Grand Committee
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Arrangement of Business
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Simon) (Lab)
If there is a Division in the House, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme Regulations 2014
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Verma
That the Grand Committee do consider the Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme Regulations 2014.
Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to open the debate on the Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme Regulations 2014. Before focusing on the details of these regulations, I will take time to provide some background to the scheme, which I shall now refer to as the RHI.
In November 2011, we introduced the world’s first long-term financial support programme for renewable heat—the non-domestic RHI. Today, I am very pleased to introduce the regulations to extend this innovative and ambitious scheme to householders.
This decade, the RHI will help to contribute to meeting the country’s 2020 renewables target. The RHI also has a longer-term ambition. By encouraging people to switch to renewable heating now, the RHI is preparing the country for the widespread rollout of low-carbon heating from 2020 onwards, helping us to achieve our 2050 aim of near-zero carbon emissions from household heating. The RHI and, in particular, the domestic scheme also have an immediate aim—to help householders to reduce their heating bills. Heating is the single biggest energy use for householders. For people living off the gas grid whose costs are greatest, this represents a significant burden. Off-gas grid consumers could see between 10% and 40% savings in their heating bills, as well as saving carbon by moving away from fossil fuels. Moreover, renewable heating systems function better within properly insulated homes. The domestic RHI, working with the Green Deal, can therefore offer a whole-house solution to high energy bills.
The RHI covers the whole of Great Britain, with Northern Ireland running its own scheme. Our non-domestic scheme, launched in 2011, supports the installation of renewable systems that heat commercial, public or not-for-profit properties and systems that heat multiple homes. The latest published figures show that we already have in excess of 4,700 applications, more than £38 million paid in RHI support and more than 978 gigawatt hours of heat generated from renewable sources under that scheme.
It has always been our intention that the RHI will be extended to cover the domestic sector. The innovative nature of the domestic RHI as a world first means that it has been a challenging and time-intensive policy to develop. We have consulted extensively. In September 2012, a public consultation was launched to seek views on proposals for the domestic scheme. This provided us with a huge amount of valuable evidence from stakeholders and a wide range of views, all of which we have to consider.
Given the current economic climate and the need to deliver value for money through government expenditure, it was particularly important to get the scheme right. Following this period of extensive analysis, the finalised scheme outline was published in July 2013. Providing support until the launch of the domestic RHI, the renewable heat premium payment grant scheme has, to date, supported the installation of more than 17,000 renewable heating systems by homeowners and social landlords. The budget for the domestic RHI allows for more than 35,000 installations in the first year of the scheme before a reduction in tariffs is triggered.
The domestic RHI scheme which these regulations will implement will extend RHI support to renewable heating systems that heat individual homes, provided they were installed on or after 15 July 2009. The scheme will be open to everyone, whether they are connected to the gas grid or not. Those who live off the gas grid with high heating costs will benefit the most from switching to renewable heating. Homeowners, social and private landlords, their tenants, and self-builders can all benefit.
The domestic RHI will support biomass-only boilers and pellet-only stoves with integrated boilers. It will also support air-to-water, ground-to-water and water-to-water heat pumps, provided that they run on electricity. Both biomass and heat-pump systems will be eligible only if they deliver heat via a liquid—for example, through radiators—and provide space heating only or both space heating and hot water. Evacuated tube and flat plate solar thermal panels will be eligible too, although only if they provide just hot water. Panels that generate electricity as well as heat will not be eligible. The list of technologies that will be eligible at the launch of the scheme is fixed. That said, however, we recognise the importance of innovation and we will consider including other technologies in the future.
To provide consumer protection, the regulations require that all products meet specified, recognised European technology standards. Furthermore, an installation must be certified by the Microgeneration Certification Scheme or an equivalent scheme. MCS is a quality mark that demonstrates compliance with industry standards. It has a framework in place to deal with any potential disputes between homeowners and installers. We also want to protect air quality from any potential impacts of increased uptake of biomass; the domestic RHI therefore follows the non-domestic scheme by setting emissions limits in relation to the two main pollutants for new biomass installations: particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen. Heat pumps need to meet an additional requirement: they must have a minimum efficiency rating—known as a seasonal performance factor—of 2.5 in order to ensure that they are genuinely renewable. Apart from self-builders who will already be meeting the requirements of current building regulations, we are also tackling the energy efficiency of homes by requiring loft and cavity wall insulation to be installed, where appropriate, and by requiring that a Green Deal assessment be undertaken.
Renewable heating technologies work best in an energy-efficient home and reducing the size of the heating demand from each house means that each home saves money on its fuel bills and that we can support more households through the RHI. The domestic RHI will provide ongoing support in the form of tariff payments based on a set rate per unit of renewable heat produced; the rate depends on the technology installed. Tariff rates compensate for the additional costs of installing a renewable heating system compared with a conventional off-gas grid system, such as an oil boiler. Ofgem will administer the domestic scheme and will make the payments over seven years. They will be calculated quarterly and adjusted to reflect inflation each year. The basis for the payments will be the amount of renewable heat produced by the technology. In most cases, it will be based on an estimate of the amount of heat that the home needs in a year, known as deeming. For biomass and heat-pump systems, this estimate will be taken from the property’s latest energy performance certificate. For heat pumps, the figure will be adjusted to take into account the estimated efficiency of the heat pump in order to ascertain the renewable proportion of the heat produced. For solar thermal systems, payments will be based on the estimate of system performance produced as part of the installation.
In certain circumstances, applicants will need to install meters and will be paid based on their meter readings—for example, where the installation is in a second home or where there is an additional system in place that also provides space heating. Any payments based on metering will be capped at the amount set by the deeming approach. On top of their RHI tariff payments, a householder could receive additional payments if they take up the metering and monitoring service package. These packages are similar to a service contract and will allow the householder and the installer to view detailed information about the heating system in order to improve its performance. Only heat pumps and pellet-only biomass boilers will be eligible for these additional payments. The payment for heat pumps will be £230 per year and for pellet boilers it will be £200 per year. A mechanism for managing the budget for the domestic scheme will be in place using degression to control costs. Degression works by gradually decreasing tariffs as quarterly thresholds of spend are reached. Any reductions will be announced with one month’s notice and the reduced tariffs will apply only to new applications. DECC will also publish monthly updates of spend and progress towards triggers which will allow applicants and installers to determine the likelihood of a future decrease to their tariff.
RHI participants will need to provide annual declarations and, in certain circumstances, further information about their ongoing compliance. Ofgem will also have the power to investigate further and to withhold or claim back payments of non-compliance.
Finally, a random selection of applicants will be chosen to have meters installed which collect data on performance of technologies for evaluation. The cost of the installation will be covered by DECC.
These regulations will have effect in England, Scotland and Wales. RHI policy in Northern Ireland is devolved. Scottish Ministers have given their consent to regulations as required by the Energy Act 2008. Northern Irish Ministers administer a separate but equivalent scheme and have been notified of these regulations, as have Welsh Ministers.
These regulations represent a significant and exciting step towards the goal of reshaping our heating market. The domestic RHI scheme will sit alongside its non-domestic counterpart in a world-first approach to incentivising the uptake of renewable heat. Its short-term aim will be to help households save on fuel bills and contribute towards helping the country meet its 2020 renewables target.
However, the ambition goes beyond that. It will also set the country on the path towards the wider rollout of renewable heating everywhere from the 2020s and onwards. Driven by RHI, we hope to see the industry expand, costs to reduce and consumer awareness and familiarity to increase. The result will be renewable heating becoming a viable and competitive alternative for all households. I commend these regulations to the Committee.
Baroness Worthington (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for introducing these exciting regulations. This is a real step forward; we have been waiting for it and we are pleased that it has finally arrived.
Perhaps I may first ask some general questions on how we are doing on the RHI. We have had previous debates on other orders and I am always keen to know how we are doing in relation to our target. This is a world first and things may not be going as fast as we would like. That is understandable—it is a complex policy area—but it would be good to have an update on where we are in relation to the terawatt hour target for 2015-16, which I believe was set at five to seven terawatt hours. It is not that long away now and I would be interested to know how we are doing.
I have raised the issue of underspend before. There is a budget surplus under the RHI and I hope that we will increase the speed at which we get through this budget and that measures will be installed. The regulations refer to the earlier scheme, the renewable heating premium payments. It was a sensible move to introduce an early scheme in order to assess take-up and it would be interesting to know what the take-up was and how many people came forward to receive payments under that scheme. My questions are related to getting a sense of how we are doing and the background against which this policy should be judged.
On integration with the Green Deal, it is sensible that we should try to join up policies, particularly policies that involve interaction with householders. The Green Deal and the RHI should complement each other well.
How are we going to make sure that Green Deal assessors are fully cognisant of all RHI technologies? Perhaps the Minister could say a few words about how we make sure when training Green Deal assessors that they are fully aware of all of the RHI technologies, how they can be applied and the properties and situations which would be beneficial for consumer take-up. If they are not joined up, they could otherwise become a barrier. If we are not integrating this, people may not be aware of RHI and its availability; equally, there might be a barrier the other way in requiring a consumer to have a Green Deal assessment—if an assessor comes in and perhaps is not aware or does not give information about the RHI, that could be an unnecessary impediment towards the take-up of this technology. I want to make sure that we really are joining up the policy at a delivery level.
Baroness Verma
I thank the noble Baroness for her support. I shall try to answer her questions, but if I miss any, I will go back, read Hansard and write to her. She asked whether we would meet our renewables targets. We have managed to achieve 4% of total energy from renewables in 2011-12, compared to our interim target of 4.04%, so it is within the margin of error. We remain resolute that we will work towards even more ambitious renewables targets—I think that both the noble Baroness and I are sighted on achieving that ambition.
The noble Baroness also raised a point about underspend. In order to meet our targets, we will require growth in a broad range of renewable heating technologies, and we recognise that some technologies will need appropriate financial support through the non-domestic RHI and some technologies have lower than expected deployment. That is why we had to review the tariffs last year. In December, we published plans to increase tariff levels and introduce new technologies to the scheme. We will shortly lay regulations to bring those into force. I hope that, eventually, it will balance itself out. Like the noble Baroness, we do not want unnecessary underspend, but we want to ensure that it is being spent to achieve a more tangible outcome.
The noble Baroness also asked about the take-up. At the end of February 2014, 19,640 vouchers had been issued under the RHPP, of which 13,325 have been redeemed.
I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness that we do not want perverse incentives, so the scheme has robust enforcement mechanisms, including when a property is rented. Sanctions will include suspending payments and recovering RHI payments if a participant does not meet their obligations under the scheme. I thought that I had covered that in my opening remarks, but I hope that I have now clarified the position. Before responding to what more we can do to incentivise biofuels, I am more than happy for the noble Baroness to meet officials to go at it in a more detailed way than the brief explanation that I am about to give. They are not eligible for the domestic RHI partially because we do not believe that these renewable solutions have a sufficient role in the transformation of the domestic heating sector to subsidise them through the RHI. We are keen to see the replacement of fossil fuel systems with wholly renewable domestic heating solutions to maximise both our renewable heat generation and carbon savings. That is a debate and discussion for another time, and perhaps looking at the expression of the noble Baroness, it is better that we take this away.
The noble Baroness also asked about the gaming of the system. Participants will be required to declare annually that they are complying with the eligibility criteria of the scheme. If their circumstances have changed and they are living in the property for less than 183 days per year they will be required to install meters to measure their heat use. The noble Baroness touched on the training for Green Deal assessors. MCS installers are training to be Green Deal assessors and creating partnerships to ensure a joined-up service. I agree with the noble Baroness that we have a lot of very good programmes in place, and it would be far better if they were much more integrated. While the noble Baroness may see the Green Deal as not being as successful as it should be, I reiterate that it is a 20-year programme. People have taken out green deals not using the Green Deal finance plan; they have used other means. On those we cannot go back and measure, but we know that half a million have been undertaken. Of the people surveyed, more than 80% said that they were very happy to have had that measurement done in their homes.
We have to take it in context; we do not want short, quick fixes for what is a deeply embedded problem in our property market. I agree with the noble Baroness that the process may have been too complicated, and the Government have tried to simplify it by listening to the installers, assessors and consumers. The regime has been simplified by making sure that there is certainty in the system for both industry and consumers by being able to signpost consumers for a more informed journey. We have taken all those things on board and introduced them, but it is far too early to say that the Green Deal is not working. We have to look at the measures that are working alongside others, so the narrative needs to be much more integrated, with the smart meter programme, RHI and the Green Deal. We need to congratulate ourselves as a country on being a global leader on energy efficiency measures. We should never underrate the perception out there. By talking down programmes because they have not achieved their aims as quickly as anticipated, we undermine the very committed, dedicated small businesses that are involved in the Green Deal.
Baroness Worthington
I thank the noble Baroness for her comprehensive answers. However, if she would write to me on a couple of matters, I would be grateful.
I was specifically interested in how we are doing on the terawatt hour target for the RHI and not only renewables targets overall. A short note on that would be very helpful. On the new build installations, how will the microgeneration be counted towards the target? We do not want to miss things out of our targets, so that would be helpful. I would like to take the opportunity of having a meeting on biofuels because I do not quite follow the logic.
Baroness Verma
The noble Baroness asked two questions. On the second question, while new build installations are not supported through the domestic RHI, other than self-build, they will still be counted towards our renewables target through the use of market intelligence from the renewable energy sector based on sales figures.
I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness and the Opposition for their support for these regulations.
Enterprise Act 2002 (Protection of Legitimate Interests) (Amendment) Order 2014
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Grand Committee do consider the Enterprise Act 2002 (Protection of Legitimate Interests) (Amendment) Order 2014.
Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)
My Lords, in moving the Motion on the Enterprise Act 2002 (Protection of Legitimate Interests) (Amendment) Order 2014, I shall also speak on the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (Competition) (Consequential, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order 2014. I am afraid that these are rather dry subjects for debate, as your Lordships may have ascertained from my introduction. They are highly technical pieces of legislation, characterised by various consequential and transitional provisions. However, debate them we must and my challenge is to make this an interesting and rewarding experience for us all.
That gives me the chance to place these orders in the context of our much wider and far more interesting reforms to competition law, because the real significance of these orders is to serve as the two final pieces in the legal jigsaw that creates the Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, within a reformed competition regime from 1 April.
Noble Lords will recall—how could any of us forget?—the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act, which I had the pleasure of taking through this House last year. I hope that the Committee will permit me to refer to it as the 2013 Act for the purposes of this order. In its competition elements, the 2013 Act laid the foundations for the establishment of the CMA and a major reform of the UK’s competition regime. The CMA will be responsible for promoting effective competition in markets across the UK economy and for delivering major benefits for consumers. It will have strengthened responsibilities and powers, taking on the work of the Competition Commission and a number of the responsibilities of the Office of Fair Trading. This afternoon’s brief debate gives me the opportunity to provide noble Lords with an update of what has been achieved since the 2013 Act received Royal Assent.
The CMA was launched in shadow form in October last year. The Government have appointed a well respected board for the new organisation. We have also published our strategic steer for the CMA, setting out the key benefits that it should bring for consumers, and a performance framework that explains how we will measure its impact. We are on course for the full launch of the CMA next week, on 1 April.
Both the orders that we are debating today are, as their titles suggest, largely concerned with consequential and technical amendments to other legislation. These amendments are required to give full effect to the range of administrative and legal changes to the competition regime that Parliament enacted in the 2013 Act, so it is important to stress that there is nothing novel or unexpected in what we are asking your Lordships’ approval for today.
To be clear, the changes that these orders make were both foreseen and intended by the 2013 Act. By way of a very brief recap, Part 3 of the 2013 Act abolishes both the Office of Fair Trading and the Competition Commission and creates the new CMA to assume their competition functions from 1 April. Part 4 of the 2013 Act makes various changes to those competition functions. It amends the provisions on mergers in Part 3, on market studies and market investigations in Part 4, and the definition of the cartel offence in Part 6 of the Enterprise Act 2002. It also amends the anti-trust provisions in Part 1 of the Competition Act 1998. I hope that noble Lords are all still with me, because this is where it gets slightly more complicated.
First, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (Competition) (Consequential, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order, as its name suggests, makes consequential amendments to a wide range of primary legislation. Many of these amendments are simply replacing references to the OFT and the Competition Commission with references to the CMA. Others ensure that changes in the 2013 Act to the regime for market investigations apply across the regulated sectors, such as gas, water and rail. Where the sector regulators share powers to refer markets for investigation with the national authorities, they ensure that the streamlining and modernisation in the 2013 Act apply as appropriate to the regulators.
I should add that the order also amends the Enterprise Act 2002 to reflect the CMA’s role in the enforcement of consumer legislation. The CMA will have primary expertise on unfair contract terms. This will enable it to take enforcement action where there are structural market failures. The CMA will also have access to other enforcement powers to ensure that consumer choice is not restricted. That being said, the great majority of consumer law enforcement will continue to be done by trading standards services, with the National Trading Standards Board responsible for co-ordination and prioritisation under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Harris. As competition is a reserved matter, the order also makes similar amendments to Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish legislation. Article 3 and Schedule 2 make transitional and saving provision in connection with the transfer of functions from the OFT and the commission to the CMA.
All of that is pretty straightforward when compared with what I am about to cover—namely, the Enterprise Act 2002 (Protection of Legitimate Interests) (Amendment) Order. This amends a previous order of the same name from 2003. Again, many of its changes reflect the abolition of the OFT and the Competition Commission and the transfer of their competition functions to the CMA. The order relates to one of the three situations under the Enterprise Act 2002 in which the Secretary of State may intervene in a merger case that raises potential public interest concerns. Specifically, it sets out when the Secretary of State may issue a European intervention notice—or EIN, for short—to repatriate elements of merger cases that otherwise fall under EU jurisdiction. This may arise in merger cases where competition jurisdiction falls exclusively to the EU but where the case raises potential public interest concerns in the UK.
The changes in the order to this EIN process replicate those already made in the 2013 Act to the other two public interest regimes. These are the public interest intervention notice, or PIN, regime, which enables the Secretary of State to intervene in merger cases where the CMA has jurisdiction, and the special public interest intervention notice, or SPIN, regime—noble Lords should perhaps insert their own punchlines here—which enables the Secretary of State to intervene in a merger case on particular public interest grounds where the threshold for CMA jurisdiction is not met. Changes have been made to the powers available to deal with pre-emptive action. Powers to accept undertakings have been repealed and powers to make orders have been strengthened.
Allow me to leave your Lordships with a closing thought. It is true that these orders are unremarkable in themselves but, by approving them today, we are reflecting Parliament’s will to establish the Competition and Markets Authority and the new competition landscape that it will oversee from 1 April. I am confident that these reforms will enhance the competition regime and deliver greater benefits for consumers. I therefore commend these orders to the Committee.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I thought for a moment that we had doubled our numbers and increased the interest in the dry but very important issues raised by the noble Viscount, but I was wrong. He rather threw me at the end by saying that he was expecting us to approve the orders today. Perhaps he could very quickly give me an answer on that, as I do not think that that is what we are doing today; I think that we are considering them. The approval comes later and, of course, one cannot bind what I and my colleagues might wish to do when the orders are put to the House for consideration, so we may have to go through all this again. The noble Viscount should not get too carried away at this stage with his rhetoric, which I did enjoy.
