

Due to time constraints, I shall briefly touch on three issues: coronary heart disease, drugs and TB. I turn first to coronary heart disease. Collectively, as we know, heart and circulatory diseases cause more than a quarter of all deaths in the UK. Rates of premature death have been declining since the 1970s but this decline has not been reflected equally in all parts of our society. Tackling inequalities in heart disease should be hard-wired into the performance measures of the NHS and explicitly reflected in the quality and outcomes framework and the payment-by-results scheme for GPs, and should highlight gender differences in risk factors, screening and treatment needs. There is not sufficient evidence that this is being done.

Secondly, 1.2 million people are affected by drug addiction in their families, mostly in poor communities. The annual cost to society of drug addiction is £15.4 billion and this does not take into account the huge cost to families and end-users in their personal lives. An estimated 250,000 to 350,000 children who are affected by parental substance abuse face additional risk and harm, including neglect, being taken into care, involvement in drug abuse and poor mental health. Drug prevention can therefore be a mechanism for reducing inequalities and social exclusion. Drug treatment is an essential part of a successful drug policy and of reducing inequalities. However, evidence from the recent European Quality Audit of Opioid Treatment suggests that NICE and Department of Health guidance is not being fully implemented. The survey found that, although patients are ill informed of their treatment options, choice of treatment is often driven by patients. The UK has the second highest reported rate of patient relapse. Anecdotal evidence suggests that many patients may be relapsing and then re-entering the same treatment. Can the Minister say how the Department of Health and NICE guidelines are being implemented and evaluated, and whether that information is being disseminated to clinical commissioning groups?

My third and last area of health inequality is TB, which is a global disease of poverty. TB has killed more people than any other infectious disease in history. It remains the second deadliest infectious disease in the world, claiming 1.3 million lives each year. TB is airborne and infectious; in a world of globalised travel, it is no surprise that nearly every country in the world has TB. London has the highest rates of any capital city in western Europe. In 2012 there were nearly 9,000 cases of TB, nearly 10% of which came from just three London boroughs: Newham, Brent and Ealing. The first two of these are the London boroughs with the worst rates of overcrowded and temporary accommodation. This is not a coincidence. Although the number of cases has stabilised, rates in Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities are steadily rising. This is not a coincidence either. These groups are often marginalised and report barriers to accessing healthcare. TB in the UK is far from being under control and health inequalities are driving it forward.

Many poor people around the world suffer and die because they cannot afford to buy advanced medicines that are still under patent and often sold at a 50-fold, or even a 100-fold, mark-up. The NHS spends an estimated £8 billion every year on patented drugs. There are merits in other ways of incentivising important pharmaceutical innovations, such as a health impact fund, which Germany is actively considering. Would the Minister consider meeting the architects of the fund to see what benefits the UK could derive from it?

I end with five key points. First, it is time for action. How are the Government implementing the recommendations of the Marmot review? Secondly, there should be a joint narrative between the Department of Health, NHS England and Public Health England on what they are doing together to tackle inequalities and who is accountable for what. Like the King’s Fund, I believe that local authorities have a critical role to play, through their new public health duties, but the reduction in health inequalities cannot be delivered solely by them. Thirdly, Public Health England should show leadership and visibility by showing how it is supporting and, where necessary, challenging other government departments. Fourthly, all new government policies and services should be subject to health equality impact assessments, requiring policymakers and service providers explicitly to take health inequalities into account. Finally, I totally agree with the British Heart Foundation when it states that each of the four Governments in the UK should appoint a senior Minister with cross-cutting responsibility for tackling health inequalities and each government department should have an objective to reduce health and social inequalities.

14:09

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, has given us the opportunity to cover a very wide canvas this afternoon on an issue that is so deeply rooted in deprivation and its results that it is difficult to do it justice in the course of an hour. I fear that I shall make the problem even greater by dealing predominantly not with inequalities in the UK but with those across the world, because some of the most stark and striking inequalities in health, particularly women’s health, occur globally. I should perhaps reassure the Minister that I will not expect a fully fledged, all-singing, all-dancing DfID response from her today. However, I would be grateful if she could pass on these comments to colleagues.

Whichever society one is dealing with and wherever in the world, ill health is both the outcome of deprivation—social, economic and educational—and itself a cause of deprivation. At its most stark, it is illustrated in life expectancy: there are those figures that the noble Baroness gave us of a healthy life expectancy for a woman in the UK varying from 54.1 years in Tower Hamlets to 72.1 years in Richmond-upon-Thames. There is a great deal to discuss but I shall concentrate on women’s health and those areas specific to women, pregnancy and childbirth, where men do not risk morbidity and mortality at all. We should remember that gender-specific risk starts early. For some, it starts with selective infanticide, while there is female genital mutilation and child marriage, which is not just a social ill but a health threat as well. A girl who gives birth while aged under 15 is five times more likely to die than one who is over 15, and so are her babies.

I should declare some interests. My international development interests are as in the register but, particularly, I am chair of the external advisory group at the Centre for Maternal and Newborn Health at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and, in the UK, a member of the General Medical Council. I am also grateful to Professor Gwyneth Lewis of the UCL Institute for Women’s Health, who has done so much work on maternal mortality in this country and abroad.

Maternal death rates illustrate the inequalities that exist in world health and between women all over the world today. In 2010—I think all my figures are from that year—287,000 women died in childbirth. One woman dies in childbirth every two minutes across the world. In the UK, where the maternal mortality rate of deaths per 100,000 is 11, every one of those deaths would be subject to a confidential maternal death inquiry. In sub-Saharan Africa, where the MMR is 500 deaths in every 100,000, that inquiry would be considered completely inappropriate and impossible to carry out. Many of those deaths may not even be officially recorded. The lifetime risk of dying in pregnancy is one in 20,000 in the United Kingdom; in Sierra Leone, it is one in seven.

Of course, these deaths are not the only consequence. For every woman who dies, perhaps 15 suffer morbidity. Neonatal rates are absolutely related to maternal deaths and yet perhaps 80% of maternal and perinatal deaths are preventable. It was said by Mahmoud Fathalla in 1988:

“Women are not dying because of diseases we cannot treat. They are dying because societies have yet to make the decision that their lives are worth saving”.

We can see in our international development programme that there are programmes that work, that are sustainable and that bring skilled birth attendance—perhaps the single thing that makes the difference to maternal mortality. Across countries in Africa, the Making It Happen programme, led by Nynke Van den Broek of Liverpool, is providing sustainable training and support for the maternity services so that they can improve their death rates. I very much hope that in the response to come from DfID we will get continuing commitment to such programmes.

Returning to this country, where we have one of the lowest death rates in the world, considering how good our recording is, poverty and deprivation still make it more dangerous to give birth in this country if you are from a lower social class or have less education. The statistic that stands out to me is that women, single or in partnership, in a family with no wage income are 10 times more likely to die or suffer complications in childbirth—10 times. The link between poverty and health continues in this country, as it does between countries.

14:16

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, for introducing this debate on this challenging issue. We know from the NHS, the Office for National Statistics and elsewhere that poorer people live shorter lives and that they live more of their lives with limiting illnesses. The Marmot review in 2010 highlighted the seven-year gap in life expectancy and the 17-year gap in disability-free life expectancy between those on the lowest incomes and those on the highest.

We also know that there is a significant difference in rate of diagnosis, treatment and outcomes for the five biggest killers depending on where you live. Last month, the ONS published its analysis of the health deprivation divide using the 2011 census and found that men and women aged 40 to 44 living in the most deprived areas are about four times more likely to have “not good” health compared to their equivalent in the least deprived areas.

In terms of gender, the most recent ONS figures, published at the weekend, show that women in the most advantaged areas can expect to live 20 years longer in good health than those in the least advantaged areas. Poor women spend only 66% of their lives in good health, compared to 83% of the richest. The richest women live nearly seven years longer than the poorest. Although women have historically enjoyed longer life expectancy and more prolonged health than men, that gender advantage is almost entirely eroded by social inequalities.

The Marmot review, Fair Society, Healthy Lives, made the simple point that reducing health inequalities is a matter of fairness and social justice, but tackling those inequalities and injustices is neither simple nor straightforward. Health inequalities result from social inequalities, so any action on health inequalities requires action across all the social determinants of health.

The Marmot review’s first and highest priority for action was giving every child the best start in life. I have spoken on this before, but it is a subject that I feel very strongly about. The evidence is overwhelming that investing in the pre-school years pays most dividends for health and well-being in later life. What happens during early years, starting even in the womb, has lifelong effects on everything from obesity, heart disease and mental health to educational achievement and economic status. That is why it is so important that we provide more parenting support programmes and that we have a well-trained early years workforce and high-quality early years care.

I will not dwell on that point but want instead to look at where we are four years on from the Marmot review. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 places a duty on the Secretary of State, NHS England and clinical commissioning groups to have due regard to reducing inequalities, and there have been some successes. The widespread adoption of high-impact interventions, such as prescribing cholesterol-reducing drugs and drugs to control blood pressure, and increases in stop-smoking services, have all shown an impact.

However, this sort of success has been uneven. A King’s Fund report tells us that the overall proportion of the population that engages in three or four of the four main areas of unhealthy behaviour has declined significantly, from around 33% of the population in 2003 to around 25% by 2008. However, people with no qualifications were more than five times as likely as those with higher education to engage in all four poor behaviours in 2008, compared with being only three times as likely in 2003.

So far, policy has focused on tackling individual lifestyle risks one at a time but this ignores the distribution of these behaviours. We need a more holistic approach to policy and practice that addresses the lifestyles of people showing multiple unhealthy behaviours. When your future prospects look hopeless and your life is lonely and miserable, there is little reason to make changes to your behaviour now in order to add years later. Will the Minister tell us what is being done to ensure a more integrated approach to behaviour change, which links to inequalities policy and focuses more directly on the Government’s stated goal to,

“improve the health of the poorest, fastest”?

Michael Marmot recently returned to the fray: last month he alerted us that the ONS plans to reduce the amount of data it collects which highlight the differences within local authority areas. My borough of Kensington and Chelsea has the highest average life expectancy in the country but there are pockets of extreme deprivation. One ward has a life expectancy of 71 years, whereas it is 92 in Knightsbridge. These are the data that should inform the commissioning of services. I hope that the Minister can reassure the House that these data will continue to be collected.

I welcome the recent launch by Public Health England of a national conversation on health inequalities. However, this conversation needs to take place at rather a higher volume than it appears to have done so far. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, I ask the Minister what the Department of Health, NHS England and Public Health England are doing together to tackle inequalities. They need to be heard telling us how they will use their powers, not just calling the rest of us to action. We need a joint commitment. As NHS England is now the monopoly buyer of primary care, it needs to use that power to reduce health inequalities. Public Health England should share its expertise in health impact assessment with other departments so that they are able to take into account the health inequalities impacts of one potential decision versus another.

The task of reducing health inequalities cannot be left to local authorities to deliver solely through their new public health duties. We need to ensure that local authorities invest money and expertise to ensure long-term reductions in health inequalities. One of the values at the heart of the NHS constitution is that “everyone counts”. Our resources must be maximised for the benefit of the whole community and we must make sure that nobody is left behind.

14:22

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Manzoor for instigating this debate. It is a hugely important subject. I will concentrate most of my remarks on the growing problem of TB and, in particular, drug-resistant TB.

Overcrowding is perhaps the biggest risk factor for the transmission of TB. Anyone who has TB and is not treated will remain infectious, potentially passing the disease on to those who live with them. For those in temporary accommodation, TB is a threat to keeping their accommodation. TB is infectious and difficult to treat, and patients are often scared of losing their accommodation if they admit to having TB.

People with lower incomes are statistically more likely to experience drug or alcohol abuse problems, which reduce their immune response and heighten their risk of contracting TB and other infectious diseases. Cases in the UK are centred around big cities. London has an average rate of 42 cases per 100,000. As my noble friend Lady Manzoor has already remarked, two of the boroughs with the most severe problems with overcrowding and temporary accommodation, Brent and Newham, are also those with the highest rates of TB in the UK.

The problem becomes even more severe among the homeless population. The disease attacks people with reduced immune systems, so the impact of rough sleeping, poor nutrition and other factors associated with the chaotic lifestyles of the homeless can increase their chances of developing TB in the first place. In addition, the homeless community is less likely to present to primary healthcare when experiencing symptoms of TB or any other disease. That increases their likelihood of remaining infectious and transmitting the disease to others. It also increases the likelihood of them developing more severe and difficult-to-treat symptoms, due to the opportunity for the disease to progress further.

Homelessness was also found to increase the likelihood of developing drug-resistant strains of TB, including a much greater risk of developing multi-drug-resistant TB. It was also found that homeless people are a dozen times more likely not to adhere to treatment, which puts them at even greater risk of developing, and transmitting, infectious TB.

The central thread running through all this is a critical problem with housing. Once admitted, hospitals cannot discharge people without a home address. If the disease is not advanced and they have no other health complications, most patients will not be admitted. TB treatment is extremely long: the average treatment duration is 220 days and the average cost of a bed per night is £500. A patient who cannot be discharged can cost the NHS £110,000 in bed fees alone. Specialist hostel accommodation is available and needs supporting. One project that I visited just two weeks ago in Euston costs £60 to £80 a day, including all food, a room, training, language skills and social support for TB treatment.

Does my noble friend the Minister agree that a holistic package of care, if widely adopted by the NHS in high-risk TB areas, could save taxpayers millions and greatly improve treatment outcomes, as well as reduce the spread of the disease?

14:26

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate, and on the excellent way in which she laid out the issues at the beginning. These are important themes, which go beyond health and beyond the UK. I will not talk about international development, although I will say in passing that I identify completely with everything my noble friend Lady Hayman said on that issue.

I was interested to note recently that the European Strategy and Policy Analysis System, which advises all the parts of the European Union, has identified inequality as the most significant long-term challenge now facing Europe. As recovery is now under-way, there is what it describes as a “trend break” in inclusive growth; in other words, growth that is taking everyone with us. It is interesting that in our international development world we talk about no one being left behind in health, but we are not doing very well at that ourselves.

That report goes on to talk about the most vulnerable, the growth in unemployed youth and the so-called lost generation, and the impact on the most vulnerable and the ill of the reduction of public services, all of it indicating that we are building up health problems for ourselves for the future.

That theme of inequality is one that we will have to keep coming back to, and it is important that we do so. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, that we need to increase the volume. Not only does the Department of Health need to do that, but we all need to keep pressing the points that I suspect we all understand very well, and make sure that they are turned into reality.

We in the UK understand those issues better than most. We have had a great tradition of research into and evidence of the relationship between health and income since the Whitehall study, which was begun in 1967. It shows the clear relationship between them; within that, it also notes that while women have longer life expectancy, as we have already heard, low income can affect them worse, and that there is a greater discrepancy in the length of healthy lives. Therefore in a quarter of the boroughs in the UK, men have longer healthy life expectancy than women do. We also know that people from black and minority ethnic communities are particularly affected, because they are overrepresented in low-income groups and face some specific health threats. Therefore we know what the problem is.

The relationship between health and income is complex, and has at least four components, all of which have to be addressed. The first component is simply the material one: whether people are able to buy better health with better food, gym membership and so on. Then there is the psychosocial: we now know the biological mechanisms that show the way in which stress impacts on the body and affects health. We also know that there are links between people in low-income groups and risky life behaviours, as we have already heard from a number of noble Lords. The reverse is also true: poor health can cause low income and reinforce the whole cycle. All these issues affect women, but for women there is a double impact, because many of them are carers or involved in bringing up children, and the health of women affects other people profoundly.

The way to deal with this is equally complex. The WHO study on social determinants, already referred to, stressed the importance of taking a life-course approach to health inequalities, with interventions at every stage from birth to old age, while the study from Europe that I mentioned emphasised investing in citizens and having a focus on promoting well-being.

We have in this country many good specific examples, of which I will name just one: in Lewisham, where they are targeting women’s inequality and picking up across the entire borough the sort of issues that I am talking of. But we need strategic impact, as the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, said; she described it in relation to coronary heart disease, drugs and TB. We need a much more strategic and followed-through approach at a higher volume than is the case at the moment.

I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s response to the noble Baroness’s questions. I suspect that she will tell us that the ideas outlined here and in what other people have said are central to the Government’s policies. However, I hope that she will not just spell out the Government’s hopes for their policies but point to particular examples where those policies are in reality reducing inequalities and having a positive impact on health. We all understand that there needs to be a cross-government approach; health by itself cannot achieve many of the things that we are talking about. Could the Minister also therefore give us good examples of where this approach is happening; for example, where education is working with health to develop health literacy among children?

Finally, the reverse of this is also true: some government policies from other departments may have adverse effects on equality and on health. Can the Minister therefore tell us what the health department is doing to assess the impact of policy from other departments on health and reassure us that the Department of Health can intervene, and indeed has intervened, where there is a potentially negative impact?

14:32

[Baroness Flather (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, for giving us this opportunity to express our views, which is very welcome. I turned 80 last month and I feel that I am on the last lap of life. I have only one passion, which is for poor women, mainly in Africa and India, who get forgotten. There are 1 billion women altogether in Africa and India and what their lives are like we cannot even imagine unless we have gone there and seen it for ourselves. I am not going to talk about that, because it is a huge subject and I have views on what we can do about it, but I just want to tell your Lordships one little story.

I have a Nigerian friend who is from a village in the middle of Nigeria. She said to me that when a woman in her village reaches the age of 40, they have a street party. It is a great thing to reach the age of 40. What does that make us feel? I shall give another, recent example. I had an Indian maid. She does not work for me any more, but she comes to me. She says that I am her mother. I keep telling her that she is not my daughter, but it does not seem to have any effect. She came to me in a terrible worry about some medication that she had been given for her blood pressure. She said, “Oh, it’s not the same as what I had before. I don’t know what they’ve given me. What is it going to do to me?”. So I just read the leaflet. It was blood pressure medication. It was not the same packaging—there are so many different ones.

I want first to say, therefore, that I am much more concerned with ethnic minority women. Secondly, I want to mention a big problem, which is ignorance. Obviously, not everything is available to everyone—we know that—but unfortunately we are not doing anything about improving the awareness and understanding of what is available. A lot of ethnic minority women do not know what is available. They do not understand it. What they can have has not been explained to them.

A report for the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sexual and Reproductive Health in the UK, launched in 2012, showed the differences in the availability of help in different boroughs of London. The differences were huge. Every woman has the right to have access to family planning, not only for herself—because it affects her health, her thinking and her feelings—but for the children she produces. If you have too many children, you cannot give them the attention they need.

We also do not do anything in schools. We are ambivalent about sex education. We do not teach our children what they need to know about their own bodies and needs. People say, “Oh, they will become more promiscuous”. Well, they will be promiscuous if they want to be promiscuous, whether we teach them or not. Maybe they will be more careful; maybe they will use condoms. Let us do that; let us work towards trying to bring in proper sex education in this country, because that will help the next generation.

We have heard about TB and things like that. There should really be a testing process before people come here. Most countries have testing processes for illness. If you know that somebody has TB, you can still let them come but then you give them treatment right away. You do not wait for them to spread the TB around to other people.

The other thing that is specific to ethnic minority women is depression. They suffer hugely from depression. There was a Chinese Peer called Lord Chan who set up a group, of which I was a member, to look at suicides among ethnic minority women. We have the need for family planning. We have mental health problems in minority groups. People are not trained well enough to manage the bicultural aspect. We need to be aware of that. It is very difficult to treat somebody with mental health problems via an interpreter.

There are so many issues. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, quoted Dr Fathalla. Actually, it was in the 1970s, earlier than she said, that he said that we do not treat women—not because we cannot but because we do not think they are worth treating. He was saying how bad it was; he was not saying it for himself. It is true. If you go to African countries, women’s health is right down the agenda. Nobody cares.

FGM was mentioned. Do noble Lords know that if a girl has been cut, the family gets more money for her? We should bear that in mind because quite often some of these ills are perpetrated for financial reasons; child marriage as well—they sell the girl. I said to my friend from Nigeria, “Two goats will buy you a girl of 12”. She said, “No, one goat”. This is the kind of world we are living in and this is the kind of treatment women are getting, so let us not do it here.

14:38

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, following on from the noble Baroness, it is my fervent hope that before I die PSHE will be a core part of the curriculum in every school in this country. That is what we must fight for. I add my thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, for enabling us to have this important and wide-ranging debate. The speeches have given us terrific—and horrific—facts and figures, and much food for thought.

Like other noble Lords, I woke on Monday morning to read articles about the report from Oxfam, A Tale of Two Britains, which showed that the richest five families are worth more than the poorest 20% of people in this country—that is, 12.6 million people, almost the same as the number who live below the poverty line. These figures are deeply shocking and proof of the profound inequalities in our society. The report also said that, for the first time, more working households were in poverty than non-working ones and predicted that the number of children living below the poverty line could increase by 800,000 by 2020.

We know that there is a direct correlation between health inequalities and poverty. Many of the solutions to health inequalities lie outside the health sector—for example, with housing, good employment and security. As in so many areas, it is women who suffer most from health inequalities, not just personally but because they have responsibility for the health of children, partners and elderly parents. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation comments:

“Health and poverty are intertwined—being trapped in poverty piles on stress that perpetuates the cycle and worsens health further”.

I know that the Government will say they have taken action in the Budget to reduce poverty, but it is the reality for millions of people in this country. Next month, when last year’s Budget adjustments are made, they will still be living in poverty while millionaires are thousands of pounds better off.

Housing has a huge influence over people’s health: temporary accommodation; overcrowded rooms; damp walls; inadequate cooking facilities in B&B accommodation; cold homes because there is not enough money for the meter; and the stresses and strains of struggling to pay exorbitant rents. The Government will also say that they are taking steps to make affordable housing more accessible with schemes such as Help to Buy. Those schemes may well help some people and I am glad, but they do nothing to help people who are desperate to rent affordable homes, either from the public or the private sector; they merely create the potential for a housing bubble.

I am sure that we all agree with the conclusions of Sir Michael Marmot’s review on health inequalities, one of which is to ensure a healthy standard of living for all. Yet obesity is the plague of our era, first because of lack of activity and secondly because of poor diet: 26% of adults and 30% of children are classified as obese, the fourth highest level in the world. In a terrific debate last night on the report of the Olympic and Paralympic Legacy Committee, speaker after speaker spoke with concern about the need for greater emphasis on PE in the school day and how high-quality PE and sports programmes can boost school attendance, challenge anti-social behaviour, improve academic performance and, of course, make children healthier now and improve their future health. What are the Government going to do about this issue, which is inextricably linked to health inequalities? Last year, the National Children’s Bureau found that children living in deprived areas are nine times less likely than those living in affluent areas to have access to green space and places to play and to live in environments with better air quality.

Alongside exercise, a healthy and balanced diet is also essential but, given that Britain has some of the highest and most volatile food prices in western Europe, this is becoming harder and harder for people struggling with the squeeze on their household budget. Poverty means that, even though parents might know that fresh food is healthier than processed food, tinned and frozen food is often cheaper and, if you live in a B&B with a single gas ring or you are simply exhausted because of the stresses and strains of life, fast food looks like the only option. The health of many women often suffers because they regularly deprive themselves of food when the choice is between feeding themselves or their children. Yes, they can resort to food banks but only on three occasions can they suffer that indignity. I was extremely disappointed by the complacent and patronising response from the Government at Question Time today. It demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of the realities of life for so many people. My noble friend Lady Whitaker, who is in her place, said that since food banks got going at their present scale hospital admissions for malnutrition have increased by 74%. In answer, the Minister said,

“we are working with business and others to encourage people to adopt a healthier diet”.

That is not the appropriate answer. It demonstrated no grasp at all and a total lack of empathy, as did the continued emphasis on charitable giving. I celebrate the work of charities; food banks do a fantastic job, but I abhor the poverty that drives people to them.

On Tuesday, I had the privilege of spending a few hours with a young woman whom I first met when she was an inmate in HMP Eastwood Park. Thanks to her own resilience and work in the soap enterprise in the prison, of which I am the proud patron, she has turned her life around and is now in employment and caring for her children. We talked about inequalities and the problems that lead to women’s imprisonment, as well as their health problems, specifically mental health problems. The figures are stark: 70% of female sentenced prisoners suffer from two or more mental health disorders, yet, as in the general population, there is no parity between mental and physical health care. She suggested that, in order to help the women avoid problems following sentencing and to reduce consequential costs, every woman should have a mental health assessment before beginning her sentence. This seems an excellent idea and I would be grateful if I could discuss it further with the Minister together with Maria Thomas of the Shaw Trust, who has done a lot of work on this. I look forward to the responses from the Minister to the excellent questions raised today.

14:45

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, am grateful to my noble friend Lady Manzoor for initiating this important debate. I thank all noble Lords for their excellent and informed contributions. I agree with the noble Lord who said that an hour is just not enough to do justice to the huge canvas of inequalities that there are not only in the UK but across the world. I regret, too, that in the time available I will not be able to answer all queries from noble Lords. I promise to write to all who have taken part in this debate to answer their queries and, I hope, to make them feel more reassured.

Health inequalities are a priority that is shared by this Government and Health Ministers across the whole UK. Worldwide, concern is high on DfID’s agenda and it has been very busy over the past few years implementing millennium development goals and thinking about what should follow on from them, particularly those areas surrounding women and children. For too long, health inequalities have denied many children a good start in life, prevented people realising their full potential and weakened communities. They are deeply rooted and a scourge on society, which is unacceptable. However, the tragedy is that, for the most part, they are avoidable. As the Secretary of State has said, we want to make them a thing of the past.

Health inequalities and the poor health outcomes that result are a focus for the health system, working with Public Health England and NHS England, and backed by new health inequalities duties under the Health and Social Care Act 2012. The Department of Health is ensuring that these bodies work together to overcome these inequalities. However, I have to give a warning that successes in any of these areas are not overnight. We have to be in this for the long haul, which is why strategy is so important. These organisations are barely a year old.

Our strategic approach is underpinned by the evidence in the Marmot review. The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, was the first of several noble Lords to highlight the importance of the 2010 report, Fair Society, Healthy Lives. It highlighted that life expectancy is spread across a social gradient, a point highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall; namely, that the lower a person’s position, the worse his or her health. It recommended that action should be proportionate to the level of disadvantage.

Following on from that paper, our public health White Paper, Healthy Lives, Healthy People, accepted the review’s recommendations and we are sponsoring the UCL Institute of Health Equity, led by Sir Michael Marmot, to help implement them. We have adopted its approach. For example, on maternal and child health we are increasing by 50% the number of health visitors by 2015 and more than doubling the number of places on the family nurse partnership programme, which supports vulnerable, first-time young mothers.

Reducing health inequalities is a core Public Health England activity. It will be set out in its business plan to be published shortly, and its health and well-being framework in June. It will identify the action that many stakeholders—notably local government—can take. NHS England set out its proposed priorities in its December board paper Promoting Equality and Tackling Health Inequalities. In addition, NICE continues to provide evidence-based guidance, and the ONS will continue to publish much important data to support our efforts in reducing health inequalities. When I sum up, I will pick up on the issues around data mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe.

The noble Baroness will know of the importance of good health for women during and after pregnancy from her time at Bradford as a previous chair of Bradford Health Authority. Bradford is second only to Birmingham in the number of infant deaths. Responding to that challenge, Bradford established an infant mortality commission, drawing together partners from all corners of the city. Action in Bradford and elsewhere has had a national impact. The health gap in infant mortality was halved between 2004-06 and 2009-11, between the routine and manual group and the whole population, which shows that local focused action can reduce inequalities.

Different communities face different health needs, and it is for local areas to identify those needs. We have sought to empower local areas by transferring public health to local government, giving £5.46 billion of funding over two years. We have made it clear that local areas must take account of health inequalities as a condition of that funding.

Some of the most extreme health inequalities are found among the most vulnerable and socially excluded women, such as street-based sex workers. Open Doors, a Hackney organisation, and the TB team at Homerton Hospital carry out late-night outreach among these women looking for cases of TB and HIV—a fatal combination—and to provide support and care for them. The Homerton TB team also provides housing for homeless people with TB for the duration of their treatment because, as my noble friend Lady Suttie has said, homelessness helps spread TB. The £10 million Homeless Hospital Discharge Fund seeks to ensure safe discharge from hospital and to break the cycle of poor health and homelessness. Public Health England is leading on developing a national TB strategy, including tackling drug resistance.

The NHS is providing a hepatitis information and testing programme in Sheffield, which offers screening for at-risk communities, including the Roma communities, and in Leeds it is seeking to establish the needs of those communities and to improve access to their services. In Salford, the NHS is working with different groups to improve the uptake of vaccines such as MMR, focusing on BME groups where the uptake is low. In Hillingdon, a specialist health visitor and trained volunteers support Afghan and Tamil women on a range of physical and mental health needs, including domestic violence.

As noble Lords will know, access to services is crucial. Women living in deprived areas are less likely to attend for breast cancer screening or present with early symptoms, which leads to lower survival rates. We cannot meet our cancer objectives without reducing these inequalities through programmes such as the National Cancer Equality Initiative, and the work of local areas such as Southwark and Lewisham in reducing inequalities in breast cancer care, and Walsall and the Isle of Wight in promoting cervical cancer screening.

Obesity has a strong social gradient among women. We are encouraging and promoting action on obesity and better nutrition through the responsibility deal and through Change4Life. There is a threefold difference in smoking in pregnancy rates between London and the north-east. Sunderland and other north-east communities, Blackpool and Dudley have responded to these inequalities and are contributing to our national ambition of reducing smoking in pregnancy rates among all women from 15%—where it is now—to 11% by 2015.

We work—with Public Health England—across government to reinvigorate action on child poverty, raise educational attainment, support families and promote work as a route out of poverty. To pick up a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, a study by the Institute of Health Equity has shown that one of the best things that you can do for a child is to read to them daily. Not only does that raise their educational outcomes but it also raises their cognitive ability from a very early age.

[Baroness Flather]

There are many parents who cannot read.

[Baroness Jolly]

I understand that. I am sure that there are adult education programmes across the country. The noble Baroness shakes her head. Perhaps we can have a conversation about that outside the debate.

We have focused on outcomes rather than on targets to promote action and measure progress, including through the public health outcomes framework, in line with the Marmot review proposal for a national framework of indicators for local areas to draw on to meet their own needs. This strategic approach to reducing health inequalities will help guide local action that is practical, joined up across the causes of ill health, and delivered at a scale to make a difference and improve health outcomes for all our people.

In what time I have, I shall run through points that noble Lords have raised that I have not covered. The noble Baroness, Lady Manzoor, asked about cardiovascular disease, which we know affects millions of people and is one of the largest causes of death and disability in this country. The previous Government made huge strides in this area which this Government have carried on. During the past decade, there has been a 40% reduction in under-75 mortality rates, with a narrowing in the difference between the most deprived and the least deprived areas of England.

Domestic violence is one aspect of violence against women and girls; others include sexual violence, abuse and gang violence. We also heard today at Question Time about FGM, and the Government are working on that issue.

On international health inequalities, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, the approach to tackling health inequalities in England is recognised internationally as leading edge. Professor Sir Michael Marmot has chaired the World Health Organisation’s commission on the social determinants of health. Based on the interim analyses of the first phase of this programme, it is estimated that, during the lifetime of the project, more than 9,500 maternal lives will be saved, more than 190,000 maternal disabilities will be avoided, nearly 10,500 new-borns will be saved and more than 12,500 stillbirths will be averted.

The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, asked about the gap of 20 years in healthy life expectancy. I mentioned earlier that local authorities have been given a £5.4 billion budget to press on that.

I have been informed that I am out of time. I am sorry. I flagged up that I doubted that I would get through all your Lordships’ points during the debate, but I will certainly write to you and answer any outstanding queries.

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

Before the Minister sits down, it would just be quite nice to have a reassurance about the data.

[Baroness Jolly]

Yes.

UN: Technical Agencies

Thursday 20th March 2014 Grand Committee

Question for Short Debate

15:00

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the key objectives of United Kingdom delegations attending United Nations technical agencies in 2014; and whether they will report back to Parliament after the meetings.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, United Nations agencies are responsible to national Governments, who are their members and funders. These organisations with specialised purposes, from health to meteorology to communications, were formed even before the League of Nations and United Nations were. In the United Kingdom, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has an overall brief to ensure that the delegations to these agencies from various UK government departments and their semi-independent agencies represent UK interests effectively. Despite the strong and effective participation of the UK in these agencies, there is general concern that their profile in Whitehall and Westminster is not as high as it should be. It is obviously much lower than that of foreign affairs and international crises.

The United Nations Association, the voluntary body that supports the UN in the UK, works hard to raise the profile of UN bodies. These agencies have a vital role for key aspects of all countries of the world, both developed and developing; for example on health warnings, food safety, communications, aviation, weather forecasting and intellectual property. Sometimes Ministers attend the meetings of the UN agencies but fewer do from the UK than from other countries. I recall my noble kinsman Lady Bottomley attending the WHO meetings when she was Minister of Health, while Mr Meacher at Defra was an assiduous attendee of meetings at UNEP, the United Nations Environment Programme.

My first point is that the agencies need reviewing from time to time, in the light of urgent issues, but while the UN and national Governments always look at efficiency in these reviews, they seem reluctant to look at the fundamentals of their operation and the budgets allocated in relation to the urgency of the problem. I am pleased that the UK contribution to UN agencies is not dependent on its policies or particular decisions; nor is it subject to lobbying by commercial or political organisations, as US contributions are. My noble friend Lord Rea will talk about the WHO; yesterday I learnt that there are threats to the WHO from the United States about its policy that sugar levels should be dropped to the equivalent of one glass of Coca-Cola per day.

Water resources are currently critical but the United Nations programmes—for example in UNESCO and the World Meteorological Organisation, which is also responsible for hydrology—have very small budgets. In the case of the World Meteorological Organisation, it is less than 5% of the total while 95% is for meteorology. Although availability of water is one of the key objectives of DfID, this is a surprising situation. Sometimes new agencies are needed, as happened in the 1980s when the United Nations Environment Programme was initiated. UNEP did a good job on the ozone hole but it is not being directed in an effective way by member countries to co-ordinate and publicise the national, regional and global problems associated with atmospheric and marine pollution. That is of course very topical at the moment, particularly in Asia. Marine pollution is in fact to some extent a responsibility of the International Maritime Organisation, based across the river here in London, but it plays a limited role. Is Defra considering stronger co-ordination by UNEP in this general area of pollution, since UNEP is probably the UN body with the biggest responsibility?

My next point is that the United Nations bodies are generally open in their communications. They are not secret; all their minutes are published before and afterwards and the communications between the members are open. However, it is very important that the recent exposure of certain Governments spying on the confidential communications of diplomats from other Governments and non-governmental organisations does not lead to a loss of trust between countries and agencies working in the UN.

I tabled a Parliamentary Question and was told, more or less, “We’re not going to answer that question because we do not talk about those things”. The fact is that they exist and this is a real issue. I hope that the Minister, in replying, will provide something more than I got in response to my PQ.

My next point is that the Government review agencies, but in doing that they should also consider the benefits to the UK: for example, in dealing with flooding, where other countries have developed useful approaches and, in some cases, have better research facilities. The Food and Agriculture Organisation studies of GMOs in agriculture are surely important. The recent reviews by United Nations bodies of the UK’s health and housing are very useful, although they were very controversial and the Government were not very happy with them. That is the kind of UN activity that is really impacting on us in the UK, which we therefore need to consider in reviewing those agencies.

One way to ensure improved benefits to the UK from our membership of the UN is to involve UK stakeholders, in which I include parliamentarians, to a greater extent in UN agencies; for example, through regular pre-meetings, report-back meetings and wider participation of UK delegations as observers. I am president of an NGO, ACOPS. We have observer status at the International Maritime Organisation and the London dumping convention, and we can provide some expertise. For example, there are now regular consultations between the Met Office and certain parts of the private sector, which are very welcome.

However, generally, the United States is stronger in that respect and positively ruthless in using its delegations to promote US technology. They have told me that they will vote or not vote because they were told by their industry to vote for this or not vote for that. That is highly directed to promoting US technology and US business. The Chancellor was calling yesterday in his speech for the UK to have higher exports. Perhaps he might talk to the Foreign Office UN department to see whether it could be of some help in that direction. At the executive level, there are now excellent relations between some UN agencies and NGOs, of which GLOBE is an example on issues connected with climate and the environment.

My third main point is that the United Nations as a whole has broad targets. I believe that the millennium development goals were a tremendous step forward for the whole UN movement, understood at the level of the sustainability commission in New York and the General Assembly. That brought together lots of activities. There have also been the broad goals of reducing carbon emissions. I believe that there could be more specific targets for agencies or groups of agencies—for example, I just mentioned pollution. Those targets could be openly discussed by parliaments as stakeholders and progress or regress towards achieving them should be openly reviewed.

Of course, targets require data, which remains a great weakness of the UN system and, indeed, the international system. UN bodies could urge countries to be more systematic in gathering data and more open with them. For example, sometimes even the most basic data are not available in some countries, such as whether there is or is not a sewage plant in the capital city of an African country. In the case in point, the answer was no. A study in another African country showed that several organisations are collecting very useful environmental and health data which are not well co-ordinated. The study, in collaboration with those organisations, recommended the use of data centres. The whole world would benefit from that. DfID does not seem to understand or support that view very strongly.

In closing, which goals and targets should be emphasised and publicised? They should relate to recent crises. One of the greatest crises at the moment is the Syrian and, earlier, Iraq conflict. Surely we should be thinking more about technical methods of identifying combatants and their weapons, as happened last year with the question of gases. We must consider how we can provide improved humanitarian aid. Those are technical and organisational questions and we should have targets for them.

The Bangladesh factory collapse last year led to the deaths of many hundreds of people. There should now be improved targets for the International Labour Organisation on factory health and safety. After the floods in Europe and Pakistan and the droughts in California, the water programmes need more technical focus and bigger budgets, as I have already mentioned. We could also have targets to help co-ordinate international and regional programmes for pollution episodes.

We could have improved warnings and assistance before, during and after natural and artificial disasters. The United Nations organisation for disasters, the ISDR, co-ordinates but with more funds it could have more ambitious targets. For example, should we not have a target that, say, 30 years from now we should finally be able to detect earthquakes? There is a good deal of research going on—big objectives are appropriate. A meeting in Parliament this morning showed the need for FAO studies of future food and fish stocks, and how they are in danger from exploitation, pollution and climate change, to be more widely understood by world leaders. We need some clarity in this area.

I look forward to the Minister’s response to the issues raised. I declare my interest as a former permanent representative for the UK at the World Meteorological Organisation, when I was head of the Met Office; president of an NGO; and vice-chair of GLOBE, working with UN agencies.

15:11

[Lord Rea (Lab)]

My Lords, this short debate covers a very wide-ranging subject but it is regrettable that there are only three speakers. Perhaps this is something to do with it being on Thursday afternoon, but it is surprising. There are many people who are far more expert on the United Nations and the World Health Organisation—about which I shall speak—than I am. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, may be relieved that she has to answer only three speakers when the United Nations covers such a huge range of subjects.

In my short contribution, I will concentrate on the World Health Organisation, which is just one of some 20 United Nations agencies. Its membership covers every single country in the United Nations—194 at my last count—and it has representatives in 140 of them, collaborating with national health ministries. In some developing countries, a WHO team helps with developing the governance and administration of health services in various ways. Although the WHO has been criticised as cumbersome—even sclerotic—it has had some very able directors-general who have pulled it into better shape. The WHO has some significant successes to its credit, the best known being the elimination of smallpox and the near-elimination of poliomyelitis. It has had many more quiet successes, many of which are still going on, concerned largely with monitoring disease levels, particularly epidemic outbreaks. Until recently WHO has concentrated on infectious, rather than non-communicable, diseases but there has been increasing interest in looking at the origins and handling of the latter since Gro Brundtland’s reign as director-general. This is appropriate, since they now make up half the diseases affecting the developing world as well as nearly all the serious diseases affecting the developed world.

In the area of infectious diseases, the WHO collaborates with a number of other agencies. Some of these are its own offspring but receive separate funding and have devolved or different administration. I am thinking of UNAIDS or the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. So in its governance it retains a considerable degree of democracy and accountability through its committee structure at different levels, with representation from member states meeting regularly. My noble friend mentioned the regular attendance of at least two of our Ministers.

Some of the most useful work of the World Health Organisation is done by its many expert committees, some of which are standing committees meeting regularly with permanent staff on subjects such as essential medicines and biological standards. There is one group that regularly reviews the guidelines the WHO issues fairly regularly on a variety of topics. My noble friend mentioned perhaps the most recent, which was on sugar intake and has ruffled some feathers in the food industry. Other expert committees are ad hoc on topical subjects and may meet only a few times, but the members of these committees are all internationally recognised authorities in their chosen field. They are selected from panels of experts held by the WHO. A sizeable proportion of these experts is from the United Kingdom. Will the Minister describe the process by which they are selected? When they are selected, do they make a declaration of interest before they are appointed?

Reports from these committees are widely respected, although not always welcomed by Governments, which is as it should be. Progress in public health often involves controversial measures not welcomed by vested interests making profits from the activity or product concerned which is deleterious to health.

I shall make a very few remarks on drugs. The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs has rather laid down the approach internationally to the control of drugs. The emphasis has largely been on curbing supply with a prohibitionist stance. The director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has said that it is time for the UN’s stance on drugs to change from having a largely prohibitionist role to one more focused on the health impact of drugs and on reducing the harm they cause. Will the Minister say whether the Government have moved even a little in that direction?

15:19

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, we should congratulate my noble friend Lord Hunt of Chesterton not only on securing this short debate but on once again, and single-handedly, raising the important issues surrounding United Nations agencies. I agree with the comment by my noble friend Lord Rea that it is a pity that there are not more speakers in this debate.

The truth is that this crucial part of UN activity is not discussed enough in either House of Parliament, and when it is discussed in your Lordships’ House it seems always to be at the instigation of my noble friend. Thanks are due to the House of Lords Library, which has prepared a briefing pack for today’s debate. In that we can read the Hansard for the debate on 22 November 2011, almost precisely 28 months ago, and be reminded of Parliamentary Questions that have been asked in both Houses and answered by various Ministers. These are of course helpful but I will ask some questions about how Her Majesty’s Government organise themselves in relation to UN agencies, about where costs fall between the FCO and other departments and whether there is enough ministerial oversight and parliamentary engagement with this issue.

Of course, in general terms, like the Government, the Opposition support the UK’s membership of, involvement in and activity in these agencies. As befits a country which played a leading part in the setting up of the United Nations, we are right to engage in the multilateral activity that is the basis for the running of and results from the agencies. Whether we serve on the executive of a given agency or attend its congress, there is obviously a need to be able to act as a team player and, at the same time, to look after British interests. No one has ever said or suggested that this is easy or necessarily comfortable at all times, but we strongly believe that the need for multilateralism in foreign affairs has never been greater; a statement of the obvious, perhaps, but worth putting on the record.

My understanding is that the FCO has a small section that oversees our membership of these agencies, but that individual departments with their own technical skills are involved in the UK involvement with the relevant agencies. I am delighted that the Minister is in fact the Minister in the FCO for the United Nations and thus for these agencies. I note that the questions that were asked in the other place over the course of the past year have been answered by various Ministers, which is no doubt the common way in which it is done.

My questions are not meant to be unduly critical, but are really for information and for Parliament. Does the Minister believe that she has satisfactory oversight of how any individual agency is functioning? Or is that responsibility passed on to, perhaps, another Minister in another government department that deals with day-to-day activity with that agency? Generally, is there sufficient ministerial oversight in any event? Or is there a danger that Ministers, whether in the FCO or elsewhere in Whitehall, with their heavy workloads, have really been forced to make this rather less of a priority than it should be?

What is the actual cost to the Government overall of our membership and participation in these UN agencies? How much of that total cost does the FCO contribute, and how much do other departments contribute? That leads on to the question of parliamentary engagement—reporting back to Parliament after meetings —which is one of those which my noble friend, in raising this issue today, is particularly concerned about: it is in the Question. Does the Minister believe that there is room for improvement in reporting back to Parliament? If there is, how could it be improved?

In the debate some two and a quarter years ago, to which I referred, mention was made of a possible ad hoc committee on international organisations. The Minister who responded on that occasion, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, talked about an ad hoc committee,

“which might look at the how Britain relates to international agencies and which ones provide us with the best value for money”.—[Official Report, 22/11/11; col. 1039.]

Clearly, the 2011 multilateral aid review, the MAR, and its update in December last year are very good starting points for parliamentarians, as they are for the ordinary citizen outside. However, it is perhaps right to now look at whether Parliament should play a slightly more important role in looking at what these individual agencies actually achieve for this country and, of course, for the world.

I repeat that none of the questions I pose today is meant to be unduly critical. I do not think there is very much between the Government’s attitude to this issue and our attitude to it. However, I am sure the noble Baroness will agree that if improvements can be made, they should be. If the Minister would like some time to consider her answer to the questions I have put today, I am more than happy to receive a letter in due course. Meanwhile, I look forward to what she has to say in her reply to my noble friend’s speech.

15:26

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)]

My Lords, first, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for securing this afternoon’s debate. All too often, issues in relation to the United Nations—certainly in this House but in the other place as well—focus on the headline-grabbing situations, where there is a crisis around the world and we are talking about Security Council resolutions. As the Minister for the UN, I have found that one of the areas of the job that is least publicised is the day-to-day meetings that we have with UN officials, whether in New York or when they are visiting here, about UN reform. As the noble Lord will be aware from his own experience, it is like an oil tanker in terms of changing some of what are seen as perceived norms, certainly within the UN system, which appear even more so when you look at the specialised agencies within the UN.

It is therefore important, certainly for me as Minister with responsibility for the UN, to make sure that we do not lose sight of how these particular specialised agencies benefit the United Kingdom and, indeed, the wider international world. They are vital, as the noble Lord said, for the smooth running of everyday things that our globalised society and economy depends on—everything from shipping to telecommunications. As the noble Lord mentioned, these agencies also play an important role in the greatest challenges facing us all, such as climate change, in providing aid to the victims of natural disasters and in the prevention of global pandemics. They therefore have an impact on almost all government departments across Whitehall.

The noble Lord, Lord Bach, asked about the organisation of UN agency responsibilities. The FCO has oversight of budgetary policy and of management reform for these agencies, but we co-ordinate UK positions with the lead policy departments depending on which specialist agency we are dealing with. We take the lead in co-ordinating the various government departments and agencies. Over the past 18 months, for example, we have hosted a quarterly UN reform group meeting which brings together all those officials across Whitehall from the different departments who represent the UK in the UN and we run workshops, seminars and more formal training to make sure that we all get the best out of what can sometimes seem like quite an opaque and difficult system.

We have also set up a dedicated web platform to provide officials with a virtual space where they can share knowledge, expertise and best practice in dealing with the UN’s specialised agencies. We continue to explore other, more innovative ways to ensure that the UK is even more co-ordinated, coherent and consistent in its dealings. Do we have enough oversight? Do I, as a Minister, have enough? The noble Lord was right to ask that question. The important decisions on the agencies are referred to Ministers. An example of that is that Ministers would be involved when dealing with the election of the agencies’ executive heads.

Another question that was raised was about where the costs fall in all this. The FCO pays the costs of the assessed contributions to the core UN budgets. Other government departments fund assessed contributions of specialised agencies according to their respective areas of activity.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked about the Government’s plans to report to Parliament on the outcome of meetings. As I said to the noble Lord in reply to a Question in January last year, it is for the lead department in each case to report on such meetings. The issues handled by the agencies are usually quite highly technical in nature, so it is the responsibility of each department that engages with them and that sits with the experts across Whitehall to report on them. I know that many departments already publish information about this work in their annual departmental reports or in thematic reports on specific policy areas.

Alongside government reports, UN bodies also publish a wealth of information about their work online, and I can reassure the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that UK delegations enjoy positive relationships with agencies which are willing to share their knowledge and listen to our views. However, UN agencies need to get better at talking to each other, and the challenge of co-ordinating system-wide action will become even more important, for example, when the UN grapples with setting the sustainable development goals as a follow-up to the MDGs.

I hope I can deal with a couple of the areas that were raised today on the key objectives for the specialised agencies. The International Telecommunication Union and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport will pursue the goal of bringing the whole world online and enabling everyone to access the benefits of information and communications technologies. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, made an excellent point about the running of collaboration between government, the private sector and civil society to reap the full benefits from UN agencies. The DCMS has created a partnership with UK businesses, including BT and Vodafone, academics and NGOs for that purpose. The ITU is an outstanding example of where open decision-making and bringing together 700 people from all sectors makes for better decision-making.

The Met Office was also referred to in the debate. It works with the World Meteorological Organisation to ensure that there is appropriate international infrastructure to support our national capability. It will also use international collaborations, commitments and relationships through the WMO to enable the delivery of the national capability in the most cost-effective way.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, also talked about DfID’s engagement. As the FCO Minister with responsibility for, among other areas, Bangladesh, I am especially pleased that DfID is contributing £4.8 million to the ILO to support improving fire safety and structural integrity, especially after the Rana Plaza disaster in Dhaka, and I hope that that kind of work will prevent the kind of tragedy we saw with the collapse of Rana Plaza and other buildings. The Government are also working with the ILO to make it more efficient and effective in offering country-specific solutions to employment challenges. I know it has worked on, for example, cotton picking in some central Asian countries.

This brings me to the FCO’s key objective for the UN agencies, and I feel it is right to push for a more joined-up UN system that delivers better outcomes for its member states and better value for money for the taxpayer when many Governments, including our own, are asking for more to be done with less funds. The UK and our international partners have strongly supported the efforts of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to strengthen the UN. Mr Ban has made some progress—for example, the new Department for Field Support, the creation of UN Women and the global field support strategy—but still more needs to be done. I spend quite a lot of time working with officials to try to work out what are our key priorities where we could support the Secretary-General and where we feel some progress could be made rather than just grandstanding statements.

On containing UN budgets, improving budgets by linking funding to results, prioritising mandates, effectively improving performance management and the better use of IT to streamline some of the back-office work which at the moment appears to be done in so many different ways in different organisations, I have opened up a dialogue with the Secretary-General and the executive heads of all UN bodies to seek their co-operation on these UK priorities, and we are currently considering a number of actions to take forward the UK’s agenda for change. I have formally written to the Secretary-General and the heads of the UN agencies. My officials will continue to work closely with the different government departments and agencies that represent the UK at the specialised agencies to ensure that they are giving the same clear and consistent measures that we are giving in terms of UN reform in general.

The noble Lord, Lord Rea, asked specifically about the World Health Organisation. We have a good relationship with WHO and work closely with the organisation on a broad range of public health and development issues. The Department for International Development’s multilateral aid review assessed WHO as being critical to the delivery of UK international objectives; for example, around polio and maternal health. The UK is the second largest contributing member state to WHO after the US, with an investment of about £220 million over the two years 2012 and 2013. The Department of Health leads on that relationship, and the UK will become an executive member of the WHO board from May of this year for three years. That will enable us to work even more closely.

The UK does not provide significant funding for HIV/AIDS. However, we contribute to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which covers some of the areas that the noble Lord spoke about. The Department for International Development announced last September that the UK would contribute £1 billion to the Global Fund for 2014, 2015 and 2016. The UK also contributes about £50 million a year of core funding to the UNAIDS programme. In addition, the UK sits on the executive body of the global fund and UNAIDS.

The noble Lord asked how our experts to WHO are selected. I do not have that information, but I will certainly write to the noble Lord to give it to him. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will probably be disappointed by my response to his question on spying in the specialist agencies. He and other noble Lords are probably aware about long-standing HMG policy on such matters. Rather than provide him with a stock response, I am just going to say that I am unable to provide him with any more information than I have already provided in the PQ.

It would have been great to see more noble Lords taking part in this debate. This can sometimes be seen, certainly in my role, as a dry aspect of what usually happens at the UN. It is not the General Assembly; it is not the Security Council; it is not responding at times of urgency; but it puts in place the bricks and mortar for us to make a better world. It was therefore important that this debate should take place today and I thank the noble Lord for calling it.

The Government will continue to work closely with our international partners and civil society to ensure that the UN specialised agencies contribute to our work on key issues like development, prosperity and management reforms. Once again, I am grateful to the noble Lord for providing an opportunity to discuss these important issues.

15:37

Sitting suspended.

Economy: Creative Sector

Thursday 20th March 2014 Grand Committee

Question for Short Debate

16:00

Asked by

[Baroness Andrews]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proposals they have to promote the role of the creative skills sector in the United Kingdom economy.

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted that so many noble Lords have joined me in this debate today. I am very grateful, especially since it is a Thursday afternoon and it is late—so thank you so much.

The skills policy has been described by one of the leading policymakers as “impenetrable” to the outside. Quite so. Given the complexity around the creative skills sector, I thought it wise this afternoon for me to focus on the creative and cultural sector and leave other experts to talk about digital and media. I shall also focus on just a few challenges in the short time that we have.

My long-term concern is about our entrenched failure as a country to commit to high status vocational training and skills or to understand the importance of creativity in the school curriculum, converged in the exam question that I was set recently by the Government of Wales. This was to make a report to the Welsh Government that would establish how the arts, culture and heritage, working collaboratively, could make a greater impact on reducing poverty and raising ambitions in Wales. It was not so much about new resources as about new ways of thinking. In fact, Wales is well ahead of the game in asking this question and in putting culture at the heart of the search for economic and social solutions to poverty, inequality and unemployment.

It is a hugely complex question, and there are no simplistic answers—but in the report that we launched last week I put forward some basic propositions as to how young people could better access the skills and jobs driven by the knowledge economy and the experience economy. That was a new term to me; by “experience economy” is meant the demand for cultural and performance goods. Among the recommendations that I gave some priority to was the need for a richer arts and cultural provision inside and outside school, joined to community provision as well as better training of teachers, so that they understand how engagement with the arts lifts and accelerates learning. We also need shared policy-making between culture, welfare and employment agencies and an all-Wales strategy for volunteering and apprenticeships across the creative and cultural sector.

The report is packed with examples of the different experiences of young people across Wales—whether they are working backstage or front of house for the National Theatre or an opera company—and how they are finding their own vision and voice as artists and musicians, taking over the museums and working with archives while developing the skills concomitant with that. In that context, I am very happy to pay tribute to the work of Creative and Cultural Skills in Wales, which has placed about 140 creative apprenticeships so far, helped by the very successful young recruits programme. It is more successful, I should say, than the Work Programme in England. The success of that programme shows that there is a buoyant demand for people who can run visitor operations, arts management, technical theatre and much more.

That confirms what the trend of the UK statistics shows—that the creative sector is growing at double the rate of other sectors, and there are persistent skill gaps. Indeed, according to CCS UK, some skill gaps are actually intensifying, not least due to the speed of digital change but also in areas such as management, marketing, sales, technical and craft-specific skills. So the demand for specialist and general skills can only grow. Equally importantly, the skills that are needed go far beyond the creative economy itself; they actually spread into and serve the entire economy because essentially they are about talent and capabilities. What is exciting about this is that, especially in areas of high youth unemployment, there is a greater opportunity in some ways for the non-graduate and the accomplished technician than there is for the graduate.

Getting skills training right across the sector is, as every noble Lord here knows, very challenging. The sector almost defies definition because it is so dynamic and diverse. We have about 30 idiosyncratic industries covering everything from fashion to special effects, and it is bound to be difficult to articulate common or even coherent structures, content, accreditation and qualifications. The Minister and I met a group of music industry apprentices the other day. I was struck by the fact that each of them had negotiated their own FE and employer training. In fact, many of them were engaged in business management law and marketing rather than music-making. The fundamental and urgent challenge now seems to be that although we know that the creative industries generate billions of pounds in added value and exports, the infrastructure is lagging light years behind our ability to take advantage of it. Putting the right levers in place is more difficult because neither the SMEs, which dominate the private sector, nor the cash-strapped public sector can plan strategically or to scale for skills training.

In addition, we have a labyrinthine architecture: two skills sector councils and each country in the UK doing things slightly differently. Having to negotiate and navigate that is proving incredibly complicated for everybody. There is good news. A lot is happening. Our Creative and Cultural Skills Council has placed 3,500 apprentices since 2009. It continues to articulate clearer vocational routes. It has created the National Academy for Creative and Cultural Skills as its delivery method and its programme, Creative Choices, has reached more than 1 million people. In the past year or two we have had the creative skill set, identifying 17 recommendations to boost skills. Recently, we have had the creation of the Creative Industries Council.

My first question for the Minister is: can he update us on the impact of that range of developments? What are the Government doing to support and incentivise those efforts? So far, so good, but it is not good enough, because throughout the system there is clearly a need for greater collaboration and dialogue, particularly in relation to education and employment. One sector leader put it to me that the cultural sector has always been perceived as marginal to education and skills policy-makers because there have not been any traditional non-graduate ways into work, so jobcentres and careers advisers are mystified by the sector. That is absolutely what I have found in Wales.

The priority is to demystify the sector and enable greater collaboration, to close the gaps which stop information about careers in the creative sector reaching teachers, parents, young people, careers advice programmes and employment strategies. Of course, we have to start with schools. An arts-rich curriculum can give young people the real skills that they need to get on in any situation: resourcefulness, thoughtfulness, fast and flexible thinking. Teachers as professionals need to know more about how engagement with the arts and culture accelerates learning, sustains motivation and opens up new choices and careers. We need them to be able to access that information because they are the most powerful advocates and agents to help young people into those career choices. Would that every teacher could visit Singapore to see how an arts-rich curriculum drives an economy.

I ask the Minister to report progress on the Henley report and to update us on discussions about the arts and the EBacc. Secondly, the dismantling of the Careers Service has been catastrophic. Careers advisers do not themselves always know how to go about getting never mind giving advice, because many of those careers are portfolio-based. How are the Government addressing that problem? How is the Work Programme being advised about the possibilities?

Thirdly, the Government need to address what I see as the failure of both leadership and policy integration. Neither the DCMS nor the UK Arts Council sees skills as its direct responsibility. The cultural sector has not historically engaged with FE. There needs to be a much better fit between employers, HE and FE providers, BIS and DCMS. They should all have an equal role in that because, frankly, there is no point in the Secretary of State for Culture banging on about how important culture is to the economy if DCMS takes no responsibility for the skills to sustain that. This is more urgent because the new Euro programmes make it imperative that the cultural sector engages with the need to drive up work opportunities for young people. Perhaps the Minister could take that message back to DCMS and tell us more about what is planned to make sure that we take advantage of the new Euro framework programmes.

Fourthly, the SMEs need more support to navigate complex funding systems without being overwhelmed. I am delighted to say that CCS again is showing real leadership and is looking at how best to bring together schools and careers advice with industry engagement, training and work experience. It is planning a place-based series of innovative and exemplary skills hubs set up around the CCS base in Thurrock, which are intended to form networks, pool resources and offer greater sustainability for small businesses. It is an excellent local model for local delivery, which is what we need to see to make clear how everything joins up in principle and practice. I hope that the Minister will lead a delegation to see how it is working.

Finally, the growth review included digital and creative industries as one of its six priority growth areas with justified and prioritised actions to support future growth. Surely that should include a more coherent and vigorous approach to skills training across the sector.

16:10

[Baroness Bonham-Carter of Yarnbury (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for this debate. I think that we all agree that the UK’s creative industries are one of our greatest assets. An IPPR report published last month states:

“The creative industries survive or fall on innovation and the discovery of new talent, so skills are critical”.

As the noble Baroness said, in this area we do not face a jobs problem but a skills problem. However, work is being done.

As the noble Baroness also mentioned, BIS and DCMS have established the Creative Industries Council, on which I sit. It is a joint forum attended by practitioners and government. It is an attempt to corral the very disparate members of the creative industries sector and focuses on areas where barriers to growth face the sector. We are hard at work on a soon-to-be-launched creative industries strategy, at the heart of which is establishing an education and careers system that inspires and supports the next creative generation.

In 2011, Ian Livingstone and Alex Hope published the Next Gen. report, which argued that our education system was not keeping up with the times, in particular the way in which ICT was being taught. The coalition Government listened and a programme of study for ICT including computer programming and a GCSE in computer science were introduced this year. Computer science is now part of the EBacc’s science strand.

Before the last election the Lib Dems produced The Power of Creativity in which we pledged to enable businesses to offer more apprenticeships. We have achieved that. A record number in the creative industries are now being government funded. In the Budget yesterday, funding was provided for more than 100,000 additional incentive payments under the apprenticeship grants for employers scheme and we hope that large numbers of these will be creative. According to Arts Council England, 81% of those surveyed who had taken up an apprenticeship are now employed in the creative industries. It is estimated that the 2011-12 apprenticeships will deliver net gains of £2.4 million to the UK economy.

I am sorry if I am speaking rather fast but I want to get to what I really want to talk about; namely, that it is clearly money well spent but that there is a major problem in the area of diversity. Last week Lenny Henry gave the BAFTA TV lecture. What he had to say was horrifying. He told us:

“Between 2006 and 2012, the number of BAME’s working in the UK TV industry has declined by 30.9 per cent. Creative Skillset conducted a census that shows quite clearly that Black, Asian and minority ethnic representation in the creative industries in 2012 was just 5.4 per cent—its lowest point since they started taking the census”.

As the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, will know as well as me, when it comes to the performing arts we should not be worried about just the lack of “front of camera”, it is the producers, the directors, commissioners and board members who set the scene. How is this for a fact? Of the key PSB bodies—Ofcom, BBC Trust, ITV and Channel 4—where the Government have some influence, 42 board seats are available, of which just one, a BBC trustee, is not white. All 15 seats on the BSkyB board are filled by white appointees. ACE and the BFI have just one non-white board member each.

The DCMS Minister Ed Vaizey has recognised the problem and set up a group, of which I am a member, alongside the noble Baronesses, Lady King and Lady Benjamin, and representatives from the industry, which meets monthly. We are determined not to be just a talking shop. Action is required and one of our priorities is data. To make people accountable, you need detailed and timely data.

What a waste. It is essential that the creative industries reflect the 21st-century UK: our vibrant, creative and multicultural country that attracts so many people from overseas because it is just that. The most important thing, as this debate highlights, is to ensure that we continue to create the creators, and in doing so we must stop excluding so much potential.

16:15

[Baroness Young of Hornsey (CB)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate secured by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, whose remarks I endorse—apart from the fact that actually we have masses of data about this issue, which has been campaigned on for 50 years. It is time for real action, again.

I do not wish to rehearse the facts of the contribution of the creative industries to the UK economy, although I will point out that if the fashion industry were a country, it would be seventh on the table of global GDP and about the same size as the economy of Canada. That is how big it is, so I am going to focus on the fashion industry again. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me for taking this opportunity to shift the focus from some of the more established notions of skills training and gaps on to creative skills and sustainability. This is timely as we approach the first anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh on 24 April. It is perhaps also worth noting that we are in the final year of the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.

Since the exposure of the realities of not only building collapses but issues such as landfill and other forms of environmental degradation, more and more people are calling for a fashion revolution. Yet my sense is that the training and education of those who design, produce and sell garments has not really kept up with that kind of movement. The more we think about the challenges in producing fashion that retains its sense of fun, enables us to present our sense of identity, et cetera, the more important it becomes to make values and ethics explicit components of the training and education of creatives and makers in the fashion industry. Just as we train and teach our students and apprentices how to develop their craft and skills to produce high-quality creative content, so we should be teaching innovative approaches to internal and external threats, problems and opportunities, such as the environment and sustainability.

The Centre for Sustainable Fashion is, along with MADE-BY, among the leaders of the drive to ensure that students develop their creative skills and innovative talents in conjunction with an understanding of the need to develop different ways of working which emphasise that good fashion should also be sustainable. The centre’s staff provide the secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion, which I chair—my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, is also a member of that group.

As the world faces environmental and social challenges, there is a greater need for innovation and creativity based not on single disciplines but on inter- and multidisciplinarity. Future creative graduates are going to need the skills to address sustainability and ethical challenges, which means that they must have the opportunity to engage with these issues throughout their education. I have used fashion as an example but the arts, cultural and creative sector as a whole has to develop much more sustainable practices and much more rapidly.

Currently the creative industries are not leading the charge on sustainability, which I feel is a missed trick, especially given the ability of the sector to engage with such a wide range of people in a fun and interesting way. Given the ability of these sectors to generate debate, joy, contemplation, reflection and so on, and given their highly developed creativity, I hope that the creative skills training bodies will make a decisive push in this direction, encouraged by leadership from the Government. Creative practitioners have the potential to make a real difference in the way that society as a whole faces these issues.

16:19

[The Lord Bishop of St Albans]

My Lords, I am glad to join in this debate and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for bringing this matter to our attention. I want to focus on a much more limited area this afternoon, if I may, by thinking a little about education and about the role that voluntary organisations play in this area. I shall use some illustrations from schools, colleges and universities and say something about the small role that the church plays in trying to do some of this.

On Tuesday morning, I made one of my regular visits to a school. I went to Sutton Church of England school near Biggleswade. It is a tiny rural school led by an excellent head teacher, Sarah Stevens, and it has been classed by Ofsted as outstanding. As I was taken around, I found myself in a corridor where a girl who was receiving a violin lesson gave me an impromptu concert. She was delighted and we all clapped. I noted that it was taking place in a corridor because there was nowhere else for it to happen but creativity was a key part of that village school. Indeed, many children there are learning musical instruments. Yet when I go into schools, I hear again and again about the pressure on the curriculum which is squeezing out some of the things that teachers would like to do creatively, which is surely one of the most important things.

I would guess that your Lordships, like me, can think back to their own schooling and to one of those inspirational teachers who not only spotted creativity but learnt how to draw it out. They helped the child believe that they could do something creative and offer it to others. Well, we have lots of very good schools which are working on that. I think, for example, in my own patch of Wootton Upper School and Arts College and Tring Park School for the Performing Arts. There are also excellent performing arts departments in the two local universities, which I know very well, of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire. However, we need to find ways to recognise and celebrate what they are doing. They are providing the actors, producers and everybody else for the future of our theatres.

Britain also has a wonderful tradition of musical performance and singing. We play a little part in that with our heritage of music in our cathedrals, collegiate institutions and some parish churches. It is there that many of these young people discover not only that they have a voice but how to train it. This has nothing to do with schools or with government. Many professional singers started off in precisely these places and are now singing either in the classical repertoire or in popular music. I am thinking of Charlotte Church, Aled Jones and Gareth Gates, all of whom have made a real contribution to the economy. The recent “Sing Up” initiative by the Government has helped to reverse the decline of singing among children and cathedrals have been active in it. In my own cathedral, we have choristers taking part in the termly chorister outreach concerts organised by the Hertfordshire Music Service. Since 2008, we have welcomed 48 schools and nearly 4,000 children have been learning together and performing. This is at the point when they begin to grasp the idea of a creative way of living.

With relatively little extra financial help, much more could be achieved. For example it was in one of my parishes, South Oxhey, which is in a relatively poor area near Watford, that the local parish priest, Canon Pam Wise, persuaded a certain Gareth Malone to form a choir. That turned into a TV series and has raised self-esteem hugely in that area. I confess that it may not have made much of an economic contribution but it has certainly made a huge contribution to self-esteem and social capital. These are vital things. Our cathedrals are also particularly active in the commissioning of music and art, such as stained-glass windows and sculpture. We have just commissioned 12 new statues for our nave screen which will take craftsmen two years to complete. Cathedrals are one of the main employers of apprentice stonemasons; a recent project between the University of Gloucestershire and eight cathedrals has been on just that.

I believe that as well as having large national government initiatives and encouraging business, we need to think hard about supporting schools in developing creativity and about the voluntary organisations which want to be part of this, if we are to capitalise upon our long history and develop the creative aspect of our national life. It is from here that many talented and gifted young people come. They have the potential to make a significant contribution not only to society but to the economy.

16:24

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, along with everyone else, I am grateful to my noble friend for initiating this debate. I was struck by the contribution made by the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, on the subject of diversity. It slightly made me consider whether to tear up what I was going to say and talk more about that subject, but perhaps it would be unwise given that we do not have much time.

I want to concentrate on the contribution made by arts organisations to the development of skills, both within the education system and outside it—that is, outside the formal education system—and not only in the creative skills sector and the creative economy but, as others have already touched on, in other sectors of the economy. I shall do that by shamelessly bigging up an organisation with which I am connected and of which I am extremely proud: the Roundhouse. In a way it is a microcosm of everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and others have been talking about. It is in north London and is a famously beautiful building within which wonderful professional arts events take place. There is music, theatre, circus and all sorts of other stuff.

Underneath the main performance space at the Roundhouse is a suite of studios that are fully equipped with video and sound, giving opportunities for people to make music in a variety of ways and to make other things as well. A wide diversity of young people between the ages of 11 and 25 come through the door to use the studios. They undertake practical skills-based courses in all the things I have just mentioned. They can develop their interest in being performers, managers, technicians, DJs or whatever they want to be into a marketable skill under the supervision of experienced tutors who are also, critically, working professionals.

People learn skills in a variety of ways. Some are not particularly well served by or at home with a formal educational setting. They do better with other ways of learning. The Roundhouse provides many opportunities for people who perhaps have not done so well in the formal education system to re-engage with their own enthusiasms, sometimes to re-engage with formal education, and to acquire skills that they can go on to use. It is probably not surprising that many Roundhouse alumni are now themselves established professionals in the creative sector, working at every scale from the BBC down to small start-ups. I should say that every year two young people sit as full members of the Roundhouse Trust, and my goodness are they ever good; they certainly put us on our mettle.

The New Economics Foundation recently published some research on the impact of the open access programmes being run at the Roundhouse, into which young people come from a very wide range of backgrounds. Some of them are privileged while others come from deprived backgrounds, although they are committed to their education. Some have failed or been failed by the education system. These young people come together and work together. The foundation discovered in its research that the act of working together in a group—one that is ethnically and educationally diverse—in itself helps to create and embed a lot of what those young people are learning. I would just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, that that is where hope for the future lies. It is in programmes like those being run at the Roundhouse where people are given an opportunity, no matter what their background, to learn about themselves and to learn new skills—and then put them into practice with no sense of social, ethnic or any other kind of barrier. They are simply focused on what it is that they want to do.

I ask the Government to acknowledge that this kind of work is going on all over the place. The Roundhouse is a particularly fine example but other arts organisations are doing it too. They are doing it in the face of considerable difficulty. It would be very nice if the Government would acknowledge, at least, that this is not just nice-to-have stuff: it is really important stuff. It impacts not only on the creative economy but on the whole of our economy. If we could build it into our education system, how much better off we would be.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, before the next noble Lord speaks, please could noble Lords keep to time? This is a very time-limited debate.

16:30

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I want to say a big thank you to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for giving us all the chance to talk about our favourite subject this afternoon. After the recession and 2012, it is even clearer that our future in Britain lies with our imagination, creativity and invention. Enders Analysis’s Creative UK report, published only this week, demonstrates that the UK is experiencing a wave of business creation in the creative economy, higher than any other major OECD country.

So many of the creative industries are interconnected and have a wide economic impact. The CEBR report for the Arts Council last year demonstrated that arts and culture play an important role in supporting commercial creative industries. I am delighted that yesterday the Chancellor confirmed that 20% tax relief would be given to all qualifying theatre productions, rising to 25% for regional theatre. But the CMS Select Committee and, we have heard, the CBI and NESTA have all concluded that the creative and cultural industries face a number of pressing skills shortages, exacerbated by the growing inability to recruit talent from abroad. Skills deficiencies have been exposed by digitisation. Investment in training has historically been difficult to implement largely because of the prevalence of small and micro-businesses.

The creative industries—I absolutely share my noble friend’s concern about this—need also to be much more accessible to young people from diverse backgrounds if they are to attract the talent that they need, as a recent IPPR report, March of the Modern Makers, makes clear.

I have some brief comments, given the time available. In line with the Henley review, we need students going into the creative industries to be multidisciplinary. There has been a danger that EBacc poses a significant threat to the UK’s creative economy. Will the Minister reassure us that the new “floor standards”, which contain five EBacc and three other GCSE subjects, introduced last October, are becoming widely known and will ensure that progress is measured across a range of subjects including the arts? Will this arrest the slide in take-up of arts subjects?

Then we have apprenticeships. Traditionally, this has been a sector that has been very difficult for school leavers without connections to penetrate, and where unpaid internships have favoured the children of the better-off. The sector is improving. I looked at the Apprenticeships website and there is now a large number of apprenticeships, for example, in the creative and digital media. The All-Party Music Group recently heard about the launch of UK Music’s programme to deliver 200 new paid apprenticeship opportunities across the music industry. Under the noble Lord, Lord Hall, the BBC is making great progress. BSkyB, Channel 4, Channel 5, ITV, Sony and many others launched Creative Access in 2012 to provide opportunities to young people from the BME community. The Arts Council, of course, has its major creative employment scheme.