The noble Viscount mentioned the pleasures that he had had on the ERR Bill and I was, again, slightly confused by that, as there were occasions where the Minister was distinctly uncomfortable about some of that Bill and may remain so deep in his heart, given the way it was taken over into other areas under his direct responsibility. Some of the points that were brought in remain, in our view, poorly drafted and badly exercised in terms of consultation and process and not up to the standards that we would expect in this House. However, we are where we are. It was always a pleasure to debate the issues with the Minister and I pay tribute to him not only for being a model of what is required at the Dispatch Box but also for being able to generate a vast number of letters that inflect, add to and complete the questions that are sometimes asked but are not able to be answered in the process. For that I thank him very much. To have that on an almost regular basis makes my days in the office much more exciting.
The noble Viscount challenged us by saying that he would make these speeches exciting; I am afraid that I cannot do that myself. I have a number of questions but, as he said, these are not novel or unexpected statutory instruments. We knew that they were coming down the line, but what is novel and unexpected is that they are so close to the start of the CMA to which they refer, which comes into force in a matter of days rather than weeks, as would normally be the case. I suspect—although I have no evidence of this—that the fact that so many colleagues from the department are here suggests that there has been a bit of a problem in getting some of the details of this correct and that it has come close to the wire. Maybe I am wrong on that but, as the noble Lord went through it, it was clear that the orders are very detailed indeed and that there must have been some difficulty in getting them right.
The points that I want to make are very limited. One question on the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (Competition) (Consequential, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order 2014 is whether the Minister can explain a bit more for the benefit of the Committee the discussions that took place with the devolved Administrations. Although this is a reserved matter and therefore not a matter of competence in those areas, the impact that it will have and the suggestion that the Government were legislating at a time that might impact on the devolution and independence discussions going on in Scotland raise the question of what exactly would happen. I understand that there were no Sewel requirements but I would like to have a sense of that, if others have some thoughts on it.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, first, I apologise to the noble Lord and the Committee in relation to the consideration of the order. For clarity, the Motion before the Grand Committee today is that the Grand Committee do consider the instrument. The instrument is then subject to a separate Motion to approve on the Floor of the House, usually without further debate, after Oral Questions, as is the norm. I realise that I will have to move the Motion on the next order formally at the end.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his comments in this brief debate, albeit between just two noble Lords. I, too, have greatly appreciated the discussions and debates that we have had in my office, in the Chamber and outside, as well as—if I may put it this way—his general congenial interactions. I hope that that will continue. As for the letters that I write, I rather hope that that may not continue, for the noble Lord’s sake, but my aim will be to inform and communicate to him as necessary.
A short closing speech addressing the noble Lord’s questions—I hope that I shall be able to address them all—is also a welcome opportunity to provide noble Lords, just days before it becomes a reality, with an update on the establishment of the CMA and to expand on what I said in my opening remarks. This provision will enable the CMA to fulfil its mission, which is to make markets work well in the interests of consumers, businesses and the economy.
The interests of consumers are at the heart of the CMA’s mission. We have given it a target over three years of demonstrating direct financial benefits to consumers of at least 10 times its relevant costs to the taxpayer and we are requiring the CMA to report annually on how it is delivering those consumer benefits. It will have primary expertise on unfair contract terms legislation and will have additional consumer enforcement powers to tackle practices and market conditions that make it difficult for consumers to exercise choice in an otherwise competitive market. The OFT super-complaint mechanism will be transferred to the CMA, so designated consumer bodies can continue to expect fast-tracking of issues that significantly harm the interests of consumers.
The CMA will co-ordinate its efforts with trading standards on both enforcement and the sharing of research and intelligence. We believe that there is a strong case for reform. We have created the CMA to improve the effectiveness of competition enforcement, to streamline processes by improving the quality of decisions and by taking forward the right cases and to improve speed and predictability for business. This is not to denigrate the outgoing competition bodies. That is an important point that I want to make, given the debate that we had some time ago during consideration of the ERR Bill. They had excellent reputations both at home and abroad and the CMA intends to build on that and, indeed, the leadership.
The CMA will be a non-ministerial department with full operational independence. It will have a mission to make markets work well in the interests of consumers, businesses and the economy. It will be obliged to report annually on the delivery of consumer benefits and the wider benefits in terms of growth, business and consumer confidence, compliance and the deterrence of anti-competitive behaviour.
Finally, the CMA has five strategic goals: first, to deliver effective enforcement, making strong and effective use of its powers; secondly, to extend competition frontiers proactively to identify and address markets where competition is not working well; thirdly, to refocus consumer protection, working with consumer protection partners; fourthly, to achieve professional excellence with robust decisions and effective and proportionate remedies; and, fifthly, to develop integrated performance and demonstrate improved efficiency.
I should like to attempt to answer a number of questions. The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked about the reason for the delay. There have been no problems at all in getting the details correct. The timing is more a result of a proper public consultation that has been required and the scheduling of the business of the House, so it is much more of a process issue.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I cannot find the exact reference. The Minister referred to extensive consultation but I think that I read somewhere that neither of these documents required much consultation. If I have got that wrong, I should be grateful if the Minister could clarify it.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
That is a fair question. Although there has not been a formal consultation, there was a need to consult a wide range of bodies. I will double-check that and write to the noble Lord if that needs to be corrected or expanded on.
The noble Lord also raised the issue of whether there had been discussions with the devolved Administrations. I can reassure him that drafts of the order were shared with the devolved Administrations, who were able to consider the provisions to amend the legislation and make some comments. He also raised the issue of errors corrected by the protection of legitimate interests order. The corrections made by the order include Article 16(7), which corrects a typo. Article 18(2)(a) is a revocation consequential on the repeal of Section 69 of the Enterprise Act 2003; the same applies to Article 18(3). Article 18(16) deals with a missed consequential amendment when Section 118(1)(aa) was added to Section 118 of the Enterprise Act. I know that this is a serious matter. Perhaps the noble Lord is attempting to compete with me on the dryness of the issues, but I hasten to add that they are important.
The noble Lord also raised the issue of who leads in different areas. Trading standards are more devolved across different nations. Competition law and enforcement is a reserved matter, however, so I can confirm that the CMA, under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Currie, will look across the UK. To clarify a point that I made earlier about the consultation, there was in fact a public consultation on the protection of legitimate interests order—it was on that specific order.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
I am sorry; I have now found my reference. The point that I was trying to make was that, in relation to these instruments being so late relative to the formation of the CMA, which we welcome, the Minister used the reason that the Government had to do extensive consultation. I would not say that it was an excuse, as that is a terrible thing to say. However, that consultation closed in July 2013 and there was plenty of time to absorb anything that came out of it, particularly as this goes on to say that there were no substantive comments.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
As I said earlier, and say again, I will definitely now write to the noble Lord to clarify the process and the element of consultation in as much depth as I can.
To conclude, these orders represent the final stage in the parliamentary process, which began with the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, to create that new competition landscape. They give effect to policy objectives and provisions that Parliament enacted in that Bill. I therefore commend these orders to the Committee.
Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (Competition) (Consequential, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order 2014
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Grand Committee do consider the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 (Competition) (Consequential, Transitional and Saving Provisions) Order 2014.
Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Copyright (Regulation of Relevant Licensing Bodies) Regulations 2014
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Grand Committee do consider the Copyright (Regulation of Relevant Licensing Bodies) Regulations 2014.
Relevant document: 23rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)
My Lords, the relevant licensing bodies—or collecting societies as they are better known—are already self-regulating and using codes of practice based on minimum standards set by the Government. The purpose of this legislation is to support their self-regulation and ensure that this good practice continues. It allows the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to remedy any problems or gaps that may emerge in self-regulation. These gaps would emerge if a collecting society started to deviate from the minimum standards; for example, if it had no proper complaints procedure or did not make provision for an independent ombudsman for its members and users.
Collecting societies are the organisations that copyright owners use to license their rights and collect their royalties. They are an economically significant sector. The nine or so collecting societies in scope of these regulations together collect around £1 billion per year and have nearly 400,000 members. Their role is valuable; indeed, they are central to the monetisation of copyright. They bring together rights holders and users efficiently, are instrumental in ensuring that income is received by rights holders and facilitate legal access to copyright works.
These regulations have their genesis in the Hargreaves recommendation that collecting societies,
“should be required by law to adopt codes of practice”.
This recommendation was made against a background of concerns about the operation of some collecting societies. These concerns were often reflected in correspondence to Ministers—indeed, I have seen some myself—as well as in meetings with trade and representative bodies. They ranged from the levels of transparency for members to complaints by licensees about unfair practices and heavy-handed licensing tactics.
Complainants, many of whom were small businesses, were often especially frustrated because they had no choice to shop elsewhere for their copyright material if dissatisfied. This is because most collecting societies tend to be monopolies or quasi-monopolies. The regulations that have been laid before this House complete the system of co-regulation that the Government have been developing with stakeholders over the past couple of years.
Many of your Lordships may recall the extensive debate in this House during the passage of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act. I emphasised our preference for self-regulation then and I do so again now. We want collecting societies to run themselves to the highest possible standards. The sector is doing this and must be congratulated on its progress. Most collecting societies now have self-regulatory codes of conduct. Noble Lords should be assured that statutory intervention is, and must be, a last resort.
Baroness Buscombe (Con)
My Lords, I should like to speak briefly on these provisions, which I welcome. The regulations give the Secretary of State a reserve power, and I think that this must be emphasised to all those who have expressed concerns over the past few months in relation to the Government’s progress following the introduction of the new legislation.
It is very important to emphasise that these are backstop reserve powers which can be used to close any gaps that may emerge in the self-regulatory system. This is nothing new. The advertising industry’s self-regulatory system has backstop powers invested in Ofcom to intervene.
Put simply, those powers work and the industry trusts them. The system remains light touch. I believe that it is in the best interests of the industry to have such a system which can be trusted. It needs to be sufficiently robust and flexible to protect the interests of all those who benefit from collecting societies. The success or effectiveness of a self-regulatory system is dependent on all those who manage that system, so if the system fails it is important to have reserve powers to deal with breaches robustly but, as we have heard from the Minister, in a very light-touch way through three stages. I genuinely believe that that is reasonable.
If there is a breach, it may affect the reputation of the system as well as those who are subject to it. I believe that these provisions will protect the light-touch self-regulatory system.
Lord Razzall (LD)
My Lords, I join the noble Baroness in welcoming these regulations. I wish to raise with the Minister four concerns which have been raised by PRS for Music. I am not sure whether he has had the benefit of its representations on these four points.
First, paragraph (2) of regulation 9 provides for information to be given within two weeks of receipt of the request. I understand that that time limit was not included in the consultation process. Does the Minister envisage that the ombudsman or the co-reviewer can extend that time limit if that is relevant to the particular inquiry for information that is made?
Secondly, paragraph (1) of regulation 9 can impose an obligation for information to be supplied “for any purpose”. That is an extremely wide provision and there is concern that this is hardly light-touch regulation. Does the Minister have any idea what constraints would be imposed on the requirement to supply information for any purpose?
My third issue is a fundamental one. Regulation 10 provides that penalties may be imposed on a licensing body itself. However, some of these licensing bodies will be voluntary, non-profit-making organisations owned by the members themselves. Therefore, the members would ultimately be liable for any penalties that may be imposed. However, the regulations are being introduced for the benefit of the members. What factors does the Secretary of State envisage taking into account in imposing any such penalties?
I think that my fourth concern is easily answered. There is a provision for fees to be charged to whichever relevant collective management organisation they are imposed on. There is a concern that it should be made clear that the fees should be charged only to a collective management organisation which is being targeted, rather than being spread more widely.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the regulations. I declare an interest as I have received sums of money from ALCS in the past and therefore am part of a collecting society. Like other noble Lords, I support this approach which is a sensible expression of backstop powers and will be a light-touch operation. It will probably not be as rigorously regulated as was suggested by Hargreaves in the original report, but I do not think that that is necessarily a bad thing. The consultation and the accompanying debates reflect the fact that there is a good system out there which works well. Therefore, it is not necessary to introduce draconian powers and the measure being introduced is an appropriate balance between two things.
Having said that, there are two impacts and it would be helpful if the Minister would respond to them as I did not hear him mention them in his opening remarks. The first, as is set out in the papers, is the proposal that deals with an issue raised through Professor Ian Hargreaves’s review on digital opportunity. It anticipates work that is going on in Europe on similar issues, so the collective rights management directive, of which I understand a final text is now available, casts a shadow over this operation. I wonder whether the Minister could sketch out where he thinks there are differences in the current approach.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Simon) (Lab)
My Lords, a Division has been called so we will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara
My Lords, I was making two points about issues contextual to the order. One was the question of whether the CRM directive would have an impact and, if so, whether the Minister could outline either how well his proposals in the draft SI fit into it or any gaps that he has already perceived in it. A monitoring period before the regulations will take place in 2016, just at the time that the CRM directive will be introduced. We therefore need to be careful that we are not overburdening the industry or those who draft the orders by having to do all that at the same time.
My second point was an issue which we raise from time to time in debates on intellectual property, which is the progress of the Copyright Hub and the impact that this secondary legislation could or would have on the operation of the hub. I suspect and hope that they have been designed to be complementary, but the issues of collecting societies fit closely with those who are operating the hub. The hub, which is trying to widen access, clearly has interesting feedback into the work of the collecting societies.
My other points have largely been touched upon. It would be helpful to have some comments on the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Razzall, about the timescale. On the question of how penalties will apply, I note that in the impact assessment on the statutory instrument we are told that during the consultation, there was consideration of whether fees should apply to the organisations only—as has been said, some of them are quite small and voluntary—or whether it would also apply to the individual offices of those operations. It is not clear to me from reading the regulations which way that has come out. If it is the latter, issues were raised during the consultation. The report states that the relevant licensing bodies objected to the provisions for sanctions against offices, but the provision has not been amended because of the overwhelming evidence from an earlier consultation and the desire of the Government to have robust protection in place for those who deal with the relevant licensing bodies, especially as they often have the choice to shop elsewhere. Again, I want clarity about who could be subject to the fees and how that could operate in practice.
Finally, I put it on record that although we support this operation, it is intriguing to us that the policy adopted is effectively to legalise a number of monopolies operating in this area. In any situation where monopolies are recognised, there is a sense in which competition must be the right answer. Here, we are choosing a different route because it is understood that the processes going on in the collecting society area are different in both quantum and quality to those which might apply under a more vigorous competition arrangement. That having been said, we should recognise that that is what is happening. These bodies cannot have competition. They will be operating as monopoly suppliers of copyright licences in particular circumstances. Although, on behalf of the Opposition, I am happy to support the proposal, we think that we have to keep that point in mind.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate for their valuable and broadly supportive comments.
We intend to use these powers where self-regulation fails, as has been mentioned. This power is light touch, as my noble friend Lady Buscombe mentioned, and is important to guarantee minimum standards. These powers are proportionate and designed to act as a deterrent. I think there is general agreement in the Committee on that.
We recognise that collecting societies play an important role in facilitating legal access to copyright works. They bring together rights holders and users to enable them to do business efficiently. The Government have worked with the collecting societies to develop the co-regulatory framework so that they continue to operate effectively, while ensuring that there are protections in place for their members and licensees.
I should like to emphasise again that the Government’s preferred option is self-regulation. This is why these regulations are designed to allow licensing bodies to remedy matters themselves in the first instance before recourse to statutory intervention. We are confident that collecting societies can self-regulate effectively. However, when needed, these regulations will provide robust, proportionate measures.
The regulations also contain provision for financial penalties, which are designed to deter non-compliance. They can be used only should self-regulation fail. This gives members and licensees the comfort of knowing that the standards that are set out in the collecting societies’ self-regulatory code of practice are guaranteed.
I hope that I have made it clear that the Government are serious about self-regulation and it is important that collecting societies have every opportunity to put their own house in order. Equally important, if they fail to do so there should be no way to avoid the consequences. If the Secretary of State is concerned about a collecting society’s behaviour, there is an opportunity for him to act, using the three-step process in the regulations. The fallback position is to impose a statutory code if collecting societies have not taken up that opportunity. While it appears unlikely at the moment that that point will be reached, it is important that the statutory power is available so that there is a deterrent to ensure that collecting societies face consequences if they do not act in a proper manner.
My noble friend Lord Razzall raised a number of points relating to a letter received by the PRS. I will attempt to answer them. The first issue was on information and timing. The collecting society concerned should have all the relevant information to hand anyway, and therefore be able to meet the 14-day deadline. The timeframe for supplying information to the statutory licensing code ombudsman and code reviewer are included in the regulations to ensure that any investigation can be conducted as swiftly and efficiently as possible. The licensing code ombudsman will require information to effectively investigate disputes between a collecting society and the licensee or member. The code reviewer’s power relates to the information needed in order to undertake an effective review of the codes of practice adopted by collecting societies and their compliance with their provisions. If a collecting society has concerns about meeting the deadline, it is open to it to notify the licensing code ombudsman or code reviewer as soon as possible. Finally, where the collecting society concerned can show that it has made every effort to comply with any request, the Secretary of State can take these arguments into consideration when deciding whether to impose a financial penalty. If such a penalty is imposed, there remains the option to appeal against its imposition and the amount. I rather laboured that answer but I hope it provides a full response to my noble friend.
My noble friend also raised the issue of cost recovery. Where the Secretary of State has incurred costs by having to intervene, it is right that he should be able to cover the costs of that intervention, but they should not be borne by the taxpayer. Where a collecting society has had a statutory code imposed on it and/or has failed to appoint an ombudsman or code reviewer, as required, the associated costs of regulation should be borne by the collecting society concerned. Where the Secretary of State needs to appoint a statutory ombudsman or code reviewer when the self-regulatory appointment has failed, it is right that all the collecting societies which will use the new system should bear the costs of that appointment and any ongoing costs. I should state that this would have gone way down the line before that point was reached, so it would be in extremis that this provision would be realised.
My noble friend Lord Razzall raised the issue of the legal basis. The gist of his question was: what legal power enables the Secretary of State to request information from collecting societies under Regulation 9? The provisions in Schedule A1 to the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allow for the Secretary of State to request information, as outlined in Regulation 9.
Paragraph 7(1)(a) includes the power to make incidental, supplementary or consequential provisions and paragraph 5(3)(a) allows for provisions for determining whether there has been a failure to comply with the requirement of a code of practice. The provisions in Regulation 9 will enable the Secretary of State to request the information necessary to enable them to discharge their duties equitably under the regulations.
City-to-city Diplomacy
(10 years, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Earl of Dundee
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the case for city-to-city diplomacy in Europe as a means for providing better practice.
The Earl of Dundee (Con)
My Lords, in my remarks today I would like to connect three themes. The first is the nature and purpose of city-to-city diplomacy. The second is how it can assist democracy and stability in Europe. The third is the ways in which the United Kingdom and Her Majesty’s Government might now take a timely lead in supporting and advancing it. In some respects this subject is quite new. That apart, its issues are, I think, consensual and cross-party. I am grateful to all colleagues who are speaking today and I look forward a great deal to their contributions and guidance.
At first sight, city-to-city diplomacy appears to be no different from twinning cities. After the Second World War the latter development was most successful. In different countries it established links between population centres recently caught up in Europe’s fighting and conflict. Such twinnings were able to express and build up good will—a very important and necessary achievement. Yet the links did not go much further than that. Nor did they need to do so. Nevertheless, for the same cities the past 20 years have provided a wider opportunity, not least as a result of the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, as well as through Europe’s current affiliation of states: 28 within that of the European Union and 47 within that of the Council of Europe. Thus, to the advantage of national and international democracy, this prospect is to evolve good practice and to do so through joint programmes and initiatives embarked upon by cities at their local levels.
Some programmes may be analytical, identifying potential needs, gaps in the delivery of services or weaknesses in economic growth and so on; some may be proactive, between cities implementing business, trade and tourism or education and culture exchanges; while others might set out to enhance the methods of local government, the levels of citizen participation and the well-being of civic communities.
Clearly all those endeavours benefit cities, their member states and Europe alike. For the advantages are both internal and external. City-to-city programmes can address cross-border issues and other aspects of conflict prevention, thus assisting the work of NGOs and international organisations. Within their own European states the local and national connections are fairly obvious. For to the extent that locally city-to-city diplomacy evolves good practice of any kind, it does so nationally as well. Equally, the strength of local democracy which it may inspire and engender also becomes a greater strength of national and European democracy as a result.
Then there is the current background to local democracy in Europe. This is better than and much different from what it used to be. Diplomacy is no longer the prerogative of officials from national foreign ministries. Increasingly it is advanced through people themselves. There is growing evidence of good results deriving from the absence of formalities and structures. Ever frequently it is demonstrated that economic, community and social progress have become less dependent upon public funding and strategies in the first place and, instead, for their advancement and reinvigoration more reliant upon academia, the private sector and professional bodies.
Against this background, city-to-city diplomacy reduces costs and boosts the local economies concerned. That is particularly so when the focus is upon a variety of associated initiatives rather than only a disparate few. Last month, assisted by the Council of Europe, it was in this context that between Croatia and the United Kingdom just such a project was launched between the cities of Zadar and Dundee.
So the purpose and effect of city-to-city diplomacy is to augment stability and democracy at local, national and European levels together.
When we come to the role of European Governments, and in particular that of Her Majesty’s Government, there are of course some important considerations. As a forceful expedient for local democracy, how should Governments cause working synergies between cities to form and flourish without undermining them through government direction and prescription? No doubt the simple answer is support without interference. Both the European Union and the Council of Europe are now prepared to facilitate projects. However, a great many cities are completely unaware of that, as they also are of the positive scope offered by city-to-city diplomacy in the first place. Does the Minister therefore agree that now is the time for the Government to give much more guidance and encouragement to our own cities? To that end can he say what actions he would take?
Within the United Kingdom the Government have already taken steps to promote more active citizenship. They are also researching policies to improve the well-being of communities. Does my noble friend concur that, as city-to-city diplomacy already advances each of these aims, this is a further reason for the Government to seek to advance it now?
Then there is current government policy on European Union revision, which many of us support. That is to remove competitive burdens and restrictions while completing the single market. However, this structural progress may take a long time. Meanwhile, the development of local democracy in Europe is quite another matter. Does my noble friend believe that this is where city-to-city diplomacy has a key role to play? For if the latter can serve the aims of active citizenship and community well-being at home, then the corollary is that it is also well able to do the same abroad and in Europe. Does my noble friend therefore conclude that this is exactly where the United Kingdom and Her Majesty’s Government can begin to give and be seen to provide a constructive lead to enhance local democracy in Europe?
In summary, city-to-city diplomacy is an extremely effective and attractive intervention. That is all the more so as it is free from the structures and politics of member state Governments. Yet at the same time in Europe it is central and complementary to their priority aims of stability and democracy.
Lord Anderson of Swansea (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Earl raises a challenge not only to the UK Government but to the devolved Administrations with their responsibilities for local authorities. He has been a persuasive advocate of the concept of city-to-city diplomacy and greater public participation, which I have witnessed not only in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe but also in the All-Party Group on Croatia, culminating in the launch of the new city diplomacy project with Zadar and Dundee on 4 February.
The noble Earl tried to distinguish his concept from that of town twinning. I think that he would agree that his concept needs to be sharpened a little. In some way it stems from the concept of twinning, which began, as he said, after the Second World War and which is now, alas, on the ebb. There are a number of reasons for this: there is the austerity—it was perhaps the first cutback made by local authorities; people are travelling more; some have sought to politicise it—Cuba, the West Bank; and there is the amount of councillors going to exotic locations at council tax payers’ expense. However, city-to-city diplomacy clearly builds on the concept of town twinning.
I hope that the noble Earl will say that we need to learn the lessons of what has been good and bad in the existing town twinning system. We should also learn the lessons of what we did immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, where we sought to buttress local democracy and active citizenry in the countries that were formerly part of either the Soviet Union or the Soviet empire by sending senior local government officers there, be it chief executives, deputy chief executives and so on, or be it in leisure. We should consider what was done well and what lessons we learnt from that.
The noble Earl is well aware, of course, that work in this field is being done by the European Union—Europe for Citizens. This is supported by the Government, rather surprisingly, because it not only deals with commemoration but promotes the concept of Europe itself. Clearly it needs co-ordination with the European Union. The European Union has the money and the Council of Europe perhaps has the resources and the wider membership. Given the precedent of, for example, the partnerships for democracy with Morocco and the Palestinian Authority, there needs to be close co-operation between the narrower European Union and the wider 47-member Council of Europe.
There is a new wave of localism in Europe, which we need to encourage. We need to exchange best practice to learn from the initial Dundee-Zadar precedent. This is clearly good for individual countries, good for local democracy and good for international co-operation. Again, I commend the noble Earl.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lord Dundee for initiating this debate. My experience, which I shall draw on over the next few minutes, relates to Newcastle upon Tyne, where I was a council leader for a number of years. Newcastle has had a number of twinning relationships, particularly in the post-war period, which had, and still have, a very important role because they bring people together. They include sports club exchanges, cultural events, choirs, church group visits, youth groups and school exchanges, as well as the more formal city-led exchanges.
However, the world changes and new possibilities open up. It is not just about twinning, as my noble friend Lord Dundee said. I have concluded that there are three levels to successful city-to-city diplomacy. I mean the wider sub-region by “city”. The three levels are people to people, institution to institution and city leadership to city leadership, which includes business. In this context, I have always been struck by the words of Professor Michael Parkinson, who was founder and former director of the European Institute for Urban Affairs at Liverpool John Moores University. He said:
“A significant feature of successful continental cities is the importance they attach to internationalisation and having city ‘foreign policies’”,
investing time and,
“effort in international networking to raise their profile, gain new allies, expand market share, influence decision-makers and learn new strategies and practices”.
I find that a very useful rationale for developing city-to-city diplomacy.
When we began to rearticulate Newcastle’s approach a few years ago, it was based on those principles. It focused on networks, connections and projects with cities and city regions that have similar characteristics or special links, and where there is economic benefit for business, trade or innovation. The advantages are in sharing learning and best practice, in collective access to funding—particularly European funding, supporting key institutions, such as our universities— and scope for projects that promote language—learning and culture.
In Europe, Newcastle’s twin cities are Gelsenkirchen in Germany, Nancy in France, Groningen in the Netherlands and Bergen in Norway. They have all seen very positive outcomes in recent years—in cultural links, school twinning, shared provision in higher education and in public policy. What can be done by universities? For example, an innovative, dual award programme provides an opportunity to study for a master’s degree in advanced international business management from Newcastle University, and at the same time an MSc in international business and management from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. At undergraduate level for a BSc honours in economics and finance, which includes international financial management, there is an optional study-year abroad at the University of Groningen to provide an international perspective. Those derive from our existing twinning relationship with the city of Groningen.
Finally, I want to draw attention to the potential of honorary consul networks in building bridges between the diplomatic establishment and local businesses and academia. In Newcastle, the honorary consulates of France and Germany have a shared facility in the civic centre. It is the first shared facility in Europe and it is an approved commitment by the city council, too. The honorary consuls help to lead the organisation of the annual North East in Europe conference, now an established and valued event. However, we can extend into new areas. Developing connectivity between the north-east of England and Sweden has been particularly impressive with a consul-led UKTI trip to Sweden for 22 new exporters and several other outward and inward- bound missions, not least in the environmental sector. That is based on a growing new relationship with the city of Malmö and the existence of a Swedish consul in Newcastle. There is enormous potential for the Government to assist and I hope that they will help to spread good practice.
Viscount Falkland (CB)
My Lords, I confess that I am somewhat daunted by the Question although I have been asked to talk about the twinning of towns and cities. Therefore, I will not talk about the actual Question but about twinning. Indeed, a noble Lord virtually said that what we are discussing is “twinning plus”.
I have always been fascinated by twinning although I did not know very much about it. When I was asked to speak in this debate, I rang a number of councils. Given the time constraint in this debate, I shall discuss only three of them. These three councils are very different but have in common the fact that their communities decide the way in which they operate their twinning systems with towns in different countries, which I like. I am sure that the noble Earl would have no difficulty answering questions on this topic but anyone who is vaguely Eurosceptic might become more so on hearing his speech. However, I obviously need to do a lot more homework on that.
The twinning system is withering on the vine. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, gave various reasons for that but did not refer to age. People are getting older. Two local authorities told me that they had built up wonderful relationships over many years. For example, Torquay has a curious relationship with Hamelin, or Hameln as it is known, which you would not expect. Those who have read the Grimms’ stories will know the story about the pied piper and the rats. Torquay has built up a very strong relationship with Hamelin in relation to a number of issues, including life saving, which I thought was very strange. Germans from Hamelin come over every year and discuss life-saving issues with people in Torbay, which has a lifeboat service. When I asked why the citizens of Hamelin would be interested in that, I was told that the Weser is a very deep river. Noble Lords will remember the fate of the rats in the fairy story. The charming thing about twinning is that you learn such interesting and varied facts.
Barnet is an interesting example in this regard. It has a budget for this work, which it does not think is big enough. However, it wishes that it had no budget at all because most of its time is taken up dealing with freedom of information requests, which can be asked by all kinds of cranks and lunatics. This is the phenomenon of the unexpected effects that flow from seemingly perfectly worthy legislation. These requests take up all that authority’s time. People want to know how much of the relevant budget is being spent, and on what. It emerged that the cost of this work for each taxpayer in Barnet was 0.01 of 0.01p. We are in a ridiculous situation in this country. We should not impose on people all kinds of strange democratic things which I hardly understand, although I suppose that I am a democrat. Basically, we have got this right. It just needs to be brought up to date and changed as new pressures emerge.
The other council I contacted was Basingstoke, which is closest to the example given by the noble Earl as it is working on projects as they come up. I have talked to a number of people involved in this issue, including volunteers who were enthusiastic, polite and pleased that I was inquiring about it. Therefore, I put in a request that we leave the situation as it is and forget “twinning plus” for a while.
Baroness Wilcox (Con)
My Lords, as ever the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, poses an interesting Question. It is very interesting for me because I did not want to take part in the debate today as I do not believe in any of it. However, he was insistent that I did take part and listen to everybody else to see whether I could glean anything, as I certainly have in such a short time already. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, can always talk about the nature of cities and make that sound terribly interesting for me. We have heard about good practice from the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, from whom I have learnt all about Newcastle upon Tyne. Then I listened to the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, and thought that I should just sit down and say very little because I agree with him.
The question I ask is: what would it achieve? What would its purpose be that would actually be that different from what we already have? That may be looking a bit tired or sad, and as if it ought to be gingered up a bit. It may be just because Russia is dashing all over the place in the Council of Europe area that we are all rather overexcited about looking to and after each other. That may be what it is about a bit as well. The noble Earl has also had wonderful success with his twinning, which has been different and, by the sound of it, rather magnificent.
I have to speak from the background of being a trader. As a trader, I therefore believe in free trade right across the world, wherever possible, without many barriers if we can avoid them. I also believe that cities are mini-worlds. Every city is different and grows in its own way. It may be on a river or on the sea, or up a mountain, but it will have its own things—its own dynamic and energy. It is geography that makes us and, very often, it is trade routes that make cities unique. History also teaches us that the next things we need are talent, technology and tolerance. I would vote for those three things rather than reinventing new ways to bring along democracy or whatever we are calling it, with all sorts of other new civil servants to help us and tell us all how to run our lives.
Each city trades differently and for different reasons. The danger from what is implied here is that the greatest in size and wealth among the 47 countries of the Council of Europe will be talking only to each other. The biggest will talk to the biggest; the best will talk to the best. I cannot see any other way. What we would be looking at is city states. We have seen city states and we know what happens with them. It is hard enough to protect the countries and cities that we already have. Is there to be a war among the cities or a wasteland between them? Are these going to be cities with transport and treasure? I see sieges and armies; I see corruption and exclusion.
So as a trader, I would rather see 1,000 flowers bloom in the 47 countries of the Council of Europe. The noble Earl, Lord Dundee, the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, are, of course, representatives to that council as delegates, as am I. Indeed, the Minister who will answer in a minute has also been a delegate there. To see this functioning any better than what we have now is going to take all the things that I do not want us to do: more diplomats, more civil servants, more talk, more meetings, more dinners, more cost and less free trade.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)
Exactly two weeks ago, I was in Denmark chairing a conference of local and regional authorities from around the North Sea. During my two days in Aalborg, I had an opportunity to reflect on the nature of international co-operation at a local level. I was considering how best to raise these points in your Lordships’ House, so I am very grateful that the noble Earl has given me a chance to do so so quickly.
The North Sea Commission was founded in 1989 as a way of allowing local and regional authorities with a North Sea border to come together to discuss areas of common interest and to see whether, by working together, we could arrive at better solutions. I was a councillor in Suffolk when we took the decision to join. I was involved until 2005 and spent much of that time as chair of the heritage, culture and tourism group. Membership was beneficial to Suffolk. It gave us a ready-made pool of the European partners that we needed to join in EU-funded programmes. These ranged from the promotion of local foods and the creation of local business to sustainable tourism and diversification of jobs in Lowestoft, which had been very badly hit by the decline in the fishing industry.
We went on to discover that there are issues and problems common to the North Sea region which cannot always be tackled by individual councils, regions or member states. The North Sea Commission used its influence to bring together fishermen, scientists, environmentalists and civil servants when previously they would not even sit in the same room. What we had then has now developed into an EU-wide regional organisation with legal powers over fisheries. We shared experience together on how to deal with many of the problems brought about by oil and gas exploration. Noble Lords will remember the Brent Spar. The North Sea Commission still does that work but it is now also heavily involved in renewable energy and the development of a North Sea energy grid. Coastal erosion, flooding and pollution are issues which all suggest that there is a need for a body which looks at the North Sea from a North Sea perspective rather than a local or national one.
Not very much has changed in the nine years since I stopped being involved, except for one big change which I did notice. In 2005, English local authorities from Newcastle down to Kent were members. Now, Southend is the only English representative on the North Sea Commission. Scottish councils are, thankfully, still very active. So what has happened? There is still a need for a body such as this. I saw no evidence that the NSC is less effective. Indeed, the presence of a number of very senior officials from the European Commission suggests that it is highly regarded, and the presence of members from all other countries, including Norway, which is not in the EU, suggests that it is still valued. So what has happened in England? I think that there are two factors and they are both relevant to this evening’s debate.
First, public services are increasingly required to demonstrate the outcomes of expenditure of public money. That is absolutely right, but it means that spending on areas where the outcomes are more intangible, such as partnerships, become harder to justify. Secondly, there is the irony that, as the world is becoming smaller and individuals travel more and communicate across the globe, outside, the notion that public servants and elected members might actually leave the country to meet colleagues is viewed with great suspicion and even hostility. To some extent, that is understandable. It is hard for elected members to justify foreign travel, even if it is to a wind farm in Germany, when cuts are being made in public services.
Returning to the narrower context of the North Sea Commission, it became clear to me at the conference that there will be an increased focus on the North Sea, especially in the context of energy. The EU is looking to the North Sea Commission to help to drive progress in these areas and, when that happens, there will be no English voices round the table. I think that that will be a serious omission. I should like the Government to consider what practical assistance can be given to ensure that that does not happen.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, as others have done, I thank my noble friend Lord Dundee for initiating this debate, and I welcome the opportunity to make a minor contribution.
My interest in active co-operation with other European cities and organisations began when I was a student, before the time when it was fashionable to make studying abroad part of a course. As a student teacher, I was invited to attend a student exchange at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Osnabrück. Here, I made many friends but, very importantly, I learnt about and observed the different teaching methods in Germany. Our 1960s liberal teaching methods were very different from the German structured form of learning.
Later in life, as a family, we were very active in an organisation called the Junior Chamber of Commerce, now known as the Jaycees. The international activities of the Jaycees brought together from all over the world individuals and families who shared an interest in business and commerce. Our children grew up seeing friends from all parts of the world over the breakfast table and, as a consequence, they learnt much about life from many different perspectives.
Several noble Lords have spoken about twinning arrangements after the Second World War. In my experience, however, many of the cities involved in twinning have developed their twinning arrangements well beyond their beginnings and the desire to create good will. My own city of Bradford, where I am an elected member, has had a number of twinning arrangements which were active in developing commercial, cultural and sporting links. The cities were Skopje, Roubaix, Mönchengladbach and Hamm. These cities shared common activities in business, trade, culture, the textile industry and other commercial activities, as well as being home to a number of minority ethnic groups.
As the leader of the council, I was very pleased to encourage the mutual interest in art and culture with Hamm in Germany. Bradford is the home of David Hockney and the city is proud to have collections of his works. Bradford and Hamm had an exchange of the work of the artist Otmar Alt and some of David Hockney’s works. Our parks and public spaces proudly showed the colourful modern sculptures of Otmar Alt and the people of Hamm delighted in the Hockney exhibition.
All of the activities I have described, and many others, have had many benefits for all involved—business, trade, culture, improved local government, more citizen participation and improved national and political stability. It is clear that working synergies already exist.
EUROCITIES was an example of 23 European cities working together around information-sharing, exchanging ideas and employment programmes. Members of EUROCITIES were able to influence policy workers in Brussels to help develop the social agenda. The many positive experiences that I have had, and those that I have observed, taught me that already many cities in the 47 states of the Council of Europe have the ability and the will to work together for the common good. I hope that the Governments of the member states can recognise the role and the ability of the Council of Europe in encouraging city-to-city diplomacy. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, has said, this project should not create the need for more officials and paid bureaucrats. Diplomacy should no longer be solely the prerogative of officials from foreign ministries. City-to-city diplomacy can, I am sure, make a major contribution to enhanced stability and democracy if the citizens themselves develop such diplomacy.