In higher education, we have some fantastic institutions, but the Creative Industries Council’s Skillset Skills Group, in its excellent report in 2012, made the point that too many courses lack industry-relevant skills. Creative Skillset’s Tick accreditation scheme for those courses, which arose from its recommendations, is therefore much to be welcomed. Post graduation, students need to learn business and entrepreneurial skills, and that is why I so strongly welcome initiatives such as those of the British Fashion Council’s NEWGEN programme. There is therefore considerable progress in the sector. There are clearly myriad different schemes at all levels, but we now need to do much more. In particular, we need to make sure that all the pathways to qualifications and careers in the creative sector are clearer than ever, with far better information to those at whom they are aimed.

16:33

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

I am honoured to talk in this debate introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews. She was instrumental in starting me on my journey into digital inclusion and I thank her for that as much as for prompting the discussion this afternoon.

I longed to work in the creative industries when I left university. I imagined myself as a great writer or, even better, as a renowned theatre director. In reality, I became a media and telecoms analyst. On getting my job, my boss told me that the telecoms industry was a fabulously interesting business filled with less interesting people, and that the media industry was a fabulously boring business filled with fabulously interesting people. It was 1994. Then a strange thing started to happen. During the following decade, these two sectors—media and telecoms—became more and more similar. The technology was moving so fast that the separation between content, distribution and customers was blurring. The internet had landed firmly in the middle and the definition of “creative” changed.

By 1998, I was running Lastminute.com, and the coders who lurked late at night on the top floor of the office were becoming the rock stars. They were the people in the team who were inventing the magic for our users. This trend has sped up. Now, the biggest stars on the planet, from will.i.am to David Hockney, are talking about coding and the power of tech. Creative people around the world are eulogising about the importance of learning to code. The geeks truly have inherited the earth.

Amazing and innovative ideas are emerging, such as the Creators Project, sponsored by Intel. It is one of my favourites, as it flushes out new digital artists. The ability to keep at the forefront of digital change will enable the UK to continue to lead the world in its creative sector, but there is much to be done. The introduction of better computer science in the curriculum and the mandatory teaching of coding in primary schools from September are very valuable. The UK has the opportunity to encourage a whole new generation of creators, but it is essential that the resources and training are given to teachers to make this change a success.

One aspect of the web that never fails to inspire me is the creativity that can be unleashed when people who have never before had access to it are shown how to use it. Jorge works with a charity that I chair, Go ON UK in Newcastle. Jorge came to the UK in late 1973 at the age of 16, having been forced to leave Chile following persecution by the dictatorship. He could not go back to Chile and reunite with his relatives and friends until recently, but earlier last year a friend suggested that he should get on the web and learn about digital media and self-publishing so as to write a book about his story. Jorge had never spoken of all those dark years in Chile but last year his book, Dear Chile, was published, and on the back of it he has just secured a publishing deal to write his memoirs.

Jorge had never used the web before this experience and he is not alone. Currently, 11 million adults in the UK cannot do four basic things online. How many more Jorges could there be among those 11 million—how many more people who never before have had the opportunity to become part of our wonderful and enriching creative sector? We need to build digital skills in all parts of our society to make sure that we have as wide as possible a pool of creative talent from which to draw.

16:34

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Andrews on securing this debate and I am grateful for the opportunity to add my short contribution.

The importance of the creative industries to the UK economy is not in doubt. Despite the recession, the creative industries have been outperforming the rest of UK industry, growing by 15.8% since 2008 against a baseline increase of 5.4% for the UK economy as a whole. Other noble Lords have given figures on employment, added value and exports, and I certainly will not repeat them. Suffice it to say, our creative business is booming.

So I welcome the recent announcements about tax breaks for high-end TV, animation and video games further to promote the skills that the UK has to offer in these fields. Film, television and games production are the kind of innovative, creative industries at which we excel in the UK, and they deserve government support. I am delighted that there is now discussion about extending tax credits even further, to regional theatre, not least because theatre is the training ground for many of the creative skills areas in which we take such pride.

The point I want to make is that of course creative talent does not appear fully formed: it has to be nurtured and stimulated. That is done, above all, in our specialist institutions and universities. Higher education is the primary producer of the talent and skills that feed the creative industries, and it is an important source of research that informs new ideas, practices and business models that apply both within and beyond the creative sectors. As Nigel Carrington, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Arts London, has said:

“A creative education is an investment in the future of individuals and nations. Creativity powers innovation, challenges assumptions and acts as a catalyst for change. Our students and alumni are shaping the world”.

The creative industries rely on the supply of graduates coming through our schools and universities, as others have said. Starting with schools, that means that creative subjects—the arts—must be guaranteed a core place in the school curriculum. Or, as has been noted in the other place, we must put the STEAM into STEM subjects.

If we are to continue to produce the talent that underlies the success of these creative industries, we must improve the status of arts education in our schools, not allow it to disappear. Yet the introduction of the English baccalaureate as the gold standard for schools has placed further emphasis on maths, science and geography, at the expense of creative subjects. Take-up of art GCSE fell by 14% between 2010 and 2013, while subjects such as fine art and photography will be credited as just one GCSE rather than two in school league tables. This is short-sighted. Students must be encouraged and supported to develop their creative skills, so that they are equipped to go on to study at our universities and conservatoires. From there, the talent will flow into our creative industries. What assurance can the Minister give us that the strategic importance of those subjects which are not science-based but which nevertheless contribute significantly to the UK’s economic health will not be overlooked?

While we safeguard the status of arts education in schools, we must also ensure that we fund properly our specialist arts schools and conservatoires. I have spoken on this aspect before, but I would like to ask again for an assurance over the continued commitment of premium funding to our conservatoires to help cover the shortfall between the fees they can charge and the actual cost of providing the intensive, individual tuition needed. They nurture the very best practitioners and have the highest percentage of graduates in employment across the UK higher education sector.

The continued success of our creative industries requires that we do everything possible to promote their centrality to UK cultural, social and economic life.

16:41

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, this is an important subject and I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for concentrating our minds on it.

These are difficult times and we all have to take our share of the prevailing astringency—I have no illusions about that. However, as we have heard already, we must be cautious not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The Government have rightly recognised that the creative industries—or, in my particular field of interest, the arts—bring huge dividends to the UK economy, our reputation abroad and our society.

I will turn to the creative skills sector more precisely in a moment. First, though, I must say that there would be no such sector without education. In that respect, I fear that the bathwater is gushing out. Music and drama have been severely cut in many schools, and that is where it all begins for so many. That is where the light is lit, where young string players can get their fingers round the instrument while their muscles are still malleable; where an ability to express pent-up emotions through the worlds of literature, dance, drama and music can lead to more stable and fulfilled personalities; and where confidence in self-expression is kindled.

We know that exposure to the arts—to the communion of singing in a choir, for instance, where you have to listen to your co-choristers—promotes teamwork and social cohesion. However, this must not be the preserve of the privileged. Despite what, for instance, the Yehudi Menuhin School might do for a young Nigel Kennedy, our aim must be to provide cultural nourishment to every child so that they at least have the opportunity to become part of the creative sector. You have only to see a child’s fluency on a computer to realise how quickly—shamefully, to those of my generation—they assimilate and master new technology, but they must have access to it in the first place.

As we move towards university, we still find the arts being downgraded in some areas. A few years ago I was given an honorary doctorate of music at the University of East Anglia. After the ceremony, we talked about future plans, and how the music department might grow and produce musicians of stature, as the creative writing course had produced Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro among many others. A year or so on, the vice-chancellor had to write to me to tell me that I was a doctor of music at a university that no longer had a music department. Pride turned to great sadness, not for me but for the young people who, so close to Benjamin Britten’s home, would be denied a top-flight musical education. How sad, too, that the paid choir of Llandaff Cathedral has been disbanded.

I am glad to say that my musical industry, at least, is doing something at the sharp, business end of things. As we have heard, UK Music launched a Skills Academy in 2013, which brought together different strands of skills and training to help young people get work in the music industry. Since the launch, UK Music has placed 30 young people into some of the UK’s top music companies. Apprenticeships have ranged from royalty administration to music publishing. The Government should consider extending the successful creative employment programme, possibly by rerouting funding from programmes with lower take-up rates. It has worked because it is targeted to a specific industry.

Understanding of copyright is also crucial and it should be taught as part of music, not just computing and IT. As Adrian Sterling, an expert, said the other day:

“Copyright is about a right in a copy, not a right to copy”.

This is an eloquent distinction, which we all need to understand if we want our culture and creativity to continue to flourish. I have been privileged to flourish in a wonderful world of creative endeavour. We must make sure that future generations have similar possibilities: much is at stake.

16:46

[Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)]

I apologise to noble Lords. I am speaking in the gap and must exercise compression techniques as I have got about one minute. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for an absorbing and fascinating debate. I am going to focus only on my favourite issue—apprenticeships—which has been given a good airing.

We have seen some good progress and I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, referring to the apprenticeship vacancy matching service, of which I am quite proud. It is one of the few computer systems I have introduced that has not, to my knowledge, fallen over or been hacked. We have recently seen some good examples. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said, the noble Lord, Lord Hall, has been a good influence at the BBC. With the Royal Opera House, he created the Thurrock opportunity, which creates apprenticeships in production, scenery design, et cetera. We need to engage locally, so I put it to the Minister that there ought to be a creative job opportunity strategy involving every local employment partnership.

16:47

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lady Andrews for tabling this debate and for her excellent contribution. I also thank all noble Lords who have spoken. There was so much I wanted to say in the debate but in the short time I have I will limit myself to three quick points.

First, it is clear that the creative industries are already a success story but, sadly, they are an untapped source of considerable potential economic growth for the future. We have heard that there have recently been some piecemeal but welcome initiatives to boost skills in this area. For example, we hope that the creative employment programme, launched by the Arts Council and overseen by the National Skills Academy, will support thousands of new apprenticeships and paid internships. That is to be welcomed, as is the £16 million of funding to Creative Skillset to develop skills in film, TV, animation and games. A number of noble Lords have mentioned other initiatives. However, these initiatives are small-scale and disparate and serve to highlight the Government’s failure, across departments, to grasp and nurture our global economic potential and the human potential which lies behind it.

Secondly, as a number of noble Lords have said, nowhere is this inconsistency more stark than in the Government’s own education programme. Michael Gove has undoubtedly been allowed to sideline the teaching of creative subjects in the curriculum and the new league tables still put pressure on schools to drop drama, art, music, design and the other creative subjects. This is taking its toll: GCSE applications are falling across these subjects. I hope that the noble Lord will respond to that criticism.

At the same time, in education, we have seen the decimation of the careers service, so that young people have no concept of the wide range of work opportunities that exist in the modern creative sector. A recent report showed that teachers were so out of touch with what the job opportunities are in this sector that they just gave young people the same careers advice that they had been given at school. Noble Lords do not need me to tell them how far the world has moved on since then. Meanwhile, the government squeeze on the funding of undergraduate arts courses has seen creative and digital courses lose most of their teaching grant. Again, combined with the rising tuition fees, that risks damaging the supply of young qualified performers, writers and designers for the future.

Thirdly, much of the current government spending on arts and culture is badly skewed towards London and is failing to play its part in rebalancing our regional economic recovery. That has been compounded by the starving of funds to local government. As we all know, that has cut funding to community arts organisations, which in the past would have been the place where the next generation of artists had their first experience of participation. It is not clear how that vacuum is to be filled. Where will young people go to put their first foot before the footlights?

It is interesting that the recent IPPR report made a very imaginative suggestion, which is the idea of creative clusters around the regions, building on a local specialism; for example, Manchester could concentrate on fashion and games, Cardiff on TV and film, and Bristol on software and design. That is a very imaginative idea. With support from BIS and DCLG, such initiatives could play a vital role in wider regional regeneration. However, it needs the political will to drive an agenda such as this.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, made clear, the whole situation is made worse because non-white people and those from poorer backgrounds do not find any places in the limited training and careers opportunities on offer. There is a danger that we are sliding into dominance by a white, south-east urban elite in this sector, and nobody wants that.

It is a frequent mantra in these debates that we need more joined-up government, and I do not pretend that that is easy. However, I also know that DCMS does not have the funding or the clout to deliver radical change alone. I hope that the noble Lord will address those concerns in his response.

16:52

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for securing this debate, and thank all noble Lords for what has been a fascinating exchange. We all agree that the creative industries play an essential role in our national life. I am very conscious of the enormous experience that your Lordships bring to these matters.

As has been said, the creative sector contributed £71.4 billion to the UK’s economy in 2012—well over 5% of the total UK economy, and far outperforming the UK economy as a whole. In that year alone, 133,000 new jobs were created in the sector. While the sector is showing impressive growth here in the UK, we do not exist in isolation; our global competitors are working hard, too. The Government are fully committed to working with the sector as it develops its strategy to maintain our global competitiveness. I was particularly taken by the absolutely correct point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, that it is very important that the creative industries are very much alive to the importance of sustainability, particularly, as she mentioned, in the fashion world.

The noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, raised from the outset the importance of the commitment of skills and the support of the Government. That is why the Government set up the Creative Industries Council—I am delighted that my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter is a member—to provide strategic focus for both industry and government. It has also put in place a range of generic and sector-specific financing measures, and fiscal measures such as the creative content tax reliefs. The film tax relief alone has helped to raise more than £1 billion in inward investment in British films. It provides funding for agencies such as the Arts Council, the BFI, Creative England and the Technology Strategy Board to invest in and support the creative industries. The Arts Council is investing £1.4 billion of public money in arts organisations and cultural programmes between 2011 and 2015, and the BFI is investing nearly £500 million over the same period.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that my understanding is that 70% of Arts Council lottery funding over the past three years has been invested outside London. Indeed, as I said earlier and as we all know, many organisations which receive funding that are based in London tour well beyond London.

Yesterday, the Chancellor announced further support for measures for the creative industries, with the European Commission approving the extension of our film tax credit and a new tax credit for theatre, to which my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones and the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, generously referred. That will offer 20% tax relief for qualifying productions and 25% for regional touring from this September.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, emphasised, education and skills lie at the heart of any strategy to maintain our global competitive edge. We need to foster opportunities from an early age for young people from all backgrounds—what my noble friend Lady Bonham-Carter and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, said about all backgrounds showing a breadth of career opportunities in the sector is vital. That needs employers, schools and colleges to work together.

I am conscious of what has been said about the National Careers Service. I have a very long note on the basis that it has not been decimated. In fact, the reforms to careers advice in England will be of immense help. Given the time, it may be helpful if I write to your Lordships in some detail about that. Indeed, in the area of education and skills, Creative and Cultural Skills, Creative Skillset and e-skills UK—all the skills councils for the sector—are using government funds to develop and deliver schemes.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned the £15 million creative employment programme funded by the Government and the creation of apprenticeships and paid internships. Much more will be done. We certainly recognise the potential; that is why the Government are committing £292 million up to next year on a range of cultural education programmes, including music education hubs, the BFI Film Academy, heritage schools and many more. Through the Skills Investment Fund, we will be supporting skills development in the digital sector context. I very much hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, will approve of that and of our reform of the curriculum for computer science, putting greater emphasis on programmes for creativity. It is clearly important that we have teachers who know how to do that, and that is also part of the programme that I should like to write to your Lordships about.

The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, raised the issue of the gaining of skills and the wider benefits outside the sector, whether financial and life skills or health and social benefits. They are all part of what those industries can create for people of all generations. That is why DCMS is working on how better to capture the intrinsic benefits of the creative and cultural sectors.

I was very interested in what the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, on culture and poverty meant. I have a copy and I will read it. A number of your Lordships raised the matter of teaching arts in schools. There is so much to be said about that. Given the time I have, I ought to write in detail, because I think and hope that there is a misapprehension about that. As the Chancellor said, about £20 million of public money is going to help cathedrals. I want to refer to what the right reverend Prelate said about singing and what the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, said about conservatoires. We clearly need to make sure that music-making, which is such a key feature of national life, is encouraged.

I had a very interesting meeting yesterday with Channel 4. It spoke to me about its 4Talent scheme. I must mention the BBC and the Stephen Lawrence BBC training programme for young people from BME backgrounds, and many others.

I will be out of time very shortly, but I wanted to say that I have been briefed by members of many departments. Our thinking is very joined-up. The Creative Industries Council is jointly run. I have had briefings from DfE. The Chancellor has come in to help with the Budget yesterday. We should celebrate the creative industries, and I am very sorry that I do not have time to do your Lordships any further justice.

Pensions: Low-carbon Investments

Thursday 20th March 2014 Grand Committee

Question for Short Debate

17:00

Asked by

[Lord Harrison]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to help ensure that pension fund investments support the transition to a low-carbon economy.

[Lord Harrison (Lab)]

My Lords, we save for a pension to give us security in retirement. Climate change is putting that security at risk. It risks the financial performance of our pension funds, it threatens to destabilise the wider economy and it could compromise the quality of life of ordinary pension savers now and in decades to come. As the custodians of our savings for a secure retirement, the investment decisions of pension funds should help guarantee that security by mobilising capital away from fossil fuel extraction, which contributes to climate change, towards low-carbon investment opportunities, which can reduce the climate threat.

In this debate I want to outline the clear steps that the Government might take to facilitate this transition. We must give pension funds a stable policy framework. We must provide explicit legal clarity so that they can consider environmental factors in their decision-making. We must extend the rights of pension savers to know how their funds are addressing the risk that climate change poses to their savings.

In the early months of this year, flooding and severe storms brought misery to communities across southern England and Wales. Thousands despaired as floodwater inundated their homes. Hundreds of thousands spent days and nights without power. Experts at the accountancy firm Deloitte have estimated the clean-up cost of the floods at some £1 billion. The Prime Minister was echoing the concerns of many when he told MPs that he strongly suspected recent extreme weather events to be the result of climate change. The Met Office has warned that the UK should prepare for similar events in the future. The flooding showed how climate change is a real and present concern for ordinary people.

However, millions of those people have a stake in the very system that is helping to drive a potential environmental catastrophe. That skewed financial system must be a central part of the solution. UK pension funds account for some £2 trillion of assets. They invest in the goods and services that make our economy. As long-term investors and custodians of the retirement incomes of millions of ordinary people, they are uniquely placed to understand the climate risk. For those funds, that risk is indeed stark. Under every scenario, the effects of climate change on pension funds could be dramatic. If Governments do not introduce effective regulation to reduce emissions, the value of funds’ investments in fossil fuel companies and other high-carbon assets could collapse.

If climate change is allowed to advance unchecked, the effects of extreme weather and the growing volatility of food and fuel prices are likely to hit returns across entire portfolios. The noble Lord, Lord Stern, has estimated that if we fail to act, the total cost of climate change could be as much as 20% of global GDP. Climate change could also create economic and social instability, affecting the spending power of future pensioners and their broader well-being in retirement. Pension funds have a duty to act in the best interests of savers. Given the risk posed by climate change, they should seek to understand the investment implications. By reducing their exposure to high-carbon assets and by taking advantage of opportunities in the green economy, pension funds could help to guarantee the future security and prosperity of themselves and their beneficiaries, and hedge against that climate threat.

Certain barriers mean that this transition is not yet happening. The Government can remove those barriers. Pension funds often perceive low-carbon investments as risky and a significant reason for this is the confusion, and sometimes the infighting, that characterises government policy on tackling climate change. It makes investors uncertain when comments attributed to the Prime Minister describe green levies as “green crap”; it makes investors uncertain when the Treasury delivers a Budget where oil and gas explorers are given a £3 billion tax break to encourage drilling; and it makes investors uncertain when fossil fuel subsidies outweigh those for green technologies. In other words, at present, Governments are not only failing to do enough to promote green investments, they are actively keeping those investments uncompetitive by subsidising high-carbon alternatives.

Where there is currently uncertainty, the Government must provide stability and leadership. To remove this barrier to prosperity and to unlock a potential investment success story, they must make an iron-clad and cross-departmental commitment to catalyse the low-carbon transition. This means phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels and making an active and systematic commitment to developing and commercialising green technologies. As the Commons Environmental Audit Committee found, giving full borrowing powers to the Green Investment Bank by next year would decisively boost green investment and create jobs. That means putting low-carbon solutions at the heart of government plans for infrastructure and industrial strategy.

The type of infrastructure we build now will critically affect our ability to meet our carbon reduction targets in the future, so initiatives like the pensions infrastructure platform should demonstrate a clear direction of travel. As well as having low-risk opportunities to invest in the green economy, the law must allow pension funds to consider the wider benefits of those investments. The ShareAction charity has found that many pension fund trustees feel unable to take account of social and environmental factors such as climate change when making investment decisions. They often interpret their duty to act in the members’ best interests as a narrow requirement to maximise short-term gains.

Although the Law Commission recently stated that there was “no reason” for funds not to use environmental considerations, this position is often not reflected in practice. Investors need clarity and the Government can provide that by clarifying in statute that pension funds are not legally obliged to chase short-term profits at the expense of wider considerations. Will the Minister respond to that?

Savers’ security in retirement depends on how their funds address climate risk and the law should encourage them to take a broad and enlightened view of their members’ interests. Just as the Companies Act encourages directors to take account of environmental considerations and other wider factors in pursuing the success of their company, such a measure for pension funds would enable trustees to focus on long-term, sustainable wealth creation. Again, will the Minister respond to that?

To assess the risks of climate change, pension funds must also have access to high-quality information about the companies that they invest in. The introduction of mandatory greenhouse gas emissions reporting is welcome but this reporting must cover the full extent of a company’s activities and to be useful to investors, that reporting must be objective, reliable and readable. Is the Minister satisfied that the reports produced at the moment achieve the target of giving proper and measured information?

Will the Minister state clearly today that facilitating the transition to a low-carbon economy provides real business opportunities, especially to small businesses? Katja Hall, the chief policy director of the CBI, said this month:

“The UK’s low-carbon transition is already driving jobs and investment. Our green market stands at £120bn and has been growing throughout”,

the recession.

I conclude by saying this regarding the European Union. Criticism was made today by the Chancellor of the carbon trading scheme but if we could engage with our European Union friends on important issues such as the environment, the Prime Minister might be satisfied with a renegotiation which is positive in the way that it approaches these important matters, which affect pension funds and people’s prosperity.

17:11

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lord Harrison for initiating this debate. I agree with every word that he said but that will not stop me saying the same thing in my own words. I declare a past interest as the chair of a public sector pension fund. That was at the Environment Agency and I will mention some of my experience there later on. However, I will start by focusing on the size of the problem.

As we all know—or as most of us accept—the world needs to reduce drastically its carbon emissions and greenhouse gases but, frankly, we are not doing at all well. The IPCC’s fifth assessment spells out that we are on course to exceed by some margin the safe level of a 2% rise in global temperatures, which is not that safe. I will take the measure of carbon intensity because the Americans like that better than some of the other targets. Between now and 2030, we need to reduce our carbon intensity globally by an average of 5% per year. The reality is that in the last five years, which were during a world recession, the carbon ratio fell by only 0.7% per annum so the world is well short of where we need to be. In fact it is the US that has done best, largely by substituting shale gas for coal, but in the emerging economies carbon intensity has actually increased by 5% and most western economies, including our own, have not done very well either. We increased our carbon intensity by 2.6% in the last reported year, which was to 2012, and the world as a whole did so by more than 2%.

As we are, we hope, coming out of recession we would expect the pressure and therefore the carbon intensity to increase rather than decrease. It is therefore a growing problem and to attempt to turn that round needs massive investment in greener technology: from the sources of energy right through to the appliances we use in our homes and on our roads, and from nuclear energy to how you power your own scooter or small car. Investment in those technologies can come from only three sources. The first is the state—as we know, states in most of the world are running through a period of austerity and shortage of funds. The second is the balance sheets of existing companies—we know that quite a lot of money is sloshing around on the balance sheets of many major companies. Unfortunately, that does not include European energy companies, whose balance sheets are not in a great state. We are therefore unlikely to see huge investment coming from that. It will therefore have to come, thirdly, from the markets. We know also that a large chunk of market investment nationally and internationally is deployed by people who, quite contrary to what my noble friend Lord Harrison was seeking, look very much at the short term. Many of the hedge funds and other investor funds around the world are not really likely to invest in technology which has a long-term return.

Pension funds on the other hand are by definition there for the long haul. While there has been a decline in certain types of the better pension funds, they are still deploying vast resources. The people who are dependent on pension funds have to take a long view of the benefit from them. People who are contributing now, in their 20s, to pension funds of all sorts could be receiving, or their dependants could be receiving, benefits relating to that contribution in 80 years’ time, well beyond the targets for the reduction in greenhouse gases.

There should therefore be some synergy between the decision-making of the pension funds and the need to divert investment away from high-carbon energy and high-carbon usage into greener technologies. Unfortunately, there are two problems with that. There is the culture of the pension fund sector on the one hand and there is the unreliability of Governments of all sorts in acting to facilitate this on the other.

On the culture of pension funds, they are risk averse, but they define risk in very conventional terms. They are a bit set in their ways; they are a bit traditional and slow to move. That applies to the trustees of most pension funds, who, as my noble friend said, tend to interpret their fiduciary duty in a rather short-term and narrow way; it applies to the administrators of those funds; it applies to the advisers to those funds, who tend to look at things in stock market terms and seek a relatively short-term return when they choose which equities, bonds or markets around the world they should invest in. It applies also to the actuaries, who have pretty substantial powers in telling funds whether they are viable—indeed, some of the regulations relating to that are pretty constraining of pension funds in terms of assessing their solvency. Actuaries are even more conservative—with a small “c”, I hasten to add—than the pension fund professionals. It applies also to the fund managers who are contracted by pension funds. They tend not to see long-term investment which has some risk as being an area for their investment—yet the greatest risk of all to everybody’s investment is climate change and the drastic effects that it could have on all sorts of investment and all sorts of property. It should therefore be logical that investment policies should be seen through the prism of how they are affected, or likely to be affected, by climate change.

Some pension funds are beginning to do this. It does not mean overturning everything that pension funds do; it means seeing everything through a prism. In investment in equities, it means looking at the type of activities that companies are engaged in; in government bonds, it means looking at the type of view that Governments take; and in particular projects or ownership of property or land, it means looking at agriculture or forestry that is on the greener end of activity. In the Environment Agency, we tried to do that, for everything from our own decisions and right through. It did not mean that we had a completely abnormal range of portfolios; it just meant that some companies were not invested in while others, which were giving a bigger return and some seriously green advantage, were. It is not rocket science for pension professionals to take on that role, and we should do so in all our operations. There needs to be a concerted effort to try to change the culture of the pension fund professionals and those who advise them. It is beginning. One of the papers circulated to us was the Green Light Report, which makes a number of very important suggestions as to how pension funds can conduct themselves. I do not have time to read them out.

The other constraint is Governments. There are some opportunities for Governments here, and some downsides. Two years ago the Chancellor called together some of the major pension funds to try to get them to invest more in infrastructure. I do not know the degree to which there was a green dimension to that, but there could have been. He was thinking of delivering £5 billion of investment almost immediately. I am not sure how well that went but there needs to be some consideration of using that model to bring together the big pension funds and point them towards greater investment in greener technology and low-carbon areas.

Of course, the regulatory framework is also a serious issue. Successive Governments have changed the regulatory framework both for pension funds and the development of green technologies. Just this week we have seen the Budget change rules in relation to money purchase pension funds, which will seriously destabilise investment in insurance companies and annuity providers. We had changes even yesterday in relation to the carbon floor price and therefore the way in which we see a return to green investment. We have a whole history of this—under both Governments, one has to say—with FITs and ROCs changing the rates. We cannot have a regulatory framework for the long term which changes every year, yet the past few years have seen serious changes. My plea to the Government is: let us have some stability and consistency, in relation to both pensions regulation and regulation supporting green technology.

17:22

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, on getting this debate on to the agenda because it is crucial to our future and our security as a nation. It is also a real pleasure to be in a debate where I did not say the words “climate change” first. It is great that more and more people are understanding how challenging this will be. Earlier this week, I was in a debate on fracking in which proponents of fracking said that we have to frack to deliver our carbon-reduction targets. Even proponents of fracking, which I think is the most disastrous anti-climate change measure, are using climate change as a big stick and something that we have to take into account in the future.

It has already been said that the local authority pension funds have a current market value of around £200 billion. That is a sizeable amount and if it can be manipulated and used in the right way, it can have a huge impact. There have been several reviews of pension fund rules, including the 2001 Myners report, but pension funds are still investing billions in tobacco, arms and fossil fuel companies. My work on this has been trying to encourage various pension funds to invest more ethically but also in a greener way. It is not easy. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, mentioned that pension funds are risk-averse but the fact is that there is a huge risk if they do not take climate change into account. In fact, the green economy is growing at a steady 4%, with lots of promise, so actually it is not a bad investment.

The big problem is that pension funds could be exposed to what is termed the “carbon bubble”, in that they have invested very heavily in fossil fuel companies and similar, but those assets cannot be used if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. That is a real concern because those pension funds could plunge if that sort of carbon bubble becomes imminent.

The government Budget was depressing yesterday—business as usual, and less green than the previous Budget, if that is possible. I abhor that the Government seem unable to see this problem, which is happening in front of their eyes.

Last year I met with Edi Truell, who is the chairman of the London Pensions Fund Authority, and pressed him to make the authority more ethical, in the sense that it could be more transparent about policies and implementation. My concern was that the LPFA was acting like an absentee landlord, not looking closely at what the companies it invests in are doing: whether they pay the living wage, for example—which should be an automatic component of whether it invests—and, of course, whether those companies are ethically and even soundly run.

I also talked to the London Pensions Fund Authority about positive investments in areas such as energy infrastructure. The fund is currently looking into the possibility of raising £4 billion, with other pension funds, to fund a 620-mile-long cable to Iceland, which would enable us to share enough energy to power 2 million homes. Iceland could be the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy supplies.

For many years people have campaigned to get quite a lot of pension funds to invest more ethically. For example, East Sussex County Council has been lobbied many times. The fund is valued at around £1.9 billion and is one of the largest pension funds in England and Wales. It has been considering one of the three things that should now happen, which I will now propose to the Government.

First, pension funds should sign up to the UN principles for responsible investment. That is an elementary step. Secondly, the Government should require pension funds to disclose much more information; for example, their socially responsible investment policy implementation and performance monitoring. The people who get the pensions want money for their pensions—of course they do—but at the same time they want to feel that they are not raping and pillaging the rest of the world.

Pension funds should also try to make more positive investments. For example, Lancashire County Council’s pension fund has just invested £12 million in the UK’s first community-owned solar development in south Oxfordshire. That sounds like such a win-win situation. It is good for Lancashire and absolutely brilliant for south Oxfordshire.

As I have a little time left, I will give noble Lords the three tests of sustainability. I wrote these for Boris Johnson when he became Mayor of London; I stood over him and made him read them, which was absolutely pointless. However, I will read them to noble Lords. The first test is: does it ask everyone, at every level of society, to do something? It is not enough to expect the Government, or the local council, to fix our problems. We all, as individuals, have to do something, but the Government cannot expect us to do it on our own—everybody must do something.

The second test is: could it cause potential problems downstream? This is one where Greens are absolutely brilliant, because we are very good at spotting potential messes. A classic example is biofuels. People such as Richard Branson were saying, “Fine, I’ll fly all my aeroplanes on biofuels”. In fact, if you grow biofuels, you are cutting down virgin territory and forest, and taking land that could be used for food—and food supply will be an area where we will have huge problems in the future. You have to make sure that you do not create more problems downstream.

Finally, does anything claim to be “the” answer? There is no one answer. The problem of climate change is so complex and diverse that we need 1 million, or 2 million, solutions. As Al Gore says, there is no silver bullet, only silver buckshot. The problem is so complex, so we need complex solutions.

Doing the right thing now will save us money. It might feel expensive, but it will be a lot more expensive—exponentially so—in the future. Therefore anticipating, adapting to and mitigating climate change is absolutely urgent. Pension fund authorities have so much power through their investments that they should be exemplars of how to deal with it.

17:29

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Harrison on having initiated this debate, in which there seem to be as many chiefs as Indians, which is a bit of a shame. I have spent the past seven years of my life studying climate change, and I would like to take a somewhat more global view than speakers have taken so far, as climate change is quintessentially a global issue.

Not only in this country but across the world, pension funds occupy a peculiarly strategic position within the wider framework of financial markets. They are by definition long-term investors responsible for a far longer investment cycle than the vast majority of other funds. In a world of the immediate, pension funds are obliged to consider the long-term future. Following my noble friend Lord Whitty, that does not mean that they always do so in practice, but in principle they are obliged to do so. Generating a stable set of returns for 20, 30 or 40 years down the line implies having a broad set of ethical imperatives—in other words, the obligation to create stability through their investment decisions; to produce stability rather than just endorse it. I take it that that is really the theme of this debate as a whole.

Sustainability is all about enhancing such stability in a world that is creating huge problems of resource management for its future. In the European Union, pension investments amount to about €8.7 trillion, a gigantic sum of money. About half of that is professionally managed assets within Europe, the rest is public money. It makes complete sense to argue that sustainability—seeking to limit climate change in particular—should be brought to the forefront of pension fund investment. It is in principle a win-win situation as, as other speakers have said, if we are unable to limit the advance of climate change—increasing weather volatility and other changing climatic patterns—we will intrude on that very process of providing security for today’s younger people that it is the object of pension funds to generate.

The framework of emissions reductions set out in the EU’s 2020 programme and beyond provides plenty of inducements for pension funds to invest and, indeed, guarantees a level of long-term protection for that investment. It will be interesting to hear what the Minister thinks of the existing state of affairs within EU countries on that issue, not just in the UK. A number of substantial investments of pension funds have been made in, for example, Germany, Austria and Denmark with regard to environmental imperatives. Most of those, as one would expect, are from public pension funds. However, some more corporate models are emerging. They are interesting and should be studied here. Notable examples I would mention are the Nysted wind farm in Denmark and the proposed Anholt wind farm in the same country. In those cases, the pension fund and the industrial partners collaborate to share both risk and reward, and that would certainly be a viable model here. Denmark, as we know, is considerably in advance of the UK on many of these issues.

In this country, the Green Light Report does what its name indicates: it analyses how pension funds can safely and profitably enter that new territory. The report has a range of comments on the issue that my noble friend Lord Whitty raised. It seems a sensible document and contains a whole series of possible strategies.

I should like to ask the Minister three basic questions. One is simply to follow up on the speeches that have been made so far. It is obvious that public policy will play a key role in ensuring a greater connection between pension funds, sustainability and the limitation of climate change more specifically. What interventions are needed on the level of shareholding law to provide a platform for such long-term investment? Where is our existing legislation inadequate and how might it be improved?

Secondly, does the noble Baroness agree that there should be impartiality between younger and older savers in respect of pension funds and their output for environmental imperatives? That has brooked very large in some European countries, because it helps to structure the nature of the investments made. If the noble Baroness does agree, how can public policy help ensure that this is so?

On my third point, I differ significantly from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and from her contributions to the debate on shale gas earlier this week. I call myself an ungreen green: the prime issue facing the world is reduction in global carbon emissions, which overrides most other imperatives, although it does not eliminate them altogether. We have a lot of work to do on this compared to the United States. This has come, not so much from the report discussed on Monday, but from the Breakthrough Institute. This environmental organisation has shown, definitively, that over the past several years the US has reduced its carbon emissions to a greater degree than almost any other country. It has done so because the advent of shale gas has allowed the widespread closure of coal-fired power stations which, as everyone acknowledges, are the most lethal source of CO₂ emissions.

Does the Minister agree with this analysis which, as was discussed on Monday, is resonant with implications? Does she agree that pension funds should, subject to strict and responsible environmental regulation, treat shale gas as an effective environmental investment, so long as some of the core issues—especially curbing emissions of methane—are effectively handled? As was said in the report discussed on Monday, this is important because it is relevant, not just to this country, but to the core issues of climate change. The US and China contribute some 42% of total global CO₂ emissions. If we cannot effect a change, especially in China, we are not big enough to make a significant dent in this global issue. Shale gas can play an important role, alongside renewable energy, if it is used analogously to how it has been used in the United States.

This has been a worthwhile debate which can have practical consequences. We in the UK should not be too parochial about it. We should recognise its global significance and actively look at best practice in other countries—in the EU and elsewhere in the world—which have deployed pension funds in conjunction with industrial partners. In doing so, they have secured a breakthrough in showing that corporate capital can be harnessed to long-term environmental objectives.

17:38

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand that I can speak in the gap, but there is no gap.

The City of London is clearly studying the fact that all the reserves of coal and oil in the ground cannot all be used if we are to meet our objectives. The question then is: will there be government compensation for these false investments? Probably not, but there could be different ways of using this material in the ground. As the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, has been saying, you can use gas from fracking providing that you do not subsidise the water clean-up like the United States. This may be better than burning the coal but, as Shell used to say 15 years ago, if you can change the coal in the ground you can turn it into a different kind of carbon fuel with much fewer emissions.