Lord Dykes (LD)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to congratulate my noble friend Lord Dundee on his excellent speech which launched this brief debate and I am grateful to him for his suggestions. I echo the specific question put at the end of her remarks by my noble friend Lady Scott and I should be grateful if the Minister would include me in the answer to it. It is a very pertinent question.
In this period of austerity it will be very sad if twinning withers on the vine and the working synergies, which are even more important, profound and deep, are cut back by budget pressures. Their achievements can be made at the margin on modest amounts of money. Without sounding too boastful, I remind the Committee of what we did in Harrow when we twinned with the last significant untwinned town in northern France, Douai—the judicial centre of northern France many years ago—which was a great success. The figures we issued of how much that programme cost were very modest. That was when there was no austerity and we could do it.
Perhaps I may make one European point as my noble friend Lord Wallace is in his place as the duty Whip. I have always found it bizarre that the anti-Europeans on the right-wing side of British politics are happy if companies and corporations become international and global but they do not like countries in the European Union to join others and link up on all sorts of things. I find that strange because not only does each country then benefit from the collective strength of the whole Union but its own individual sovereignty goes up; it does not go down. There is no loss of sovereignty in net terms. Everyone gets stronger and so does the Union. That is an example which, on an administrative scale, can be done for cities, towns, villages and so on. We were very proud of its success.
I declare an interest: I live on the Normandy-Picardy border because I had to live in at least one country that was in the eurozone when we foolishly failed to join the euro many years ago. I notice that the town twinning is now mostly not with English towns but with German ones. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that probably one of the finest stories in post-war Europe has been Franco-German reconciliation, with really deep relationships developing now. There is no withering on the vine in the twinning that I can see in those areas. There is work and synergies of all kinds, from football teams to choirs to individuals getting married—an extraordinary development of very profound relationships that are European as well as in the sense of being proud of one’s own country. The two things go together.
In Harrow I had the great pleasure and privilege of having Bentley Priory, the RAF base, in my constituency, where the Battle of Britain was directed by Air Chief Marshal Dowding. Because of that, with our liaison function, we always had a USAF officer, an officer from l’Armée de l’Air in France and, indeed, visiting German officers from the German air force. One year I was particularly pleased when I persuaded the organisers of the September Battle of Britain cocktail party to play not just the marvellous Royal Air Force march but the Luftwaffe march as well. The whole gathering applauded when the Luftwaffe march was played. It could not have been done decades before then but it is done now because people want to get together and we must provide those examples and opportunities to them.
I do not think it is right to say that officials should not be involved. Budgets must be strictly controlled but you need intelligent, constructive officialdom, not excessive bureaucracy. You need private initiative. You need companies to be involved. You need intellectuals, students and teachers. Then you begin to make progress of understanding at the lower levels of human society—not lower in the sense of being low, literally, but the more modest levels of your own village, district, town or city—and then rising up through the political system as well, so that politicians are involved in espousing those things and not being suspicious of them or hostile to them, as is the rather sinister atmosphere developing among, I hope, a small number of people in this country, some of whom may be heard tonight in the exchanges that are coming between two significant political leaders.
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, I start by congratulating the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, on securing this debate. I thank him for initiating such an interesting and expert discussion. It is impossible not to admire the noble Earl’s commitment to and enthusiasm for city diplomacy, and the Opposition Front Bench welcomes the debate he has started. I was slightly disappointed by the response to this debate by one or two noble Lords, which was slightly negative, I think. No one is saying that this scheme is fixed for all time. The plans are beginning and it is very important that we should be broad-minded in our approach.
I think that I understand the difference between city diplomacy and town twinning, and must confess to an abiding support for the latter, having been involved in it at both city and small-town level for a number of years. I will make a few quick points. The idea of city diplomacy seems to be yet another example of soft power in action. We hear a lot, rightly, about the World Service and the British Council. I declare my interest as chairman of the British Council All-Party Parliamentary Group. But soft power should go beyond those two brilliant institutions.
The idea that local government, particularly cities, should play a part in diplomacy or soft power—whatever you want to call it—is not new. It has happened in green affairs around the world for a long time now. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, has great experience of local government in this field. The Dundee-Zadar city diplomacy project is an interesting and timely development. The noble Earl outlined his intent in his speech, saying that the purpose and effect of city-to-city diplomacy is to augment democracy and economic stability at a local, national and European level.
That seems sensible. Who could object to that as a principle? Of course it needs a great deal more working out in practice—no doubt that is what the Dundee-Zadar experiment will show us. This is also a question for the Minister: is it not particularly relevant at a time when Foreign Offices, not just in this country but around Europe, are looking for funding—desperate, in fact, for resources to undertake diplomacy and fulfil their function?
My city is Leicester, and I intend to pass the Hansard of this debate to the executive mayor’s office. The city has a strong tradition of twinning and of working with other cities, so I will do that locally, but in my role as part of the Opposition Front-Bench team responding to the debate, I intend to take the noble Earl’s idea about city diplomacy forward to be considered as part of future proposals. For the moment, however, it is this Government who have to respond to his debate. As always, I look forward to hearing what the noble Lord has to say.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, first, I join all other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Dundee for giving us an opportunity to discuss this important subject. From listening to the contributions today, it is clear that this has generated a lot of interest across the Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, and my noble friend Lady Eaton, raised the issue of soft power. That is important. Too often we are caught between what initiatives are being taken specifically and sometimes underrate soft power in terms of language, cultural exchanges and so on. That is an important part of city-to-city diplomacy.
I begin by reminding your Lordships of this Government’s commitment to localism. The Government have returned more powers to individuals, communities and local councils than many thought possible. Indeed, my noble friend has acknowledged this. We passed the Localism Act in 2011 to ensure that local people could come up with and implement the most effective solutions to local problems. As a former local councillor with responsibility for culture—in my own patch we had the All England Club—I had experience of the powerful messages that you could send through sport, a point made by my noble friend, and of extending that in city-to-city initiatives.
The Government’s view is that we need to give further control back to our cities and we are already seeing the success that this change has brought about. Only last week, Cambridge joined the ever-increasing number of British cities benefiting from a city deal. As noble Lords are of course aware, under this deal cities, including Cambridge, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds and many other successful cities, will now have greater responsibility for and control over decisions that affect them, and a greater chance to shape their own development.
My noble friend Lord Dundee talked about the importance of city-to-city initiatives, particularly in encouraging active citizenship and general well-being. Giving back power was the start of that process. We now want cities and regions to use the freedom they now have to strengthen their communities and economies. All places are unique. Some places will do that better than others. Some policies will work well; others may take time before they get going. So it is important that local policymakers have the opportunity to discuss among themselves, to share success stories and discuss possible risks and pitfalls.
The Local Government Association encourages this domestically. My noble friend Lady Eaton played an important role in this respect as a former chairman. Its Peer Challenge and Knowledge Hub programmes are good examples of developing better practice through engagement but, as my noble friend Lord Dundee pointed out, and as he knows well from his considerable experience with cities in the sterling work that he has done in the UK and in Croatia, there is much that can be gained from sharing experience internationally, and we have worked hard to develop spaces for cities to share best practice.
In answer to my noble friend’s question, we support fully the strengthening of such initiatives, and city-to-city diplomacy can play an extremely important role in developing local democracy. The UK Government will continue to support institutions facilitating this development. Indeed, my noble friend Lady Stowell of Beeston is currently in Strasbourg to address the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities.
The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, asked about trade. That is a valid issue to raise. UKTI encourages cities to focus directly on activities such as building their local foreign direct investment capacity, understanding their sector or other strengths and establishing inward investment propositions for their area. The noble Lord, Lord Bach, will recognise that many embassies around the world have a UKTI hub to encourage bilateral trade. I hope that point will be welcomed by my noble friend Lady Wilcox.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is one of the organisations that provides such spaces for city-to-city diplomacy. It brings together experts to discuss policy challenges and solutions, in relation to both specific cities and wider urban policy. OECD analysis was used to good effect to support the introduction of the city deals that I have already mentioned. Another example of the value provided by OECD co-operation is the project in which Manchester is currently participating. Organised by the Directorate for Public Governance and Territorial Development of the OECD, this project brings together a small group of international cities with the aim of finding best practice for dealing with ageing populations, which is an increasingly relevant topic.
The OECD urban working party directs initiatives, such as the Manchester ageing project, and other OECD work on cities, such as the recent project on green growth in the Benelux. The UK recognises the value of OECD work in this area and plays an active role in the urban working party. The environment was also mentioned quite forcefully and rightfully by my noble friend Lord Dykes.
My noble friend Lady Wilcox mentioned the Council of Europe. It has a strong track record and has an important role to play in city-to-city diplomacy. With the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities and the European Committee on Democracy and Governance, the Council of Europe can facilitate direct exchanges between cities and local authorities and allow national Governments and local authorities to take a step back and address strategic challenges faced by cities and regions in Europe. As noble Lords will know, the UK sends a sizeable delegation of local and municipal officials to the congress. The delegation, with a mandate of four years, is made up of 18 full members and 18 substitute members from local authorities and the devolved Administrations.
The UK is also represented at the European Committee on Democracy and Governance, which we chaired until January 2014. During our chairmanship of the Council of Europe in 2011-12, the UK achieved wide consensus on our priority of streamlining the Council of Europe’s activities on local democracy to ensure the effective co-ordination of activities and the efficient use of resources. The creation of the Centre of Expertise for Local Government Reform marked another step forward in the Council of Europe’s capacity to help cities and regions develop best practice through co-operation.
Within the European Union there are many opportunities for city-to-city diplomacy. I assure noble Lords that the Government, through attending various EU meetings, seek to disseminate information from EU presidency meetings designed to spread good practice among cities.
Noble Lords will be aware of the Committee of the Regions, which provides further opportunities. It aims to shape future EU policy decisions by getting involved in policy-making at an early stage and has greater influence now than before the Lisbon treaty. The UK appreciates the importance of ensuring that the impact of EU legislation on local issues is understood. The UK delegation promotes UK local government and devolved Administration interests in EU law-making and decision-taking.
The ERD fund is another key tool in facilitating city-to-city contact. The ongoing negotiations on the new sustainable urban development programme illustrate how this Government are working hard in Brussels to make sure that UK cities can access this tool. When our cities and regions are able to work with the fund, it is clear that engagement is worth while.
Using funds from the EU and national Governments, Glasgow is yet another example of a city now working with 11 partner cities to promote the employability of young people in the labour market. Birmingham is leading a group of 10 cities as they develop links between creative industries across Europe. Manchester is one of six cities sharing work on how to use financial instruments better in municipal planning. Here in London, Westminster local authority is engaging with Barcelona, Dublin and five other cities to promote urban markets as key drivers of economic development, urban regeneration and sustainable living.
My noble friend Lady Scott and, I believe, my noble friend Lord Dykes talked of EU funding for regions and cities. I have already illustrated some of the instruments that are available. EU funding has been valuable in city-to-city diplomacy but we must continue to make sure that access to this funding is available for our cities. The co-operation seen in the frameworks for the Council of Europe and the OECD are examples of this. Specific mention was made of the North Sea Commission and that UK representation was declining in that respect. The Government have introduced measures allowing local authorities more and greater control over their budgets, and they can now appropriately prioritise their spending. If those local authorities see the value of the North Sea Commission, they can of course pursue that.
Baroness Scott of Needham Market
I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord but is he aware that when the Secretary of State in another place makes comments from the Floor of the Chamber criticising individual local authorities for participating in travel abroad, it really does not help the Government’s case?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
I am sure that has been noted in Hansard and I will write specifically to my noble friend in that respect.
My noble friend Lady Eaton talked about sporting links and the noble Lord, Lord Bach, talked about soft power. I have already alluded to the fact that this is an important part of city-to-city diplomacy. The Olympic Games in London in 2012 were an excellent sporting spectacle from which all cities could learn—indeed, we are sharing experiences across the world. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, also raised concerns that twinning is declining, in part due to budget constraints. This Government have brought in a raft of measures intended to give local authorities more control over and responsibility for their budgets, and we allow them to decide on their spending priorities as they are directly accountable to their electorate. City-to-city diplomacy has provided twinning schemes and I fully acknowledge the worth of those that have been set up.
I am increasingly aware that we are running slightly short of time. The exchange of views between cities should, of course, lead to stronger communities, more effective policing and more proactive education for young people. However, as my noble friend Lady Wilcox said, these new initiatives should not lead to increased bureaucracy. We can see that when conditions are created that allow city and local authorities to interact and co-operate on areas close to them, best practice develops and our cities thrive.
My noble friend Lord Dundee has made a powerful and persuasive argument, which I know Ministers and officials across Whitehall will reflect on. I pay tribute to the leadership that he has shown on this issue and look forward to further efforts to strengthen the role of city-to-city diplomacy in the future.
UK Visas and Immigration
(10 years, 8 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Steel of Aikwood
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the operation and accountability of UK Visas and Immigration.
Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)
My Lords, I do not intend to have a great debate on immigration. I put down this Question for Short Debate as a result of two recent experiences of dealing with individual cases, about which I would like to inform the Committee. Last August, I received a letter from a small charity, the Friends of Meisori School. This is a group of schools and churches that have got together to help sustain a primary school in Kenya with scholarships and that kind of thing. It had invited the headmaster of the school to come to Britain and conduct a programme of visits to schools in York, Hereford and Bristol. At the last minute, it found that he could not get a visa and his whole visit fell to the ground. The charity wrote to me angrily because it had seen my name on the foundation stone of a library, which I had laid some years before. I had no connection at all with the charity.
I wrote to Mark Harper, who was then the Minister for Immigration, to ask for reasons why the visa had been refused and I was completely dismayed by his reply, which simply told me about the visa requirements. I wrote to him on 30 October last year to say that I was dismayed. My last sentence was:
“I feel a parliamentary question coming on unless I can get a clear reason why the visa for Mr Lekae was refused”.
Well, 2013 came and went and I had no reply so I duly put down a Written Question which was replied to by our good and noble friend Lord Taylor of Holbeach. He simply said that:
“Due to its obligations under the Data Protection Act, the Home Office is unable to comment on an individual case”,—[Official Report, 16/1/14; col. WA68.]
without the permission of the applicant, so that did not get me anywhere.
I then wrote to Mr Samuel Lekae and asked for his permission to pursue the case. He sent me that permission and, eventually, having failed to get a response, I put down a Question and wrote to the Minister again. He replied on 10 January and, to be fair to Mr Harper, he wrote a very nice handwritten apology at the bottom of the letter. He gave the same argument about the Data Protection Act, so having got the authority from the headmaster to act on his behalf I wrote to the Minister again on 27 January. To date, I have had no reply. Of course, that Minister has disappeared and been replaced by another one, but that is not really an excuse. However, I visited the school last month and met the headmaster. The point I want to make is that it is in a remote area and he had made several visits to Nairobi to try to get the visa. That is four or five hours by car each way but, at the end of the day, the visa was refused.
The other case was just last month. I was taking part in a conference to commemorate the bicentenary of David Livingstone, organised by the Scotland Malawi Partnership. That body has government funding and the conference was co-sponsored by the Open University, which is also a body with public funding. A distinguished lady from Malawi was invited to be one of the speakers and, at the last minute, she was refused a visa. The charges that they have to pay—£400 a time—are of course lost but so is their airfare for which we, the taxpayer, had paid. The attempt to raise money by raising the fees is negated every time there is a refusal, while the public body which has invited and sponsored a visitor ends up paying for an abandoned airfare.
The timescale involved is ridiculous. It usually takes three weeks to get an answer, in the case of Malawi. In December last year, just three months ago, a new system was introduced by e-mail but it seems to be entirely dysfunctional. The website is an embarrassment. It routinely crashes and there are sections that simply have not been finished. For example, the user has to state which country they are applying from by using a drop-down menu, within which the only information is the starting letter of the country. If you are looking for Malawi, you look for the letter M and you then have to guess how far down the list it might be and what other countries there are whose name begins with M, and then you tick the right box. There seems to be an assumption that all applicants will have regular and easy access to a computer, to an internet connection with strong bandwidth and to a printer. That effectively rules out almost everybody in Africa except the urban elite.
It appears that the Government have outsourced their legal responsibilities on immigration to a private company which was the cheapest bidder. It is almost impossible for an applicant to contact the private company, because, in the case of Malawi, the private company is in Pretoria in South Africa, which handles all UK visa applications for the whole of southern Africa. Even if they could make contact, the company closes all its offices at midday on Fridays for an early weekend, irrespective of the workload or the urgency of applications. Being a private company, it is not governed by the same standards of delivery, service and transparency which one would expect from a government department.
There is a further complication in the case of Malawi. As all its visa applications are handled in South Africa, significant delays are caused, as passports, birth certificates, bank details and other documents are sent backwards and forwards across the continent. It also means that decisions are being made remotely by people who have do not necessarily have intimate knowledge of the country from which the application has been made.
In the case of Malawi, there is a further, peculiar difficulty. The applicant has to pay for a visa application using a credit card and pay in the currency of the country where the regional visa-issuing centre is based. That means paying in South African rand. The Scotland Malawi Partnership has been advised that it is illegal in Malawi to make online payments in a foreign currency unless you have specific permission from the Reserve Bank of Malawi. We are also informed that almost no Malawians have international credit cards that would be suitable for the purpose. My argument to the Committee is that the system is not conducive to visitors coming to this country, and I think that the reputation of the country is being damaged by the incompetence and cost of it.
I raise with the Minister one particular query about rule 41(vii) of the Immigration Rules, which insists that visitors to the UK have evidence of sufficient funds to cover the cost of their visit and their return to their country of origin. That is apparently UK policy, but a recent conference in Cardiff was told that that was not the case and that it would be sufficient if the sponsor had enough money to cover the costs of the applicant. So there seems to be an element of confusion even about what the policy is.
I end by making three suggestions to the Government. First, before the Commonwealth Games start in Glasgow in a few months’ time, the agency must make it clear that people attending from Africa—in this case, athletes, their trainers and so on—will require visas. The Commonwealth Games will be disrupted if many of the applicants are not able to get there because of visa restrictions. How many short-term applications have been turned down? How many applications have been received and what percentage of them were rejected?
Secondly, it should be an instruction to the agency that, when visitors are being sponsored by reputable bodies in this country, there should be an obligation on it to contact the sponsors and double-check. It can do that quite easily by e-mail quite and check the bona fides of the applicant, rather than go on demanding more and more visits to a remote centre and more and more fees. I would not object even if we were to introduce a system of bonds, whereby sponsors could give—let us say—£1,000 as an assurance that the person concerned would return. That is a suggestion which the Minister might like to pass on to his colleagues in the Home Office.
I mention in my QSD the question of accountability. I do not think it is good enough to hide behind the Data Protection Act and I think that any MP or Peer who raises a question about a visa application is automatically doing so on behalf of the applicant and should not be put off by being told that the Data Protection Act is in the way. When I was an MP, it was possible in visa cases to write to or even phone a high commissioner and ask them to examine a particular case. Sometimes the visa was refused for good reasons, which would be explained, and other times the decision would be overruled. There is a total lack of accountability now and it is that that I am really complaining about.
Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)
I thank my noble friend for enabling us to bring some of those cases to the attention of the Minister. I have a case to raise that has many characteristics in common with what we have just heard. It also concerns immigration, or at least visitors, from Africa.
I have the impression that it is becoming very hard to visit this country unless one is well off. I know that we want to attract the well heeled but I wonder whether it is right that we should get into a position where only the well-off can come here. In Hereford—it is Hereford again—there is a linking charity that, since 1985, has with other linking charities sponsored short visits, typically of four to six weeks, of more than 100 mid- career health professionals from Tanzania to come to see how we do things here and then, with that knowledge, go back to improve the functioning of their own institutions. These people are obviously not students in the formal sense. They come on ordinary visas, fully sponsored, with all costs paid by the British organisers. They are therefore of no burden to the British taxpayer. On the other hand, without that sponsorship, they most certainly would not be able to come because they could not afford to.
What has happened to this little programme? Beginning about three years ago—in other words, I fear, under the present Government—the already onerous and intrusive visa paperwork became even more so. My noble friend set out the costs involved for those who have to go a distance, and in this case I think it was to Nairobi. In 2012 and 2013, two of the four applications relating to the Hereford-Muheza link—Muheza is in Tanzania—were turned down. In relation to other link programmes over the past four years, there have been 15 rejections, which is a pretty high rate considering the overall annual numbers coming in. That has a pretty destructive effect on the link programmes and involves a great deal of wasted effort because these refusals come through only after a number of tractations and a lot of effort on the part of those who are then turned down.
Rather like the cases raised by my noble friend Lord Steel, this has also led to correspondence with the Home Office. One of the organisers, Dr John Wood, wrote to Mark Harper in February 2013. He did not, however, get a letter back from the Minister. He had one from a Ms Ioannou in May 2013, explaining that it was only right that the UK welfare system should be protected from non-genuine visitors, that visitors should be able to show that they could maintain and accommodate themselves while in the country and indicate, with a return ticket, that they intended to return to the country with which they had demonstrably genuine ties—the same reasoning that we have heard. These stipulations are, I agree, reasonable. They are tough but they are certainly reasonable and defensible. However, the link programme, in all its years of operation—now 13—has never had an absconder and there is no reason to believe that it would have one now or that the conditions would not have been met. Also, in shades of what was said by my noble friend, Ms Ioannou said, “flexibility in the Immigration Rules for visitors exists, if they can be maintained and accommodated by relatives or friends where they do have the financial means to support their visit”. Is that not exactly the same thing as being told that there is a way through? That is precisely what the link programme provides: maintenance and accommodation while in the country.
Subsequent to this correspondence, the link programme’s postbag is still full of rejections on the grounds of the inability to guarantee return, which appears, in turn, to be related to suspicion about the consequences of the inability to self-fund. Of course, if those visitors could fund themselves, they would not need sponsorship. It is a Catch-22. The fact of costs being fully covered and sponsorship by an impeccable organisation—which I think it is—appears to be irrelevant to the refusals. They have sponsors, but the fact that they could not pay for themselves were they not being sponsored, although they are, means that they get turned down. As regards the inability to guarantee return, what guarantees beyond having your costs being covered, your return ticket and your ties to your homeland are good enough for the Home Office? Does it want an armed guard throughout the visit and to the airport? That is what it begins to amount to. What has happened to the flexibility in the rules alluded to at the conference and in correspondence with Dr John Wood? Is it ever exercised and what does an applicant or the sponsoring organisation have to do to bring it into operation?
The Government have managed to devise a list of reputable colleges to which overseas students may apply without the vires of the application immediately being brought into question. The penalty is, of course, loss of status for the college if the students do not leave at the end of their study period. Is it beyond the wit of our immigration system to devise a similar list of sponsoring organisations in good standing which the local immigration office can hold and with which there can, if necessary, be dialogue in individual cases by e-mail, as my noble friend suggested?
The system as presently operated frustrates charitable activity, which cannot be good, and, in my view, it also fails the test of proportionality. Unsurprisingly, it has now got to the stage where it has given rise to an application under the Freedom of Information Act by angry sponsors who want to know how many invited visitors of this type have actually absconded. The application has not been answered on the grounds that the cost of collating the information exceeded the cost limit specified in the regulations. My last point is: what about this cost limit? Is it so low that even the collation of extensive and readily available evidence is precluded by it or, as is perhaps more likely, is it that the evidence is too scanty to provide convincing support for refusal decisions? I hope that in reply the Minister will be able to give an undertaking that the operation of the Immigration Rules in relation to these charitably sponsored visits will be looked at in a fresh light with a view to devising a solution which will enable them to continue to operate under rules which are reasonable in principle—
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I apologise, but we are risking not having a full quota for the Minister at the end. There is no slack in the timing.
Baroness Neville-Jones
I apologise. I will finish my sentence. I am sure that the intention behind our legislation was that it should be reasonable.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for obtaining this debate. I am afraid I have to agree with both speakers that this is a shambles and probably just the tip of the iceberg.
I shall talk about UK immigration problems on the cross-channel rail services. It is worth recalling that the Channel Tunnel was built—I played a small part in it—to create seamless travel to the continent. We have somehow substituted for a physical barrier an administrative blockage which is an absurd obstruction to travel to and from the continent.
Starting 25 years ago, you had the juxtaposition of French or Belgian and British immigration at London, Paris, Lille or Brussels. Sometimes immigration checked passengers on the train coming back into this country. That may be fine for those cities with quite big volumes, but now that the operators want to move to the south of France, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and many stations in between, it just does not work. The latest situation is that if Eurostar is running a train from the south of France, going out it is fine—you can get out of this country all right, for the moment anyway—but coming back the train stops at Lille and everybody has to get out with their suitcases, go upstairs, through security and immigration and back down again. The train leaves an hour later. So many more passengers go out than come in by train, which is no great surprise.
The same will apply to Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Cologne, Aachen, Schiphol or wherever we want to go. DB, the German railway, has said that it would like to come to London but it is not going to because it just does not work. That is because, in addition to what I have explained, immigration will not allow you to mix domestic passengers with international passengers. Therefore, if the train is coming from Frankfurt, it cannot carry passengers from Frankfurt to Brussels because they might leave a bomb on the train or have the wrong passport. It is also expected that on every station at which the train stops there should be an immigration officer checking people’s passports, followed by security. What operator is going to fund that? It is totally uneconomic.
The same will apply with HS2. There are supposed to be international services going from places north of London—such as Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and Leeds—to Paris perhaps. This will not happen because we will not be allowed to carry domestic and international passengers on the same trains. I can assure noble Lords that there will not be enough people travelling from Birmingham to Paris to fill a complete train—it will need London passengers as well—and I suppose that they will all have to get out at London and go through security and immigration again. This is killing international rail travel. I do not see any way at the moment in which things can change.
I have had several meetings with Ministers. They have been very helpful but they cannot offer any solutions. I have three solutions. The first is very tongue in cheek but it is made on the basis that we will have to be checked going out of the country. I am told that it will be like using an Oyster card, which takes half a second to get through a barrier. A passport check going out will take 12 seconds. Imagine taking 12 seconds to get into Holborn station in the rush hour. The queues will go all the way round the block. We put chips in dogs to make sure that they are rabies-free. Would it not be better if we all had chips and could walk straight through? The Government know everything about us—they spy on our e-mails and so on—so it would not make much difference. So that is my first suggestion. I am not sure that the Minister will accept it but it is always worth a try.
My second suggestion is that we could join Schengen, but, with this Government, that is pie in the sky. The third suggestion is that we check passports on the train. It used to be done, as I have said. I have been told, “Oh, it takes much too long and we cannot get the latest signal that Mr al-Qaeda suddenly might be coming. Five minutes from getting into the tunnel he will get in and claim asylum”. There should be the technology to do this online and on the move reasonably quickly. It is the only thing that will work when coming in and going out. It behoves the Government to develop a system and make it work.
Something needs to be done. The immigration and security services are not achieving anything. Parts of the Conservative Party seem to want total physical as well as economic separation from the continent but, as I have said, it is bad for business and for Britain’s reputation. We must do something about it.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood for this debate. It is couched in extremely wide terms and I may introduce two subjects that no one else may consider come within its purview, but I think they do.
The first thing I wish to say in this short space of time concerns universities and overseas students which, as everyone knows, is a vexed subject at the moment. It is of huge importance for this country in that we have, for our size, the most successful university sector in the world in attracting overseas students, particularly non-EU students. It has quite extraordinary benefits for us, and not only the obvious financial and economic ones. One cannot put a finger on the cultural value of having in our midst these amazing overseas students who bring to us all their particular knowledge, culture, language, arts and so on. Most important are the friendships created by this mingling of British students with overseas students. That has value for the future in terms of one’s personal development, in terms of knowledge and understanding between different cultures and countries, and in terms of affection and friendship, which spills over into all sorts of economic outlets and manifestations.
I put it to the Minister, as it has been put to many other Ministers, that bundling up overseas students at our universities with other economic migrants who are here permanently and equating the temporary, three-year undergraduate to a permanent economic migrant for the purposes of our immigration figures is wrong. It gives a wrong impression and creates unnecessary tensions within this country. I know that the UN has a definition of students that would pull in the temporary, learning immigrant coming to university, but we do not have to use that UN definition for our own internal purposes. Indeed, it is different from the OECD definition. It is a simple but important point. We have not got through the Immigration Bill and I hope that the Government will be moved to exclude university students from its purview in terms of immigration figures.
The other thing that I want to talk about in the three minutes that I have left is the report that came out in February called Tier 1 (Investor Route): Investment Thresholds and Economic Benefits, produced, as it was, by the Migration Advisory Committee under the chairmanship of Professor Sir David Metcalf. It had a brief to look at the economic benefits of these tier 1 immigrants. Most here will know that, under that arrangement, if one invests £1 million, one can have an unlimited right to remain in this country—in effect, becoming a permanent migrant resident in the UK. There is a residence test and you have to spend at least 180 out of 365 days here, but that, as it stands, is the rule.
I put it to the Minister that I think the Migration Advisory Committee did its very best. In its final report it expressed all sorts of reservations about some of the assumptions underlying this scheme, but one thing that it was not asked to do but which I think it is absolutely essential is done before the outcome of its consideration is finalised in any change to the tier 1 scheme is to consider the serious damage to our reputation as a financial centre from the fact that this scheme encourages some of the biggest rogues on earth to come to this country. Black money in tens of billions has flooded into the UK because this scheme gives the so-called owner of this black money the right to permanent residency here. One thing is clear from the report: people bring their money here for non-pecuniary reasons. They do so because this is a safe and stable country, it has relatively incorrupt markets and, interestingly enough—this comes on everybody’s list of factors—there is an excellent private education system to which they can send their children.
I have not got long anyhow, but I do not think that one needs to labour the point that the reputation of this country, through all the awful things that have happened in the City in the past six or eight years, is already seriously damaged. In looking at the report of the Migration Advisory Committee, the Government should look at the whole issue of due diligence to make sure that money that comes in is good money and not corrupt money, and is properly owned by the people who invest it here.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for the opportunity to participate in this debate. I want to talk about a single, shocking and very recent case of the American organist, Cameron Carpenter, a musician with a global reputation, whose performances include one at the Proms here in London in 2012. According to his testimony, which he put on his Facebook page, he arrived at Birmingham Airport at 10.30 at night on Monday last week to prepare for a concert on Wednesday 19 March at Birmingham Symphony Hall. Tuesday was to be his rehearsal time. He intended to come in on the permitted paid engagement scheme. My understanding is that UK Visas and Immigration officials at Birmingham did not know about the PPE scheme. He was held for seven hours by the security firm Tascor in a brightly lit room with interviews and fingerprinting during the night, and at 7.05 in the morning was escorted by armed guard on to the first plane back to Berlin.
At this stage, I think, most people would have given up. However, Cameron Carpenter is a resourceful man, who was—and I quote from his blog—
“consulting all the way”,
through his flight,
“with some of the best management the world has to offer”.
He goes on to say:
“What would become of artists not so fortunate as I am to have such representation, I fearfully wonder”.
Yes, what indeed?
What happened next was that, after landing in Berlin, he had a shower and caught the next plane to Heathrow. At Heathrow he was also detained for a shorter period but finally allowed in on PPE, as, of course, he should have been in the first place.
To my mind, there are three issues here, which are also of more general relevance. The first and most serious is that this is more than the heavy-handed treatment which we know occurs and has indeed been meted out to other artists visiting the UK. This is quite simply abuse. Cameron Carpenter arrived late at night, and was subsequently subjected to all-night sleep deprivation. The question has to be asked why a security force, Tascor, is involved in such circumstances at all. This person is clearly not a terrorist—and indeed it should not matter whether he was in the right or not. This is abuse that should not be happening to anyone who has been detained. Has this become a part of Britain where we have thrown away the principle of innocent until proven guilty, where, as long as you remain detained and beyond, you are treated as a criminal? Well, the answer is, of course, yes.
In my estimation this is unacceptable, and it raises questions about accountability. The Minister may not be able to give me the answer now, but I would request a Written Answer, placed in the Library about who is precisely responsible for what and accountable to whom, including Tascor’s relationship to the new immigration bodies at each stage of such a process as I have described. This is an important matter that needs to be sorted out urgently.
Secondly, there is the question of competence—or rather incompetence. The Minister may recall the debate we had just over three years ago, which he answered, where a real concern was expressed about the repeated poor treatment of artists visiting or trying to visit this country. The Manifesto Club, English PEN and others worked hard to have a change in the system, and we were pleased that the Government responded to these concerns with the introduction of PPE outside the points-based system in 2012. But this was two years ago. By April 2012, UKBA officials at every single port of entry should have been fully apprised of the scheme. I ask the Minister when border officials will be properly informed about PPE.
Finally, there is the matter of our reputation on the world stage. That a world-renowned artist has been subjected to this form of treatment is an absolute scandal in itself, although Cameron Carpenter’s experience, unfortunately, does not exist in isolation. As we know, there have been numerous incidents in recent years, including the case of the Sachal Jazz Ensemble, which the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, raised in an Oral Question in December. But there is also a basic, bureaucratic stupidity about this, which UK Visas and Immigration must address. A couple of minutes on Google will tell anyone who Cameron Carpenter is and what his status is.
In the Government’s favour—and I am very grateful in this respect for the conversations I have had with the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, and those conversations that I and others have had with the Home Office—I appreciate that we are in a period of transition. I hope very much that the Government can promise that there will be significant change for the better, and that this kind of unacceptable treatment will be consigned to history.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I associate myself very closely with all that has been said, although the second half of the contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, focused a bit too much on mammon for my level of expertise. However, I take him as an authority on that aspect. The introduction the noble Lord, Lord Steel, gave, was powerful and shocking in equal measure, and made the case on its own. I can say to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, that I am aware of the Hereford situation; indeed, clergy are among those who are able to come under the scheme she mentioned.
I have been looking at the painting up there; we often have it above us in this Room without realising that it portrays an innocent and rather vulnerable girl there who is being misused by the authorities of the day—a rank case of injustice. I have never sat here debating a subject more relevant to “The Judgement of Daniel”, the painting we have had above us all these years.
As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, says, we could talk about a whole range of things, but I will talk about how this impacts upon the church in particular. The church is an international body, and intrinsically so: Christianity spread through missionaries travelling to other countries. A great deal of interchange has ensued over the years in both directions, which has caused no difficulties but has been a source of mutual enrichment in all sorts of ways. New rules, as well as the inefficiencies and delays in the system, are now making things very problematic.
I will take an example, not from the Church of England but from the Salvation Army. Last year a British Salvation Army minister, if I may call him that, married someone from outside the EU, but could not return with her from his honeymoon because while he was abroad the rules had changed, and the salary—or stipend—he had from the Salvation Army did not meet the £18,000 threshold. The fact that he was given a house and a car was not apparently taken into account, so he was allowed back in but his wife was not. It was an awkward choice; they simply ended up going somewhere else, abroad, to work with the Salvation Army where they were welcome.
Another area of growing difficulty is exactly that of obtaining visas for people who are of relatively poor means themselves to visit the UK under the various partnership arrangements that exist. Most of the 43 English dioceses have active partnership arrangements with churches abroad, often in Africa because of the links between the church in this country and Africa. Again, that provides huge mutual enrichment, and Africa needs that more than anything, not least at present.
In Africa, the level of documentation we take for granted just is not there. People do not always have birth or marriage certificates, or bank accounts so that they can demonstrate that they have the money we expect them to have. It is a different culture—a different world. A visit from someone who comes from one of those overseas churches will typically be paid for in advance, and underwritten and guaranteed by a perfectly reputable body—I hope that the Church of England can still count as a perfectly reputable body—which will pay its debts if necessary. I put the question to the Minister: why should there be any difficulty? What has happened to cause all those difficulties? There should not be a problem. Can the Home Office give us a single example of somebody who has come on one of these short-term visits and who has not gone back when they have been sponsored by one of the mainstream churches? That is the question, exactly in the spirit of the introduction the noble Lord, Lord Steel, made to this debate.
I will finish with an example in a slightly different form, from my own diocese, relating to someone from Zambia. He came to the UK—I think he may have been in the UK beforehand, perfectly legally, but was then sponsored for ordination and studied that here at one of our theological colleges. He and his wife wished him to be ordained and to serve a title of curacy in this country, and I was delighted to offer that to him. He has had a splendid two and a half years’ curacy in one of our parishes. In the mean time, his wife has been training as a nurse, paying overseas fees; the money has been got together and they are paying every penny they can out of his stipend towards his wife’s fees for the nursing course. I hope that, in due course, they go back to Zambia. In many ways, it would be a good thing if they took back the skills that they have learnt here. But, equally, if he wants to spend more time working in this country, that to me is a thoroughly good thing that should also be possible.
However, when we try to get the visa and immigration authorities to tell us what we have to do as a diocese and what the conditions are, we find that letters get lost. My colleague who deals with this is in despair. We write letters but nothing comes back. Time is ticking away and the training curacy of the chap I am talking about is coming to an end. I want to know the conditions under which I can offer him a post. I need some advice on that from the immigration authorities. Even if the advice is that the rules say he cannot stay here under any circumstances, at least that would be an improvement in that we would know where we were. I think that it should be possible for him to be offered the post, providing there are no other applicants, but getting to the starting gate with the authorities is extremely difficult. Part of the problem is that the church does not “tick the boxes”. Clergy are treated as if they are just factory workers or employees of any sort. We need a lot more flexibility, sensitivity and common sense in the system.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I commend the noble Lord, Lord Steel, for raising this issue today and for his introduction to the debate. He highlighted the danger of losing sight of the personal or wider impacts that policies may have, particularly when they are ineffective or inefficient or, as he said, impractical or dysfunctional.