There are many strategies as you go from existing reserves to energy and they need to be discussed. It is not just suddenly turning off these reserves: they can be used in a variety of ways. This is the important point in any strategy.

17:39

[Lord Grantchester (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Harrison for initiating this debate and for his stimulating opening remarks.

Since the passing of the Climate Change Act, there has been no denying the size of the task before us, as my noble friend Lord Whitty said. In the past decade, wind and other renewables have grown to the extent that they now provide about 10% of UK generating capacity, with nuclear power generating 16% of electricity. Therefore, a quarter of electricity generation is now low-carbon. That highlights that there is still a long way to go. There is also no denying that it must be government that takes the lead, prepared to pump-prime heavy initial costs and to set the investment framework to ensure that the necessary funding is forthcoming.

Buildings emissions have fallen by 18% but transport emissions have made little progress and are about the same as they were in 1990. There is concern that carbon budgets will be challenging, to say the least, especially as a large element of the reduction in emissions has been due more to the recent economic downturn than to constructive initiatives. Instead of bringing forward increasing investment, this Government have unsettled confidence and overseen decreasing activity. Investment in green energy has fallen to a four-year low, from £7.5 billion in 2009 to £5.3 billion in 2013. Bloomberg figures for asset finance excluding small-scale development show investment falling from £7.2 billion to less than £3 billion and, worse, heading to less than £2 billion.

All speakers today have recognised the contribution that pension funds can make to building a low-carbon economy. There is a green finance gap, with investments currently running at less than half the level needed to deliver the decarbonisation needed to meet emission reduction targets. Pension funds are able to look at the long term for returns, even if they must also have a keen eye on cash generation to meet ongoing pension commitments. Green projects on sustainable energy sources and clean technology include multiple technologies at different stages of development and lengths of maturity. Pension funds have a wide range of investments available, such as equity, infrastructure funds and now green bonds, which are rapidly gaining interest as an asset class.

However, pension funds’ investment in green measures remains very low, at about 1%. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, highlighted that pension funds have a long way to go regarding the ethical parameters to their operations and investments, but investors will not invest simply because it is green. Many green investments are currently uncompetitive because they involve developing new technologies and have to reach a scale to enable them to become commercialised. Investments usually bear high liquidity and volatility risks and are therefore suitable only for dedicated and sophisticated funds.

A further barrier is the perceived political risk, which is especially heightened internationally, where fossil fuel subsidies often outweigh those for green technologies, thereby keeping green investments uncompetitive. My noble friend Lord Giddens set out the global challenges to long-term security and the international challenges to investor law regarding best practice. It should also be recognised that there is often a lack of expertise and appropriate knowledge among the pension funds.

Government policies are vital to support the commercialisation of new technologies. First, government policies must be consistent, stable and maintained long enough to enable the long planning and gestation periods to mature. Investors need clarity on the development of regulatory decisions, timing and future direction, as my noble friend Lord Whitty said.

Government can encourage business and environmental footprint reporting. On companies’ annual reports and accounts, the Government have introduced regulations to include the requirement to provide information on the company’s environmental impact and how this will affect the performance and development of the company. New carbon reporting for companies could help investors understand carbon impacts and stimulate greater focus on these issues among customers and suppliers, in order to add pressure on companies to adopt more sustainable practices. This work needs to be developed further.

As my noble friend Lord Harrison highlighted in his remarks, ShareAction has questioned whether the duties on directors and trustees to consider acknowledging and thereby mitigating climate change are robust enough. Nevertheless, it is important that companies and funds factor those risks into their decision-making and consider the climate impacts of investments as part of their wider social and environmental audit and risk assessments.

Green infrastructure funds are also likely to be an important way for pension funds to pool resources and invest in a portfolio of green projects. In that regard, the establishment of the Green Investment Bank has been vital in using public money alongside the private sector. However, the Government must show clear determination to follow through policies with cross-departmental commitments. Although this Government have a dislike for targets, such targets could nevertheless demonstrate the Government’s commitment to make things happen and underline where corrective action may become necessary.

At the end of our debate on the statutory instruments to implement the Green Deal, I asked the Minister if she would share what success might look like on this very important initiative to enhance the energy efficiency of our homes. Although she would not commit to a figure, the Minister in the other place said that he would be having “sleepless nights” if fewer than 10,000 people had not signed up to the Green Deal within its first year. Just 1,221 households have signed up and only 746 measures have been installed.

Although it is good that the Green Investment Bank has provided funding for the Green Deal and its energy efficiency schemes, does the noble Baroness agree that the scheme urgently needs to be reviewed, especially in regard to the interest rates levied, and undertake corrective action? It is most important that the Government provide clear and consistent environmental policies which will fix market failures and give institutional investors the confidence to invest in green projects. Without these policies, climate finance from pension funds will not be forthcoming and we will all be having sleepless nights.

17:47

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Harrison, for opening this debate and all noble Lords who have contributed. This important debate allows me to lay out what the Government are doing to ensure that we have in place an environment of certainty for long-term investment. Above all, we must strive for certainty for low-carbon energy policy, a certainty which allows all investors and pension investors in particular to fund energy infrastructure. The current low-carbon investment regime provides this certainty, which, in February this year, led to the manager of a pension fund owned by the state of Quebec acquiring a 25% stake in the 630-megawatt London Array offshore wind farm for £644 million.

There have been several other major pension investments in solar PV projects supported by the small-scale FIT scheme, notably by Aviva insurance. PensionDanmark has also made a number of UK investments in renewable obligation-backed projects. As we complete the much needed reforms to the energy market, we need to ensure that policy stability sustains and investments continue at pace.

The central ask of the pension community is long-dated, index-linked products which deliver stable returns from assets that are well understood and low-risk. Pension companies are not looking for a fast buck; when they invest they are in for the long haul. Our new contracts for difference are private law, long-term contracts which seek to remove the volatility risk associated with the wholesale energy market. The returns from these contracts will be index linked to ensure investments retain their real value.

We have also provided a back-up route to market through our off-taker of last resort provisions. This further reduces risks for debt and equity providers, and improves competition and liquidity in the power purchase agreement market. The transition from the renewable obligation to contracts for difference is being taken forward in a structured manner and our reforms will ensure that our targets are hit at the lowest possible cost to the taxpayer.

The Government have three objectives for energy policy: to keep the lights on, to keep energy bills affordable and to deliver our climate change goals. To achieve the necessary change, I was privileged to lead the Energy Bill through this House, and the Energy Act 2013 is now law. The Act provides the legal and financial mechanisms necessary to attract the investment that we need and at the right price—investment which could support up to 250,000 low-carbon jobs by 2020.

Noble Lords have raised a number of questions and points. I shall try to answer as many of them as I can. Where I feel that colleagues in other departments may offer greater detail, I will ask them to write to the Committee.

To the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, I say that I am pleased to be chief and extremely proud to be an Indian—so that ticks both of the noble Lord’s boxes. I turn to the more important points. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, touched on a range of issues which I think were covered in my speaking notes, but I remind him that the EMR, the biggest reform of the electricity market since privatisation, was done under this Government. We wanted to provide investors, particularly in the renewable, low-carbon sector, with long-term certainty. The previous Government, of whom the noble Lord was a supporter, had 13 years during which they knew that 20% of current electricity power generation would come off grid by 2020. They failed to address that issue and we must now, sadly, play catch-up in a range of areas. We have to accept that there are issues at stake.

To the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I say, yes, of course, we all sign up to individual responsibility. This Government and the party opposite had complete consensus when we worked through the Climate Change Act 2008 to ensure that we as a country set standards and examples for the world to follow. However, we cannot do it at any cost; we have to see how it impacts on consumer bills. The noble Baroness gives a deep sigh, but I say to her that, when you are in government, you have to take a whole load of decisions. Some of those decisions may not be taken as quickly as we would like, but they have to incorporate consideration of their economic impact on all our consumers, not just a small section of them.

We will remain on track to being the greenest Government ever—that was a promise and a pledge that we made and the Prime Minister has reiterated it. We have through the Treasury set a levy control framework of £7.6 billion up to 2020. So I do not think that there is any lack of ambition on the part of this Government to deliver on low carbon if they are putting in that sort of up-front surety and investment.

Some of the more detailed points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, around pension funds will need to be responded to by other colleagues in more detail. I will ensure that the appropriate colleagues receive a note from me after this debate.

The noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Giddens, mentioned other countries. I am pleased that China has taken some very big steps towards addressing its carbon emissions. We are seeing great progress in its building of offshore wind—it is building more offshore wind capacity than any other country. It has recently created its own renewable feed-in tariff for solar. Its manufacturing sector has significant wind turbine and solar companies. It is also investing heavily in new nuclear.

I turn to India. I read an article very recently on advice it took from us at DECC on the 2050 calculator. It has incorporated the 2047 calculator to see how it can address issues of introducing more renewable energy.

[Lord Giddens]

Would the noble Baroness agree that there is a massive possibility in China for the development of pension funds in relation to environmental issues? There are no pension funds in China: it is families who save. The country has to build a welfare system from the beginning and therefore, at least in principle, has the opportunity to circumvent some of the difficulties we find in western countries.

[Baroness Verma]

The noble Lord raises a very important point. We should be actively having this sort of discussion with all our global partners.

Since 2010, this country has seen £35 billion of investment in the renewable sector and there is £20 billion more in the pipeline. I would dispute with anyone who says that investment is not coming here. The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, thinks we are not attracting investment. We have attracted more investment than did the noble Lord’s party when it was in government. It is not a competition. The noble Lord, Lord Boateng, did not speak in the debate but he may shake his head. We have significant investment coming through, with new nuclear as well as the renewable sector. We should be proud of being a country that people want to invest in and of offering an environment that enables the investment to come in.

I am always mindful of time. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, also mentioned the National Association of Pension Funds—I think that it was the discussion around a national pension fund that the Treasury may have raised in 2011.

[Lord Whitty]

The Chancellor said he was bringing together the large pension funds to look at their investment in infrastructure.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I am told that I have two minutes. We have made progress. A £500 million fund to be managed by Dalmore Capital will, hopefully, be unveiled and be available. I think that is the fund the noble Lord is referring to, but I will read Hansard and make sure.

The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, also mentioned the carbon floor price. We have to establish a price that sends a credible signal to help drive billions of pounds of investment in low carbon energy generation. However, we also have to put it against what is happening with our partners and member states. We cannot let our industries be at a disadvantage because we have not been able to reduce the burdens on our energy-intensive industries.

I have been told that I need to sit down very soon, but I would like quickly to touch on the reference made to the Green Deal by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester. I remind the noble Lord, over and over again, that this is a very long-term programme. We did not come in singing it with bells and drums, but it has seen significant measures being put in place. We have seen over 500,000 measures installed under ECO. The noble Lord must be aware that some may have used the Green Deal bank but others may have their own finance.

Committee adjourned at 5.59 pm.

House of Lords

Thursday 20th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Thursday, 20 March 2014.

11:00

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Gloucester.

Food Banks

Thursday 20th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

11:06

Asked by

[Lord Beecham]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number and role of food banks in the United Kingdom.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley) (Con)]

My Lords, there are no official figures for the number of charities providing food aid, including through food banks, in the United Kingdom. Food banks are a mostly community-led provision responding to local needs, and it is not government’s role to tell them how to run the services they provide.

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, Newcastle alone has eight food banks and seven low-cost food centres. Is it not time that the Government recognised that the growth in the number of food banks and in the number of people using them does not reflect a lifestyle choice but is caused by hardship and hunger? Will the Minister urge the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to resile from his petulant refusal to meet the Trussell Trust, one of the major providers of food banks, and instead discuss with it how best to meet the need that is now palpable in communities up and down the country?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, we do, of course, appreciate that some of the poorest people are struggling. The Government’s view is that the best way to help people out of poverty is to help them into work. The latest labour market statistics show employment up, unemployment down and workless households down. We operate a number of government initiatives aimed at helping families with food—Healthy Start, Change4Life, and the School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme—and we are extending free school meals. There are a number of other measures designed to help households in the wider context. These are the ways in which we are tackling poverty.

[Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend may not be aware that the APPG on Food Poverty and Hunger is shortly to start an inquiry into the reasons behind food poverty, which will be chaired by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro and Frank Field. I am sure we all look forward to its findings. Does my noble friend agree that the flip side of this coin is the shocking amount of food waste in this country, estimated at £60 a month for each household—the equivalent of six meals a week?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I am aware of the APPG inquiry of which my noble friend speaks, and I am looking forward with great interest to what it comes up with. As my noble friend also knows, we have a number of initiatives dealing with food waste. As an example, WRAP’s Love Food, Hate Waste campaign aims to raise awareness of the need to reduce food waste and help people take action.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that since food banks got going at their present scale, hospital admissions for malnutrition have increased by 74%? What are the Government going to do about that?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, we are working with business and others to encourage people to adopt a healthier diet. Industry is making voluntary pledges to cut salt, fats and calories, increase uptake of fruit and vegetables and label nutrients and calories on packs in out-of-home eating places. Of course, there are a number of other initiatives to do with school food.

[Lord Palmer (CB)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Bishop of Gloucester]

My Lords, research by Citizens Advice shows that the main reason people are referred to food banks is delay in the payment of benefits and benefit sanctions; anecdotally, this is also the church’s own experience from its involvement in the many food banks it helps to run across the country. Will the Minister tell us whether the Government are persuaded by this evidence and, if they are not, will he share with us what plans they have to carry out their own research into the reasons leading so many people to seek food aid?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I very much acknowledge the right reverend Prelate’s question. While it is right to expect that claimants who are able to look for or prepare for work should do so, a sanction will never be imposed if a claimant has good reason for failing to meet requirements. If claimants demonstrate that they cannot buy essential items, including food, as a result of their sanction, they can claim a hardship payment. No claimant should ever have to go without essentials as a result of a sanction.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, food banks in the south-west gave emergency food aid to more than 40,000 adults and 20,000 children in 2013. Does the Minister believe that this is supply-driven or down to desperate, pressing demand caused by a cost of living crisis? If he is unsure, perhaps he would accept an invitation to join me on a visit to my local food bank, or perhaps to the one in Gloucester, to investigate.

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I have indeed visited a local food bank near my home within the past few months. I was reminded that food banks are run by wonderful people and donated to by hugely generous folk. They perform a very valuable service, distributing food to people who really need it, and they tend to operate at a local level. Britain has a great tradition of charitable giving, and it would be a bad day on which we started to interfere with that.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Palmer]

My Lords, there was some confusion with the right reverend Prelate. I did in fact ask the Minister whether he agreed that it is surely a scandal in today’s society that food banks have to exist at all.

[Lord De Mauley]

I think I have just answered that, my Lords. Britain has a great tradition of charitable giving, and it would be a great mistake to interfere with that.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

Can my noble friend say whether the Government have any plans to commission any of the research indentified in the conclusions of his own department’s recent review of food aid in order to inform and support the voluntary groups providing food aid?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, we are not proposing to record the number of food banks or the potential number of people using them or other types of food aid. To do so would place unnecessary burdens on the wonderful volunteers trying to help their communities. The report is a useful summary of evidence from providers and charities. The provision of food aid ranges from small, local provision through to regional and national schemes. The landscape is mostly community-led provision responding to local needs. It is not the Government’s role to tell them how to run the services they provide.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister said that the answer to the problem of people using food banks is for them to be in employment. Without doing research, how on earth can the Minister justify that statement? So many people are working and using food banks—those on zero-hours contracts, et cetera. Is the Minister aware that, in many parts of the country, food banks cannot accept food that needs cooking because those using food banks have had their power cut off through poverty?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, the noble Baroness raises a number of issues, and I am not going to have time to do them all justice. She raises the issue of the working poor, and she is right to do so. We agree, as I said earlier, that some of the poorest households in the country are struggling. That is why, for example, we are increasing the minimum wage and increasing the personal tax allowance, taking 3.2 million people out of income tax altogether. That is why we have frozen fuel duty and why we have helped local authorities freeze council tax.

[Lord Tebbit (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend not agree that there is always a near-infinite demand for valuable goods that are given away free? One can notice it even in the catering departments of this building. If food is given away at prices grossly below market value, more is used. Would my noble friend initiate some research into the sales of junk food in the areas where people are relying for their basic foods on food banks?

[Lord De Mauley]

No, my Lords, we will not. It might be worth adding to the debate that, as part of its 2014 report on social indicators, the OECD reported that in the United Kingdom there had been a decrease in the number of households reporting that they had felt unable to afford food over the past 12 months when compared to 2007.

Nuclear Management Partners

Thursday 20th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

11:15

Asked by

[Lord Hoyle]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government why the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, rather than the Government, took the decision regarding the extension of the contracts of Nuclear Management Partners.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) (Con)]

My Lords, the decision on contract extension was for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, in line with its duties and responsibilities under the Energy Act 2004. Ministers were consulted and endorsed the decision before it was announced. Rolling the contract forward represents the best way forward at this time, giving the opportunity for NMP to build on the progress made to date, to address weaker areas of performance and to make further real progress in the next five years.

[Lord Hoyle (Lab)]

The decision to extend the contract of Nuclear Management Partners was taken despite its poor performance, undue delays and the fact that the costs are spiralling out of control—it will cost £70 billion to decontaminate six square kilometres. It is well over budget, by £2 billion. When the original decision was taken to give NMP the contract, it was taken by Ministers, so why did Ministers dodge the issue this time?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I reassure the noble Lord that we did not dodge the decision. We have taken advice through the work done by the NDA, and my officials were involved in the review throughout the process. The decision made by the NDA was to see this contract go for a further five years to build on the work that has already been done. I remind noble Lords that 90% targets have been reached by NMP in the past five years. It is an incredibly difficult site, as the noble Lord is aware. Of course, there are extremely difficult challenges facing it, and a lot of it has been due to long-term neglect.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, Nuclear Management Partners spends £1.6 billion of taxpayers’ money each year on the decommissioning process, yet it is in an area that is still one of the most deprived in the United Kingdom. What pressure are the Government putting on that organisation to make sure that it builds up local skills and supply chains to the benefit of the people of Cumbria?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I absolutely agree with my noble friend. I assure him that the Energy Act 2004 requires the NDA to consider those very impacts on communities that live nearby. On the example of Sellafield raised by my noble friend, more than 10,000 local people are employed by Sellafield Ltd and there is more than £1 billion of spend. According to the 2011 figures, one-third of that was on local businesses and the supply chain in west Cumbria.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, the letting and continuation of contracts is a highly sophisticated operation, which can have a huge effect on the amount of money needed to run an operation. Where does the Minister’s department get the skills to do this?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I remind my noble friend that the skills in the department and the skills that we bring in from outside are hugely specialised in this area. We are gifted with having some of the greatest minds in the nuclear sector within this country, and we should be very proud of that. We have an absolutely fabulous regulator, which is seen in the world as one of the best. So I do not want to undermine the great skills that we have, but we draw on skills from outside the sector, too.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, clearly we have a lot of skills in the nuclear sector in the UK, but let us go back to my noble friend’s Question. The fact is that in recent years the performance of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has been very disappointing, particularly as regards Sellafield. The question is this: given that disappointing performance, should it not have been a question for Ministers as to whether the NMP contract was extended? Why did Ministers not take that decision?

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I will return to my first Answer. Ministers were cited after a full review by the NDA and my officials were in on that review; we have been kept informed at every juncture. The decision to go forward with this contract is absolutely right. We are building on the work that has been done. Noble Lords from across the Chamber cannot take lightly the challenges facing the Sellafield site. We are discovering things that were not properly characterised in the inventory and so we have to deal with new challenges as well as with the current ones. We are in a position to see, review and make sure that progress is being made.

[Lord Cunningham of Felling (Lab)]

My Lords, I had the honour to represent the constituency that included the Sellafield site for 35 years in the House of Commons. I agree with the Minister that these are very complex issues. However, is it not a sad reflection on the decline of our once world lead in civil nuclear power? Sellafield was the biggest single yen earner in the British economy. Now the lead partners in this whole programme—which is crucially important to west Cumbria and way beyond—are not British; they are American.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right to raise those points. However, I remind noble Lords that for a very long time there has been little certainty for the nuclear sector. At least this Government have taken that certainty forward.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that the NDA can sack Nuclear Management Partners at any time it chooses during the five years and that the NDA has to maintain the capability in taking over from NMP in managing contracts?

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend is absolutely right. NMP can of course be sacked. We are looking at making sure that what is being delivered is performance-related. If no good, reasonable progress is made, then we will have to look at other options.

Female Genital Mutilation

Thursday 20th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

11:22

Asked by

[Lord Dobbs]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the impediments to bringing prosecutions in cases of female genital mutilation.

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Wallace of Tankerness) (LD)]

My Lords, the Crown Prosecution Service can consider prosecuting only those cases that have been referred to it by the police following an investigation of a number of significant factors affecting the reporting of female genital mutilation. Those include a lack of information from affected communities and the age and vulnerability of the girls and women, which prevents them from coming forward to report offences or to give evidence in court. However, your Lordships’ House should be in no doubt that the Crown Prosecution Service is working hard to bring a successful prosecution.

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

I thank my noble and learned friend for the encouraging reply and initiatives the Government have been taking. However, he will understand when I say that these are not yet enough. Female genital mutilation is a crime. It is estimated that 66,000 women and children in England and Wales are victims, yet there has not been a single prosecution. Can my noble friend assure the House that, while we are rightly sensitive to the interests of minority cultures, the Government will never neglect our fundamental British culture, which deems that this practice is little less than butchery and must be stopped? While the Minister rightly emphasises the role that education has to play in stamping out this practice, will he accept that by far the best way of driving this lesson home and saving as many innocent women and young girls as possible is to ensure that those responsible are identified, prosecuted and locked away, where they can do no further harm?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, there is widespread frustration that there has been no prosecution, albeit that there has been legislation on the statute books since 1985. At present, the Crown Prosecution Service is considering or advising the police on 11 cases, four being re-reviews of cases that had previously been considered and where a decision was made that no further action should be taken. My noble friend is absolutely right: this is a crime. It is a very serious form of violence against girls and women and is a form of child abuse. I assure my noble friend that the criminal law applies to everyone, without exception.

[Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)]

My Lords, ought not the Government look beyond the CPS at teachers in schools, and particularly the college of GPs, and ask GPs to check girls in certain minority communities to see whether or not they have been victims of this practice? This really needs to be done. It is not up to the CPS to do this; it cannot proceed unless it has the relevant evidence. We need to go to the core groups that deal with these children, particularly the college of GPs.

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, the noble and learned Baroness is absolutely right: the Crown Prosecution Service can take only cases referred to it by the police. In turn, the police require co-operation and engagement on the part of those involved in schools, education, the health service, including GPs, and, indeed, the communities themselves. That is why there is a range of activities across government, agencies and the third sector to try to raise awareness and improve lines of communication so that cases can be reported with more confidence.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister’s answers are very clear, and I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. It is clear that legislation alone has not been an adequate deterrent. However, the French system works particularly well, whereby young girls who present to hospital are examined to see whether they are victims of FGM. We would not necessarily want to go down that route but, given that it has been successful, will the noble and learned Lord take on board the comments made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, but also look at other ways of addressing this issue, including involving hospitals and other agencies which could bring evidence to the attention of the CPS to ensure that we get a prosecution, as that will be the only genuine deterrent that will really make a difference?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, the noble Baroness mentions France. My understanding is that there is no specific crime of female genital mutilation in France. Nevertheless, I think that other issues are involved there which are somewhat different. However, I reassure the noble Baroness that the Crown Prosecution Service is looking at experience in different jurisdictions to try to get information on best practice. With regard to hospitals, which she mentioned, as from next month there is intended to be a reporting requirement from hospitals of cases which they discover, and a database will be built up. It is important to remind those involved that there is a legal obligation on NHS staff to safeguard children and young people and that, if they identify someone they consider to be at risk, or who has already undergone FGM, they must respond appropriately by involving the social services, which, in turn, can involve the police.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, this morning the BBC revealed that, since 2009, some 4,000 patients have been treated in London hospitals for the after-effects of FGM. Clearly, this is a very widespread and serious health problem. Will my noble and learned friend look at our own jurisdiction with regard to civil protection for forced marriages and consider whether, instead of relying only on the criminal process, with the difficulty of the burden of proof and all the rest of it, it might not be sensible instead to amend the law to ensure that civil protection orders can be imposed in the family courts, as in the case of forced marriage?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My noble friend makes an important point. Last month, there was a round-table discussion involving Ministers, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Director of Public Prosecutions and a whole range of government departments which have an interest in this issue. The fact that this matter goes across a number of departments has been reflected in the questions asked today. One of the action points to be taken forward by the Ministry of Justice is to seek views on how a civil prevention order might work alongside criminal legislation to protect potential victims because protection—preventing it happening in the first place—is vital, as well as prosecuting those who have perpetrated this offence.

[Baroness O'Cathain (Con)]

My Lords, I ask the Minister whether these girls have any access to confidential information. For example, we have ChildLine, Rape Crisis, services for battered wives, and all those areas where people can, if they are in positions like this, phone up and get some help and assistance. I have never heard of one for this bestial practice. Is there any charity that we could approach and ask?

[Lord Wallace of Tankerness]

My Lords, I can reassure my noble friend that the NSPCC has in fact initiated a helpline, in co-ordination with the Home Office. Perhaps one of the issues is the need for greater dissemination of that. Another recent initiative has been the issuing of a statement opposing FGM, of which 41,000 copies have been sent out in over 11 languages to raise awareness and to bring this issue to the attention of those who have been victims. One of the issues that has been looked at by the police and the Crown Prosecution Service is that, for those victims who do come forward, the appropriate witness protection is in place to give them reassurance and to help them. People obviously have been very brutally treated.

NHS: Bed Capacity

Thursday 20th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

11:30

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to prevent hospital patients being moved in the middle of the night to relieve pressure on beds.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and refer noble Lords to my health interests.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, moving patients between wards overnight should happen only for good clinical reasons, because it can be a distressing experience for them and their families. We have asked NHS England’s medical director, Sir Bruce Keogh, to write to all hospital trusts requesting that they minimise transfers that are not aimed at improving patient care. As the Government’s response to the Francis inquiry highlighted, listening to and learning from patients to improve care is a top government priority.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, it is all very well the Minister’s telling the NHS not to do it any more, but does he agree that the real problem here is the pressure on hospital services, particularly on A&E services, which then leads to a desperate search for beds, which then causes patients to be moved in the night time, as this survey has reported? Do Ministers have a response to the more general issue of the acute pressures on our acute hospitals at the moment?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, many hospitals have been under pressure, particularly during winter, as they always are. It is telling that if one looks at the tell-tale signs of pressure, such as bed occupancy, the rates have remained stable for a number of years. In fact we have more clinical staff on the front line, particularly in A&E, than we had a few years ago. There is no doubt that there are times when hospitals feel acutely under pressure. However, despite rising demand, average waits for assessment in A&E are around 30 minutes at the moment, compared with over 70 minutes in 2009-10.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, would the Minister use his good offices to reinforce again with the National Health Service that all unplanned moves that are not determined by clinical need, be it during the day or at night, have the potential to cause disorientation to patients and considerable distress to their relatives?

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. That is why my ministerial colleague, Dr Poulter, has written to Sir Bruce Keogh. This issue lies at the heart of the NHS constitution: the patient’s dignity and shaping care around the needs and preferences of patients is absolutely at the centre of the constitution. This is why it is entirely appropriate for Ministers to make their views known and for Sir Bruce to ensure that all hospitals are aware of this principle.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is possible to discharge patients from hospital in the evening safely and that there are some patients for whom that is the best clinical option, but that hospitals are not good at ensuring that frail older people are discharged at the best time when they live on their own? Could he include that in the review carried out by NHS England?

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend is quite right. As she knows, there are far too many frail elderly people who end up in hospital in the first place. We must get better at the discharge arrangements for them and not keep them in hospital too long. This is the focus of much of the work going on in the department and NHS England at present concerning vulnerable older people. We will announce a comprehensive plan around this later in the year.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, apart from distressing patients, is not moving them around bad for infection control, particularly if the beds are not properly cleaned?

[Earl Howe]

Yes, my Lords. As ever, the noble Baroness makes an extremely good point. It is heartening that infection rates have come dramatically down in hospitals over the past few years, but we can never be complacent and it is important that when a patient is moved the infection question is always considered.

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not the case that we have the lowest number of beds per head of population of any OECD country, bed occupancy rates of approaching 90%—a dangerously high level—and, despite all that, the shortest lengths of stay of any European country? Does the noble Earl agree that the idea of closing wards or hospitals can only worsen the situation, unless, of course, we are able to build up the community services before we do any of that?

[Earl Howe]

I agree with the principle that the noble Lord has articulated. Certainly, commissioners and providers of care should reduce beds only where it is clinically safe and appropriate to do so. The NHS is very experienced at flexing the number of beds it has available; it does this every year and every winter. As a principle, I would agree with the noble Lord but I come back to the point that bed occupancy rates have, in fact, remained stable over the past 10 years, fluctuating between 84% and 88% on average, and increasing slightly over the winter period.

[Lord Geddes (Con)]

My Lords, further to the question from my noble friend Lady Barker, is it mandatory for the NHS to advise next of kin before discharging frail patients?

[Earl Howe]

I am not aware that it is mandatory. It is certainly good practice for hospitals to inform families, just as they should inform patients. Every decision taken about the patient should be explained to that person.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, can I come back to the point raised by my noble friend? The noble Earl will know that Monitor is requiring foundation trusts to make five-year plans ahead. My understanding is that almost all such plans made by acute trusts are predicated on reducing bed capacity in order to keep within the budgets that they are likely to have over that period. Can he assure me that as those bed numbers are reduced, community care and social care provision will increase in order to enable patients to be discharged appropriately?

[Earl Howe]

It is for that very reason that we are setting up the Better Care Fund as from April 2015, so that health and social care are more joined up, people are kept out of hospital and we can therefore safely reduce the number of beds. We have to take an all-systems approach to this; it is no good looking at one part of the system—health and social care have to be looked at together.

Employment

Thursday 20th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

11:37

Moved by

[Lord Freud]

That this House takes note of the level of employment in the United Kingdom.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Lord Freud) (Con)]

My Lords, it is appropriate that we should be debating the labour market today after yesterday’s figures showing record numbers of people in work and unemployment down again.

I believe that we will benefit from having a frank and open discussion. We have seen exceptional progress in recent months, but we know there is more to do and we must not be complacent. Indeed, the performance of the labour market in the recent recession can be seen as something of a puzzle. Previous recessions saw dramatic falls in employment. Yet despite this being, on some estimates, a deeper recession than in the 1930s, we did not see the number of people in work fall anything like as much as the experts predicted. GDP fell by more than 7% but the number of people in work fell by only one-third of that. I have yet to see a full and convincing explanation for why employment did not see the fall expected. There probably is no single reason. Active labour market policies and the flexibility of our modern labour market, as well as the bitter experience of those who went through past recessions, may all have played a part.

The resilience of the labour market in the recession has been matched by robust improvement now that we are getting the economy back on track. There are 1.3 million more people in work since the election, and more than 30 million people are working—more than ever before. In fact, if you exclude full-time students, the employment rate is now back to the peak that we saw before the last recession, and we have had further good news, with the female employment rate now at an all-time high.

I am often struck by what appears to be a widening gap between the impression that people have about the labour market and the reality of these figures. Many predicted that the fall in public sector jobs would not be matched by an increase in the private sector. They were right, but not in the way they expected. The rise in private sector jobs has not just matched the fall in the public sector but has far exceeded it—up nearly 1.7 million, with total employment up by 1.3 million as a result. Recently, there were reports that most of the growth in private sector jobs since 2010 has been in London. When I asked my officials whether that was true, I received a surprising response. Using already published and easily accessible data from the Office for National Statistics, the true position is almost the complete opposite. Nearly 80% of the rise in private sector employment has been outside London.

We are regularly challenged on the rise in long-term unemployment, particularly among young people. Long-term unemployment is a scourge, and through the Work Programme and the Youth Contract we have put in place just about the most comprehensive response that has ever been seen. Yet what those who criticise our record fail to mention is that the previous Government hid long-term unemployment by artificially removing people from the claimant count. They shifted people about to become long-term unemployed on to training allowances or into short-term job schemes, taking them off benefit in the process. We have put a stop to those methods, so now the figures are a true count of the number of long-term claimants. What really worries me is that the Opposition’s proposed jobs guarantee would result in the exact same problem, with long-term unemployment misrepresented as people are shifted off the claimant count.

People are rightly concerned about the effect the recession has had on young people. However, if we are to tackle youth unemployment, we need to have an understanding of where the real problem lies. When people talk about a “lost generation” of 1 million young unemployed, they are including those in full-time education, who make up nearly a third of the total. In fact, one young person in every 10 has left full-time education and is unemployed, and this proportion is the same for all under-25s and for those from an ethnic minority. This means that youth unemployment remains significantly lower than after past recessions: 9% of young people have left full-time study and are looking for work compared with 12% in 1993 and 14% in 1984. When it comes to NEETs—young people not in any form of education or work—we are not where we want to be, with a higher NEET rate than in many other EU countries. This is mostly due to lower participation in education in the UK. Although the NEET figures are now improving, this is something that the Government will continue to address. The other side of the picture shows that, among 20 to 24 year-olds who have left education, our employment rate outperforms the US and the EU average, and that, of the large EU economies, we are second only to Germany.

I should like to move on to some of policy responses we are making to the main labour market challenges that this country has been facing. It is unheard of for inactivity to fall in a recession, yet that is what has happened. Excluding students, inactivity is currently the lowest on record. The number of people claiming inactivity benefits has fallen by nearly 350,000 since 2010. People are better off in work and we did not want to repeat past mistakes by allowing people to drift into inactivity. Maintaining an active labour market policy ensures that people do not become detached from the world of work and are well placed to benefit as the economy picks up. We are changing the culture. People who can work are expected to work and, with our support, employment is rising. But challenges remain. Although falling, there is still a working age inactivity rate of more than 22%.

We have been successful in getting lone parents into work and have a record lone-parent employment rate. Before November 2008, lone parents could claim income support until their youngest child reached 16 years of age. This child age threshold has been progressively reduced and now stands at age five, and we are introducing additional measures best to support parents to prepare for work when their child is old enough. As noble Lords will be aware, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister announced further measures to help hard-working families. These included bringing forward a childcare package that will provide tax-free childcare for almost 2 million families. This will help parents go out to work and provide more security for their families.

Our reforms to the benefit system are a key part of the Government’s long-term economic plan to build a stronger economy and secure a better future. Much of our effort has been focused on improving the support available for people who are on sickness benefit but able to work to enter or rejoin the labour market. We are not just writing off people on long-term sickness benefits, as happened in the past. We believe it is only fair that we look at whether people can do some kind of work with the right support—support offered by Jobcentre Plus, specialist provision or through the Work Programme. We need to ensure that the longer-term unemployed do not drift away from the labour market. That is what happened in past recessions, with worrying consequences. It is because we are not going to allow that to happen again that we are investing in the Work Programme. That is expected to provide personalised support to more than 2 million claimants over the life of the contract.

The Work Programme is the largest employment support programme that Britain has ever seen, with far more financial risks sitting with the provider. Payment is by results, with higher payments for getting those with the biggest barriers to employment into sustained work. The Work Programme is better designed than previous employment programmes and is supporting more people into sustained work. Industry figures show that the Work Programme has already helped nearly 500,000 people into work and, of these, more than 250,000 have escaped long-term unemployment and got into lasting jobs. While all contracts are on track to hit their contractual JSA targets, there is significant variation in performance. The worst performing providers are being tightly managed to ensure that they up their game. One contract has been terminated. For the first time, a government employment programme is harnessing the disciplines of the marketplace so that only those providers who succeed are retained to help claimants into work.

Of course, young people still face many challenges, particularly in making that important transition from school to work. Youth unemployment is falling but we need to continue working to bring it down in the aftermath of the recession. We need to ensure that young people have the experience and skills that they need to succeed in the labour market. The Government are raising the participation age so that all young people are now required to continue in education and training beyond the age of 16. We are also implementing wide-ranging policies to improve standards in schools, reform post-16 academic and vocational education and ensure that apprenticeships continue to meet the needs of a modern labour market. We have a wide range of programmes, including those funded by the European Social Fund, and the Youth Contract, to support young people who are NEET to return to full-time education, training or employment.

In a recent report commissioned by Tesco, 60% to 70% of young people said that they had concerns about lack of experience. Many said that they wanted more help from business and struggled with CV writing. That is why it is so important that, through Jobcentre Plus, young unemployed people are given the opportunity to be referred to a careers interview with the National Careers Service. They can also work with local employers who offer work experience and pre-employment training to give them the chance to build up their CVs and job skills.