This has been a wide-ranging debate in which we have benefited from noble Lords’ expertise. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, spoke modestly of his involvement with Eurotunnel, and the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, spoke of his experience of dealing with overseas students. I would like to pick up on a few of the points that were made.
As regards overseas students, I have never understood the reasons for a net migration figure. The fact that many professional people are leaving the UK and there is a big reduction in the number of overseas students coming here and paying fees constitutes a success in the Government’s mind because it reduces the net migration figure. That is a nonsense.
It is good that we are discussing this Question today against the background of the Immigration Bill that is going through your Lordships’ House. One of the issues that concerns me, and which has been brought home in this debate, is the Government’s proposal to abolish the right of appeal against visa decisions and to rely instead on administrative review. The Minister is aware of our opposition to that stance and he understands the reasons for it. It is clear from the reports of the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration and from other reports that the Home Office is struggling to deliver a quality service and that there are huge casework backlogs, as we have heard today. Therefore, a system which allows for appeals, and for mistakes to be addressed, is even more important when we recognise the problems in the current system.
I have gone through the relevant figures before and do not want to do so again. However, more than 12,500 asylum cases are still awaiting an initial decision. That is a 17% increase on the previous quarter. The Home Affairs Select Committee revealed a previously undisclosed backlog in permanent and temporary migration decisions of 190,000. I understand that the total immigration backlog at the end of 2012 was some 502,000. The Independent newspaper has calculated that it will take 40 years to clear that backlog.
However, more important than the backlog is the quality of decision-making. The latest statistics reveal that 32% of deportation decisions, 49% of, managed migration appeals—that is, work and students appeals—and 49% of entry clearance applications were successfully appealed last year. We have heard that for some people appeals are impossible—the opportunity to appeal is just not there. Given that most of the appeals allowed are due to simple casework errors in the initial decision-making, to remove the right of appeal and go for administrative review seems to us totally wrong. The Government’s priority should be to improve the efficiency of these initial decisions, make sure that there is no need for appeals and try to ensure that we have a fair and effective system. As we have heard, we are judged on how our visa system operates for people across the world. Mistakes can have serious implications for the individuals concerned.
The cases mentioned by noble Lords raise a number of issues. The noble Lord, Lord Steel, referred to a particularly pertinent issue concerning a private company undertaking such checks—the same issue raised in the case referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty. I am curious as to the standards that the Government expect private companies to adhere to, and whether they are open to the same checks and monitoring that they would have been had they remained government agencies.
We have had some powerful examples of what seem to be incredible and unreasonable decisions that have been hard for noble Lords to understand. The Minister could take away from today how many of these cases are known to noble Lords personally and how many other noble Lords and members of the public can give similar examples. I have dealt with two similar cases which I find incredible. One is a small business man known to me personally. His wife has been applying for leave to remain for some time. I have confirmed that I know it to be a genuine existing relationship. They have a child. He has been back and forward to get a decision made. The latest news is that they have given her indefinite leave to remain because they have lost the documents, but she has not heard anything about it yet, so that poor family is living in limbo.
A friend of mine who has businesses in this country and in India wanted to bring the man who cared for his father when his father was dying over for a holiday to thank him. Immigration did not understand why he did not have enough money in the bank. He had a job, a home and family to go back to, but he did not have enough money in the bank. Every time he appealed against the decision, he had to make a journey of several hundred miles. There has to be some humanity, some practicality and some common sense in our decision-making.
To come back to the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, I am also aware of the case of Cameron Carpenter. It worries me enormously that people acting as immigration officials on behalf of the Government do not seem to know what permitted paid engagement is. An important point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, was that our reputation could be damaged by incompetence and the cost to the system. That is the message that we should take from today: we want a fair, efficient system and one that works in our interest. There are some wise decisions and some wacky ones, such as chipping us all as we leave the country, but I hope that the Minister will assure your Lordships today that he will give all those matters his full consideration.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lord Steel for initiating this Question for Short Debate. It is vital for the security and prosperity of this country that we have a visa operation which is effective and transparent.
The subject for this debate is quite wide-ranging but I have very good advice. As we have heard, it will take some time completely to fix the system but I think it is important that we acknowledge the progress that has been made since we took the decision to scrap the UK Border Agency almost exactly one year ago. The international visa operation, as many, including the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, have recognised, is working well. Our standard service compares favourably with those of competitor countries but I accept that the system is not error-free. Last year, we processed almost 2.5 million applications overseas. The average processing time was seven and a half days—well within the service standard. This is despite significant rises in demand from some of our key growth markets. For example, last year in China applications rose by almost 40% on the year before.
We are also increasingly leading the world in the provision of high-quality tailored visa services. For example, we now offer priority three-to-five-day services in 70 countries, which will be expanded to more than 90 by the end of the year. We have also introduced a same day, super-priority service in India, which will be rolled out to China this summer and other countries later this year.
The Committee should be aware that none of this is at the expense of security. In the past year, we have interviewed more than 100,000 people applying to come to the UK as students to check that they are genuine and have the required language skills. I will say more about the speech of my noble friend Lord Phillips in a moment. We are also doing more detailed checks, including sharing details with other government departments, such as HMRC, to deal with those applicants who seek to abuse the immigration system.
This is not only overseas. We are also increasing interviewing and the checks that we do in our in-country operations. This is the part of the business where we have had the biggest problems in the past. Under the UK Border Agency, sadly, a lack of proper planning meant that there simply was not enough resource in place to deal with the level of work coming in. A lack of proper performance management arrangements in business areas meant that this was not spotted until it was too late, leading to the build-up of backlogs. The UK Border Agency’s closed, secretive and defensive culture then meant that Ministers and Parliament were not told the full extent of these problems early enough.
All of this, I am pleased to tell the Committee, is changing. The Government’s decision to scrap the UK Border Agency’s agency status means that UKVI sits in the Home Office and reports directly to Ministers. We have also brought in a completely new leadership team, led by Sarah Rapson, who was previously the chief executive of the successful passport service. It is instilling a much greater grip throughout the business and is committed to creating a culture which is consistently competent, high performing and customer-focused. We are seeing the results of this in performance improvements. Backlogs in temporary and permanent migration are down significantly and we are on track to completely clear workable cases by the end of this month. We have brought in new service standards that are much clearer about what customers can expect. If one was to apply today and complied with the rules one could expect to get a decision within the service standard.
We have also focused on clearing smaller backlogs that previously were not given enough priority. These include MPs’ correspondence, complaints and FoIs where poor performance contributed to a sense that the organisation was neither open nor transparent. We are clearly not yet perfect in the way we respond to these but the situation is improving. At the same time we have made significant service improvements. We have overhauled our same-day premium service centres by extending opening hours and tackling appointment harvesting. As a result, availability has increased and customer satisfaction with the service here is regularly at more than 90%. We have also launched new services such as premium postal and taken steps to tackle issues that customers have complained about, such as the fact that we hold on to their passports while we make a decision, when we do not need to.
There are, of course, still challenges. As we said when we abolished UKBA, it will take many years to completely fix the system. Some of our big challenges are in asylum, appeals and litigation, where we are seeing big rises in volumes. This is driven by world events and the work we are doing to clear backlogs and tackle abuse. Dealing with this will be a priority next year and we are bringing in extra staff to do so. We will also be continuing to focus on making sure that we are making consistent and quality decisions about people’s right to come and stay in this country. It is important to recognise that this is not always straightforward and that when making decisions on applications, case workers must carefully consider whether, on the balance of probabilities, the applicant is likely to leave the UK when they are required to do so. I suspect that that may be relevant to the case referred to by my noble friend Lord Steel. It is a matter of judgment. That is why many appeals are successful, because it is a matter of judgment. The caseworker, on his appreciation of the evidence before him, makes a balanced judgment that the applicant is likely not to return home, but when appealed the tribunal decides that it should be granted.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I apologise for interrupting the Minister but he appears to be saying that the judgment of the caseworker is wrong in so many cases.
Earl Attlee
I am absolutely not saying that it is wrong. I am saying that the caseworker has made a judgment and the tribunal has come to a different one. The judgment they have to make is whether the applicant will return home at the end of their stay, bearing in mind the circumstances. That has to be a judgment call.
Lord Steel of Aikwood
On that very same point, what about my suggestion that the caseworker should make contact with the sponsors to double-check the veracity of their application?
Earl Attlee
I do not think I am able to respond to that question this evening but I will, of course, be writing to all noble Lords, and I will respond on that point. However, this is an issue on which I have been in discussion with officials—fairly vigorously, on my part.
My noble friend Lady Neville-Jones referred to correspondence. We need to ensure that Peers’ correspondence is being dealt with correctly and to look at the specific issues raised. I will write to her, which I am sure is what my noble friend expects. From my noble friend’s experience, she will understand that only Peers and MPs can expect to receive a reply from Ministers.
The decisions made by officials will sometimes lead to situations that people do not like but we have safeguards in place to make sure that they work properly. While there is room for improvement in both the operation and transparency of UK Visas and Immigration, this should not overshadow the fact that we are making real progress. One year on, UK Visas and Immigration is both better performing and more open than what came before.
In the remaining time, I will try to answer as many questions as I can. My noble friends Lord Steel and Lady Neville-Jones raised the issue of bonds and sponsorship. The Government considered during 2013 whether to pilot a bond scheme that would deter people from overstaying their visas. We decided not to proceed. Various considerations must be factored in when considering any such new scheme. These range from administrative complexities through to issues around fairness and whether it would be open to abuse.
Baroness Neville-Jones
I do not particularly favour the bond scheme but I think that the fact of the sponsorship is extremely relevant to an application. My anxiety is that when applications are made, only the financial circumstances of the applicant seem to be taken into account. The facts that all their costs are going to be covered and that they fulfil all the other criteria do not seem to be taken into account adequately so as to let them in. That is my worry: why is sponsorship from a reputable organisation not a sufficient guarantee, and can we not set up a system so enabling it to be?
Earl Attlee
As I said, I will be responding in detail to my noble friend but those are precisely the issues that I took up vigorously with officials.
In respect of the applicant to whom my noble friend Lord Steel referred, the applicant is welcome to make a fresh application at any time and, should he choose to make a further application, I would encourage him to address all the points made in his previous refusal. My noble friend also referred to Malawi. Our overall service overseas is good but we need to look in detail at the points that he raised. I understand his point about the loss of the visa fee but the work in assessing the application has already been undertaken and, if we were to return the fee for failed applications, we would then have to increase the fee for successful applications.
The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, made important points about international train services and HS2. Perhaps the best way of dealing with this would be if the noble Lord and I seek a meeting with my noble friend Lady Kramer, with me wearing a Home Office hat rather than a DfT hat.
In response to my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, the Committee will know that we are in the middle of the Immigration Bill. I am personally fully seized of the benefits of students for all the reasons that he gave, not least that of soft power. However, whatever the benefits of students, my noble friend cannot deny that when they are here they require accommodation and public services.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, raised appeals with regard to the Immigration Bill. I think we should leave that until the Report stage of that Bill. I am sure that the noble Baroness is looking forward to that stage.
I need to remind my noble friend Lord Phillips that the aim of the policy is to attract the brightest and best students. We continue to review our rules to ensure that we do this while discouraging abuse of all kinds. I am out of time but I will write to noble Lords where I have not properly answered their questions.
House of Lords
Middle East: Syrian Refugees
(10 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Selkirk of Douglas
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to co-ordinate with the Governments of Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt the arrangements for the long-term resettlement in the region of refugees from Syria.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, the UK has allocated £292 million to support refugees in neighbouring countries. We are working closely with Governments and partners in the region to make sure that the needs of host communities are incorporated into our programmes. We will now complement this aid to the most vulnerable and at-risk refugees by providing sanctuary in the UK, where this is the only realistic option.
Lord Selkirk of Douglas (Con)
I thank the Minister for her reply. Will she accept that there are now more than 1,311,000 children among the refugees in countries next to Syria and that their families are very anxious that their children should not become part of a lost generation? In view of this, will the Minister give support to policies such as the Jordanian Government’s national resilience plan, which involves focusing on areas with a high number of refugees to provide better access to education and healthcare, and to improved water supplies, sanitation and other basic services?
Baroness Northover
My noble friend is right. An estimated 1.3 million Syrian children are now refugees in the region. Under the No Lost Generation initiative, the UK has allocated £30 million to provide protection, trauma care and education for children affected by the crisis. We are working with Jordan to support the host communities and we welcome the Jordanian Government’s national resilience plan as part of an ongoing process of prioritising needs.
Lord Judd (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that the scale of this refugee problem is having profound implications for the populations of the countries concerned, where people see a great concentration on the refugee community, while the deprivations from which they suffer are consequently accentuated? Does she further agree that this presents a very considerable threat to stability in the Middle East and has implications for the durability of any peace settlement between Israel and Palestine? In that context, is it not essential to have a regional approach to policy as well as pragmatic work with countries one by one?
Baroness Northover
The noble Lord speaks from a great deal of experience and he is absolutely right. This is indeed creating a huge amount of instability right across the region, which is why we are looking at it in that light. That is why we are channelling so much support to the neighbouring countries in the region that are hosting so many Syrian refugees. We are acutely aware of the effect on their populations.
Lord Chidgey (LD)
My Lords, more than 2.5 million refugees have registered in neighbouring countries, and the number of internally displaced persons in Syria now exceeds 6.5 million. Taken together, that is a total of more than 40% of Syria’s pre-conflict population. More than half the refugees are children, as noble Lords have mentioned. In the absence of progress towards a political solution, the UNHCR predicts that this refugee population is set to become the world’s largest. Yet, is my noble friend aware that, so far, less than 4% of the refugees have sought safety in Europe? How do the Government therefore intend to respond to the UNHCR’s call for “much stronger international support”, clearly well in excess of the vulnerable persons scheme that began yesterday?
Baroness Northover
My noble friend is right about the scale of the challenge here and about the fact that most refugees have stayed in the region. Many of them, of course, wish to return home when it is safe to do so. That is why pursuing the peace process is the most important element here and why, in the mean time, we have to make sure that we provide as much humanitarian aid as possible. He will know that we have taken in, as of yesterday, refugees from the most vulnerable categories but, clearly, trying to tackle the crisis as a whole has to be our main strategy.
Lord Wright of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, now that it appears that the Syrian Government are increasing their control over much of the country, have we or our partners had any discussions with the Government in Damascus exploring the scope for refugees to return to their homes?
Baroness Northover
It seems to me that a few steps will be needed before we reach such a situation. The first thing is to try to get the Syrian Government to allow humanitarian access and to respect the UN Security Council resolution on humanitarian access. There are many steps that the Government of Syria can take to try to ensure that security in their country is greater and therefore that refugees would be keener to return.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, the refugee crisis is now in its third year, and certainly we are in it for the long term. The impact on host countries is severe, as my noble friend mentioned, and in particular on the political stability of countries such as Lebanon. Does the Minister agree that longer-term funding for host Governments’ authorities is necessary to ensure that their national infrastructure and indigenous populations do not suffer further?
Baroness Northover
The noble Lord is right. As I mentioned earlier, that is why we have a programme for supporting those countries; we recognise the instability caused by hosting all these refugees.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, given the large-scale dispersion, how easy or difficult is it to support those who have been victims of rape as a weapon of war?
Baroness Northover
The noble Baroness will know that my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has emphasised this in terms of how we are approaching the Syrian crisis. We are doing a considerable amount—and it is new work—in trying to support those who have suffered sexual violence in this conflict. That is so often the case in such conflicts, and this is one of the first times we are seeing whether we can gather evidence systematically so that cases can be taken and, in the mean time, supporting those who have suffered in this way.
Lord Avebury (LD)
My Lords, is it true that when choosing the refugees who are to come to this country, priority is given to those who are at present located in Egypt and Lebanon, and that Jordan will perhaps not have a share of the numbers? Can my noble friend say any more about the mechanism for selecting candidates to be brought to this country?
Baroness Northover
I am not going to comment on where the refugees are coming from. It is extremely important that they are accorded privacy and that their recovery is aided. My noble friend will know that we are prioritising women and children, particularly those who have suffered sexual violence. I am happy to supply further details of the categories. Therefore, we are looking at the cases on their merit and we will not reveal where these people have come from or where they are going at the moment.
Disabled People: Blue Badges
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Touhig
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to ensure that people whose mobility is not impaired solely by physical disability, and their carers, will continue to have access to blue badges for their vehicles when they need them following the introduction of the Personal Independence Payment to replace Disability Living Allowance.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Kramer) (LD)
My Lords, people who receive a personal independence payment because they cannot walk further than 50 metres will automatically be eligible for a blue badge. However, people who do not meet this criterion may still apply directly to their local authority to see whether they meet any of the other eligibility criteria. Whatever their disability, they may be eligible if it causes very considerable difficulty in walking.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as vice-president of the National Autistic Society. People with autism are having great difficulties in obtaining blue badges as a result of changes to the eligibility criteria associated with the personal independence payment. Will the Minister look at the guidance given to local councils on blue badges, so that we can ensure that people with cognitive impairments can park near the services that they need? Will she also agree to meet representatives of the National Autistic Society, other noble Lords and me, so that we can further this discussion?
Baroness Kramer
My Lords, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, that I would be very pleased to meet, so we will make sure that that goes into the diary. Your Lordships will be aware that, as the DWP is reassessing DLA claimants for the new PIP benefit, those who do not qualify under the relevant PIP can retain their existing blue badge until it expires so that there is a time period to get into the new programme by applying to the local authority. The department is clarifying its guidance, which is being written at the moment, to make it clear to local authorities that any permanent disability can be physical or otherwise. In other words, it need not be physical. The test is that it causes very considerable difficulty in walking; that is the qualification for a blue badge.
Baroness Seccombe (Con)
My Lords, blue badges are a very precious privilege. For my husband, they were a life changer. Does the Minister agree that there is nothing so irritating as seeing a young, fit person using a blue badge to park illegally, and is there any more that can be done to stop that illegal practice?
Baroness Kramer
My noble friend is absolutely right that abuse of the blue badge system is thoroughly despicable, and we are determined to stamp down on it very hard. This House has played an important role, as my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester brought through the House the Disabled Persons’ Parking Badges Act 2013, which enables enforcement officers to operate in plain clothes and to seize badges that are being misused by any person. That is a very significant difference. We have introduced a nationwide database so that enforcement officers can check all UK blue badge details and download a photograph of the holder at the roadside on handheld devices. There have also been a number of other regulatory and administrative changes, all of which strengthen enforcement. At this point in time they are sufficiently new that I do not have figures to indicate how effective the scheme has been, but anecdotally local authorities are informing us that it has greatly strengthened their hand.
Lord Wigley (PC)
Does the Minister realise that the person who is walking away from a car may be the parent or carer of a disabled person who has that need, and should not be subject to that judgment? Does she agree that parents and carers of children with autism or a learning difficulty, who in some cases lack awareness of the dangers of a road, should also benefit from the blue badge scheme?