Apprenticeships play a vital role for many young people, helping them at the outset of their working lives to progress their careers, and the Government offer a £1,500 grant to smaller businesses to take on their first apprentices. Yesterday, the Chancellor announced an extension of this scheme. The Government will now be making more than 100,000 additional incentive payments for employers to take on young apprentices aged 16 to 24, providing a major boost to their job prospects. Traineeships are a new programme to help young people aged 16 to 23 to develop the skills and vital experience that they need to secure apprenticeships and other sustainable jobs.

This Government continue to support economic growth across the regions and help to create the conditions for businesses to feel more confident in hiring more people. Private sector employment has been rising across the UK, and we need to ensure that this continues. To satisfy the recruitment needs of employers, Jobcentre Plus and Work Programme providers use their local labour market knowledge and expertise to improve claimants’ skills and readiness for work. Local enterprise partnerships, in England, provide the vision, knowledge and strategic leadership needed to drive private sector growth and job creation in their areas. Through our strong local offer, Jobcentre Plus district managers work with local enterprise partnerships to ensure that their strategic economic plans make the important link between growth, unemployment and social exclusion. In Humber, Jobcentre Plus and the local enterprise partnership have mapped local and national employment support services and identified where they need locally to plug the gaps.

Developing City Deals has provided a blueprint for working together and co-designing local initiatives. Cities are being given greater freedom to invest in growth and enterprise and being given greater powers, including the power to boost skills and jobs. In Leeds, DWP supports the city region to achieve its aim of being a NEET-free city. Its plan is to enable small businesses to provide apprenticeships when they would not normally have the capacity to do so. The aim is to deliver 680 apprenticeships over three years.

My 2007 independent report on the future of welfare, Reducing Dependency, Increasing Opportunity: Options for the Future of Welfare to Work, came on the back of a long-term aspiration to secure an employment rate of 80%. On the basis that the ONS now defines it—looking at those aged between 16 and 64 rather than between 16 and 59 for women—today this would be equivalent to an employment rate of around 78%. Clearly, a lot has happened since then, not least the deepest recession in nearly a century. Our first aim must be to regain the ground lost in the recession, which would mean a rate of 73% against the current level of 72.3%. It is interesting to speculate that, because most students are outside the labour market, rising participation in education makes it harder to achieve higher levels of employment. But, of course, it is no bad thing to see more young people in education. So, adjusted for that higher participation in education, that 80% employment rate probably translates today into a level some three percentage points higher than the 72.3% that we are currently looking at.

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, I understand that, by convention, the mover of the Motion is given the opportunity to be uninterrupted and then can respond to questions in the wind-up.

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, that is three percentage points higher than the figure of 72.3% that was reported yesterday. That gives a feeling of the factors that we have been looking at over the past seven or eight years. As I said, that extremely challenging outcome implies that any employment strategy would need to target all of the inactive groups. Noble Lords will be pleased to see that, since 2007, the number of people on inactivity benefits has fallen by around half a million. The economy is now recovering and creating new jobs, making this a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help those who have been trapped on welfare to return to work. It is in that light that I would ask noble Lords to view the Government’s welfare reform ambitions. I beg to move.

11:56

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for initiating this debate, and in doing so, I note that he is much admired for the way in which he steered the Welfare Reform Bill and the Pensions Bill—two of the most difficult Bills in Parliament—through this House. In fact, I think that he is more appreciated by this side of the House than he is by his own party. I say this because my contribution is not very supportive of the Minister’s claims and I wanted to place on record my admiration for him before I rubbished his thesis.

I understand why there is a great deal of celebration from the coalition Government about the level of employment. However, the increase in inequality, the way we treat our young people, the way we treat public sector workers, the increasing economic fragility of people’s lives and the experience of most women in terms of income and childcare mean that there is absolutely nothing to celebrate. The economy is nearly 2% smaller than it was at the end of 2007. Looking at the very short term, it is true that the number of unemployed actively seeking work has shrunk by 250,000. I accept that. However, there are still 770,000 more people unemployed than at the end of 2007—a total of 2.4 million. That represents little change from May 2010. Unemployment has averaged nearly 8% since 1980. So we have to ask how—or even whether—the economy can bring that level down to the 2% we had for 25 years after the Second World War. We had growth averaging 3% a year for more than 60 years. Achieving that over a period of time under current government policies is beginning to look unlikely.

Then we have low productivity. Firms have survived by shelving investment and paying their workers less. This might work in the very short term but it will not lead to growth. George Osborne knows that low productivity has slowed growth and will continue to do so. The Financial Times has used the Office for Budget Responsibility’s own model to show that the £85 billion deficit target in 2013-14 will actually be £111 billion.

The Government’s headline increase in apprenticeships is positive on the face of it, and of course it makes the unemployment figure look better. However, the reality is very different. The minimum wage rate for an apprentice is £2.68 per hour. Although it is a positive step to acquire skills and work experience, when the wages are under £100 a week before travel costs and bills, it starts to look less attractive—and if those apprenticeships do not lead to a job, it breeds cynicism and despair. Most of the new jobs in the service sector are filled by young, unskilled workers on short-term, part-time and zero hours contracts, which is a guarantee that low productivity will persist. The impact on young people is extremely worrying.

The latest survey from the Prince’s Trust confirms what some of us know already. Young people are having a tough time finding security and fulfilment—unless they come from a privileged background. Some 9% of respondents to the survey said that they had “nothing to live for”, and one-third of young unemployed people have considered suicide. Clearly, there are other factors such as an increase in homelessness, poor careers advice and the break-up of families, but we cannot be proud that in this country a large proportion of apprenticeships are just an excuse for cheap labour, or are of poor quality and short duration. The Government’s own research shows that one in five apprentices receives no on-the-job or off-the-job training, and 25% are paid less than their legal entitlement. The Work Foundation has found that, despite the range of skills that are deemed necessary for a career in social care, only around one-third of health and social care apprentices receive both on-the-job and off-the-job training, and one-fifth report receiving neither. It is no coincidence that most new claimants of housing benefit are working rather than unemployed.

A Manpower survey shows that job prospects are better than they have been for six years, in particular in the building industry, the utilities and large companies. If that leads to more jobs for skilled workers, it may help productivity, but if it represents more low-paid, temporary and unskilled work, it will disguise the real problem. The Government have made much of the fact that private sector jobs have increased by 1.5 million and that that has made up for the loss of jobs in the public sector. Even if we discount the tragic loss of skills and commitment to public service that that represents—a hollowing out of the Civil Service and local government, and unsustainable pressure on health service staff—the figures hide blatant exploitation of workers and the prevalence of low pay, particularly among women workers. Some 11 million people have had no increase in real earnings since 2003.

The Government have also made much of the increase in self-employment. Research by the Office for National Statistics shows that women have made up more than half of the 10% growth in self-employment since the recession began. If this represented an increase in business start-ups and thrusting entrepreneurs, we would all be cheering, but the reality for most is very sobering. According to HMRC, in 2011-12 the average income for a self-employed man was £17,000. Even taking account of the ability to offset a large proportion of costs and expenses if you are self-employed, that is still a surprising figure. The average for women, however, was £9,800—40% less than men. In almost every region apart from London, the south-east and Scotland, self-employed women earned less than £10,000 a year. This suggests a great deal of substitution from low-paid employment to low-earning self-employment.

A recent report by the Women’s Budget Group notes that much of the increase in women becoming self-employed is effectively because of precarious work and zero-hours contracts rather than because of the creation of new businesses. Scarlet Harris, a spokesperson for the group, said:

“Clerical, cleaning and caring work, which is predominantly carried out by women, has experienced some of the fastest growth in self-employment in recent years. These women, who already suffer poverty rates of pay, are now having to contend with the poor working conditions and complete lack of job security that self-employment brings. These shocking gender pay gap figures should end any delusions people have about the UK’s four million self-employed workers”.

A BBC investigation last month found that advisers are encouraging individuals on welfare-to-work schemes to become self-employed in order to move them from unemployment benefits to working tax credits. Has the Minister investigated this matter? If so, how does he plan to deal with it?

Not only is the gender pay gap widening for the self-employed, but ONS figures show that the gender pay gap as a whole in the UK widened in 2012 for the first time in five years, from 9.5% to 10%. The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that the recent Budget is for,

“the makers, the doers, and the savers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/3/14; col. 794.]

He should have added—“and young people and women can push off”.

Finally, I do not believe that we can win a race to the bottom. We need high-quality jobs, investment in manufacturing and good-quality training and careers advice. The World Economic Forum in Davos concluded that the biggest threat to prosperity in the next decade was the increasing gap between rich and poor. This Government are following a path that will ultimately fail, at enormous cost to people’s security and aspiration. It really is a case of, “Never mind the quality, feel the width”.

12:06

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for enabling us to have this debate because it gives us an opportunity to look at the levels and nature of employment in the UK, not least from the perspective of region and age. The context overall is one in which austerity, inevitably, is still with us, in that borrowing this year will be more than £100 billion. Government debt is still rising so there are limits on what the Government can afford to fund.

I listened very carefully to what the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, said. I will simply say in response to the list of criticisms of the Government—which was a self-selected list because it missed out a whole range of things that indicate a trend towards a higher rate of quality employment—one would think that the financial crisis had nothing to do with the Labour Government up until 2010. This Government have had to deal with a huge financial crisis in a very serious recession and the level of employment we have today is quite remarkable given the record of the previous Government and what this Government have had to do.

I say that otherwise one would be led to think that this was a story of entirely bad news and it is not. The green shoots of growth and recovery are there. Figures published yesterday by the Office for National Statistics show that the number of people in employment has risen to 30.19 million and that the level of unemployment has fallen again by 63,000 to 2.33 million in the three months to January this year. Compared with a year ago, the numbers in employment have grown by more than 450,000. That is a very encouraging figure. A higher percentage of the adult population in the UK is now in work than in the United States of America. Unemployment is down to 7.2%, falling well below its peak, and below the current levels in most European countries. The unemployment rate in the European Union is 50% higher than here at 10.8%. It is true that more women are employed now in the UK than ever and that 95% of all jobs created last year were full time. The trend data also show that youth unemployment is now falling and has already fallen to a level lower than when this Government came into office four years ago. That is a very important achievement, and we should say so. However, that is not to say that there is a lot of further work that needs to be done, because it is undeniably the case that youth unemployment remains far too high.

I join the Minister in saying that it is very important that we note the impact of the Budget. I realise there is a debate on this next week, but it is highly relevant to this debate, because yesterday’s Budget is a Budget for employment. It has been described in the media as very much a Budget for savings and pensions, and in one respect that is true, but actually it is a Budget for employment. There are several reasons why I think that is the case. First, it will help to drive exports even more, giving British businesses access to the most competitive export finance support in Europe, because the UK’s direct lending programme has been doubled in the Budget to £3 billion. Secondly, it is cutting energy prices for business, particularly for the most energy-intensive manufacturers, around 80% of which are based in the north of England, Scotland and Wales. There will be increased incentives for companies to return manufacturing from abroad to Britain. Thirdly, there is increased financial support, through the tax regime, for capital investment and for research and development. Fourthly, there is more support for apprenticeships, which I will look at in greater detail in a moment.

I noted the comments by the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, about childcare, but we should remember that it was announced earlier this week that as many as 1.9 million working families could benefit from a tax-free childcare allowance worth up to £2,000 per child, up to the age of 12. Taken together, all these measures will help business growth, increase the number of jobs and increase the number of people in work and able to work. The Office for Budget Responsibility has said that employment will rise to well over 31 million by 2018, which seems a reasonable prediction based on what we know today.

I will now focus on unemployment and what will happen there. Unemployment stands, as I said earlier, at 7.2%. I was very concerned early last summer when the Governor of the Bank of England said that the Monetary Policy Committee would look at the case for increasing interest rates when unemployment reached 7%. My concern was that 7% is an average UK figure and that parts of the country would be higher while others would be lower. Some parts of the UK have unemployment rates of over 10% and they need continued low interest rates to encourage investment. I was therefore very relieved when the Governor of the Bank of England revised his view and said that the unemployment rate should drop further before the Bank considers an interest rate rise. A substantial body of opinion thinks there is sufficient slack in the economy to permit this without impacting on the rate of inflation. It will certainly help to encourage growth in those parts of the UK with higher unemployment and will also help to secure more jobs for young people.

It is that issue that I want to take a more detailed look at. In official statistics, young people can be shown as employed full time, employed part time, employed and in full-time education, employed and in part-time education, unemployed, economically inactive, or not in employment, education or training. The detailed statistics can be complex to follow because the categorisations can vary depending on what you are looking at. What is not complex to follow—I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, on this—is that too many young people are unemployed or underemployed. The trend, as I said earlier, is in the right direction and the Government should be praised for that, but I am grateful to the Local Government Association—I should declare that I am a vice-president of the LGA—for pointing out that 1.25 million young people are not working but would like to. Some of course are in full-time or part-time education, 760,000 are in work but would like more hours, and 425,000 are not working to their potential—for example they may be graduates in what are thought to be non-graduate jobs.

The Government are spending around £15 billion a year on young people and I welcome their ambition, which the Minister has explained to the House, to devolve skills and training to local enterprise partnerships and to local authorities and their partners. It is important because we need integrated employment services based on local labour markets. Only local networks can deliver that, as was highlighted by a number of City Deals, in which—as Members of the House might be aware—I have had an involvement.

Crucially, however, we have to remember the role of schools here. Schools have a statutory duty to provide a careers service, yet a few months ago Ofsted reported that three-quarters of secondary schools were not executing their statutory duties satisfactorily. This was followed by IPPR North’s report, published in January, which concluded that secondary school careers services were not equal to the task of helping students navigate the increasingly difficult transition from school to work. That report, entitled Driving a Generation: Improving the Interaction between Schools and Businesses, made a number of very helpful recommendations which I commend to the Minister because it proposed a means whereby schools and businesses could relate much better to each other. My point is that if the huge and worrying mismatch in skills is to be solved, the solution must be started in the place where young people learn in compulsory education, where they need to better understand the qualifications and skills required to enter an apprenticeship, particularly in science, maths and IT.

There is high demand from young people for apprenticeships, but there are still not enough employers coming forward to offer them. The average apprenticeship post receives 12 applications each, but in some sectors the level of demand is twice as high. I therefore welcome the extension in yesterday’s Budget of apprenticeship grants for employers, which will fund more than 100,000 additional incentive payments for employers who take on young apprentices. I also welcome the funding to support employer investment in apprenticeships at degree and master’s level. This will bring more employer engagement into the HE sector and expand apprenticeships at higher levels, where there are currently too few available qualifications.

I have two very brief points in conclusion. First, will the Minister and his colleagues look at the role of UKTI? In many respects it does a very good job. Its role in driving exports upwards is good, but it has a role in inward investment and no regional or sectoral targets to meet. It simply has UK-wide targets. It would help enormously if it actually had to produce an audit of where it has directed inward investment. My second point is about regional and local procurement. I have a constant concern that national procurement contracts are being driven by price and go to national companies headquartered in the south of England. I would like to think that we would always ensure, in all procurement by central and local government, that local people are employed, that local people are trained and that smaller local companies and social enterprises can tender for government contracts. I hope the Minister might be prepared to agree to undertake a constant audit of the outcomes of government national procurement policy and its impact on employment.

12:18

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for initiating this incredibly significant debate and for all the work that he has done across the work and pensions landscape, which has been ground-breaking and innovative. It is worth reiterating yesterday’s employment figures: there are more people in employment now than at any previous time; more people employed in the private sector than at any previous time; and more women in employment than ever before. Yesterday’s Budget was a Budget for jobs: employment is up; growth is up; the deficit is down by a third and by next year it will be down by a half. Could there be any greater evidence for that than the announcement this morning from Hitachi that it will base its global—yes, global—rail business in the UK?

It is one thing for employers to provide jobs; we also need to ensure that the skills and training are there so that our people, particularly our young people, are ready to take up those employment opportunities. To that end, I commend the work of my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking with the university technical colleges and the work they are doing. All educational establishments should focus on not just a careers service but what is now known as employability. I suggest to the Minister that he should consider a potentially statutory obligation on schools, colleges and universities to the young people leaving them which would last until those young people enter the next stage of their journey, be it higher education, training or employment. In future, it should not be possible to have someone who is not in education, employment or training and who has nobody potentially looking out for, supporting and assisting them to take that next step—whatever the right step might be for them.

Working on the Olympic and Paralympic Games, we saw the opportunity to create hundreds of thousands of jobs, but also how there were gaps—particularly in the host boroughs—in finding people to fill those jobs and to drive employment in the local area as much as we all wanted. That will continue. When you look at iCITY, a brilliant redevelopment of the media centre in the Olympic park, there will be high-skill, high-tech jobs. We need to ensure that people have the right skills to be able to go into those jobs and to continue to work in their local areas. Similarly in terms of construction, there is the E20 village—the old athletes’ village—and the new plans at Ebbsfleet. In Scotland, there is the new town at Tornagrain. These will provide thousands of constructions jobs, engineering jobs and jobs across the economy. We need to ensure that people are ready, willing and able to take up those jobs. Similarly, across the massive infrastructure programme that we are rolling out under the careful eye of my noble friend Lord Deighton, there is again potential to drive economic growth and employment opportunities right up and down the country, but we need to have people ready, willing and able to take up those jobs.

UKTI has already been mentioned. Great work has been done but successive generations have relied far too much on the EEC, the EC and now the EU. Yes, Europe is a great market but it is not the only one. We have got nowhere near maximising our opportunities with the BRIC economies. When I was with the GREAT campaign down in Rio in 2011, I found that Italy exported many multiples more than the UK did to Brazil. Italy has no historical or language connection to Brazil but it has built up an effective, practical and meaningful trading relationship that has driven jobs, and not just in Brazil, for Italian businesses. We need to look at that, not just in terms of the BRIC economies but also the new MINT economies—Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and, not least, Turkey. Turkey is pretty much on our doorstep. To get a sense of the demographic there, take any western European advanced mature democracy and then turn that demographic on its head. That is the opportunity in Turkey. The majority of the population is under 25. Its economic growth is in double digits. Those people are purchasing and we need to ensure that they have the opportunity to purchase British stuff and so drive employment for our businesses right up and down the UK.

I turn to Scotland. Ultimately—in September—an incredibly significant decision will be made by the Scottish people, the most significant decision for the union in hundreds of years. It will not be simply a decision about their destiny, and it will not be considered only on the basis of Faslane. It will not be about oil, per se, and it will not be about the financial service industry in Edinburgh in isolation. It will be about jobs. It will be about employment. When Scottish voters put their cross in the box in September, I urge them not to think just about Scottish jobs; I urge them to think about English jobs and UK jobs, because that is what is at stake, and we will all benefit if we keep the union together.

In short, the Budget was about employment. It was about possibility. It was about potential. We are not out of the woods but we are on the right road. There is a long journey ahead of us. We need to drill into those employment figures, as has already been mentioned, and ensure that every area and region of the country is benefiting from this employment boom. We need to ensure that young people and disabled people are similarly benefiting and being enabled into employment. In short, we need to ensure, for all our sakes, that every person who is able to work is enabled to do so and that we provide real security for those who are not. It is in all our interests to drive this forward. What we should all be striving for is a high-employment, low-inflation, high-productivity, low-interest-rate, prosperous United Kingdom economy that is focused on and fit for the future.

12:26

[Lord Giddens]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Freud, on having initiated this debate, and I congratulate him in a non-partisan way on his work on welfare and on other areas, such as mesothelioma, which has touched me and my family personally. I greatly appreciate his efforts in that discussion. He will be pleased to know that I do not propose to emulate my noble friend in trying to rubbish him, but I want to develop an analysis which is quite different from that which has been offered by noble Lords so far.

I shall argue that when considering the level of employment in the UK it would be a great mistake to concentrate only on the incipient economic recovery and the return of demand. As the Minister said, net new jobs are being created, and there is certainly a debate to be had, as my noble friend said, about what kind of jobs they will be, who will hold them, how many are part-time and so forth. However, I shall concentrate on much deeper structural trends which provide a much more sober picture than some of the portrayals being offered so far because some of these trends are utterly dramatic. They are absolutely profound in their medium-term implications. Even in the short term, recovery in the job market could be completely subverted by them, and these changes are accelerating in the here and now.

The changes I have in mind are driven by two convergent sources of technological transformation: computer technology and robotics. It has aptly been said that we are entering a second machine age, one that it is totally different from anything we have seen before. One of the most important features of this technological innovation is that in some areas these innovations—and it is amazing when you look at the details—are exponential, not linear, and they are resonant with implications for the future.

The two fields—computer technology and robotics—are tied together by digitalisation. As digital areas, they are truly global, not national in any sense. Only some 15 years ago, it was confidently said by experts in the field that there was a range of tasks that computers could never do, essentially because computers cannot be creative. These tasks included driving a car and translating a natural language. With the advent of supercomputers, all this has changed. Most noble Lords will know that the Google driverless car has gone for something like 400,000 miles without accidents. The only two accidents it had were when two human drivers crashed into the back of it. Supercomputers can now do translations of natural language sources, including, for example, translations of poetry, as well as human translators. That is quite an extraordinary transformation.

The same thing is happening in the area of robotics. About 15 years ago I went to the Sony media lab in Japan and talked to the head of Sony at that time. He said, “From now on, we are concentrating on robotics; this is going to be our main emphasis”. I saw some of the robots they had there. They could barely walk. They could not climb stairs. They could not do the most mundane tasks. This was 15 years ago. How things have changed. I will give you a couple of examples which sound trivial but are actually a bit awesome to me. A robot recently took on the world table tennis champion at table tennis. The robot was winning for most of the match. The human suddenly came from behind at the end, and in fact triumphed, but it will not be long before the conjunction of the computer and the robot will beat all human table tennis players. If you see someone playing table tennis at the top level, it is a completely amazing phenomenon. To think that a machine could be on the verge of beating the world champion is quite awesome.

There is also a robot stand-up comic. It is able to innovate, to tell stories, to tell jokes which the robot itself invents and, as it were, to play the audience just like a human stand-up comic. For example, the robot stand-up comic said, “I went out with an Apple gadget. It didn’t work out—she was always i-this and i-that”. The robot stand-up comic also has a way of deflating the situation when it does not get a laugh: it will say, “Oh well, I’ll have to do better next time”, or, “Hmm, that was not good enough”. It sounds trivial, but there is something awesome going on here.

The implications for work and jobs are huge. Many of my economist friends and colleagues are working intensely on them. Supercomputers will be able to take over a large number of professional and technical jobs. Jobs which only a few years ago it would have been inconceivable for machines to do are now lined up for destruction. They include jobs in the law, the medical profession, accountancy, finance and other areas. These are not low-level jobs, but at least medium-level jobs. We are talking not about the distant future, but of the next 10 years. Some of these changes have already happened. For example, machine translation is already replacing human translators in some of these areas; that is quite widespread.

One detailed analysis carried out by economists in the United States concludes that 40% of technical and professional jobs are vulnerable to takeover by intelligent machines. This is a level of job displacement not seen since the transformation of agriculture by industry. Agriculture used to employ 40% to 50% of the population, and it is now down to 2% or 3%. It is potentially a level of job displacement of that order. That is why it is hard to get one’s head around it. It is easy to dismiss and say that it is just hype about a distant future. It is not that at all, I assure noble Lords. These things are already happening. It is most advanced in the American economy, but it is happening in many other economies, too. So what we see when we go into a supermarket and we are more or less obliged to checkout by machine, or we go into a bookstore and find the same thing—or we go into other shops where there is a checkout machine—is at the lowest level of what will increasingly happen, and is happening, at a higher level. That is serious stuff for future employment.

Could the Minister reflect on or give me a response to three questions? On my first question, an easy or ignorant response would be to say, “Oh well, new jobs have always been created in the past when you have technological change”. We absolutely cannot say this with any certainty here, because we have never been in a position where machines have outstripped us intellectually and physically in this way. What work is going on inside the Government on that issue? This is quite different from the rosy picture and the debate about the immediacy of jobs; it is a surging trend that could be massively important for how we look at the future of employment.

Secondly, if it proves true that there is not enough work to go around in 10 to 15 years, we might have to be much more imaginative about the role of work in life than we are today. Many of my economist colleagues are thinking about this; an example in your Lordships’ House is the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, in his recent book. They suggest that we should return to themes that existed primarily in the 1960s of basic income and negative income tax. Is any thinking going on inside the Government about those issues, should those trends become exponential, as to me they will?

Thirdly, and finally, these trends are going along with a phenomenon that my noble friend Lady Donaghy mentioned—the large-scale displacement of wealth and large-scale inequality. It is driven in some part by these technological changes, as has been demonstrated in the United States, where there has been an absolute decrease in the amount of wealth taken by the majority of wealth-holders; almost all of it has gone to the top. A similar pattern is seen with income: the closer that you get to the very top, the greater the proportion taken. That is a really disturbing trend, and it is pretty similar here. We need some seriously new policies to produce a more equitable society in this world of high technological change. I conclude by asking the Minister: where are these policies?

12:37

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, when the United States was formed in 1776, it took 19 people on a farm to produce enough food for 20 people, so most people had to spend their time and effort in growing food. Today, it is down to 1% or 2% to produce the food. So let us consider the vast amount of supposed unemployment produced by that. There was not really any unemployment produced; what happened was that people who had formerly been tied up working in agriculture were freed up by technological developments and improvements to do something else, which enabled us to have a better standard of living and a more extensive range of products. That is freedom—arguing against the race to the bottom. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, talked about robots, but I have gone back to 1776. Nothing has changed in that sense.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Freud, for initiating this debate. I have just a few points to make. First, the rise in the overall employment rate is real and is at record levels and, correspondingly, there has been a fall in unemployment. With the economic dominance of the south-east, there is a need to rebalance the economy by supporting manufacturing, particularly in the regions. Continued tax reform is also needed. The Office of Tax Simplification is an oxymoron; our tax system is getting more and more complicated.

UK unemployment has fallen by 63,000 to 2.33 million. The unemployment rate now stands at 7.2% of the population. As the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, said in his excellent speech, employment has risen to a record of more than 30 million. The bad news is that the NEETs are still close to the 1 million mark; although the figure is falling, it is still above 900,000. The number of people claiming jobseeker’s allowance has fallen to 1.175 million. Over the year that number has dropped by 363,200, which is terrific. That is all really good news.

The new Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney—I say new, but he has been in post for almost a year—made a fundamental mistake in saying that he was going to give us forward guidance and that when unemployment fell to 7% the Bank would think of raising interest rates. That figure has been reached more quickly than thought, and he has had to back-track on the forward guidance almost straightaway. Interest rates are still at a record low of 0.5%. Just think: what got us into this financial crisis was what was then perceived as being the longest period of low interest rates for a long time—and they were then at 5%. Interest rates are 10 times lower than that, but still we cannot increase them, although the unemployment figures are near, or at, what the Governor of the Bank of England wanted them to be. They have been kept unchanged at 0.5%.

The real issue is public expenditure. Public expenditure used to be around the 40% mark. It was 42% of GDP in the early 1970s. Then under the previous Government it went up to almost 50% of GDP. By the late 1980s it was below 40%. We need to get that public expenditure down to 40%, because our tax-collecting ability historically has been around 38% to 39%. If we can get our public expenditure down to 40% we will have a balanced economy and will eliminate the deficit.

UK manufacturing is not dead, by any means. We are excelling in manufacturing. Our aerospace industry is the second largest in the world. Our automotive industry, of which I speak regularly, is flying. When Tata Motors bought Jaguar Land Rover in 2008, I spent a whole day at the Land Rover factory. Wow—it was impressive. I am due another visit, because my last one is already outdated. The company is now making more in profits than it paid for a business that nobody was interested in buying in 2008: that is how well it is doing. It is also exporting and creating employment.

We have heard the great news that Bentley is moving its 12-cylinder engine manufacturing from Volkswagen in Germany to Crewe in the UK. How wonderful is that? Rolls-Royce is manufacturing at Goodwood. Therefore, we have the best of the best quality—the best cars in the world—being manufactured here in Britain.

Our chemical industry is huge; our defence industry is huge; our electronics industry is huge; and so is our food and drink industry. I speak from my own experience. I mentioned yesterday that we were manufacturing a great deal in Europe. In fact, the majority of our production was in Europe some years ago and we decided to reshore to the UK because here we can produce world-class beer. We now produce in Burton upon Trent; we are winning award after award and exporting around the world. I am proud of that.

We have a plastics industry and a steel industry; we also have a textile industry, which we thought was dead but which is not dead at all. There are still almost 80,000 businesses employing 340,000 people and generating £11.5 billion of turnover.

What about the regions and the whole focus on London? We have a country where one big city is the capital and the financial capital and is much bigger than the second biggest city, Birmingham—let alone Manchester or anywhere else. If we look at a large country such as the United States, New York is big but you have Los Angeles, Chicago and lots of other big cities. If we look at another large country, India, there is Mumbai but also Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Calcutta and Delhi, which are huge cities in their own right. We have this one big city. I am very proud of London; it is the greatest of the world’s great cities. But how can we encourage business and employment in the regions? The answer is simple: we must encourage manufacturing. We cannot manufacture in London; we have to manufacture in the regions. That can create the jobs.

The Financial Times analysis tells a story in which the percentage of people on jobseeker’s allowance benefits dropped by more than 30% last year in places as varied as Oldham in the north, Stafford in the Midlands and the Suffolk coastal region. This is great news. If we can carry on in that vein, we will have growth and employment outside London.

Again, worries about lopsided economic growth are not new. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, talked about developments 50 years ago, at a time when the economy was also recovering after a period of stagnation. The then Labour leader, Harold Wilson, complained in Parliament of a two-nations economy and said that,

“the Chancellor has to try to restrain the overheating which he sees in the South at a time when large areas in the North are still in the chill grip of his predecessor’s freeze”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/4/1964; col. 285.]

Those were the comments of Harold Wilson on Reginald Maudling’s 1964 Budget speech.

We should look at the great signs of success. We have already heard that Hitachi is to move its rail business headquarters from Japan to the UK, and that Bentley is to move from Germany to the UK. Companies from Japan and Germany, the pinnacles of high-tech manufacturing, are moving to the UK. This is fantastic. Hitachi says its move will expand the number of rail jobs to 4,000, which is excellent. I have already mentioned Jaguar Land Rover and Bentley. The Chancellor has promised to cut the costs of manufacturing to boost growth, and he has done it. He predicts that energy costs will go down by £7 billion. Again, that is excellent.

Immigration is one area where I fundamentally disagree with the Government. Their immigration policy has sent out the wrong signals around the world to foreign students and academics. That affects not just universities such as Oxford and Cambridge, where 30% of the academics are foreign. For example, more than 30% of the academics at Birmingham University are foreign. As I say, bad signals have been sent out, and the number of Indian foreign students is now plummeting, but we should look at the contribution Indians make to our economy. On Friday, I went to the celebrations for the principal of West Nottinghamshire College, who has been made a dame. She is the first Indian-born dame in 83 years. She came to this country as a young bride unable to speak English but today heads the most successful further education college in the UK, and probably one of the most successful in the world. That is the power of immigration.

The statistics show that Indians make a huge contribution to our economy. In 2013, Indian men topped the ethnicity employment table in the UK and Indian women came second. Indian men had the second lowest rate of unemployment—and so it goes on. One in seven companies is founded by a migrant entrepreneur. Migrants make a huge contribution to our economy and create jobs. Migrant entrepreneurs have been a benefit to this country.

In looking at overall business performance, we must not neglect SMEs. The Minister talked about all the Government’s initiatives. I was on the National Employment Panel for eight years and on the New Deal task force before that. SMEs account for 59% of private sector employment and 48% of private sector turnover. Within SMEs, small businesses account for 79% of employment and 69% of turnover. We need to encourage these small businesses to grow, because the argument about big companies not paying corporation tax misses the point. Yes, we would like them to pay more corporation tax, but that tax makes up only 8% of our tax take. Most of our tax take comes from the tax that is generated by employment—more than 50% comes from PAYE and NI-paying employees and NI-paying employers. The more jobs we create, the more tax we will generate; therefore we should encourage SMEs to grow.

I have suggested to the noble Lord, Lord Young, that we should have a competition in this country to sponsor staff from 100 companies to attend the Cranfield School of Management business growth programme or the University of Cambridge Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship. It costs £10,000 to attend these programmes. The businesses that send people to attend those programmes will grow faster than other businesses because we will be training our entrepreneurs to perform better and grow their businesses.

We need to go further on national insurance breaks. Ralf Speth, the chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, said that the secret of his company’s success was innovation. UK Trade and Investment was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. Exports are crucial. The further we go down the route that I am suggesting of training our entrepreneurs, encouraging manufacturing in the regions and generating jobs, the more exports will follow. I have mentioned my own experience as an example of that.

To conclude, what is the purpose of business? I think that, yes, you want to create a product that people love, but you also want to create employment for the well-being of the people whom you employ. In every survey that asks people what is most important to them, they say family. What else is important to them? They say health. What else is important to them? They say their working life. If people do not work, they are not going to be happy. A happy country is a country with, ideally, full employment. We will never get to full employment, but at least let us try.

12:50

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the Minister for initiating this debate. He has every reason to be cheerful given the rise in employment that has taken place. It would be churlish not to welcome the fact that the British economy is in a better place than it has been over the past six years, and the rising employment rate is the best feature of that.

As the Chancellor recognised, there is a long way to go before we can say that we have a balanced and sustainable economy. I note that he was not quite as upbeat and positive as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, about the prospects for the British economy. While I welcome the national fall in unemployment, it is not being felt in all areas of the country or all areas of the economy. In the north-west, my region of origin, the number of unemployed has risen by 22,000. That is the largest rise of all the regions in the country. As the Minister said, the figure that raises the greatest concern is the rate of long-term youth unemployment. For example, in south Warrington in the north-west, between May 2010 and January of this year, the number of unemployed young people increased sixfold. In Rossendale over the same period, seven times as many young people have been unable to find work. Further north, in Lancaster and Fleetwood, the number of unemployed young people has increased tenfold over that period.

The harsh facts are that fiscal austerity has slowed and weakened the recovery rather than led to it. Exactly the same thing has happened in the eurozone. Both of these are in contrast to the United States, which has bounced back more rapidly and powerfully than this side of the Atlantic.

Monetary looseness and quantitative easing has been a factor in the UK. It has helped the recovery, but it has also helped it to be rather unbalanced and, for that reason, fragile. One could say that the economy is still on life support while we have quantitative easing. We have been under the delusion, as the noble Lord, Lord Skidelsky, described it, that the policies which made the recession worse would be the same policies that made recovery possible. In fact, public investment is still down 35% from pre-crash levels. Resources still stand idle and must be mobilised in all parts of the country, not just in the relatively prosperous south-eastern corner.

That brings me to concern about the British economic model. Just over six months ago, it was said in the Economist that:

“The bones of Britain’s economy are rotten. Shoppers are consuming not because they earn more but because they can borrow more … Firms with cash … are hoarding rather than investing. New firms … find it hard to borrow: the banks will lend only against property. Britain still buys far more abroad than it sells, despite a weak currency”.

Things have moved on since then. They would not write the same thing today. However, I ask noble Lords to appreciate the fact that some of that is still very true.

The Chancellor recognises these structural weaknesses. He mentioned them in his speech on Tuesday. However, his prescriptions still fall well short of what is necessary to cure our problems. It would be so depressing to think that we are condemned to a future in which we might get a debt-fuelled property boom, particularly led again by the south-east, followed by another financial crisis, followed by another period of austerity. What can we do to avoid that? There are things being done in the banking system but it is important that this rebalancing of the British economy becomes a national priority.

Can we be bolder in this area? The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, has certainly had a go and is very active in this field. With his report, No Stone Unturned, he pointed to lessons from our neighbouring countries on the eastern shores of the North Sea, including Germany, the Netherlands and the Nordic countries—lessons about decentralisation, skills and active public intervention to spur growth. These lessons need to be learnt here, along with other features of the more successful economies of our North Sea neighbours. These include: the equality of Scandinavia; the collaborative, long-term culture of Germany, with its voice for workers; the widespread, effective collective bargaining systems in all the countries that I mentioned on the other side of that sea; and the general excellence of their infrastructure, public services and welfare states. They did not follow the cult of deregulated labour markets being the route forward to prosperity, and they did not adopt the easy hire-and-fire policies that were largely pursued in the English-speaking world. Even in Germany, the Hartz reforms introduced by Gerhard Schroeder were, by our standards, rather modest and marginal.