Baroness Kramer
I have to confess to being slightly confused by the noble Lord’s comment if he is suggesting that carers can use the blue badge when they are not with the person who has the need. The relevant test would be that the person who is in need of the blue badge is indeed there. That is possible thanks to the new mechanisms which have been provided. I am sure that the noble Lord will join me in saying that misuse cheats everyone who needs and deserves a blue badge.
Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)
My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will agree that the introduction of the PIP has been carried out somewhat chaotically, with people waiting for ages for a decision on their application. Have the Government yet found time to identify the possible number of those who were eligible for a blue badge but who are unlikely to qualify under the new scheme?
Baroness Kramer
I do not have those numbers yet because this is sufficiently new. Currently, more than 2.5 million people hold blue badges and the vast majority of them will qualify under PIP. I should say again that local authorities will make determinations on a case-by-case basis of those people who apply for a blue badge under other eligibility criteria. We will have the information eventually, but the answer is not available at this point in time.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the difficulties that the carers of autistic adults face when trying to access regular facilities like shops and doctors’ surgeries if they cannot park anywhere near them? It may be that their son or daughter looks just like any other fit adult.
Baroness Kramer
The guidance that has been provided to local authorities, which will be looking at the applications, makes it clear that eligibility is not limited to physical constraints but can be broadened to include mental health or learning difficulties as the justification. The test will be someone’s ability to walk, and that is a fairly broad terminology.
Baroness Browning (Con)
My Lords, I refer to my interests in autism charities as set out in the register. I was encouraged by the reply given by my noble friend to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, but can she confirm that the legislative link between the higher rate of DLA and the blue badge has now been broken as far as autistic people are concerned? In renewing or revising the guidance to local authorities, can she confirm that no autistic person will be put at a disadvantage under the new scheme as compared with the old one?
Baroness Kramer
I have to say to my noble friend that the scheme is different, because the test is now related to walking rather than to the benefit that underpins it, except for the, frankly, fairly substantial category of people who are eligible for PIP and who cannot walk for the relevant 50 metres. It is different in character, but it will be for local authorities to identify where the difficulty in walking exists. As she will know, there are some autistic people for whom this is not an issue, while there are others for whom it is. Making the distinction will fall to local authorities.
Energy: Green Deal
Lord Greaves
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress is being made with the Green Deal.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Baroness Verma) (Con)
My Lords, more than half a million homes so far have received energy efficiency improvements as a result of the coalition’s pioneering Green Deal and the energy company obligation programmes. We expect this figure to grow substantially as the programme progresses and the Green Deal market continues to expand.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, most of those improvements have come from the ECO scheme. By the end of February, some 163,000 Green Deal assessments had been made, but only 1,754 Green Deal work plans were either in progress or had been completed. That is a take-up rate which my right honourable friend Ed Davey has described as “disappointing”. Do the Government agree that the Green Deal is too complicated, is being poorly promoted, and is beset by the number of cowboy operators who are hovering around it pretending to carry out government schemes? What are the Government doing to get this scheme off the launch pad?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I disagree with my noble friend that the scheme is not working. He will be aware that this is a 20-year programme and that we are learning more as it rolls out. We have listened carefully to industry and consumers, and as a result we have streamlined the Green Deal. We have brought in some online home energy tools to better guide consumers and we are providing advice through the Energy Saving Advice Service to help people find local offers. Further, we have supported the Green Deal Finance Company in its work on simplifying the financing process. There is a lot going on, so I disagree with my noble friend that the scheme is not working. It is just taking a little time to ensure that people understand the benefits of the Green Deal.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, has my noble friend seen the announcement this morning by SSE, one of the major utilities, which has decided to implement the declared policy of the Opposition and freeze electricity prices to 2016? Would she like to comment on the consequences, which are the loss of 500 jobs and the cancelling of a number of investment projects? Is that not a glimpse of the future were we to get a Labour Government: lost jobs, lost green projects and lost investment in our country?
Baroness Verma
My noble friend makes some important points. He raises the fact that energy companies, if we work with them, will recognise that competition in the marketplace is driving them to adjust the way they price. If we listened to the party opposite I think we would have even fewer than six companies.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan (Lab)
How much have the Government spent on promoting the Green Deal, to the satisfaction of 1,754 people as of the end of last month?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, more than 500,000 measures have taken place. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, expects a 20-year programme to produce an overnight success. This Government have decided to adopt long-term plans. Unlike the party opposite, which for 13 years refused to invest in the energy sector, this Government have a plan and have introduced the Energy Act, which has put renewables and low-carbon fuels on an equal footing alongside fossil fuels.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that energy efficiency, particularly in households, is the best and most cost-effective way forward for reducing carbon emissions and lowering energy bills in the longer term, and that it is therefore important that the Government stick with the Green Deal, make it work, learn and make it happen?
Baroness Verma
Absolutely. My noble friend is right to raise that issue. Energy efficiency measures are there to ensure that we reduce costs to the consumers. I come back to the point that this Government have taken some major steps to ensure that there is investment within the sector and in energy efficiency measures. I would like to know what the party opposite would do. Would it put back the £50 that this Government have taken off?
Baroness Worthington (Lab)
My Lords, it is clear that, even in opposition, we are setting energy policy. Government statistics show that in February only 33 new finance deals were taken out. The problems with the Green Deal are getting worse, not better. Does the Minister agree that it would be helpful if the Prime Minister, rather than using instability in Ukraine to talk up shale gas, were to put more effort into promoting energy efficiency via the Green Deal, which can immediately reduce our demand for gas?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, the party opposite really does not get long-term investment in the energy sector. To bring Ukraine into a Green Deal question is a little far-fetched.
The Countess of Mar (CB)
My Lords, does the noble Baroness agree that the homes that would benefit most from the Green Deal are largely owned by elderly people who do not have a long-term view because they are probably not going to live long enough to make the repayments? How are they going to deal with that problem?
Viscount Ridley (Con)
My Lords, has my noble friend shared the same experience as me at the weekend: the telephone ringing at lunch time and an automated message telling me that the Government want to give me money to prevent climate change through the Green Deal?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, wherever information is coming from, it is a really good deal and I suggest that my noble friend take it up.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)
My Lords, would the Minister accept some gently given advice that Question Time is for questioning Ministers, not for Ministers to question the Opposition?
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I know what Question Time is for, which is why I come very prepared to answer the questions.
Higher Education: Student Loans
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they propose to take over the potential impact on university funding arising from lower than expected repayment of student loans.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, government reforms mean our universities are now well funded, and this has been sustained through the recession. Overall, university income continues to increase, with a high-quality student experience. As has always been the case, estimates of loan repayments will continue to take account of the latest macroeconomic forecasts. It is noteworthy that application rates for 18 year-olds and, in particular, those applying from disadvantaged backgrounds in 2014 are at an all-time high.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I do not think that the Minister has answered my Question. Will he not accept that university funding is now in some disarray? We have a former special adviser to David Willetts, the Universities Minister, confirming that there is a huge funding gap—just as we warned the Government, when they increased the fees, that they had overestimated the repayments that they would get. On the one hand we have David Willetts, who will not rule out a further increases in fees, and on the other we have Nick Clegg, who said yesterday that there is,
“no need for a further increase”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/3/14; col. 142.]
We understand that this may be yet another example of the coalition’s conscious uncoupling but will the Minister, for whom we have great respect, take the bull by the horns and make it absolutely clear that the Government rule out any further increase in university fees?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The noble Lord always adds colour to Question Time. The principle behind our reforms, as I have said already, was to put higher education on a sustainable footing for the long term, coupled with a rebalancing. This was of course, as the noble Lord will know, in response to and following the recommendations made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne. I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, who set up that particular review. As for his question on decoupling and coalition, in coalition, sometimes you agree, sometimes you disagree and sometimes you agree to disagree. That is called healthy coalition government.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me that, in the days when universities were funded through grant and not student loans, the Government could recoup none of the money that was given in grant? Even if we do not now recoup the whole 100%, we and the universities are still much better off all the time.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
As ever, my noble friend speaks with great experience in this area, and she is of course correct. If we look at the previous quarter, in which the overall university funding pot for this year has now risen to more than £29 billion, and compare it to just a few years ago, when the funding was £12 billion, that shows once again, as I have said already, that our universities can now benefit from sustainable long-term funding.
Lord Morgan (Lab)
My Lords, is not the Government’s policy on university finance a total shambles? First, it costs taxpayers more than the system that preceded it. It also imposes extreme burdens on young students, does not guarantee—contrary to what has been said—a stable level of funding for universities and offends against both social justice and managerial efficiency. Should not the Government, including their unhappy Liberal Democrat component, think again?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
First, I assure the noble Lord that we are all happy here on the Front Bench. I disagree with the noble Lord and he is, in fact, incorrect. The reforms we have brought forward are not returning less, as he suggests, than had we not made them. He should check his facts there. They say that the proof is in the pudding; let me share some facts here. According to the Association of Graduate Recruiters, in February 2014, graduate jobs were up by 10%. BT, for example, announced 1,000 new apprenticeships, including graduate jobs. Employment rates for young people holding first degrees are now at their highest level since the second quarter of 2008. That is a success story.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I share the Government’s view that the higher education sector is in remarkably good health given the recession. However, does not setting fees at £9,000, which is far higher than fees in any other European country, imply a loans system that has its own element of generosity, including a repayment starting point of £21,000, rather than the original £16,000?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The right reverend Prelate raises an important point. I am sure he is aware that the Government have ensured that those universities that have chosen to raise their fees to the £9,000 limit have suitable access agreements so that those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds are given the opportunity to go to university. The Government’s policy remains that access to a university education should be based not on someone’s ability to pay but on their ability.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister please confirm that no current student has to pay anything under the present scheme and that repayment starts only after they start to earn £21,000 a year? If there is concern about the repayment rates, would it not be more sensible to review these after three years of the scheme running, in 2016, rather than after just one?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
My noble friend is spot on. She mentioned the threshold figure of £21,000. To reiterate, no graduate who earns less than £21,000 is required to repay their loan. She also makes a very sensible suggestion about allowing this new scheme to bed in to allow for a suitable review. This is about people’s futures. I have looked at some of the policies of the party opposite and, at the moment, there seems to be a real vacuum there.
Lord Barnett (Lab)
My Lords, are the Government planning to sell off the debts? If so, what terms are they looking for? Would the amounts be much higher than those written off at the moment, and would there be any weakening or strengthening of the terms?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
As the noble Lord may well know, in terms of the student loan book, we previously had mortgage-style loans, and they were sold off for £160 million. It will, again, be ensured that any future sell-offs always provide value for money for the taxpayer.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
HEFCE informed institutions last week that it was reducing its grants by almost 6% next year. Will the Minister confirm that, as a result of new Treasury guidance, BIS will have to provide some £50 million a year as a hedge against the currently inflated RAB charge going forward?
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
In terms of specific support for research, the noble Lord will recall from the latest Autumn Statement an additional ring-fencing until 2016. This is supported through an extra capital spend of £200 million. Taken together, over four years, we are looking at £1.6 billion in the science and research sector. Once again, I emphasise that the model that was questioned by several noble Lords on the Benches opposite would have been the same had we retained the £6,000 fee, and universities would have been in a far worse place than they are.
Immigration and Nationality (Fees) Regulations 2014
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That the draft order and regulations laid before the House on 24 February be approved.
Relevant document: 22nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 24 March
Local Authorities (Contracting Out of Tax Billing, Collection and Enforcement Functions) (Amendment) (Wales) Order 2014
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Randerson
That the draft order laid before the House on 24 February be approved.
Relevant document: 22nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 24 March
European Council and Nuclear Security Summit
(10 years, 8 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement made by my right honourable friend the Prime Minister in another place. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I should like to make a Statement on last week’s European Council and this week’s summit in The Hague, which included the first meeting of G7 leaders—without Russia—in almost two decades.
Before I turn to Ukraine, let me briefly update the House on discussions on the economy, on energy and climate change, on the situation in Sri Lanka and on efforts to combat nuclear terrorism.
Our long-term economic plan is supporting the growth of a new trend, reshoring, in which jobs are starting to come back to the UK. A recent report from the EEF, the manufacturers’ organisation, found that one in six firms had brought all or part of their production to UK suppliers over the past three years. That reshoring of jobs is vital because it means that more of the benefits of globalisation can be felt by the British people, so, with the support of the CBI and Business Europe, I argued at the European Council that we could do more to develop reshoring in Britain and across Europe. The Council agreed to encourage that by doing more to cut red tape, attract investment, stimulate innovation and pioneer more work on reducing energy costs, including shale gas.
Secondly, businesses need affordable energy prices to keep pace with their competitors, so we agreed to accelerate efforts to complete the internal energy market and we agreed to improve the energy flow across the continent with more interconnections. On climate change, we want the EU to play a strong leadership role in efforts to secure a global climate deal next year in Paris. That means swift agreement on a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union, and I fully support the 40% target proposed. At the European Council meeting we did not reach full agreement in the EU and further attempts will be made on that later in the year.
Thirdly, on reconciliation in Sri Lanka, President Rajapaksa has failed to address the issue of the past properly, so in the coming hours the United Nations will vote on a UK-sponsored resolution for an international and independent investigation into alleged war crimes. At the Council, I secured the full backing of all EU member states for this approach and it is reflected in the conclusions of the Council. At The Hague I urged leaders from countries as diverse as South Korea, Kazakhstan, Gabon and Japan to support this crucial resolution.
On combating nuclear terrorism, which was the subject of The Hague summit, the meeting reaffirmed our determination to push through reforms of global security systems to ensure that vulnerable nuclear material does not fall into the wrong hands. This initiative, launched by President Obama back in 2010, has led to a remarkable amount of nuclear material being secured and reduced across the world, which should be commended.
On Russia’s actions in Ukraine, I had four clear objectives at these meetings: to secure an increase in the number of people subject to travel bans and asset freezes; to agree specific measures in response to what has happened in Crimea; to develop more clarity on what would happen if Russia were to take further steps to destabilise the situation in Ukraine; and to join efforts to build support for a democratic, successful and independent Ukraine. I want to say a word about each.
As I made clear in this House two weeks ago, if Russia did not engage in dialogue with the Ukrainian Government, or if those talks did not start producing results, there must be clear consequences. As a result, travel bans and asset freezes have been imposed, and last week the European Council agreed to extend these measures to another 12 individuals, bringing the total to 33—broadly the same number as has been imposed in the United States. We have cancelled the EU-Russia summit, agreed not to hold bilateral summits, and decided to block Russian membership of the OECD and the International Energy Agency. In The Hague, G7 leaders agreed that there would be no G8 summit in Sochi and no further participation in any G8 activities until Russia changed course. We agreed that there would instead be a G7 meeting in Brussels in place of the Sochi summit on the same day.
I also pushed hard on the need to reduce Europe’s dependency on energy from Russia. The G7 agreed that Energy Ministers would meet ahead of the Brussels summit, and the European Council tasked the Commission to produce a comprehensive plan for reducing Europe’s dependency on Russia by June. This work is long-term but vital. It requires new gas pipelines, new LNG terminals, more shale gas, more sources from outside Russia and greater connectivity. Above all, it requires political will and I am determined that, although the UK has almost no reliance on Russian gas, we should play our part in this important work.
Secondly, it was important to take specific measures in response to what has happened in Crimea. This was a sham and illegal referendum conducted at the barrel of a Kalashnikov. Both the European Council and the G7 leaders made very strong statements condemning the illegal referendum and condemning Russia’s illegal attempt to annex Crimea in contravention of international law and specific international obligations. Both meetings were clear: the international community will not recognise either. The European Council also agreed rapidly to implement economic, trade and financial restrictions on occupied Crimea, accepting Crimean goods only if they came from Ukraine, not Russia.
Thirdly, both the G7 and the European Council sent a very clear message to President Putin that it would be totally unacceptable to go further into Ukraine. The international community remains ready to intensify sanctions if Russia continues to escalate this situation, and I pushed hard at both meetings to secure greater clarity on what this should mean. The G7 agreed that this could include co-ordinated sectoral sanctions that would have an increasingly significant impact on the Russian economy; and for the first time, the EU Council tasked the European Commission to prepare measures that would have far-reaching economic consequences. Russia has a clear choice to make. It does not have to continue on this path. Diplomatic avenues remain open, and we encourage the Russian Government to take them.
Finally, both meetings reaffirmed the strength and breadth of international support for the Ukrainian Government and their people. It is clear what needs to happen. We need a broad and generous International Monetary Fund package of financial assistance to help the Ukrainian Government stabilise and repair their economy. We need a Ukrainian Government who reach out to the regions and respect the rights of Russian-speaking minorities. We need an association agreement between the EU and Ukraine; that is now signed, but it needs to be backed by reduced tariffs on Ukrainian goods. We need international support for free elections, which enable all Ukrainians to choose their leaders fairly. Britain will support all of these things.
Russia’s violation of international law is a challenge to the rule of law around the world and should be a concern for all nations. We have to be clear how unacceptable it is and to see through these economic sanctions and consequences. Otherwise, we will face similar situations in similar countries with a similar sort of unacceptable behaviour. Britain must continue to play its part in standing up to Russia’s actions, pressing for Russia to change course and helping the Ukrainian people in their hour of need. I commend this Statement to the House”.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord the Leader of the House for repeating the Statement made in the House of Commons by the Prime Minister. In relation to the formal substance of the EU summit and conclusions, I welcome the steps that were agreed on efforts to complete the internal energy market, to improve the energy flow across the continent and to strengthen EU tax rules on the exchange of information.
On climate change, I further urge the Government, given their previous leadership on the issue, to push the EU to set out its climate priorities before the UN Climate Summit in September.
On discussions regarding the vote of the UN Human Rights Council on Sri Lanka today, could the noble Lord set out what action the Government have taken in recent weeks—and, indeed, in these final days and hours—to secure the support of other states’ council members for this resolution? This matter requires urgency. I would be grateful if the noble Lord gave some idea of the timescale for the international and independent investigation into alleged war crimes.
The main substance of the Statement is on Ukraine. This House is united in outrage at Russia’s annexation of Crimea, an action in direct violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and a breach of international law. Russia’s actions have created the most significant security threat on the European continent in decades. This fear has been fuelled by the ever more aggressive rhetoric of Russia in the past few weeks. Like my right honourable friend the leader of the Opposition, I praise the measured response shown so far by the Ukrainian authorities to this act of aggression. I also want to express support for the shared goals set out at last week’s EU Council meeting of isolating Russia for its actions and reassuring our allies and partners in that region.
I shall take the specific outcomes in turn: first, I welcome the signing of the political chapters of the association agreement between the EU and the Ukrainian Government. It was this strengthening of co-operation with the EU, spurned by former President Victor Yanukovych in November, which sparked the current crisis. So it is of course right that the EU should continue to make clear that these agreements are not a zero-sum game between the EU and Russia. It is essential that this agreement, which potentially opens up nearly €500 million-worth of trade benefits to Ukraine, is taken forward. It is also right that the EU now pushes ahead with similar pacts for Moldova and Georgia.