Collective bargaining is a term that you do not often hear in this House and sounds quite quaint and historical to many here, although it is prevalent in most of our top companies, including those on the list that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, mentioned as exemplars. It is still strong at a sectoral level in the countries I mentioned and has a major influence in pressing against inequality. After all, if you are the boss and you have influential unions, it becomes far harder for you and your colleagues to sustain a culture in which you tend to help yourself and give yourself the benefit of every doubt when it comes to sharing out the company’s income. If you have effective information and consultation arrangements, involving company councils and even workers on the board, then you strengthen the forces that seek a long-term perspective on company performance—not those who see companies as a bundle of assets to be traded in the City, where the hunger for deals and transaction commissions seems undiminished. That certainly runs counter to our need for a better-balanced, more sustainable economy. The approach of those North Sea economies has much assisted greater equality and better productivity as well as longer-term perspectives about the future of their economies.

I accept that there are many good things about labour market flexibility. When applied functionally it enables workers to respond flexibly, and we have seen some of that in companies through this recession, which has helped to keep employment levels up. Flexibility in skills is obviously important, too, and enables individuals and companies to flourish. In passing, I hope that the Government continue to support Unionlearn, the programme that has done a lot to promote a learning culture among the workforce in this country. It would be a false economy to cut it back. That is not the responsibility of the Minister’s department but is on the Government’s agenda.

Flexible working hours are clearly important for the future to employers and employees alike, but while labour market flexibility has good features it also has some much less good features, particularly where it benefits unscrupulous employers by letting them fire people without adequate consultation. It is a process that has been encouraged in recent months and years by the Government’s moves. It is therefore important to consider labour market flexibility in its different segments, and regulation sometimes produces better practice.

Perhaps the worst thing about labour market flexibility as it has been applied in the UK is the lamentable performance on productivity. Output per hour in Germany is 31% higher and in France it is 32% higher. These are pretty disastrous figures. If we are to keep up with other countries, never mind soar to become the economic leader that the Chancellor talked about on Tuesday, then productivity must become a national campaign. It must become something that we improve and we must all work together to achieve that.

The Chancellor was right to warn against complacency because things are getting better, but I believe that he is wrong not to reach for more ambitious plans—perhaps, for a start, applying some of the lessons that we can learn from the other side of the North Sea.

13:00

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks and congratulations to the Minister on initiating this debate but also on his very inspired work in his field.

I am certain that there is not a single Member of this House who does not recognise the value of employment to the well-being of individuals and their families. Times of unemployment are tragic for people and for the places where they live. Therefore, it is heartening to note that, as we have heard, the number of people in employment is at a record high; over the past year the total has risen and we now have 30.19 million people in work. I know that that has already been referred to but it is such a good figure that I need to say it again.

Even so, many of our major cities, especially those in the north of England, have on occasion suffered disproportionately as major industries have almost disappeared. Therefore, today’s news—again, already referred to—about Hitachi moving its operation to the north-east is very welcome. It is also an indication of the confidence that business has in the UK and its Government.

The closure of one factory can cause several hundred jobs to be lost, even overnight. One authority in the north of England, the metropolitan district of Bradford, where I am a councillor, was once one of the richest cities in Britain and the centre of the world’s wool trade. Over a number of years, the wool trade declined and so did much of the heavy engineering industry. This had a major impact on the employment opportunities for the people of the Bradford district.

In Bradford, for the 12-month period to September 2013, 217,500 residents aged 16 to 24 were in employment. Since September 2011, an additional 18,400 people have found employment. Employment growth in Bradford since 2011 has almost doubled the 4.7% increase seen in the Leeds city region as a whole and is more than four times the 2% increase across the UK.

Bradford’s working population is growing by 2,000 people per year. By 2021, there will be an additional 18,000 work-age people living in the district. Maintaining current levels of employment rates will require 10,000 new jobs. The Leeds city region econometric model forecasts employment growth at around 16,000 by 2020—an increase of 7.5%, which is higher than the increase of 6.5% forecast for the UK. The majority of new jobs will be higher-skilled, with around 6,000 requiring graduate level skills, while only 2,000 will be NVQ level 1 or below. The sectors likely to experience the biggest growth are health, transport, education, retail and professional and business services.

Bradford Council has implemented the rates rebate scheme as part of a package of measures funded by the Government’s successful regional growth fund. This scheme has been critical in persuading a number of prospective commercial tenants to commit to a large retail development project, which has in turn enabled the critical level of pre-letting required to trigger development obligations.

Bradford’s city centre growth zone, launched in 2012, is jointly funded by the regional growth fund and the council, the aim being to encourage private sector investment. Construction of the new retail centre, I am pleased to say, is now under way. The construction phase will create 1,500 jobs, with 2,500 permanent jobs in the completed contract, which is projected to attract 20 million shoppers per annum. The timeframe for the growth zone offer is crucial. The construction phase commenced later than anticipated when the programme was devised, and this creates a major issue. The delivery schedule and the regional growth fund funding period are no longer aligned, resulting in many priority activities falling outside the contracted delivery period.

The city centre growth zone is working in the case of Bradford. It is bringing real change to the face of the city centre—change that is lasting. The momentum for investment has been really positive. It is essential that such excellent government schemes always allow flexibility on timescales to enable local circumstances to be accommodated.

A project called Get Bradford Working has provided funding for unemployed people and has funded longer-term placements in business to provide people with skills and experience. Some 273 unemployed people have been helped into jobs created through the Employment Opportunities fund, and a further 245 unemployed people have been supported into work through the Routes into Work fund. In spite of changes in heavy industry, there are opportunities to train for manufacturing jobs in the district, which still has a larger than average percentage of manufacturing. There is a shortage of engineers—especially those with high-level skills—and there are examples of people working well past retirement age as there are not the people with the relevant skills to replace them.

Nationally, youth unemployment has been rising since the early 2000s, growing by more than a third during the 2008-09 recession, and it has remained too high ever since. It is, however, encouraging news that the latest figures show that youth unemployment has fallen by 29,000 this quarter and is 81,000 lower than a year ago. Some 8.7% of all young people who have left full-time education are unemployed. While this is unacceptably high, we should note that it compares with 12% in 1993 and 14% in 1984.

As we have heard, the Department for Work and Pensions works with young people on jobseeker’s allowance through jobcentres, and the number of young people on JSA has fallen for the 21st month running. The 18 to 24 claimant count peaked in December 2011 at over 480,000, but today it is 295,000.

Apprenticeships can be part of the solution to youth unemployment and aid the development of appropriate skills in manufacturing. There are many opportunities. The Chancellor is to be congratulated on yesterday’s Budget, recognising the value of apprenticeships and extending the apprentice grant for employers scheme, providing £85 million in both 2014-15 and 2015-16 for 100,000 grants to employers, as well as £20 million for postgraduate apprenticeships, as referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

As I have said, apprenticeships create many opportunities for young people, but in too many cases young people have not been encouraged in school or by their parents to think of them as a credible alternative to higher education. We need to move young people away from the idea that anything other than a higher education degree is an inferior route to employment.

In many schools, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, ably pointed out, careers advice is woefully inadequate, with too little focus on the variety of routes into work and education. Many careers departments in schools do not have a good understanding of the employment trends or the skills required in their locality. Academy schools with business sponsorship do much to improve this situation. Too often, those leaving education are not seen as being ready to cope with the world of work. There can be issues around attitude, timekeeping and communication. Therefore, to some potential employers, school leavers can be much less attractive than those who have experience.

There is no magic bullet that resolves the issues of unemployment overnight. Her Majesty’s Government are to be commended on their economic strategies, which give confidence to investors, on their many schemes, such as enterprise zones and the regional growth fund, and on the support that they gave to businesses in many ways in yesterday’s Budget, which will have a major and positive impact on employment opportunities.

13:10

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

My Lords, every Wednesday, John Kay writes an article in the Financial Times. Last week he wrote about economics and mathematics, and he came to the conclusion that numbers do not really reflect the world as it really is. Numbers have to be tempered with the realities of human life, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, implied. While I welcome this opportunity to debate employment and I welcome the rising numbers in work, I am not sure that there is much to be gained in just debating the level of employment. The noble Lords, Lord Holmes and Lord Bilimoria, told us that the number in work is at a record level; I gently remind them that so is the population. I agree with John Kay. The numbers without the humanity can be meaningless.

I will give another example. In the normal course of events, every month some 30,000 people in Britain change jobs for a whole range of reasons; many of them are for personal reasons totally unrelated to government policies, yet they are all included in government figures. The level of employment has to be considered not just in terms of numbers but also in human terms, in its effect on people and on the fairness of our society. So I will look at the level of employment in this way.

There was a time when the Government were going to create employment by means of an industrial strategy, a strategy that would balance the economy and balance the country; it says so in the coalition agreement. This would mean high-tech growth, skilled jobs, advanced technology and a lower north-south divide. However, as yesterday’s Budget indicates, this has manifestly failed. As my noble friend Lord Monks explained, we have growth, but it is based on increased consumption and on a property boom. It is based more on trading in finance, which is a zero-sum game that benefits the few, and less on trading in goods and services, which benefits us all. Yes, the employment level has gone up, but in a way that reflects this rather disappointing industrial strategy.

The recent report from the Resolution Foundation makes it clear that some 5 million of our workers meet the definition of low pay set by the OECD. We have a higher proportion of low-paid jobs than most OECD countries. Of course, the low pay in many of these jobs is topped up by the Government through the tax system, so giving people a chance to make ends meet but also keeping up the employment figures. Instead of subsidising low pay, why do the Government not do more to encourage people to run their businesses better—by raising productivity so that they can pay a living wage? Yes, the Government are trying to raise skill levels and encourage people to gain qualifications, but if we are seeking to have a successful economy, a degree or a qualification is not necessarily a proxy for or even a means of getting a job. As my noble friend Lord Giddens explained, in that kind of world the economy pays you for what you can do with what you know, not just for knowing it. I would add that, in that kind of economy, success is increasingly a group endeavour that depends a lot on soft skills such as leadership, collaboration, adaptability and the ability to learn and relearn. Indeed, it is the absence of these skills as much as technical skills that concerns many employers today. Perhaps the biggest threat to our level of employment is the possibility of leaving the European Union. This would marginalise us economically because every day we hear from international corporations that our leaving would reduce their activity in Britain and jobs would go elsewhere. Thank goodness we now know that a Labour Government would remove this threat to our level of employment.

Then there is the matter of productivity, raised by my noble friends Lady Donaghy and Lord Monks. Did the Minister see the release on 20 February from the Office for National Statistics which gives the final productivity estimates? In case noble Lords missed it, I will give the highlights. Last year the output per hour in the UK was 21 percentage points below the average for the rest of the major G7 industrialised economies. UK output per hour and output per worker fell compared with the previous year. Our output per hour was 3 percentage points below the level of the pre-recession year of 2007. What this demonstrates is that this Government have maintained the high level of employment thanks to the high number of low-paid, low-skilled jobs that are needed in a low-productivity economy. That is a strong indicator that we are in a race to the bottom. Is this how we are going to pay our way in a globalised economy? Many of the people needed to do all these low-skilled, low-paid, entry-level jobs are the very immigrants that the Government are seeking to control. Is this how we are going to build up our exports to deal with our balance of payments and borrowing, which the Chancellor spoke about yesterday?

The Minister’s fine words about our level of employment does very little to deal with these issues, which are central to our economy. John Kay is right: take the numbers out of the human context and you get a completely different picture. Not only does this kind of employment do little for our economy, it also damages our society. There is more employment, but the unemployed are, more and more, overwhelmingly the younger generation. This is a problem all over Europe and there are EU social funds available to tackle it. Central to this funding is a job guarantee scheme, and the Government were wrong to scrap it. The Minister is wrong. The rising level of employment still leaves many young people needing to be rescued from long-term unemployment before the rot sets in.

Other noble Lords have spoken about the huge growth in zero-hours contracts and part-time work. Yes, this may raise the level of employment, but it also raises the number of people who live with insecurity, people about whom my noble friend Lady Donaghy spoke. My noble friend Lady Hollis, in her letter to the Guardian, pointed out that if you work 30 hours a week on a minimum wage split between, let us say, two 15-hour jobs, you cannot add the hours together to bring you into national insurance, so you end up with no state pension. It is playing on this kind of insecurity that enables employers to make unreasonable demands such as working people harder and paying them less, sometimes insisting on false self-employment, as other noble Lords have spoken about. I put it to the Minister that there is plenty of evidence that this is happening. The economy is growing, corporate finances are in good shape, executive salaries and bonuses are soaring, but ordinary wages are being squeezed. The number of people who are living precariously is on the rise.

We are told that average wages are going up. But the Minister may remember when he was being taught arithmetic at school, that a big increase at the top is enough to lift the average. Meanwhile, the median wage is static, leading to the rising inequality that concerns so many of us. Even with rising levels of so-called employment, is this the kind of leadership that inspires growth and innovation? Is this the kind of leadership that delivers a fair society? Successful leadership means that people have to believe that you believe in what they believe. If they think that all you care about is the numbers, you are in deep trouble. This kind of insecurity and inequality means social and economic trouble.

The level of employment must be in the context of an economy that works for all of us—not just the few who are doing well, but the many who have to make do with low wages and dehumanised working conditions. This level of employment does not create the society that I seek. This is not my vision.

13:21

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for putting this debate before the House and I share his pleasure at the good news within the employment figures. However, my noble friend Lord Haskel—who, as usual, gives us the benefit of his experience of working in industry and being an employer in the past—is right to point to the dangers of low productivity and low wages. My noble friend Lady Donaghy also made some very forceful points. The Minister might have found her attack slightly critical but if he looks at the figures she produced, I think he will see that they bear further examination.

I say in passing to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that yes, the previous Labour Government have to accept responsibility for not regulating the banks and the finance industry much better than they did. However, I would be more respectful of that argument if every other political party, not just in Britain but throughout the western world, had argued for greater accountability of the banks and finance industry. If you strip out the effect of the banking finance collapse you will find that this country's economy has not been in a bad position for a very long time. We need to acknowledge that and get some of the rubbish out of this debate.

I want to focus my comments today on the difficulty that all parties share in addressing the problem of those, particularly young people, but not just young people, who have difficulty in finding a job or maintaining a regular work pattern. My comments follow the direction set not just by my noble friend Lord Haskel but also by the noble Lords, Lord Bilimoria and Lord Giddens, because the science and technology aspect is vital. Changes in science and technology have been a factor in driving the economy forward since the Industrial Revolution but such change is an even bigger factor now.

I do not usually bore the House with my own experiences in life but I should say that my own experiences are one of the reasons why I have always looked sceptically at the unemployment and training issues. I left school at the age of 15 in 1954 and with an appallingly low educational achievement. The first thing that the school’s job officer, as they were then, said to me was, “You look like a nice young man. Why don’t you work in an office?”. So I went to work in the solicitor’s office that he sent me to. The first thing I did was to make the tea and the second was to run messages. That went on for a year.

The great advantage of the 1950s, at that stage, was that there were still plenty of jobs, so after a while I got fed up with my first job and left. You could earn much more on building sites and in factories, and that is what I did. I am not sure that some of those building sites would be open these days after a visit from a health and safety officer. I was quite relieved to discover that one building I worked on in Essex was still standing some years later, although I have to confess that it has been knocked down since. I just hope that that had nothing to do with the young man who was mixing the cement. The reality was that there were plenty of jobs and you could switch around. However, some of the people I knew at that stage did suffer quite long-term unemployment. They were not getting into the job market. Often, it was because of a lack of educational skills.

Just over 100 years ago, in the middle and late 19th century, people became aware of the fact that the abilities to read, to write and to do basic arithmetic were not only good for them but, above all, good for the economy. Those skills enabled them to use the emerging new technologies, and to develop them very effectively. In no way do I want to undermine any attempt to ensure that people leave school with good educational abilities in reading, writing and arithmetic. However, it is a digital economy now, so we need to make sure that everyone who is struggling to get and maintain a job has those skills.

My main question for the Minister is: can we look rather more creatively at how we involve people—not just young people, but particularly young people—in digital training? I do not think that any young person who has had a history of uncertain employment—let us use that phrase rather than “unemployment”—should be allowed to go through the employment agencies without addressing the questions, “What skills do you have and what skills can we give you?”. The same applies to many of the other government departments and the organisations that work with government on this. The same questions should be asked. Do they have the basic skills? “Basic skills” does not mean just being able to use a computer. It does not mean just being able to search the internet. It means an ability to operate in a much more complex area, including the increasingly important one of coding.

I can give a simple recent example. Some youngsters I know who had literally just left school and did not have jobs painted T-shirts and shoes which they had bought and on which they then applied special designs. They sold them at school fetes and charities for anything up to £100. It was pretty impressive. They were certainly able to use computers and they knew how to use the internet but they did not have the digital skills to design a website where they could sell these items. We need to remember that many of the new industries can be run from home; it is much easier to do it now, but not easy unless you have those digital skills. With some basic training, could not those young people have done it? They had computers at home, so they had the technology sitting there, but they could not design websites and therefore promote sales in that way. That is one of the ways forward. I had a conversation the other day with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, in which she drew my attention to an organisation called Go ON UK—which I know has been in contact with the Government. It is saying that that is precisely what we need to do. When young people—or older people, because we should not describe this issue only by age—go to a jobcentre or other government agency and their technical skills, such as coding, are assessed, training should be offered immediately to those who do not have the necessary skills.

I would go so far as to say, given the Minister’s involvement in the benefits area, that there ought to be a way that we can offer financial help or recompense—I would almost dare to call it a bribe—for such training. A lot of this is about a lack of confidence, which is particularly true of older people. If you do not have the confidence to use the internet well or to use IT to create, run or work for an existing business, the right training can give you the confidence. As I said, financial support might be needed to encourage that. We need to look much more creatively at this because, for all the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, gave, we are looking at an economy which is much more driven by science and technology than ever before. Perhaps I may expand on my example of the late 19th century, when people began to recognise that reading, writing and arithmetic was good, and speculate that if we fast forward a hundred years from now, people will look back and say that we were only just becoming aware in the early 21st century of the importance of digital skills.

There is an opportunity here for Governments and for political parties of all persuasions to look at the way in which new technologies are used to enable people to earn an income wherever they are in life. I want my own party to look into this and it is very encouraging that it is doing so. We have got very much better at this with people with severe disabilities. There is now much greater help in this area. No person should get through an employment agency or some of the other agencies without us gaining some idea of the digital skills which that person has, what more could be offered to them and how they could be encouraged to take up those skills.

13:31

[Lord Sheikh (Con)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Freud for introducing this subject and for his excellent speech. I speak as a businessman and as somebody who has employed many people through several business ventures. At the outset I take the opportunity to commend the Chancellor of the Exchequer on his Budget Statement. I hope to speak more on this subject during the impending debate next week but it is useful to note in this debate the measures that will boost employment.

I welcome measures announced in the Budget to support businesses, which include cutting the cost of energy bills for manufacturing and doubling the annual investment allowance to £500,000. The Chancellor also stated that we will have the most competitive export finance in Europe, by doubling government lending available to exporters to £3 billion and cutting the typical interest rate by a third. All these will provide a much needed financial boost to businesses and free up money to spend on employing more staff, among other things. This was a Budget that backed businesses and, as a result, backed employment.

It is my belief that this Government’s work on welfare and employment is one of their greatest achievements. I have spoken on this subject in your Lordships’ House previously. It has been stated many times in this Chamber, in the other place and elsewhere that the coalition Government inherited a dire financial situation—but we must not forget that this was not the only legacy that their predecessors left behind. This Government also inherited a culture of worklessness, one whereby welfare could and often did pay more than work and where generations did not work. Let us not forget that children and young people who live in households where adults do not engage in any form of employment are not only the most deprived in our society but also the most likely to follow this path once they leave full-time compulsory education. This generational cycle of worklessness was a key factor in the rising levels of welfare dependency and poverty in our communities. Alongside this, there were also vastly high levels of unemployment.

There are now 1.3 million more people in work than when Labour left office. Unemployment now stands at 7.2%, the lowest for the past five years. The number of young people in work has increased by 43,000 in the past three months and the employment rate has now hit a five-year high with a record 30.1 million people in jobs. The OBR has forecast that over the next five years a further 1.5 million jobs will be created, with real earnings growing every year.

It is however important that we remember that employment is not merely a matter of statistics. Every position filled means another family have the security of a regular pay packet. We must not forget that this pay packet is put back into the economy both in taxation and in consumer spending, supporting yet more jobs and growth. Nor should we forget the great benefit to the person’s individual well-being. I am sure noble Lords will agree that work gives people pride and confidence. As an employer, I know that people tend to work for two reasons. The first is to earn a living and the second is to get job satisfaction. On the contrary, being out of work sometimes creates depression and has an adverse effect on people. Work is good for people’s mental health, their physical health and their general well-being—benefits that have been demonstrated repeatedly. Dependency is not liberating. It constrains people and prevents them from achieving their ambitions. What is more, if we can get more people in work, some of them will receive salary progressions and improve their standards of living.

The Government deserve recognition for trying to ensure that we have a fair welfare system to support those in genuine need. Since benefits were capped, 9,200 households have moved into work or reduced their own benefit claim. Some 4,300 of these households have found jobs. We have heard many times that it is the Government's aim to reward those families who want to work hard and get on. Here we are seeing that, as a result, thousands of people are finding jobs and moving off benefits. It was not right that tens of thousands of households received far more in benefits than the ordinary hard-working family earns. We cannot underestimate the resentment and anger felt by hard-working families who saw others who made a conscious effort not to work being rewarded handsomely by the state. This caused tensions within our communities, which is understandable. To have people saying that they “could not afford to work” was absurd. Britain must be one of the few countries in the world where this was the case. Social security should be for people who find themselves out of work and are trying to get back into employment. Few people would disagree with these aims.

I pay tribute to those who offer people the chance of work. The rise in employment is not created by Government alone. It is being fuelled by businesses and entrepreneurs across the country. They should be congratulated. As the economy continues to improve they are feeling increasingly confident about employing more people. I have spoken many times in this Chamber and elsewhere on the importance of supporting small businesses. As has been said many times, SMEs are the lifeblood of the British economy. An ambitious and thriving small business sector is vital for steering the economic recovery in the right direction. None of the early signs of recovery that we are seeing today would have been possible without these small businesses. Their importance comes not only in the money they can make but also in the jobs they create. We must ensure that the systems are in place to aid them in doing this. The National Insurance Contributions Act, given Royal Assent recently, was one such measure. The employment allowance will give businesses and charities a much needed tax cut as a result of the Act. This will benefit over 1 million businesses, with almost 500,000 being taken out of paying national insurance contributions altogether. Businesses will, more often than not, spend these savings on their business—investing it, increasing wages and creating jobs.

Let us also not forget the smallest of businesses, those which currently have no employees at all. The allowance will create a strong incentive for sole traders and new and start-up businesses to hire their first employee. The number of self-employed people has risen. I hope that soon they will have more employees of their own, creating wealth and jobs through innovation.

Another welcome measure is the removal of the jobs tax on young people under the age of 21. As a result of this, employer national insurance contributions will be removed altogether on 1.5 million jobs for young people. Youth unemployment is falling, but it is important that more is done to get young people into work. We can see from the experience of previous generations that the longer the period spent out of work as a youth, the longer the time spent out of work later in life. I am pleased that, thanks to this measure, the future is looking brighter for young people in this country. This will also come as a great benefit to the businesses that employ them. A young, vibrant and skilled workforce is a benefit for us all.

We should also welcome the rise in the number of women in employment. As someone who has spoken many times about female empowerment, it is most welcome that the number of women in employment has reached a record high, with more than 14 million in work for the first time. The number has increased by over 500,000 since the election. Getting into employment should not be something that people are expected to do alone, particularly for those who have never worked before. It can be a daunting process. I am pleased that the Government’s Work Programme is helping people into work. Unlike the short-term focus of previous schemes, the Work Programme is geared towards not just getting people into work, but keeping them there. It is helping large numbers of people escape the misery of long-term unemployment and get back into real jobs. Through this scheme, providers are rightly paid according to results. They have the flexibility to design support systems that address the needs both of the individual and of the local labour market. So far the scheme has helped 208,000 jobseekers find lasting work, including 17,560 young people. This is evidence that there are jobs available, but we must work to ensure that all the measures are in place to get those who need jobs into them.

It is my belief that this Government are committed to lowering unemployment and helping people back into work. However, we must not be complacent. More needs to be done to increase employment and train people to fill the jobs. To enable us to achieve that, we should not rely on my business, which is financial services, but expand our manufacturing activities and undertake more business overseas. We must increase our trade with India, China, Brazil and Africa. There are considerable opportunities in Africa, where I was brought up and with which I still have connections. Given our historic ties with a number of African countries, we must promote more trade with them. Also, we should increase apprenticeships and train more people in different trades and businesses.

13:44

[Baroness Turner of Camden (Lab)]

My Lords, I should like to thank the Minister for introducing a debate on this important subject. He referred to growth, and many of us welcome that, but we have other concerns. What sort of growth, we must ask? What kind of work, and what is the effect upon many families struggling against poverty? The growth is clearly mainly in London and the south-east. The remainder of the country, particularly the north, is not doing so well. Unemployment in the north is around 10%, compared with 5% in the south-east. The parts of the country that are most affected are those that have faced deindustrialisation. The factories that once provided employment for the local population have disappeared. Many industries, like the steel industry following privatisation, have disappeared altogether. This is the process which was started under the Administration of the late Baroness Thatcher.

Concerns about the lack of balance in the economy have been voiced by many noble Lords in the debate. The Government seem to accept that rebalancing is necessary if growth is to continue, but obviously much more needs to be done. It is accepted that we need a more skilled workforce, and in that respect I support the efforts that the Government are making to promote apprenticeship training. Much more needs to be done in that direction for young people. Equally, more should be done to encourage young people into science and engineering studies. A number of years ago, when I was a member of the Equal Opportunities Commission, we ran the WISE campaign, which stood for Women Into Science and Engineering. We had some success in that regard and we could do with another campaign now. We need campaigns to generate more enthusiasm.

As to what work is like nowadays, again, there has been concern about the work that is available. There is talk of zero-hours contract work and of work that is low-paid. Sometimes individuals must take several small jobs because one job simply does not pay enough. This is particularly the case for women, because childcare is too expensive for many people. There was recently a TUC conference for women at which many stories were told of the treatment of people on zero-hours contracts, as well as appalling stories about very low pay. Concerns were expressed that the austerity cuts, from which everyone is expected to suffer, impact more heavily on women. Although there has been growth, wages generally seem to be stagnant. I am glad to say that there has been talk of raising the minimum wage, but it needs to rise by more than the amount suggested for it to be of real assistance. What we really need is the living wage to lift people out of poverty.

In discussions about employment in this House on previous occasions, it was suggested that people should “get on their bikes” and go to where the work exists. That is no longer a good idea because the problem is housing. In London and the south-east generally there is a housing crisis which has resulted in a shortage of social housing, and private renting is desperately expensive. All this indicates that although there is growth, particularly in the south-east, there are still major problems for many people, who face insecurity both in employment and on the housing front. The Government’s employment policies have simply added to that insecurity.

We have seen a series of measures from the Government designed to diminish or totally remove the employment rights that have been fought for over the years. It is now very difficult for a dismissed worker to claim for unfair dismissal. If, after coping with a series of bureaucratic steps he or she eventually gets to a tribunal, it will cost almost £1,000 in fees. Workers injured at work will find it more difficult to claim compensation because of changes to the law, and whistleblowers will now lose their protection if they attempt to warn about unsafe practices in the workplace.

There is also the government scheme of “shares for rights”. Employees are given shares in a company in return for surrendering all employment rights. I am glad to say that these schemes do not appear to have had much success, but all this indicates that the Government prefer to have a workforce with no workplace rights at all. This adds further to feelings of insecurity and of course encourages bad employers to behave even worse. In this House we defeated some of the proposals, but the Government later defeated our amendments in the Commons. I strongly believe that a well paid, well trained and respected workforce is far more likely to produce sustainable growth than an insecure one. After all, no one likes to feel that they are disposable.

As for training, the Government should not pay too much attention to what the media have to say about trade unions. I speak as a former trade union official. Unions are committed to the education and training of members. Unionlearn, the TUC’s education department, is highly respected for the work it does among people who missed out on training earlier in their careers. The automotive industry, which has been doing quite well, has involved the unions and has received their support. I gather that this is what happens in Germany. That was explained in some detail by my noble friend Lord Monks in his speech earlier.

There is some growth and some improvement in the employment figures, but clearly very much remains to be done. Again, I thank the Minister for his speech. It has given a number of us an opportunity to air our problems, and I hope that he will pay attention to what we have said this afternoon.

13:51

[Baroness Sherlock (Lab)]

My Lords, this is another wonderful debate. It is one of those times when it is impossible to be the opposition person responding because if I responded to all the things I wanted to today I would be here twice as long. I was beginning to wonder if it would be a job better suited to one of the robots my noble friend Lord Giddens told us about. If they can do stand-up comedy, I am sure that they can respond to a House of Lords debate rather better than the average human.

I have a growing list in my back pocket of noble Lords who I want to one day have a cup of tea with and pick their brains about things that are nothing to do with the subject under discussion. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, puts more passion into exports than anyone I have ever heard. I would love to talk to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, about beer one day or the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, about the Olympics. He increasingly has a speaking style so engaging that I forget that half the time I disagree with him—sadly I do—but I commend him on keeping us awake while offering up subjects for disagreement.

The temptation at this point is for all of us to take the latest labour market statistics, cherry pick them nicely and then throw them across the Chamber in suitable fashion. Obviously, I will do a bit of that because noble Lords would be disappointed if I did not but I will try not just to do that. I want to try to pull out some of the ongoing problems that we all—I hope—accept and acknowledge across the House, on which, while we may disagree on the reason for them and the prescription, we are able to send a signal to those listening to this debate or reading about it outside that all of us in this House take seriously the challenges facing British workers and are committed to doing something about them.

I welcome the rise in the employment rate. It might be small but it is a positive move and one in the right direction, and I am glad to hear about it. However, I want to look a bit underneath that rise at some of the issues that remain. First, an unemployment rate of 7.2% means that 2.3 million of our citizens are unemployed. I thank my noble friend Lord Haskel for reminding us that behind these numbers are human stories—there are 2.3 million individual crises that we need to take seriously. We all need to guard against ever sounding complacent even as things improve. I am also conscious that the number of people unemployed for more than two years has risen and we need to think quite carefully about the question of long-term unemployment—of which more in a moment.

We also still have a serious youth unemployment problem, as highlighted by my noble friends Lord Monks and Lady Donaghy. Some 912,000 young people are unemployed. That is virtually one in five of all young people. The Minister offered up the caveat that that includes people in further education. At this point I am tempted to quote from the ONS footnotes which explain that, in accordance with international guidelines, people in full-time education are included in the youth unemployment estimates if they have been looking for work in the past four weeks—I will stop myself there not to bore the entire House. The guidelines are quite clear as to who is included. Even if young people in full-time education are excluded, and even though many of them may actually be looking for work, we still have the significant number of 628,000 unemployed 16 to 24 year-olds. It is really serious. The Minister said that we are not where we should be when we come to NEETs. A million young people are not in employment, education and training. That is a tragedy for our country. The number of young people claiming jobseeker’s allowance for more than 12 months has doubled under the Government, so we have a significant issue. Last year, long-term youth unemployment rose to its highest level for 20 years and there are still more than 226,000 young people unemployed for more than a year.

I, like many noble Lords, worry about the regional variation. I do not want just to look crude north and south but if I go down the road from Durham, where I live, to Stockton, the number of young people claiming JSA for more than 12 months has nearly trebled under this Government. However, it is not the worst. If I go down to Yorkshire or Lancashire, in Dewsbury and Burnley, long-term youth unemployment is 10 times what it was in 2010. It is not just a northern problem. In Wiltshire, the north of Swindon has seen long-term youth unemployment increase more than fivefold. There are areas where there is a really significant problem. If we cannot offer hope to young people then what do we have to offer them? It is a tragedy not just for the country, which misses out on all their gifts, but for each of those individuals. As the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, described, the depression and mental challenges that can come from being out of work are very serious and we must therefore all take it seriously.

In terms of prescription, is the Minister ready yet to accept that it was a mistake by the Government to abolish the highly successful Future Jobs Fund, established by the previous Labour Government, which helped more than 100,000 young people into work? After all, his own department evaluated it positively, showing that it had produced net benefits of £7,750 a head after taking account of tax and benefit changes. What about the Youth Contract that replaced it? That was supposed to generate 160,000 wage incentive payments by the spring of next year. The scheme started in April 2012 and by last month there had been just 10,030 payments. Can the Minister tell the House what plans the Government have for getting the Youth Contract back on track? The mainstream youth Work Programme, which has been referred to by many noble Lords, is also having some fairly serious problems. New figures out show that just one in five people who has been on the Work Programme for two years finds a job. In fact, people are more likely to end up back in Jobcentre Plus than they are to end up in work.

As for the sick and disabled people that the Minister referred to, performance for people on employment and support allowance is pretty terrible. Today’s figures show that job outcomes at the 12-month stage are consistently around one in 20, or 5%. According to the Work Programme invitation to tender, that is what you would expect if there were no programme at all. Do we have a programme that is no better than doing nothing at all? Can the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to address that?

The second issue I want to focus on, raised by many noble Lords, is the state of the labour market and the rising insecurity faced by many of those who are lucky enough to be in work. Too many people are still stuck in temporary jobs or in short or zero-hours contracts that make it harder to get a mortgage or save for a pension. All these add to pressures on our social security system. My noble friend Lord Haskel mentioned the issue raised by my noble friend Lady Hollis about people in more than one job who cannot get into the pension system. When we debated the Pensions Bill last month the noble Lord, Lord Freud, indicated that there was some uncertainty around how prevalent zero-hours contracts were. Under pressure from the shadow Business Secretary, the ONS has now revised its figures and now estimates that there are 583,000 people on zero-hours contracts, up from 183,000 in 2010, which is a more than threefold increase.

I can confirm that the next Labour Government will outlaw the exploitative use of zero-hours contracts by banning employers from insisting that zero-hours workers be available even when there is no guarantee of work, by stopping zero-hours contracts that require workers to work exclusively for one business and by ending the misuse of zero-hours contracts where employees are in practice working regular hours over a sustained period anyway. We will put in place a new code of conduct for their use. Workers are feeling seriously insecure and I am sorry to say—as my noble friend Lady Turner pointed out—that government action has made them in practice less secure by watering down many of the protections workers have enjoyed in health and safety, against unfair dismissal and in other areas.

We then come to the point raised by many noble Lords: the cost of living crisis and the problems of low pay. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the national minimum wage, which I regard as one of Labour’s great policy successes—it boosted pay at the bottom without leading to a loss of jobs and it has wide support. I was talking to a couple of students in Durham recently over coffee, and when I explained about the days before the minimum wage, they were staggered. They had no idea that relatively recently you could just pay somebody whatever you wanted. They were amazed. In 15 years it has now become so commonplace that no one can imagine what happened previously. I know that the Government have changed their position, and I acknowledge that they have accepted it was a mistake to oppose the introduction of the minimum wage, but it is worth remembering that before the minimum wage people were being paid as little as a pound an hour. The Low Pay Unit found a worker in a chip shop in Birmingham being paid 80p an hour and factory workers earning £1.22 an hour. This was really serious. However, unfortunately, low pay has got worse under this Government. Working people have seen the value of their wages fall by an average of £1,600 a year, while the value of the minimum wage has fallen by 5%.

The challenge here, I suggest, is that the Government have not ensured proper enforcement of the minimum wage. Some 5% of jobs pay below the minimum wage, according to the Low Pay Commission, but only two employers in four years have been prosecuted. What are the Government going to do about that? Labour has called for a tenfold increase in penalties for companies that do not pay the minimum wage, and we want to see better enforcement, including giving local authorities new powers in this area. We have launched a review of low pay, led by Alan Buckle, deputy chairman at KPMG International. A Labour Government would encourage employers to pay the living wage through new “Make Work Pay” contracts, under which firms who sign up to be living wage employers in the first year of the next Parliament will benefit from a 12-month tax rebate of up to £1,000 and an average of £445 for every low-paid worker who gets a pay rise. In replying, could the Minister tell the House what the Government’s strategy is for tackling the problem of low pay in Britain? I would also be very interested to hear his response to the questions from my noble friend Lady Donaghy and other noble Lords on the gender pay gap and those from a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, on inequality.

We also have the problem of underemployment. Record numbers of people now want to work full-time but can get only part-time jobs. According to the latest statistics, 1.5 million people are approaching that position. That kind of insecure, irregular and low-paid work adds to social security bills, so that the Government are now on course to spend £15 billion more on social security and tax credits than they budgeted for in 2010. In particular, the total cost to the Exchequer of those working part-time but who want to be full-time is estimated to be £4.6 billion. While I am on techy numbers, I have another question for the Minister. I am sure that he, like me, has dug into some of the small print in the new labour market statistics. I would be fascinated to know what he thinks about the reasons for a couple of things. It seems that the number of hours worked by both full-time and part-time workers has fallen, but that the hours worked in second jobs have gone up. As far as I can tell, the increase in employment seems to be accounted for by self-employment. Could the Minister tell the House what he thinks that is telling us? Does it raise any alarm bells, either about people having to take second jobs to be able to feed their families or about the kind of drift to self-employment of the unattractive kind described by my noble friend Lady Donaghy in her excellent speech?

It would be reasonable to ask me to talk about what Labour would do instead, so I will finish by doing that. First and foremost, the challenge is to ensure that everyone who can work and should be working is in a job. The centrepiece of Labour’s economic plan is a compulsory job guarantee for young people and the long-term unemployed. Anyone over 25 who has been receiving JSA for two years or more, or anyone under 25 for a year or more, would get a guaranteed job paying at least the minimum wage for 25 hours a week and training for at least 10 hours a week.

As with the Welsh Assembly Government’s Jobs Growth Wales programme, we expect many of the jobs to be in small firms. Experience there has shown that once a company has invested six months in a new recruit, the chances are they will want to keep them on after the subsidy has ended. I was very interested by the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, and I encourage him in a sprit of bipartisanship, given his own experience of entrepreneurship, to engage with us to think about how we can make this work best for small firms. I was very struck by the need to help young people as well to think about what their entrepreneurial skills could bring to the economy. When I sat on the commission on the riots, I met a number of young people who were in prison for riot-related offences. Many of them were very entrepreneurial indeed—just not in the way that we would want them to be. It was not directed. There is so much talent out there which we could capture and direct. It is important to give people a chance to be out there and to make sure there is a limit to how long they can spend disconnected from the world of work.

The investment in the compulsory jobs guarantee would be fully funded by repeating the tax on bankers’ bonuses—which, I note from the figures, are rising again—and by a restriction on pension tax relief for those on the highest incomes. We also need those young people to be able to move on and progress in the labour market, so Labour would take action to tackle the serious skills gaps that are holding back individuals and, indeed, our economy. A number of noble Lords made some very interesting points, including the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and my noble friend Lord Soley about the skills challenge and how that is tacked in schools as well as in the economy. At its very simplest, almost one in 10 people on JSA does not have basic English and more than one in 10 do not have basic maths. If you do not have those skills, you are much more likely to make repeat claims for benefits and we need to do something about that.

I say to my noble friend Lord Soley that we do not have a problem just with coding skills but with IT skills as a whole—nearly half of those on JSA do not have even basic e-mail skills. If they are going to make job applications, not just online but to any employer, they need to have basic IT skills, and it is up to us as a country to make sure that we help them to do that. Labour would require jobseekers to take training if they did not meet those basic standards of English, maths and IT—not down the road when they fail to get a job but alongside their job search. I would also be interested to hear the Minister’s response to the broader and very important issues about productivity and skill levels raised by my noble friend Lord Haskel and other noble Lords.

There are some very serious issues here. We have some good progress being made, at least in headline figures, but some very serious problems in long-term unemployment and youth unemployment and in an economy with insecure jobs, poor pay and instability. We need to tackle these. Labour would pledge to get people into work, guaranteeing jobs for the long-term unemployed and the young unemployed. We will tackle the crisis in living standards and the scourge of low pay, address the skills gap and make work pay. We believe it is possible to get Britain working again, with decent jobs that pay enough to feed a family, not just at the top and in the rich areas but right across the country—in Stockton, Dewsbury, Burnley and Swindon. People deserve nothing less.

14:07

[Lord Freud]

My Lords, I have really enjoyed the debate. I thank noble Lords for the energy and effort they have put into some of these complicated issues. I particularly enjoyed the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, stealing the “Get Britain Working” slogan that we used in the last election, but that is a compliment. I enjoyed the first two sentences from the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, but the next sentence, about where my personal support lay in the Chamber, was incredibly dangerous so I did not like that. The rest of her speech I did not like at all.

To start dealing with the issues, at the core of what the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, and the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said—the real attack on this—is, “Forget the quantity, feel the quality”. However, according to the figures, in the past three years, three-quarters of a million of the extra employment has come from managerial, professional and associate professional occupations. That is 70% of the rise in overall employment. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made a point about the importance of having quality jobs that come from the efforts on exports, having the most competitive export finance in the country and reducing the costs of energy. Those are the fundamentals and they create real business and quality jobs.

The noble Lord, Lord Monks, spoke about different parts of the country and the north-west in particular. Clearly, the Budget announcements work in that respect: the business energy package, for instance, helps firms in the north-west, including 27 CHP plants, while the SME package helps 481,000 SMEs in the north-west. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, cavilled at the numbers going up, pointing out that the population is also going up, but the underlying employment rate is moving up to 72.3%. The most interesting thing is that, if the people in full-time education are taken out of the figures, we are now back in rate terms to the peak point that we reached before the recession. According to the projections of the OBR, we are now moving into new ground, at least on the quantity side.

I tried to go for the fundamentals in my speech and I think noble Lords might find it interesting to read it; it can be hard to take something in when you are listening to it. I was trying to say what was really happening. Productivity is really very interesting and I do not think we understand exactly what has been happening in our labour market in the past five years. We had a crash, the like of which we had not had in a very long time, so there are peculiar things happening. One of the things that was happening with productivity was that, clearly because of the impact on the financial sector, there were some odd moves. There are now forecasts from the OBR that productivity will pick up. Clearly, one of things that will happen as a direct result of that is that wages and take-home pay will start to move in the right direction.

The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, made a lot of interesting points, but one simple one was on income inequality. There is a figure, but the figure is the lowest now—as the Chancellor said—for 28 years. More fascinating were his technological issues and what we need to do about those if they happen. Clearly, as the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, said, there have been predictions like this regularly. The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, said that we were now really at a discontinuity, so perhaps it would be different this time. I think that was—in the jargon—such a shocking or disruptive event, however, that it is hard for us to expect the Government to sit down and be able to plan it through. When we see it really start to happen, we will have to work on it. We are getting jobs up, so we have not seen it yet. To respond to him, we have got, in universal credit, something effectively close to a negative income tax. We can actually make the adjustments. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, on the displacement of wealth, the interesting study that came out a few months ago from UBS showed that we were the only major country where the impact of the crash was seen evenly right the way along the income spectrum.

On the gender pay gap, there is a long-term downward trend for full-time employees, falling from 17.4% in 1997 down to 10% and it narrowed in all regions between 1997 and 2013. The noble Lord, Lord Monks, said youth unemployment was too high. On the other hand, it has been falling: the JSA claimant count has now been falling every month for 21 months: it peaked at 480,000 in December 2011 and is now at 295,000, so it is going in the right direction.

Turning to apprenticeships, the point raised was that demand exceeded expectations. That is why the Budget announced funding for more. As for the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, about their low quality, all first-time apprenticeships will now involve a job and low-quality provision has been ended. My noble friends Lord Shipley and Lord Holmes said that we needed to ensure that youngsters were better equipped with career guidance by schools. Ofsted is also concerned that schools need to meet their duty better and it will give higher priority to guidance in school inspections. The effect of the increase in participation is coming through now and the latest data indicate that the proportion participating is still going up.

The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, simply said that I was wrong on the job guarantee, a point echoed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I happen to have a pretty long memory about these schemes from various places. I can, and will, have a go at what is really wrong with that scheme, but I am more concerned about the people who are unemployed. We can help them—we know who they are—but we do not know about the youngsters who just disengage, who are called “inactive”. We all find it very difficult to do anything about that. It is probably where the most serious problem is, because if they are coming into the jobcentre, you have got them and can put them on any scheme you like. If they are not engaging, however, you have a problem.

The guarantee scheme—the one we have got hold of—is fine: it is very like the Future Jobs Fund, which I never liked at the time; instead, we put in work experience. The outcomes of work experience are virtually the same as those of the Future Jobs Fund and the guarantee strategy, but it costs one-20th, and that is how to waste money. Even then, on the sums that I can see, there is not enough money put aside. We cost this policy from Labour at £2.6 billion every year, and very considerably less has been put aside. I am not going to make the joke much about how often the Labour leadership has spent the bank bonus taxes. It spent them on reversing the VAT increase, it spent them on more capital spending, it spent them on reversing child benefit saving and it spent them on reversing tax credit savings. It says that it is not going to do any of that now—it is going to spend them on this. Let us see how long that lasts.

[Lord Haskel]

We can keep spending the bonuses because the bonuses keep going up.

[Lord Freud]

Not by that much—not by a factor of 30, or whatever it is.

The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, spoke of her concerns about childcare. We have also been concerned about childcare. Clearly, not only will she have seen the announcement yesterday about the money for taxpayers but she will have also spotted that within universal credit the rate will now be 85%. I know that she and a lot of other noble Lords will welcome that.

My noble friend Lord Soley mentioned skills. I am sorry, he is not my noble friend: I quite like the noble Lord, Lord Soley, but cannot call him a noble friend. On skills, our priority must be to get English and maths training first. One of the things we are doing with universal credit is ratcheting up the requirement for getting people to the basic level of digital involvement. We are doing a lot of work currently to work out how to help people to get to that basic level. The noble Lord is looking at a slightly higher level—into coding. That would be something separate.

[Lord Soley]

I understand what the Minister is saying. However, many people who are not good at reading, writing and arithmetic actually have quite good keyboard skills, but that does not get picked up. You can see that with kids. My noble friend on the Front Bench leading for the Opposition referred to ex-prisoners. If you look at their digital skills they are actually very good but they are not targeted in a way that enables them to do jobs.

[Lord Freud]

That is a very good point. I looked a couple of years ago at a scheme that went very specifically for youngsters who had failed in the conventional exams-based syllabus. They were given a chance by various companies to work on computers. Actually, some of them did very well and it was a new recruitment line because they were just tuned that way. There is something very real there that one could probably expand.

My noble friend Lord Shipley—he is indeed my noble friend—raised procurement. That is a matter for the Cabinet Office. I will not predict anything for the next year.

On zero hours, people are more likely to be satisfied than dissatisfied with their hours, mainly because the flexibility suits their current circumstances. While there has been an increase in the estimate, that does not mean there has been a recent increase over that period in the number—as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, would accept. The implication is that, even using the very largest estimate, we are talking about only three in every 100 workers. We are looking currently at making sure that the zero-hours system is appropriate and not abused. That is in hand at BIS.

We accept the point on the enforcement of the minimum wage. Employers who fail to pay can now be publicly named and shamed. That is on top of financial penalties, and civil and criminal proceedings for the most serious offenders. The minimum wage will rise by 3% from October this year to £6.50. That will produce a pay increase for more than 1 million people—the largest cash increase in the minimum wage since 2008.

It is clear, as my noble friend Lord Shipley said, that the Government inherited a very damaged economy, with high levels of unemployment and inactivity. We are now getting back on our feet. The better news on the economy is feeding through to an improving picture in the labour market. As a result, the number of people in work has now exceeded 30 million. We have record numbers of men and women in work and the highest female employment rate on record. As I said earlier, excluding students, we are now at an all-time peak in the employment rate and inactivity is the lowest on record. Given the context of what we have been handling in terms of the recession, that is an extraordinary achievement.

Despite the difficult global economy, over 1.3 million people more now have a job than in 2010—600,000 more than at the peak before the last recession. There are 1.7 million more people working in the private sector. Despite contrary perceptions, the rise in employment—both over the year and since the election—has been dominated by full-time permanent jobs. Things are still looking up. According to the OBR, the economy is expected to grow by 2.7% this year and the number of people in work is expected to increase by 3.3% by 2018. That does not take us quite to the figures I was working with when I wrote my report in 2007, but it does not leave them that far short.

Motion agreed.

Parliamentary Privilege

Thursday 20th March 2014 Lords Chamber

Motion to Take Note

14:26

Moved by

[Lord Brabazon of Tara]

That this House takes note of the report of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege (HL Paper 30).

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

My Lords, privilege carries connotations of social exclusivity or of favouritism, so it is important that occasionally we remind ourselves what parliamentary privilege actually is. We, as members of this legislature, are accountable to the people. We make laws. Our colleagues in the House of Commons approve taxation. We hold the Executive to account. To perform those tasks effectively and without fear, we need certain rights and immunities. We need to be able to regulate our own affairs without interference from government or the courts. Above all, we need to be able to speak and act freely in the course of our parliamentary work without fear of consequences. So the existence of some form of parliamentary privilege is a necessary precondition for a free and democratic society. It is not a special immunity that attaches to us personally. It is the freedom of the House itself, the foundation for everything that we, as parliamentarians, do here.

It is important to restate these principles, however self-evident they are, because at the time the Joint Committee which I chaired was set up they were being widely questioned. In early 2010, four parliamentarians—three MPs and one Member of this House—sought to persuade the courts that parliamentary privilege protected them from being prosecuted for false accounting in respect of parliamentary expenses. That case was still being heard at the time of the 2010 election, and the coalition agreement included a commitment to bring forward proposals to ensure that privilege could not be used by Members of either House to evade justice.

The case brought by the four Members was subsequently dismissed by the courts at every stage, culminating in the judgment of the Supreme Court in R v Chaytor. In that judgment, the Supreme Court reaffirmed something which the two Houses themselves have acknowledged for many years—that a crime is a crime and that Members of Parliament who have committed crimes enjoy no special protection from prosecution. I will quote briefly from the Supreme Court’s judgment:

“for centuries the House of Commons”—

the same applies to this House—

“has not claimed the privilege of exclusive cognizance of conduct which constitutes an ‘ordinary crime’—even when committed by a Member of Parliament within the precincts of the House”.

It follows that a false expenses claim knowingly submitted by a Member of Parliament is fraud, pure and simple—so the main rationale for the Government’s draft Bill had disappeared by the time it was finally published in spring 2012.

What we were left with was, frankly, a bit of a rag-bag. The fundamental question at the heart of the Green Paper, and at the heart of our report, was whether or not we in the UK should seek to codify parliamentary privilege by means of a comprehensive modern statute. That was the central recommendation of the last Joint Committee to consider these issues, chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, in 1999. However, the Government were against codification and so, ultimately, were we.

There are arguments for and against codification. In its favour is the prospect of certainty and clarity. Against it is the inflexibility inherent in statutory codification and the loss of the possibility of evolution. Accordingly, we did not rule out legislation but regarded it as a last resort. If we ever get to a point where the courts or the Executive interfere with privilege to such an extent that freedom of debate in Parliament is compromised, then, and only then, Parliament may have no option but to legislate once again, as it did in 1689 in the Bill of Rights, to put privilege on a clear and unquestionable statutory basis. But we have not reached that crisis point yet, and I hope we never do.

I shall briefly outline some of the Joint Committee’s other conclusions before concluding by addressing the Motion in the name of my noble friend the Leader of the House, which is being debated jointly with this report. We were unanimous in rejecting the Government’s draft clauses which would have vested in the prosecuting authorities the power to waive the protection afforded by Article 9 of the Bill of Rights, thereby allowing parliamentary proceedings to be admitted as evidence in criminal prosecutions. As the Chaytor judgment clearly demonstrated, a crime is a crime, and membership of Parliament is no protection from prosecution. Privilege exists to protect not Members but proceedings themselves from impeachment or questioning in the courts, which is why witnesses before Select Committees enjoy the same protection as Members. Removal of that protection would have a disastrous chilling effect on free parliamentary debate. I am delighted that the Government, in their response to our report, have accepted our conclusion and abandoned their proposal to waive Article 9 in respect of criminal prosecutions.

Secondly, we considered the penal powers of the two Houses and, in particular, their powers to punish those who, either by refusing to give evidence to Select Committees or by giving false evidence, may be guilty of contempt. I do not intend to speak to this complex issue in detail—chapter 3 of our report speaks for itself—but I want to underline that the existence or not of these penal powers has rarely been an issue for Lords committees, which work best when they engage with willing and co-operative witnesses. I know there have been very rare occasions—one involving the Communications Committee comes to mind—when Lords committees have encountered difficulty, but our focus was very much on the Commons, and we will watch developments in that House with interest.

Thirdly, we considered judicial questioning of parliamentary proceedings. In some countries, judicial interference has been the trigger for legislation: in Australia in the 1980s, and currently, although for rather different reasons, in New Zealand. We are fortunate that in the United Kingdom our judges generally show the utmost respect for parliamentary privilege, just as we, in Parliament, show our respect for judicial proceedings by observing the sub judice rule. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, the then Lord Chief Justice, gave particularly valuable evidence to the Joint Committee on this mutual respect. There have been some problems, particularly in judicial review cases, but we concluded that these were exceptions, rather than the rule, and that there was no need for Parliament to take action at this time.

Finally, before turning to the Leader’s Motion, I would like to mention the reporting and repetition of parliamentary proceedings, which is covered in chapter 7 of our report. This is the one area of significant disagreement between the Joint Committee and the Government. The Government say that they are not convinced by our conclusion that the vague wording of the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840,

“significantly inhibits press reporting of … Parliament”.

Instead, the Government believe that such reporting,

“has sufficient qualified protection under the common law”.

I cannot agree. The evidence of media witnesses was clear. Section 3 of the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, as amended, refers only to extracts or abstracts of documents published or broadcast by authority of the House, terms which do not appear to extend to general media reports. As a result, the media are genuinely confused over the possible risks they may face in reporting parliamentary proceedings. This confusion was exemplified by the chaotic reaction to John Hemming MP’s disclosure in the House of Commons in 2011 that the footballer Ryan Giggs was the subject of an anonymity injunction.

I was therefore pleased to see that the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, had introduced a Private Member’s Bill seeking to give effect to the Joint Committee’s recommendation that qualified privilege should apply to all fair and accurate reports of parliamentary proceedings, a recommendation that we believe would resolve this anomaly. Unfortunately, the noble Lord has been unable to secure a Second Reading for his Bill, and I understand that in the next Session of Parliament he plans to introduce a much narrower Bill, whose scope will be limited to the repeal of Section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996, which allows Members of either House to waive the protection of Article 9 of the Bill of Rights for the purposes of a suit for defamation.

I would certainly welcome the repeal of Section 13, which has created a number of dangerous anomalies, but I regret that the noble Lord is not pursuing the more ambitious proposals contained in his current Bill. As our report indicates, successive Joint Committees —the 1999 Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, the Joint Committees on the Draft Defamation Bill and on Privacy and Injunctions and the committee that I chaired—have concluded that the current blend of statutory and common law protection enjoyed by media reports of parliamentary proceedings is inadequate. I hope the Leader of the House will be able to tell us that the Government have had a change of heart and are ready to bring forward their own Bill in the new Session. In the mean time, I hope the Government will support the repeal of Section 13 of the Defamation Act.

Finally, I turn to the second Motion in today’s debate, which stands in the name of my noble friend the Leader of the House. I would like to put on record my personal thanks to the Leader for his willingness, as Leader of the whole House, to put his name to it. I shall briefly explain the background. Legislation has over the years created innumerable individual rights in areas such as employment, health and safety, data protection, clean air and so on. Businesses, schools, charities and other organisations across the country have to comply with such legislation, and as a point of principle both Houses, as responsible employers, and as custodians of this great palace, should similarly be bound by it. The problem is that, in 1935, in the case of R v Graham-Campbell ex parte Herbert, the courts decided that they were not. The result of the Graham-Campbell judgment, which was never appealed, was a mess. It came to be a common-law presumption that legislation did not apply to Parliament unless it expressly said that it did.

This presumption was reinforced by the fact that some legislation did expressly extend to Parliament. To give a current example, Schedule 1 to the Deregulation Bill, currently in Committee in the House of Commons, contains provisions relating to apprenticeships. New Section A7 in that schedule states expressly that it applies to parliamentary staff. That seems to me to be the right way to go about it, avoiding any doubt or ambiguity. The same approach was adopted in Sections 194 and 195 of the Employment Rights Act 1996, to which the Deregulation Bill refers.

As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, told the Joint Committee, if in one place you say,

“this Act applies to Parliament”,

but in another place you say nothing about it,

“it will be assumed that it does not apply to Parliament”.

That, in a nutshell, is the problem. The Joint Committee therefore concluded that, as a point of principle, all legislation of general effect, covering such areas as health and safety, employment or fire safety, should be extended by means of express provision to Parliament. In fact, as the letter from the Treasury Solicitor printed in the appendix to our report shows, this position has also been government policy since 2002, although not always observed in practice. By adopting this resolution today, we will demonstrate the House’s strong support for this approach and, I hope, contribute to clearer and more consistent legislative drafting in future.

Before I finish, I should like to thank the excellent clerks we had from both Houses who helped us produce what I hope noble Lords will agree is a good report. We also had some very good witnesses. I have already mentioned the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, but I should also like to thank in particular the clerks of both Houses of the Australian Parliament, the clerks from the New Zealand and Canadian Parliaments and the former parliamentarian of the United States House of Representatives, not forgetting our own Clerk of the Parliaments and the Clerk of the House of Commons.

In conclusion, I repeat my thanks to the Leader of the House for putting his name to the second Motion, and I hope that the House will agree it without dissent. I very much look forward to the debate. I beg to move.

14:39

[Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Lab)]

My Lords, I was honoured to serve on the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege. The report will be a valuable contribution to the ongoing debate. As it says:

“Parliamentary privilege is a living concept, and still serves to protect Parliament, each House, their committees, and all those involved in proceedings. Much has changed since the publication of the report of the 1999 Joint Committee: privilege evolves as Parliament evolves, and as the law evolves”.

Our committee, wisely chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, was fortunate to have a membership, from both Houses, of great parliamentary and constitutional experience and expertise, and I, as a relatively new Member of this House, learnt a lot. We took evidence from a wide range of experts and practitioners in the UK and abroad, and were very ably served by the clerks of both Houses, to whom I am most grateful for their guidance and expertise. I am pleased that the Government have responded so warmly to the report and I welcome the reiteration that they have,

“always been clear that Parliamentary privilege is a matter for Parliament and it is therefore right for Parliament to have a proper opportunity to reflect on its continuing purpose”.

Our committee found that there was no strong case for a comprehensive codification of parliamentary privilege, to which the Government have now agreed, as the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, explained so comprehensively. But it is important to stress again the committee’s belief that steps may have to be taken both by Parliament and the Government to clarify the application of privilege where appropriate in the future. As the report states:

“This does not mean that we reject all legislation; but legislation should only be used when absolutely necessary, to resolve uncertainty or in the unlikely event of Parliament’s exclusive cognisance being materially diminished by the courts”.

One area I would like to highlight is the reporting of parliamentary proceedings. Our predecessor committee—the 1999 Joint Committee—noted:

“Parliamentary privilege does not cloak parliamentary publications with any form of protection”.

This was decided in 1839 in the case of Stockdale v Hansard, in which the court held that parliamentary privilege did not attach to the publishers of reports ordered to be printed by the House of Commons. The Parliamentary Papers Act 1840, passed in response to this decision, established that no action could be brought in court arising from the publication of the Official Report or other documents ordered to be published by either House. It also provided protection for “any extract or abstract” from such documents made by others, provided that they were published,

“bona fide and without malice”.

Such protection for publications by order of either House is a matter of statute law, not privilege.

As the House will certainly recognise, media reporting has moved on since then. The 1999 Joint Committee defined an “abstract” as a “summary or epitome”, and thus media reports of what goes on in Parliament, even if they draw on documents published by order of the House, such as Hansard, do not generally enjoy the qualified protection afforded by Section 3 of the 1840 Act. This was confirmed by Sarah McColl, solicitor advocate in the BBC, in her oral evidence on behalf of the Media Lawyers Association. But such reports do enjoy privilege in common law in respect of defamation. If the whole debate is published, the protection is absolute; if only extracts are published, the protection is qualified.

The 1999 Joint Committee said that it would be surprising if the common law defence of privilege in respect of defamation was not available also to broadcasters. But our committee found a problem in that, outside the field of defamation, media reports of parliamentary proceedings, as opposed to extracts or abstracts, do not enjoy legal protection. The protections enjoyed under 19th century statute or common law do not meet the current situation, where modern technology means that increasing volumes of data are streamed live via the internet. Such data are subject to instant comment or reporting via social networking sites, and their re-use, for instance by combining them with other data sources, is actively encouraged under the terms of the Open Parliament Licence.

Witnesses called for far wider changes than those proposed by the 1999 Joint Committee to be made to the 1840 Act and to other relevant legislation. The Newspaper Society wished to protect all reports at any time in any form, and the Press Association suggested that absolute privilege should be afforded to all fair and accurate reports of proceedings in Parliament, including media reports of breaches of injunctions.

After careful consideration, our committee did not accept the argument that full freedom of expression in Parliament is dependent on a similar freedom being enjoyed by the media. As our report says:

“The fundamental purpose of affording absolute privilege to proceedings in Parliament is to protect those proceedings themselves, so that the democratically elected representatives of the people can engage in free and fearless debate on issues of public concern”.

On balance, therefore, our committee did not support extending absolute privilege to all reports, including media sketches and summaries, of proceedings in Parliament; not because, as some argued, Members might be used by the media to launder defamatory information—although we could not rule out such a risk—but because the existing protection of qualified privilege, which covers all fair and accurate reports unless they can be proved by the claimant to have been made maliciously, already provides a robust defence of press freedom.

However, our committee recognises that the media need clarity and certainty, and that the 1840 Act does not appear to cover media reports or editorial comment —only “extracts and abstracts” of parliamentary publications, including broadcasts. The wording of the 1840 Act reflects a time when the re-publication by newspapers of large verbatim extracts from Hansard was commonplace; and, although some may regret it, the style of reporting today is very different, to such an extent that the wording of Section 3 of the Act is largely obsolete.

When the Government argued in their Green Paper that they were,

“not aware of circumstances in which any media organisation has been prevented from publishing reports of parliamentary proceedings by doubts over the extent of the current protection in law”,

this was contradicted by BBC and Press Association witnesses. Mike Dodd of PA explained that,

“reporting Hansard verbatim requires a wait of a least two hours before the first draft comes out, whereas we have customers … who have seen something on Parliament TV and want it now or five minutes ago”.

The Government’s draft clause would therefore give no protection to a reporter who, on the basis of a live broadcast, transcribed words said in the House, and then sought to re-publish the words online. The words spoken would not enjoy any protection under the 1840 Act until the online version of Hansard was published some hours later. The committee deemed this indefensible, and therefore endorsed the recommendation of the Joint Committee on Privacy and Injunctions that qualified privilege should attach, in all circumstances, to fair and accurate reports of things said or done in Parliament.

Our committee also endorsed the recommendation of the 1999 Joint Committee that the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840 should be replaced by modern statutory provisions, and that one of these new provisions should confirm that the term “broadcast” includes dissemination of images, text or sounds, or any combination of them by any electronic means. The provisions should also include a delegated power, subject to affirmative procedure, which allows the Secretary of State to update the definition of “broadcast” in the light of further technological change, without the need for primary legislation.

Of special interest to this House is our recommendation,

“that the statutory provisions which we have proposed in respect of the reporting of parliamentary proceedings should also confirm, for the avoidance of doubt, that Members of either House enjoy the same protection as non-Members in repeating or broadcasting extracts or abstracts of proceedings in Parliament”.

I certainly hope that the Government will actively consider wholesale repeal of the 1840 Act and its replacement by modern statutory provisions that clearly establish that qualified privilege applies to all fair and accurate reports of parliamentary proceedings in the same way as it does to abstracts and extracts of those proceedings. The freedom to report parliamentary debates in the media is of vital importance in a democratic society.

14:39

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, I very much thank the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, for the skilful way in which he chaired our Joint Committee. We have in this report shied away somewhat from the concept of comprehensive codification of parliamentary privilege. We thought long and hard about many of these questions, and we were right to do so.

None the less, in the remarks that I make today I will focus on those areas in which we advocate legislative change. In some ways we follow quite closely, as it were, arguments that were advanced in 1999 by the noble and leaned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, in the report of that year. I notice that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, is in his place. As a Member in the other place, he sat on that committee. There were at least two very important aspects of that report which have seen no action in intervening years; our committee was disturbed by the failure to take action. I refer in particular to the repeal of Section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996.

The problems of and raison d’être of Section 13 arose out of a very particular, unique and, one might almost say, slightly bizarre case of the struggle between Neil Hamilton and the Guardian newspaper at that time, at a particularly difficult moment in parliamentary history and of the Major Government. There is a fundamental problem with the law as it currently stands, which the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, touched on at the beginning of his remarks. Privilege is not an attribute of an individual Member; it is an attribute of the House itself. The law as it stands is compatible with the view with which I think that both Houses are uncomfortable—that it is in some sense the attribute of the individual Member. There is a strong case for us looking again along the lines of the report by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls, on this question. There is really no more fundamental misunderstanding in the public mind about parliamentary privilege as that it is a claim by individuals to some form of entitlement. That is not the view of Members of Parliament, but we none the less have the unfortunate legacy of this case. I feel very strongly that this should, if at all possible, be corrected.

There is another respect, too, in which we have followed in a significant degree the report of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls. Page 94 of the report says:

“The Joint Committee considers the protection given to the media by the 1840 Act and the common law itself should be retained. We consider, further, that the statutory protection would be more transparent and accessible if it were included in a modern statute, whose language … would be easier to understand than the 1840 Act. We recommend that the 1840 Act, as amended, should be replaced with a modern statute”.

Again, that is a recommendation of our committee.

It is clear from the Government’s response that they are not yet convinced that there are significant difficulties facing the media in reporting Parliament. However, on the basis of the evidence that we heard, I find that difficult to comprehend. It is to do partly with the speed at which the media need to respond to things that are said in Parliament. It is clear that in the context of how we have moved in a number of important ways in terms of the recently passed Defamation Act to improve freedom of expression and equality of expression in public debate in this country, it would be ridiculous to leave this as an anomaly.

There is, oddly, a similarity between the 1840 Act and the provisions that arose in the Defamation Act out of the Hamilton case. In both cases, the immediate backdrop in the public debate is bizarre and eccentric. There is something to be said for the 1840 Act; it is important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater—it has given the media certain protection. With any change that occurs, we should be concerned not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. None the less, it is very hard, in both cases, when the circumstances of the legislation are so peculiar, individualistic and bizarre, to argue that there is some case for maintaining in statute language that in both cases is inappropriate—particularly in the case of where privilege resides, where it is fundamentally misleading to the public.

I conclude by taking a slightly different angle of approach to another aspect of our report, while declaring an interest as chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. I have to declare that interest because that committee has addressed this area—the appointment of lay members to Select Committees, which is dealt with in chapter 4 of our report. Since 2002, the committee has been pushing for this sort of development of Parliament, with independent or external elements in its system of regulation. In this context, the Committee on Standards in Public Life has welcomed the addition of lay members of the committee as a further independent element of the House system of regulation. In the end, we have decided, after receiving very compelling evidence from the clerks, that there is no case here as such for legislation. However, I do not want it to be thought that the committee, while I think rightly accepting the very cogently argued evidence that we received on this point, did not also pay a great deal of attention and give respect to the letter that the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, received from the right honourable Kevin Barron MP, the chairman of the Standards and Privileges Committee, who wrote to our chairman to support legislation granting lay members of the CSPL full voting rights, saying:

“I cannot overstate how important it is that lay members should be able to participate on the same basis that MPs do”.

Our proposals are without prejudice to that argument. It is worth drawing the attention of the House to that interesting discussion in chapter 4 of our report.

14:56

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, as the first Member to speak who was not on the committee, I welcome the report of the Joint Committee. It is a measured and persuasive report. I also welcome the response of the Government. Privilege is a matter for both Houses, but the Government have an important role to play in facilitating the recommendations of the Joint Committee, not least when legislation is involved. I was very pleased to see the constructive engagement by the Government. There were few issues on which the Government reached a different conclusion to that of the committee. On reporting proceedings, I incline to the view of the Joint Committee, for the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, outlined; but on the other issues, for reasons that I shall develop, I agree with the Government.

The report accepts that the current position is not tenable. The assertion of privilege in respect of those summoned to appear before Select Committees has for some time been akin to admiring the emperor’s clothes. In practice, committees rarely have difficulty in securing the witnesses they wish to give evidence. For those summoned, it is often seen as a matter of some pride to appear before a parliamentary committee. It is normally in their interest to appear; they want their views to be heard. The occasions when there is a problem are few and far between, but it is on those occasions when either House may need to assert its powers to ensure that committees can fulfil their essential tasks. As the Joint Committee recognises, it is in the public interest that committees have the power to function effectively. As it records, each House needs to be prepared for when someone summoned tests the penal powers of the House. As it says at paragraph 61:

“It will be too late to consider these matters when a crisis arrives”.

The committee recommends against legislating to confirm Parliament’s penal powers. I think it is correct in arguing that the disadvantages of legislating outweigh the advantages. Legislating would bring privilege within the purview of the courts, not only to determine the scope of privilege, as they do, but also to determine whether a contempt has been committed. It would entail a significant reduction in the exclusive cognisance of Parliament, and give to the courts a role that I suspect they would not necessarily welcome. There is a powerful principled case for maintaining the concept of two constitutional sovereignties, and there would need to be a compelling case to move away from it. I do not believe such a case has been made.

The Joint Committee gets to the nub of what is needed in paragraph 77. It is essentially a test of institutional confidence. This House recently resuscitated its long-standing power to suspend Members. The fact that the power had not been used since the 17th century did not mean that it no longer resided with the House. As the Clerk of the House of Commons told the Joint Committee in respect of privilege, it is not a question of the powers but rather one of their enforcement. However, enforcement must comply with standards of fairness, ensuring that those appearing before committees know what is expected of them and providing a rigorous process, including recourse to legal advisers, should they be subject to a complaint of contempt.

I believe that the committee’s recommendation for a clarification of powers and setting out fair procedures is entirely appropriate. It addresses what is clearly a problem that needs resolving, but also provides the flexibility to meet changing expectations.

The need for flexibility is at the heart of the committee’s report. I wholly accept the argument that flexibility is preferable to a statutory codification of privilege. There is no need for such codification, not least given—as the Joint Committee records—that there is no persistent conflict between Parliament and the courts. The relationship has tended to be characterised more by comity than by conflict. There have been exceptions and on occasion judges have entered into territory that should remain barred to them. Pepper v Hart was designed to enable courts to look at the parliamentary record when there was an ambiguity that could not be resolved other than by examining what the Minister had said. It was not an invitation to pass judgment on what was said and done in either House, but some judges seemed to think that it gave them latitude for such commentary. However, those have been the exceptions, not the rule; and the courts generally have shown no desire to encroach on matters that are deemed to fall within Parliament’s sole jurisdiction. As the Master of the Rolls, Lord Dyson, observed in his recent Bentham Presidential Lecture, talking about judicial review, judges are,

“mindful of the … territory into which they should not enter”,

and in exercising their power, they,

“seek to uphold the decisions of the legislature and to secure the sovereignty of Parliament and the rule of law”.

Where there may be conflict or uncertainty, that is a case for dialogue rather than confrontation. The relationship tends to fit with what Alison Young has characterised as a “democratic dialogue”. As the Government response records in respect of the question as to whether the Register of Members’ Interests should be considered as a parliamentary proceeding:

“This is another case where closer contacts between Parliament and the Courts can mitigate the risks of misunderstandings and improve the consistency of decision making”.

It is important that means of maintaining such contact are developed. One of the many advantages of retaining this House as the highest court of appeal was that it provided a forum in which the Law Lords could appreciate the importance of Parliament and other parliamentarians could appreciate the role of the Law Lords. That relationship was entirely legitimate and indeed, in my view, served to provide some protection for the role of the judiciary against sometimes ill informed criticism by the Executive. Means are now being developed of ensuring that a dialogue can be maintained between the legislature and the judiciary.

Parliamentary privilege needs to be protected in order to enable Parliament to fulfil its functions. The stress is on Parliament rather than parliamentarians. As the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said, parliamentarians enjoy protection only in so far as it is necessary to protect the House of which they are Members. As the report notes, MPs and Peers do not enjoy the immunities accorded to Members of some other parliaments. I think that our approach is appropriate. Privilege should be for the benefit of the nation. It is not designed for the personal benefit of Members.

It is thus entirely right that Members are subject to prosecution for “ordinary crimes”, whether committed on the parliamentary estate or elsewhere.

Following the principle that Members should not enjoy privileges that are not essential to enabling Parliament to fulfil its functions, I agree with the Government that there should be no change to current requirements in respect of jury service. As the response notes, Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service will readily grant requests to defer jury service where necessary. I certainly see no grounds for arguing that Members should have a right of excusal from jury service in England and Wales, but officers of either House should not. The officers arguably are more essential to the fulfilment of the functions of each House than is any individual Member.

For the same reason, I agree with the Government in respect of the right of Members not to respond to court summonses. As the government response notes, it is a privilege not enjoyed by other public figures. As it says, there is no strong rationale for Members to be treated differently from non-Members in this area. Indeed, I think there is a danger of bringing Parliament into disrepute if a Member hides behind parliamentary privilege in order to avoid responding to a court summons. There is no compelling case that such immunity is necessary for Parliament to fulfil its functions.

On most other issues, the Government agree with the Joint Committee’s recommendations. I welcome the Government’s acceptance that there should be no disapplication of Article 9 of the Bill of Rights in respect of criminal prosecutions and that Section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996 should be repealed. Both are consistent with protecting freedom of speech as essential to enabling Parliament to fulfil its functions and maintaining the clear division between the legislature and the judiciary.

My principal question is directed to my noble friend the Leader of the House, and that is: what next? That question is especially germane in this House. As the report states at paragraph 79:

“If the House of Commons were to adopt our proposals on how its penal jurisdiction should be exercised, we would expect the House of Lords to adopt similar procedures, adapted to the conventions prevailing in that House, in due course”.

“Due course” is a rather imprecise indication of timescale and there is always the danger that, with no set timetable, there may be a tendency to defer any action. It would be helpful to know what steps are being taken to ensure that we do, as the Joint Committee recommends, build on its work, and when we may expect to see the fruits of the deliberations that take place. The report of the Joint Committee is very welcome. It is important that it does not gather dust. It is in the interests of the House that we act on it. Agreeing to the Motion tabled by my noble friend the Leader of the House is a start, but it is essential that we ensure that it is not both a start and an end point.

15:06

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Norton, I congratulate the Joint Committee on its work and its report and also the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, on his crisp and clear introduction of this debate.

This is an admirable report: thoughtful, clear, incisive and readable. Although, as I shall indicate, I do not agree with quite all its recommendations, indisputably it provides a sound platform on which to consider and eventually come to decisions on the way ahead.

I certainly agree, as do the Government, with the committee’s conclusion that there is no strong case for a comprehensive codification of parliamentary privilege. I was one of the court of nine—my noble and learned friend Lord Hope of Craighead was another—in the Supreme Court, which heard the cases of Chaytor and two others late in 2010. We signed up to what I believe can be regarded as the magisterial judgment of my noble and learned friend Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers. I like to think that that decision solved what might otherwise have been seen as a number of doubts and tensions in the relationship between the courts and Parliament.

I agree with all that the noble Lord, Lord Norton, has just said about this, in particular the advantages of the flexibility of the present system and relying on the comity between the institutions involved. I share his regret at the banishment of the Law Lords back in 2009 across Parliament Square.

Of the various other conclusions reached by the committee I will focus on only four, and even then comparatively briefly. The first concerns judicial questioning of proceedings in Parliament. The starting point here is Article 9 of the Bill of Rights of 1689:

“That the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament”.

The decision of the seven-Member appeal committee of this House in Pepper v Hart in 1993—just over 20 years ago—was a landmark decision which, for the first time, allowed the use of parliamentary material as an aid to statutory construction. However, this relaxation of the rule was made explicitly subject to stringent conditions: first, that the legislation was ambiguous or obscure or could lead to absurdity; secondly, that the material sought to be relied on to explain it was made by the Minister promoting the Bill; and, thirdly, that the statements to be relied on were clear.

Over the past 20 years, there has been a great number of occasions when counsel has explored and cited Hansard in an effort to bolster their contended for construction of legislation, but far fewer occasions on which they have succeeded in that aim. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern—the then Lord Chancellor—predicted in his lone dissenting speech in Pepper v Hart, the necessary researches in Hansard have in these cases resulted in a substantial increase in the cost of the litigation, and it may be doubted whether this has in truth been justified.

There is also the risk that Ministers promoting legislation may make statements which are specifically designed to assist government in the event of future disputes as to the proper interpretation of the legislation. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Steyn, suggested in an Oxford lecture some years ago which doubted the wisdom of the decision in Pepper v Hart, courts should be inclined to use the relaxation of the rule—if at all—against government rather than in government’s favour. All that said, I am inclined to agree with the committee’s report, and the Government’s response to it, that at present no further action is needed.

On the linked questions of the disapplication of Article 9 in certain circumstances, and the repeal of Section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996, which qualified Article 9, there is not much that I want to add save that I wholeheartedly agree—as do the Government—with the committee’s recommendations. The proper honouring of Article 9 is essential to free speech in Parliament and, frankly, none of the envisaged exceptions to it begins to make sense. Indeed, Section 13 can itself be seen in hindsight to have been a serious mistake. Ironically, nobody will have seen this more clearly than Mr Neil Hamilton, in whose ostensible favour Section 13 was originally enacted. Your Lordships will recall—indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Bew, recollected this—that Mr Hamilton was originally thwarted in his libel claim against the Guardian newspaper in the cash for questions affair because, the newspaper being at that stage unable to use the parliamentary material as it wished to justify the publication, the judge inevitably had to stop the case. Once Section 13 was enacted, however, Mr Hamilton was able to pursue such a claim, but, of course, in the end it failed dramatically.

I wish to say a brief word on the registration of Members’ interests. I should note that currently I have the honour of chairing the Sub-Committee on Lords’ Conduct, which is a sub-committee of the Privileges and Conduct Committee of this House. In common with many others, I regard the first instance decision in the case of Rost v Edwards in 1990 as a curious aberration, which, if ever it becomes necessary to litigate this point in future, will not survive. Such matters as the register of interests seem to me plainly matters within Parliament’s exclusive cognisance.

I want to say a few words about jury service and witness summonses. It is on these two questions that I find myself in respectful disagreement with the committee’s recommendation, but therefore in agreement with the Government’s rejection of the committee’s proposals. I would not wish to legislate to exempt Members of either House from jury service, from which they are presently not excused, but I would wish to legislate to remove Members’ current right not to respond to witness summonses.

As to Members acting as jurors, the courts may be expected to continue to treat them with great consideration and to grant requests to defer jury service where it would otherwise lead to clashes with Members’ public duties. However, given the widespread sweeping away of exemptions from jury service, which includes that of judges at all levels of the judiciary, Members should not in my view seek to re-establish their own exemption. Indeed, to my mind, it should be quite the contrary. It seems to me enormously valuable that Members of both Houses should experience jury service, and thereby gain a real understanding of what it entails and the strengths and—I may add—weaknesses of the jury system.

As the noble Lord, Lord Blair, pointed out in a Question asked in the House only last week, Section 8 of the Contempt of Court Act 1981 currently prevents almost any research into the workings of the jury system. That section was, it so happens, included in the Act to repair a failure of my own when, as Treasury counsel in, I think, 1980, acting on behalf of the Attorney-General, I unsuccessfully prosecuted the New Statesman for contempt of court for publishing a juryman’s revelations of the jury’s deliberations in the Jeremy Thorpe trial. There was then no law against it. We relied, unsuccessfully, on the common law.

Judges who serve as jurors can now see how it all works in practice—so, too, should parliamentarians. As to witness summonses, again, Members should not be privileged. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton, on this, too. Perhaps this is a matter rather more of perception than of substance. The reality is that, even assuming this privilege is removed, it will be perfectly possible to have witness summonses set aside, assuming they have been issued vexatiously.

On the separate Motion of the noble Lord the Leader of the House, I have nothing to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, has already said, save only that I hope that one day some new AP Herbert will arise to find fresh anomalies in our law, and so keep the next generation of students amused.

15:18

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, it may seem a rather thankless task in life to spend many hours of one’s existence in a committee discussing parliamentary privilege. There are certainly no votes in the subject and there is absolutely zero public or media interest in it. Even though all colleagues in both Houses always say that privilege is enormously important, in practice not many of them are particularly motivated to follow the proceedings of such a committee.

Nevertheless, my participation in the committee was in fact not merely a duty, I suppose, and, no doubt, a privilege, but also a real pleasure. That was due entirely to the motivation and quality of my colleagues on the committee and to the extremely good tempered, fair and, indeed, often humorous fashion in which proceedings were conducted by our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara. I pay tribute to him for what he did over the many weeks when we met.

The results of the committee’s proceedings have been discussed today. I will focus on one or two details. First, I endorse the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, about the need to legislate to remove any ambiguity about the right of people—the media or anyone else—to reproduce parliamentary debates in their accounts of parliamentary proceedings. It is absolutely essential that people—not just newspapers or broadcasting stations—have qualified privilege in citing Parliament as long as they cannot be shown to have acted maliciously or to have perverted the quotation by exclusion or something of that sort. If they have given a fair and true account of what was said in Parliament, they should be immune from any legal proceedings. It is essential in a democracy that people can refer to the proceedings of their elected representatives, or in our case their non-elected representatives, without any inhibition. It is important that we legislate on that.

I find it quite extraordinary, as will every Member of the House and every member of the public, that at a time when the Government are saying that we must have more and more time off because we have nothing to do, they are also saying that there is no time to legislate on important matters such as this. I should be grateful if the Leader of the House would look again at his diary to see whether a Bill could be brought forward in the next Session so that we can deal with this matter as the committee recommended. No one has suggested that that is not a good idea or not an important priority for legislation.

I will deal briefly with a very important matter that was discussed in the committee and has already been referred to today—the issue of witnesses before Select Committees who may be tempted to refuse to appear or to try to deceive the committee when they do appear. That is a very real problem. We spent a long time talking about it. We came to the conclusion, as the House will have seen, that each House should assert its existing competence and sanctions to make it absolutely clear what the rules are and what will happen if someone breaks them. I am happy with that. However, we may find ourselves in a difficult situation if someone cynically decides that there is not much of a downside to refusing a summons or subpoena to testify or is less than straight with the committee when he or she testifies. We may have to come back to this.

There was some discussion in the committee about what we should do if we decided to legislate—whether we should act as the Australians have done and take powers ourselves in Parliament to inflict appropriate sanctions on those people who misbehave in this fashion or whether we should do what the Americans have done and make it a matter of statute law so that it is for the prosecuting authorities to pursue the matter through the courts. The Americans have done that very successfully and, I think, in contrast to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, without any damage to either the perception or the reality of parliamentary sovereignty in the United States. We may need to come back to that.

I was told in the course of proceedings—we had a session in which we took evidence from representatives of the US Congress—that that power has been used in the United States about 20 times in the past century, in some famous cases, such as the Hiss case, as well as in less celebrated cases. That has been enough to maintain the credibility of the system in the United States. No one sane rejects a subpoena to testify to a congressional committee or tells lies before Congress. The legal advice given, if one were to suggest such a thing, would be quite unambiguous in the United States. I am not sure that it would be so unambiguous in this country. We must keep an alert mind here and take the action recommended in our report—that the two Houses independently produce a resolution setting out the powers and sanctions as they currently exist. I hope that that will happen before too long.

Finally, I will comment on a matter on which I found myself in a minority in the committee. My disagreement with the majority of the committee is recorded in the proceedings. Here I also take issue with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, whose views I listened to with great respect. It is the issue of the extent to which proceedings in Parliament can be cited in a court of law, a tribunal, a judicial inquiry or something of that kind. They cannot of course be impeached or questioned: that is quite clear in Article 9 of the Bill of Rights. However, in my view, they should be citable. I put the point to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, who is a very distinguished jurist, that by definition proceedings in Parliament are surely a matter of public record, as they always must be in a democracy. Therefore, what is said and done here is not and should never be a mystery. In certain cases, what is said and done here—such as the passing of a Motion, or the proceedings and recommendations of a parliamentary Select Committee—may be extremely relevant to the subject which a tribunal or judicial review is looking at. It would be artificial if parties to that hearing, or members of that judicial tribunal, were inhibited by law from taking into account something extremely relevant, such as the recommendations of a parliamentary Select Committee on exactly the matter, or part of the matter, that they were reviewing. That would be absurd. It would not be a good day for democracy.

It is sometimes said that it would be unfair if the proceedings in Parliament that might be cited worked against one of the parties or witnesses before a tribunal, committee or other proceeding; that he or she would not be able to argue in his or her defence against the decision of Parliament because that would be in breach of Article 9 of the Bill of Rights. However, that is just a fact of life. If the wording of the statute law happens to be against the interest of one particular party, that party cannot argue about the merits of the law and say that Parliament made a mistake in passing it. It is a fact of life that must be accepted. Equally, if Parliament came to a decision on a particular matter, or a Select Committee came to a particular recommendation, that is a fact which cannot be challenged by a court or tribunal, and neither should it be. It should be taken into account. It is completely wrong that it should be somehow suppressed or that the judicial proceedings concerned should proceed in apparent, and perhaps false, ignorance of the existence of that particular fact. That is the point where I disagreed with some colleagues on the committee and continue to disagree. I am glad that this will be resolved, not by statute or by decision of this House, but by jurisprudence. I hope that, in a responsible and reasonable fashion, the Pepper v Hart tradition is continued and that it is possible for those taking part in proceedings to cite responsibly and in a way that is consistent with the Bill of Rights—not challenging or arguing the substance or that Parliament should not have done X, Y or Z, but simply being able to cite what actually happened in Parliament. It seems to me that, in a democracy, any other behaviour would be bizarre.

Finally, the Government have decided that they were wrong in suggesting the disapplication of the Bill of Rights in criminal proceedings. I and the committee were very glad that they had that conversion. However, there are two long-term lessons that we can draw from this experience and that I hope the Government will take note of. One is that in matters of the constitution, particularly, it is a great mistake to go in for reformulation if you do not intend to change the substance of the rule. If you just rephrase the rule—codify it or put the same rule in what you believe to be better words—you will not have contributed to legal certainty, which should be the duty of any legislator to contribute to. Instead, you will have contributed to uncertainty. That is because the courts will always say, “Parliament has used different words and must therefore have had a slightly different intention and we therefore cannot interpret this principle in exactly the same way as we would have interpreted the previous principle, as expressed and formulated in different words”. You create great judicial uncertainty and, had the Government’s initial Green Paper been implemented, it would have done that and it would have been a great mistake.

The final general lesson that I draw out of all this is that if you are going to legislate, you should never set out a general principle and then create a certain number of non-exhaustive, explicit derogations or exceptions from it. There you again create enormous uncertainty because you have set up a general principle; you have said, “These are exceptions”; you have not said, “These are the only possible exceptions”; and you therefore create a whole area in which there may or may not be exceptions. Again you have created great judicial uncertainty. It is what I called during the committee’s proceedings legislation by negative example. We should never do that in any context and I hope that, the lesson having been learnt on this occasion, it will be taken account of by those who formulate proposals for legislation.

15:30

[Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)]

My Lords, like others who did not have the privilege of serving on the Joint Committee, I congratulate that committee and all its members on an excellent and eminently readable report. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, for initiating this debate and providing me with the opportunity to contribute to it, which I greatly welcome.

I should like to concentrate simply on the relationship between Parliament and the judiciary. In R v Chaytor, the case to which reference has been made, the late Lord Rodger of Earlsferry said that an invocation of parliamentary privilege is,

“apt to dazzle lawyers and judges outside Parliament”.

I think that his point was sometimes simply that the invocation of the words is regarded as a sort of red light—“Keep off the parliamentary lawn”. However, as Lord Rodger noted, Lord Brougham, when he was Lord Chancellor, cautioned against that approach. His advice was that the courts should not accede to claims of privilege,

“the instant they hear that once magical word pronounced”.

The issue requires to be addressed with more care than that and with a greater regard to the context. Article 9 of the Bill of Rights must, of course, be respected. However, as Lord Brougham said, it cannot have been intended to apply to a matter for which Parliament, especially its individual Members, cannot validly claim the privilege of exclusive cognisance at all. That was indeed what Chaytor was about.

I have to confess that I was surprised to read in paragraph 32 of the Joint Committee’s report the proposition that the courts can only interpret and apply the law, and that making law is for Parliament alone. That, with great respect, is not entirely accurate. There are many areas of the common law that have been developed by the judges with which Parliament has not dealt at all. In those areas, as was explained by the then senior Law Lord, Lord Reid, in 1972, the judges do indeed make law. It is true that they do not have the last word. It is always open to Parliament to reverse the position if it thinks that the judges have got the law wrong, or if the law declared by the judges is not something with which it agrees. However, as the Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said, ultimately it is Parliament that is sovereign. However, much of the law that is applied day and daily in our courts is law made by the judges. That is one of the great strengths of our legal system. After all, legislation is inevitably a rather blunt instrument. The virtue of our common law is that it can be adapted to fit precisely to the facts of each case.

Leaving that minor criticism aside, however, I welcome the way in which the report deals in chapter 5 with the important issue of judicial questioning of proceedings in Parliament. The Government refer in their response to what they describe as the continuing good relations between the judiciary and Parliament. The relationship is indeed a good one. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, that the atmosphere is one of comity rather than conflict. In my experience, both sides are careful to respect the boundaries between what is and what is not permissible. That is certainly so of the judges.

The case of R v Chaytor obviously helped a great deal in clearing the air on this subject, which was causing concern when the idea was promoted of engaging in this report in the first place. I had the advantage of sitting in the court, together with my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. We and, indeed, all members of the court were very conscious of the need to respect the privileges of Parliament, which the appellants—parliamentarians all of them—had invoked. In the event, it was relatively easy for the court to conclude that there was nothing in the allegations against the appellants that related in any way to the legislative or deliberative processes of either House or their Members. As the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, said, a crime is a crime. It was relatively easy to reach that conclusion and the court held that the prosecution in the ordinary courts for the parliamentarians’ crimes of dishonesty was not precluded by Article 9. It is worth noting, as my noble and learned friend Lord Brown said, that nine justices rather than the usual five sat in that case. That was in itself recognition by the court of the importance of the issue that it had to address.

Like my noble and learned friend, I believe that the Joint Committee was right, in a later part of its report at paragraph 229, to criticise the decision in Rost v Edwards. It is worth remembering that that case was decided as long ago as 1990. The judge in that case allowed questions to be put to the Member as to his reasons for not registering an interest in the Register of Members’ Interests. However, I agree with my noble and learned friend Lord Brown that this was simply an aberration. Quite a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, and I should have thought that it was now clear and beyond dispute that all questions as to a Member’s reasons for declaring, or failing to declare, an interest for the purpose of proceedings in either House must be a matter within the exclusive cognisance of Parliament.

It is worth noting that in paragraph 23 the Joint Committee says that it would expect the two Houses to intervene should such a case arise in the future. I should add a footnote to that important point. The absence of such an intervention was noted in the Chaytor case. It was also noted much more recently in the HS2 case, on which the UK Supreme Court delivered judgment on 22 January this year. The point was picked up by both the president, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, and by Lord Reed. There would be no difficulty in making an intervention should the Houses wish to do so. The rules of the court enable any person with a sufficient interest to intervene in an appeal. The court itself, if so minded, can ask for submissions to be made, and it might take that step itself if it felt that it needed to know what Parliament’s position was if it was in doubt. However, it would be best, as the report suggests, if Parliament itself were to take the initiative.

Chapter 5 dwells on the question of whether reference to proceedings in Parliament for the purpose of judicial review of governmental proceedings could be damaging. The suggestion is that this could lead to a blurring of the constitutional separation between the courts and Parliament because it would seek to question what was said. That point is made in paragraph 132. I agree with a great deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, said. I see great force in the objection that he put forward because the risk of the courts going astray on this point is less acute than this part of the report suggests, although I should make it clear that I agree with the conclusion in paragraph 136 that legislation prohibiting the use of such material is not required. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Healy, that that should be resorted to only when absolutely necessary; and that situation has not arisen.

Perhaps I may say a little more about the HS2 case, which, because the judgment was delivered this year, was not dealt with at all in the report. Your Lordships may like to know that one of the questions raised in that application for judicial review was whether the Government’s decision to obtain development consent for HS2 by means of the hybrid Bill procedure in Parliament was compatible with the requirements for a strategic environmental assessment under the EU’s SEA directive. The Supreme Court asked itself whether it was appropriate for it to consider that question at all, as it would require an assessment of the effectiveness of the parliamentary procedure. Lord Reed, who delivered the leading judgment on this point, said that he was conscious of the importance of refraining from trespassing upon the province of Parliament, or of even suggesting that he should do so. The president, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, too, was careful to say that he recognised the importance of the principle. As it happened, the court was able, in the performance of its ordinary duty of construing the legislation, to hold that it could and should decide the compatibility issue itself. It rejected the invitation that it should evaluate the quality of the consideration that Parliament was likely to give to the relevant issues under the procedure selected by the Government. That was because the directive, properly construed, did not require that particular evaluation to be carried out. I dwell on the point because I suggest that one sees in that very recent decision the system working as it should, as well as the respect due to Parliament and its procedures being properly accorded by the Supreme Court.

It is worth noting just a little more about what was said in the case of Wilson v First County Trust, in addition to the passage from the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, quoted in paragraph 126 of the report. That case was decided in the early days of the development of our jurisprudence on the effect of the Human Rights Act 1998, and what was said in that case has never since been questioned. One of the questions was whether it was proper for a court to be referred to proceedings in Parliament when it had to decide a question of proportionality in relation to the convention rights. I take the liberty of referring to what I said, which was expressly agreed to by Lord Hobhouse of Woodborough. In my own speech, I said that a cautious approach was needed and that particular care must be taken not to stray beyond the search for material that will simply inform the court into the forbidden territory of questioning the proceedings in Parliament. As I put it:

“It is for Parliament alone to decide what reasons, if any, need to be given for the legislation that it enacts. The quality or sufficiency of reasons given by the promoter of the legislation is a matter for Parliament to determine, not the court”.

On the other hand, as I pointed out, proceedings in Parliament are replete with information from a whole variety of sources which are on public record, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said. The court would be unduly inhibited if it were to be disabled from obtaining and using this information for the strictly limited purpose of considering whether the legislation was compatible with the convention rights—that being a task which the Human Rights Act itself has given to the judges. The European court in Strasbourg might wish to do that, so our courts should feel able to do so when performing the task entrusted to them by Parliament, observing the boundary set by the case of Wilson.

I agree that questioning the conclusions of a Select Committee—that is, evaluating the quality of its conclusions or suggesting that they were in error—would be wrong. However, that is not what the passages in Wilson were contemplating. I suggest that, carefully read, that decision strikes the balance in the right place. I should add also for the avoidance of any doubt that the fact that the courts do not pay any attention to ministerial statements that the provisions of a Bill that they present to Parliament are compatible with the convention rights does not involve any infringement of parliamentary privilege. These statements in themselves are not questioned by the courts, nor is the extent to which, if at all, they are relied on in either House. They are simply disregarded as irrelevant to the task that the courts have to perform. The fact is that Ministers and the courts are performing entirely different functions, and it would be constitutionally improper for the courts to be told by the Executive what their decision on the compatibility issue should be.

For all those reasons, I welcome the Joint Committee’s conclusion that the problem is not sufficiently acute to require legislation. Of course, it is right that the freedom of speech in Parliament should be protected from judicial questioning, but I think that the risk of that happening is very slight. I think, too, that I can assure the noble Lord the Leader of the House that the justices in the Supreme Court are as anxious as anyone in Parliament that that should not happen. As for the Motion in the name of the Leader of the House, I endorse entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, said about it.

15:45

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon of Tara, for opening the debate and for his chairmanship of the Select Committee. Indeed, as the Select Committee says, parliamentary privilege is one of the special characteristics of our democracy that is crucial but often misunderstood. The Select Committee has gone a very long way towards clearing up many of those misunderstandings and has provided much-needed clarity about the freedoms and protections that each House needs to function effectively. As such, they are an essential bulwark of our democracy—hence the importance of the work of the Select Committee, which I think has been endorsed by every noble Lord who has spoken in this debate.

As the noble Lord said, parliamentary privilege very much came to public attention in the wake of the 2009 expenses scandal, when three former MPs and one Member of your Lordships’ House accused of false accounting over their expenses sought to argue that they ought not to be prosecuted because of parliamentary privilege. As we have heard, the matter was dealt with by the courts in, I suggest, a most sensible way.

I agree that, in the light of that judgment, the Joint Committee’s central conclusion is that,

“the case has not been made for a comprehensive codification of parliamentary privilege”.

I also agree that legislation should be considered only when it is shown to be absolutely necessary. I agree with the Joint Committee’s rejection of the Government’s original proposals in relation to Article 9, and I am glad that the committee has taken such a firm view on that.

My noble friend Lady Healy and the noble Lord, Lord Bew, spoke eloquently of the challenges of media reporting in the current age and of the need for those who are reporting to respond at speed. The noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, referred to the Bill proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, relating to media reporting in Parliament. Given that the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has not been able to make progress in the current Session and given all the problems that we know Private Member’s Bills have in getting through the other place, as the noble Lord, Lord Hill, the Leader of the House, will be responding, I take the opportunity to ask whether the Government will offer time for that Bill to go through the other place.

My noble friend Lord Davies made the very important point that we are being sent away for what one might call obscenely long recess dates at Easter; there are rumours about Whitsun; and we are not coming back from the Summer recess until mid-October. I do not believe that the Government cannot find parliamentary time to enable that to happen. I would welcome some optimism from the Leader of the House either that the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, if introduced in the other place by an honourable Member, will be given all speed or that the Government themselves will bring forward some legislation.

On Select Committees, I was very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Norton, for his interesting insight in relation to penal powers and the need for flexibility, which I strongly support. I agree with his conclusion on jury service, although I was struck by one of his comments. I think he said that officers were more valuable than Members to the Houses of Parliament. While we certainly have superb officers, I think that, as Members, we have some role to play.

[Lord Norton of Louth]

I said they were more valuable than any individual Member.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I was trying to work out the difference between the collective of officers versus the value of individual Members. It reminded me of the “Yes Minister” episode about the National Health Service that concluded that the NHS would run enormously smoothly if patients were not to come through hospitals.

The substantive point on which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, was very persuasive was the question of whether Members should be exempt from jury service. On this matter, the committee report recommends, in paragraph 253, that,

“the Government should bring forward legislation providing that Members of either House should be among those who have a right to be excused from jury service”.

I very much agree with the noble and learned Lord. Many of the previous exemptions have gone and I am sure it is right that all parts of society should expect to be called for jury service, including Members of your Lordships’ House and the other place. On this matter, I hope that we will not move to accept the committee’s report.

With regard to the Motion of the Leader of the House, it seems to be an eminently sensible approach, although I note that in paragraphs 37 to 39 of the committee report, some doubt is placed on the benefit of resolutions passed by both Houses. I ask the Leader: what is the effect of such a resolution? Is it simply a plea to individual departments to make sure, in drafting legislation, that they abide by the resolution, or does it have rather more strength? If the noble Lord could provide some reassurance on that, it would be helpful.

Overall, it seems to me that we are coming to a very satisfactory conclusion. The Select Committee’s report is very welcome. It has been very well written and argued. Apart from one or two areas about which I have doubts, I have no doubt that it has done a great service to your Lordships’ House, to parliamentary privilege and to the way that Parliament works in general.

15:51

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford) (Con)]

My Lords, although the subject matter of some of this debate may seem arcane—it certainly involved the application of a number of wet towels to my head to grapple with some of these issues—this afternoon’s debate has reminded all of us how important parliamentary privilege is and that it is a vital part of the underpinning of our whole system of parliamentary democracy. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, I want to say at the outset how grateful the Government are to the Joint Committee for its report and for its contribution to a debate that has lasted for many years and, I dare say, will continue for many more years, providing entertainment for law students in the future.

The Joint Committee’s report put its finger on all the key issues, came up with a number of helpful recommendations and succeeded in doing something which some noble Lords may think is even more noteworthy: it has got the Government to think again. So I would like to record my thanks to all noble Lords who were members of the committee, in particular to my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara for his expert chairmanship and for setting out the issues so clearly today. Indeed, the whole debate has served as a reminder, if one were needed, of the knowledge and experience of the law and of Parliament which is to be found in your Lordships’ House.

In some ways, parliamentary privilege is itself a slightly unfortunate term: as my noble friend Lord Brabazon said, it carries a suggestion of elitism, a hint of exclusivity and risks reinforcing the impression—false, I believe—of politicians who look out only for themselves. But in opening this debate, my noble friend was also absolutely right that the concept of parliamentary privilege helps to protect the rights of everyone in the country. It underpins the sovereignty of the people’s representatives in Parliament, it provides those representatives with an absolute and untrammelled right to say what they believe, and it allows anybody to speak to Parliament without fear of legal consequences.

As we have already heard, these “privileges” do not mean that individual MPs and Peers are above the law, as we all saw in 2010, when a group of parliamentarians tried to assert privilege to avoid prosecution for offences relating to their parliamentary expenses. The Supreme Court’s judgment in that case, R v Chaytor, confirmed that parliamentary privilege did not protect parliamentarians from prosecution for ordinary crimes under our criminal law, and quite right too. That point was set out very clearly by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead.

Even so, the Government felt that it was right that we should take a fresh look at all aspects of privilege to see whether there was a case for change. As noble Lords know, that led in April 2012 to the publication of the Green Paper which the Joint Committee has so helpfully scrutinised. I am sure that everyone in the House would agree that, wherever possible, matters such as privilege should be approached in a consensual and cross-party way, so I am very pleased that the Government have been able to agree with most of the committee’s findings, most notably its overarching conclusion that a comprehensive codification of parliamentary privilege is not desirable. I listened with particular care to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, had to say in that regard. My noble friend Lord Norton of Louth stressed the importance of flexibility, which was a theme picked up by a number of noble Lords.

The Government believe that legislation should be brought forward only where really necessary—I think the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said that and I may hold him to it in a different context in other areas of political debate. For example, if the Chaytor case had gone the other way we may have considered it, but we agree with the conclusions of the committee that the potential consequences of comprehensive codification are impossible to predict. As the committee itself recognised, that conclusion does not, however, prevent Parliament taking steps to clarify the application of privilege where necessary. I will not try the patience of your Lordships’ House by going through the Government’s response to the report point by point, but I will touch on the most important areas, all of which have been raised by noble Lords this afternoon.

First, the Green Paper included a draft clause which would have enabled the protection of Article 9 of the Bill of Rights to be disapplied in the prosecution of criminal offences. The intention of that clause would have been to ensure that nobody accused of a serious criminal offence could use parliamentary privilege to avoid prosecution where the alleged offence was not related to the key elements of freedom of speech. The committee opposed the provision on the grounds that it would have a damaging effect on freedom of speech in Parliament. In addition to this principled objection, which was underlined by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, it is clear from looking at the draft clause that the Government came up with, and the lengthy schedule setting out those criminal offences which would not be covered by the terms of the clause, that there would also be daunting practical difficulties in implementing such a proposal. The Government will not therefore be taking it forward, and I am grateful for what my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth said in that regard.

The Joint Committee also rejected a draft clause which would explicitly have applied parliamentary privilege to the House of Commons Committee on Standards, which has lay members, which was a matter first raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bew. The Government agree with the committee that such a provision could have cast doubt on the privileged status of other committees, particularly our own Committee for Privileges and Conduct, which also has lay members. It also seems undesirable in principle to attempt to apply parliamentary privilege to a specific Select Committee by legislation.

The Government also share the committee’s serious reservations, which we have heard this afternoon, about Section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996, which allows individuals to waive the protection of parliamentary privilege in defamation cases. This breaches the principle that privilege belongs to the whole House rather than one person. That was a point made very forcefully by the noble Lord, Lord Bew. Accordingly, the Government support the repeal of Section 13. I understand that my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill, who cannot be here today, proposes to introduce a Private Member’s Bill to deal solely with this small but important change. The Government are in principle supportive of this measure to make that clear, and we look forward to seeing if it can make progress.

I should say a few words about the applicability of legislation to Parliament—in other words, the extent to which the activities of Parliament itself are bound by the laws it has passed. Over the years there has been a measure of uncertainty and disagreement on this point and while the Government do not agree with the committee that it is necessary to legislate in this area, we do agree that it is important for parliamentary counsel and the authorities of the two Houses to discuss whether relevant provisions in Bills, case by case, should apply to the activities of the two Houses. That is why the Government’s response agreed to ensure the correct application of the Treasury Solicitor’s 2002 guidance which asked departments,

“to consult the respective House authorities … on whether any proposed legislation that is to apply to the Crown, or its servants, should also apply to the two Houses and to instruct the draftsman accordingly”.

The Government also welcomed the proposal for a Motion which sets out the importance of Bills making express provision where necessary. Following discussions with my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara, I tabled the Motion which noble Lords have seen in my name on the Order Paper. I believe, as a number of noble Lords have agreed, that it offers a practical way forward. The key for it to work will be good communication on a case-by-case basis and I can certainly commit the Government to engaging with the parliamentary authorities in a completely constructive spirit on that. Assuming that the Motion is agreed to, my understanding is that the Leader of the House of Commons will move something similar down the other end.

Let me say something about the issue of reporting and repetition of parliamentary proceedings, about which a number of points have been made and to which my noble friend Lord Brabazon drew particular attention. The noble Baroness, Lady Healy of Primrose Hill, also devoted many of her comments to this. As we have heard, the committee concluded that the uncertainty around the Parliamentary Papers Act 1840,

“significantly inhibits press reporting of the work of Parliament”,

and called for its wholesale replacement by modern statutory provisions. As we said in our response, the Government agree with the committee that the 1840 Act lacks clarity and does not fit well with modern modes of communication, a point developed by the noble Baroness, Lady Healy. We also agree that the burden of proof where reporting is alleged to be malicious should be reversed such that it falls on the claimant rather than on the defendant. While we are not as convinced as the committee that the current legal framework significantly inhibits press reporting of Parliament, we understand the need to modernise the law. We will certainly continue to consider whether we can find, and how we can find, an appropriate legislative vehicle to achieve this important aim.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

I am most grateful to the Leader of the House for giving way. Would not a suitable vehicle be the reintroduction of a Private Member’s Bill by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, or another private Member, of the kind that has just been referred to?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Obviously that would be a matter for my noble friend Lord Lester. I believe that the focus of the Private Member’s Bill that my noble friend is keen to bring forward is on the repeal of Section 13 of the Defamation Act. I think that that is his priority and that he is keen to have a clear and focused approach on that. But obviously it would be open to other noble Lords to pursue this issue through that route.

The committee also looked at the sessional orders which have traditionally called on the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to prevent the obstruction of Members in the streets leading to the two Houses. The Government do not intend to push for the revival of the sessional order in the other place but I thought that I would take the opportunity to put on the record that, so far as this House is concerned, we will continue to support the passing of the sessional order in the House of Lords at the beginning of each Session. I also remind the House that in looking at that issue, the committee referred with approval in the report to the “appropriate and proportionate” legislative provisions governing amplified protests in Parliament Square. What the committee did not say was that the situation was, at that time, much less clear in the areas around your Lordships’ House. Since then, an amendment to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill—now an Act—passed in your Lordships’ House has applied the Parliament Square system to this end of the Parliamentary Estate. I very much welcome that because I was keen that it should be done. I am sure also that all members of the Joint Committee will welcome it.

I am grateful for the points raised by my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth and by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, about jury service, and I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, that we should not re-establish the exemption that was removed. On the interesting debate about the penal powers of Select Committees, on which both the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, and my noble friend Lord Norton of Louth concentrated, I think we all agree with the committee’s recommendation that the existing powers should be clarified. That is the right way forward rather than the legislative route. It is for the other place to lead on this, which I think was the recommendation of the committee. My understanding is that it is being taken forward down the other end, but I agree that we need to keep an alert mind on these issues.

Parliamentary privilege is a precious inheritance which we must safeguard, but that does not mean that it should be immune to all change. It needs to reflect the world as it is today, a point that was forcefully made by the noble Baroness, Lady Healy of Primrose Hill. That is why I am so grateful to my noble friend Lord Brabazon and his colleagues in both Houses for their important report. It has enabled us to look at things anew and it upholds the key principles on which parliamentary privilege and parliamentary democracy are built.

16:06

[Lord Brabazon of Tara]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Leader of the House for his positive response, and to everyone who has spoken in what I think has been an interesting and informative debate. I hope that this report does not suffer the same fate as the 1999 report, about which I think absolutely nothing has been done. We have at least taken a step in the right direction today because one of our recommendations is being acted upon right now. With that, I commend the report.

Motion agreed.

Motion

Moved by

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

That, in the light of the recommendations contained in paragraphs 226 and 227 of the report of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege (HL Paper 30), this House resolves that legislation creating individual rights which could impinge on the activities of the House should in future contain express provision to this effect.

Motion agreed.

House adjourned at 4.07 pm.