Secondly, it is vital that the international community imposes real costs on President Putin and his key supporters. For this reason, we welcome the agreement at the EU summit on extending the list of individuals targeted by visa bans and asset freezes. Yet, unlike Washington, the EU list avoided sanctions being placed on senior Kremlin figures. Can I therefore ask the Leader to explain the reasons behind this and whether the names of any senior Kremlin figures were put forward for consideration before the final agreement and publication of the EU list?
Thirdly, given that the United States has added sanctions on the bank Rossiya and indicated the economic sectors that may be targeted as part of its stage 3 approach, can the Leader provide details of what any EU measures could involve and to which sectors they would apply?
On the meeting of the G7 and the EU, Labour urged stronger action by the G8. These Benches therefore welcome the decision taken by members of the G7 to suspend their 16-year collaboration with Russia in the G8 group and the decision not to attend the planned G8 summit in Sochi in June. It is also welcome that, this week, the Russian Foreign Minister held talks with his Ukrainian counterpart for the first time since Russia’s move into Crimea. What steps are being taken to ensure that such dialogue continues between Ukraine and Russia in the weeks ahead?
Finally, given that the Prime Minister said this week that Britain and its NATO allies would help bolster the defences of the alliance’s Baltic members which have Russian minorities, can the Leader tell the House what the nature of any such UK contribution would be?
The actions of the whole international community should be designed to strengthen Ukraine’s sovereignty and democratic transition, to impose real costs on the Government of President Vladimir Putin, and to bring all sides together in a meaningful dialogue to de-escalate the situation and find a political solution. As we have said throughout this crisis, in taking this action the Government will have our full support.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I am very grateful for the overall tone of the comments made by the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition and for the substantive support that she offered. I think that it is important that the Government and the Opposition are completely aligned in our response to this crisis.
I am glad that the noble Baroness mentioned in passing work done on tax transparency. Although the Statement glossed over it, it is in the conclusions of the European Council meeting. There were some concrete steps taken at the Council by Luxembourg and Austria. It is a long-term grind to make further progress, but work is being taken forward in the Council and in the OECD. The European Council represented further substantial progress on that.
On the steps taken by the Government in respect of Sri Lanka, I know that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has worked extremely hard with a whole range of countries, both at the European Council meeting and at the summit in The Hague, to build support for Britain’s position and backing for the UN resolution. That vote is due to be held shortly and, if it is carried, as we very much hope, it is mandatory that the review to which the noble Baroness referred goes ahead. I do not have the precise timetable yet, but I am sure that it will become clear after the UN Security Council has met. I agree with what the noble Baroness said about the restraint shown by the Ukrainian Government and about the importance of pressing ahead with signing association agreements with Moldova and Georgia. Alongside the work we are doing with Ukraine on this, it is important to do the same with Moldova and Georgia and on an accelerated timescale.
The difference between the names on the EU and the US lists of travel bans and asset freezes boils down to the EU approach, which is that the individual named on the list has to have a direct, demonstrable link with the action taken in Crimea. The EU has to act under that legal process and that is why we have specifically targeted Russian politicians and those with a direct role in Crimea. The noble Baroness asked about the reference to EU sectoral sanctions and what kinds of sectors are being looked at as part of the EU discussions. The EU Council statement talks about there being a wide range of sectors, but the Prime Minister made it clear earlier that these would have to include energy, financial services, trade and arms. The important point is that the Council agreed that the Commission should start work on it straightaway, which was a good step forward. I note and agree with her welcome for the suspension of Russia from the G8.
On her final question, we also welcome, as a positive step, the recent meeting between the Ukrainian and Russian Foreign Ministers. When the Prime Minister met Ban Ki-moon yesterday he urged that further such contacts be encouraged and that the UN should do whatever it can to bring Russian and Ukrainian Ministers together.
Britain is increasing its help to the Baltic states. We are making aircraft available to them for air policing. More generally, we are striving to reassure our partners in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland that Britain, like other countries, believes in their membership of NATO and the guarantees we have given them as part of that. We will work with them to secure the future of Europe, as we have done in the past.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend share my concern about the new Russian nationality law that will give Russian citizenship to all ethnic Russians everywhere in the world? This will have profound implications for not only the Baltic states, which he has mentioned, but the central Asian republics. Although he has touched on the role of NATO, will he assure the House that the Government will now look at very concrete measures to reinforce NATO’s operational and military capabilities across the board?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I take the first point that my noble friend made. I can certainly say that, as part of the whole range of conversations that we are having and the pressure that we are seeking to apply through our involvement in NATO, we will certainly work to keep that pressure up and build as strong an alliance as we can to send the Russians the kind of message that my noble friend refers to.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, is it not clear that the worst outcome for Russia would be for it to realise, as the years progress, that it has gained Crimea by losing Ukraine? However, the development of a viable and vibrant Ukraine will be a massive challenge going well beyond issues of funding, important though they are. Did any discussions take place in the EU Council about the development of potential mechanisms to help Ukraine address issues such as corruption, constitutional development and economic development? Have Her Majesty’s Government given any thought to such mechanisms?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The noble Lord made two extremely important points. The first, on the short-term gain of Crimea and the long-term loss of Ukraine and what that means, is what lies behind a lot of Russia’s reaction.
On tackling corruption and the support one can give Ukraine to help it build a more viable future, it is absolutely right that at the European Council and in other meetings the importance of tackling corruption and giving practical help to the Ukrainians to address that problem has been towards of the top of the list of priorities. There is also the question of financial help. We have agreed to the immediate unilateral lifting of tariffs, which should lead to €500 million-worth of trade benefit flowing into Ukraine. Those concrete trade and anti-corruption measures are very much part of our overall response.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
Turning to energy issues, does my noble friend accept that while it makes obvious good sense to build a better infrastructure for energy connectors throughout Europe so that oil and gas can flow and markets can work, we need to be rather careful about allowing too much centralisation and dictation of energy policy at national level by the EU? Is he aware that the net effect of EU policy at the moment is vastly to increase coal burning throughout Europe—including a lot of lignite, which is the dirtiest coal of all—and to raise energy costs for industry to levels that are seriously impacting on jobs and investment? Should we not distinguish between the areas where we need more Europe for physical infrastructure and those where we need rather less Europe to manage a flexible energy policy that does not crucify our industries and create more fuel poverty?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree very strongly with my noble friend on that and with the distinction he draws. It is one of the reasons that, when the European Council was looking towards targets for 2030, Britain made very clear its case that any such target does not bind the behaviour of individual member states or constrain their flexibility in how they go about doing so.
The other point that emerged from the discussions, of which I hope my noble friend will approve, is the emphasis on seeking to develop other sources of energy—whether that is shale gas or other developments—which will reduce our dependency, and the EU’s dependency, on Russia, which is clearly very much to be desired.
Lord Soley (Lab)
Can we remind the Russians that they have a duty to protect the rights of those people in Crimea who do not want to accept Russian citizenship, particularly those in the former Ukrainian forces who have been forced either to leave Crimea or to accept Russian citizenship, and also to offer compensation if they are going to make them move? It is an important right which the Russians have accepted in other areas. Can we also remind some members of the UN, particularly China, that no other country will sign up to give up its nuclear weapons if there is a breach of the 1994 agreement that the territory of Ukraine would be respected if it gave up its nuclear weapons?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The noble Lord makes two very important points. The consequence of Russia’s actions is that, in any international relationship of that sort, why would anyone believe its word, given that in 1994 it freely entered into the negotiations that the noble Lord mentioned, which guaranteed the integrity of Ukraine and the future of its nuclear weapons?
Lord Lawson of Blaby (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the Prime Minister’s recognition that it is necessary and desirable to press ahead as fast as possible with the development of the UK’s indigenous shale gas resources, not merely because it will be good for the economy, but on geopolitical grounds because it will lessen the West’s reliance on Russian gas. However, is it not shameful that so far there has been only one exploratory well drilled in this country and that the industry is clear that the reason for the snail’s pace of progress is the mind-boggling bureaucratic complexity of the regulatory system in this country? Is it not time that the Government put their money where their mouth is and sorted this out?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree with my noble friend’s point on the contribution that shale gas can make to the geopolitical balance of power and to increasing our collective independence, which I think is absolutely right. I also agree with him about the other benefits that it could bring to the economy, and the sooner we can crack on with it, the better.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
In addition to the issues of government capacity mentioned earlier, there are also long-standing issues here about the relationship between the majority and the minority in Ukraine that were not resolved and are at least partly behind what has happened over recent weeks. Those issues exist also in Moldova and a number of other places in that part of the world. I wonder what the Government are doing in the EU, and perhaps through the OSCE as well, to try and get more urgency into discussions about those conflicts that are in abeyance but are still there under the surface, in order to avoid a similar situation happening elsewhere.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I accept the force of what the noble Lord says, and as I said in my reply to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, so far as Georgia and Moldova are concerned, one of the ways in which we are seeking to take that forward and accelerate it is by bringing forward the signing of the accession agreements. I very much take the noble Lord’s point and we need to address that in every way we can.
Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
May I ask the Minister two quick questions? First, with regard to the Nuclear Security Summit, can he say whether there is any movement forward whatever in the negotiations on the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty? Clearly that is a crucial part of controlling nuclear materials—where they go and so forth. Secondly, on the issue of the rather more generous procedure that we have adopted towards giving visas—particularly for people who are interested in doing business in this country—will the Home Office take a very careful look at those visas if they are being offered to Russians, to make sure that they are not Russians who have supported the things that the Russian Government have recently done?
Lord Hill of Oareford
On the second point, I am sure I can give that undertaking in the sense that clearly the Government want to make sure that whoever ends up being on their list of those proscribed under the travel bans or has their visa turned down, that is an appropriate list and we will consider all the people who might potentially be on it. I do not think that the last word on this subject has yet been spoken, so I take that point.
On my noble friend’s first point about the detail and progress the Bill has made in the Hague on nuclear matters, I will need to talk to brainier people than me to find out whether the specific point she raised was indeed covered and whether any progress was made there. As I understand it, the main focus of the discussions was on seeking to take further steps in tackling potential terrorism threats. I will follow up that point and perhaps we can have a word once I have written to the noble Baroness.
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, the summit has rightly concentrated on containment at this stage, but clearly prevention would have been very much better. Should we not learn very quickly the lessons that have brought this to pass before Russia exploits the protection of new-citizen ethnic minorities in other neighbouring states? Can my noble friend therefore tell me and the House when Her Majesty’s Government were first aware of the threat that this takeover was going to take place? Secondly, what steps did Europe and this country take during the vigorous courtship of the Ukraine in trade and economic terms to discuss the terms of this with the Russians and reassure them as to the extent of our intentions? Finally, the whole of history shows that the only way to prevent the use of military force by an aggressor is to have an equivalent or nearly equivalent force oneself and to be seen to be ready to use it. The way to prevent a war—to not have to fight a war—is to be evidently ready to do so. Are these lessons being taken on board?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I can tell my noble friend that those lessons are being taken on board, which is why the range of measures that has been taken has been taken. The Government have sought a balanced and phased response to the situation as it has developed, ratcheting up the pressure over time as necessary. On the build-up to the current situation—what happened at which point—the truth is that it developed extremely quickly, and the EU and others have had to respond equally quickly as it has developed. However, I understand the burden of my noble friend’s points; that is why NATO and the security that it can offer are so important in this context.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords, further to the answer that the noble Lord has just given, is it not true that Russia had made clear for years that it could not and would not tolerate Crimea coming under the sphere of influence of the European Union? Was Brussels therefore wise to offer Ukraine an eastern association agreement, complete with defence aspects? Surely the EU has thus caused the present crisis, and not Russia.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I know that the noble Lord is often ready to blame the EU for a whole range of matters. However, it is hard to argue in this case that the situation that has developed, with the aggression shown by Russia and its breaking of international treaties freely entered into in the past, can be laid at the door of the EU.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, was not in the Chamber for the Statement that was given by the Minister at the beginning. It is therefore a bit rich that he should come in.
Lord Jopling (Con)
My Lords, on the importance of making available non-Russian sources of hydrocarbons, what thought was given to and what proposals made about the importance of Georgia? If we wish Kazakh, Azeri or Caspian hydrocarbons to be available to Europe, it is essential, bearing in mind the impasse between Azerbaijan and Armenia, that new pipelines through Georgia are made available so that those hydrocarbons can flow without going through Russian territory.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, there were certainly a lot of discussions about how to address the kind of issue to which my noble friend refers—how to improve the flow and tackle some of the problems by increasing interconnections. On the specific examples that my noble friend gave, I would be very keen to talk to him. Perhaps we can discuss that further.
Lord Goodhart (LD)
My Lords, as I said to Members of your Lordships’ House some days ago, Russia should be allowed to support Crimea. Crimea is a body that has been separate from Ukraine for more than 200 years, and Ukraine has dealt with it in a careless and unsatisfactory way as a part of that country. Ukraine took over patronage of Crimea from Russia only in the 1950s. In all reality, Crimea has been entitled to take part in what has happened in the past few days, and it should be allowed to continue to do that.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I have to say to my noble friend that that is not the view of Her Majesty’s Government or of most people in this House. Whatever the history—and I accept my noble friend’s point about the history of the region—the fact is that agreements entered into freely under international law have been flouted. The basis for the so-called referendum was illegal and illegitimate, so I am afraid I cannot accept the point that we can allow these things to stand.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)
My Lords, instead of expelling Russia by calling a special meeting of the G7, would it not have been wiser to call a special meeting of the G8 and allow the Russian President, Mr Putin, to give his point of view and be challenged on it? Secondly, was it wise for the European Union to intervene in the uprising or demonstration—call it what you will—handing out goodies and European flags? Was that not likely to frighten the Russians, who believe that the European Union has expansionist policies to the east? Finally, will the EU prevail on its friends in Ukraine not to threaten to reactivate its nuclear weapons and ask Ms Tymoshenko not to threaten to obliterate Russia?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The Ukrainian Government have generally behaved with remarkable restraint during the situation and I think the boot is on the other foot. On the noble Lord’s point about the G8—or the G7—inviting Mr Putin along, asking him to give us the benefit of his views and trying to talk him out of them, would not have been a very productive exercise. It is not the case that the EU and the US bilaterally, and countries individually, have not been seeking discussions with the Russians. Throughout this process, while seeking to apply pressure, we have also sought to provide as many routes as possible towards de-escalation, which is why we have been very keen that talks should take place. However, given what has happened, the idea that the way forward is to send out messages that we consider the behaviour of President Putin and Russia acceptable, and will sit down and talk to him as though nothing has happened, is not a realistic option.
Defence Reform Bill
(10 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
16:55 - Division on Amendment 8 - Ayes: 179 / Noes: 281 - Amendment 8 disagreed.
Lord Rosser
“Annual report to Parliament on Army’s fighting power
(1) The Secretary of State shall lay before Parliament on an annual basis a detailed report on the Army’s fighting power and shall include an assessment of progress made and any setbacks incurred in implementation of the Army 2020 plan.
(2) The first of such reports shall be laid before Parliament in January 2015, no later than 31 January 2015.”
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, the parents of this amendment are the members of the House of Commons Defence Committee, the majority of whom are government MPs. At the beginning of this month the Defence Committee published a report, Future Army 2020, and its conclusions were hardly a ringing endorsement of either government policy or government competence on this issue. Referring to the Government’s Army 2020 plan, the report pointed out quite fairly that it departed significantly from the announcements made in the 2010 strategic defence and security review. It went on to say that the Defence Committee had,
“considerable doubts about how the plan was developed and tested, and whether it will meet the needs of the UK’s national security”.
It expressed surprise that such a radical change to the Army’s structure, reflecting a reduction of 12,000 personnel from that announced in the 2010 SDSR, had not been discussed at the National Security Council and added:
“Even if the overall strategic vision had not changed, as the Government claims, the military ways and means of that strategy were considerably altered under Army 2020”.
The committee said that its principal concerns were twofold. The first was that the Ministry of Defence,
“has failed to communicate the rationale and strategy behind the plan to the Army, the wider Armed Forces, Parliament or the public”.
The second concern was that,
“the financially driven reduction in the numbers of Regulars has the potential to leave the Army short of personnel particularly in key supporting capabilities until sufficient additional Reserves are recruited and trained”.
The committee pointed out in its report that the Secretary of State for Defence accepted that,
“Army 2020 was designed to fit a financial envelope”,
and expressed its concern,
“that this consideration took primacy over the country’s abilities to respond to the threats, risks and uncertainties contained in the National Security Strategy”.
It expressed concern, too, at being told that it was the,
“Ministry of Defence’s Permanent Secretary who told the Chief of the General Staff the future size of the Army under the Army 2020 plan”,
and called for an explanation of the,
“apparent lack of consultation and involvement of the Chief of the General Staff in the decision-making process that has affected his Service so fundamentally”.
Such was the committee’s concern, including over lack of,
“evidence of an active experimentation programme in the development and implementation of Army 2020”,
that it has called for the Ministry of Defence to provide,
“an assessment of how the Army 2020 plans will affect the ‘Fighting Power’ of the Army providing comparable assessments of both current fighting power and projected fighting power following the completion of the Army 2020 plans”.
On top of that, the committee came out with this conclusion:
“We remain to be convinced that the Army 2020 plan represents a fully thought-through and tested concept which will allow the Army to counter emerging and uncertain threats and develop a contingent capability to deal with unforeseen circumstances. The MoD needs to justify how the conclusion was reached that the Army 2020 plan of 82,000 Regulars and 30,000 Reserves represented the best way of countering these threats”.
The Defence Committee has said other things, also stating in its report that it remains,
“to be convinced by, the Secretary of State’s explanation as to why the reduction in the Regular Army should not be dependent on the recruitment of the necessary number of Reservists. The financially driven reduction in the number of Regulars has the potential to leave the Army short of personnel in key supporting capabilities until sufficient Reserves are recruited and trained”.
That concern is borne out by the trained strength and recruitment targets for the reserves contained in the report.
Continuing, the committee expressed concern,
“that the Army 2020 plan would unravel in the face of any further MoD budget reductions or further reductions in Army personnel”,
and concern that,
“the Defence Planning Assumptions are adequate to ensure the UK’s national security”.
It went on to express,
“little confidence in the Government’s capacity to rapidly expand Army numbers should the need arise”.
Since the Government said that Army 2020 had to work and that there was no plan B, the committee continued by saying that the Government,
“owe it to the Army to ensure it does work, but, crucially, if the situation changes, then the Government must be prepared to respond decisively by providing additional resources in order to guarantee the nation’s security”.
The committee was still not finished, but went on to comment on the Government’s amendment taken in Committee in this House:
“While we welcome the Government’s commitment to publish more data on the Reserves and to put into statute a requirement on the Reserves Forces and Cadets Association to produce an annual report on the state of the Reserve Forces, we believe the Government should go further and give a commitment to provide regular updates to Parliament on progress on all aspects of the Army 2020 plan. Oral and written statements while helpful are not sufficient; a detailed annual report on the Army’s Fighting Power should be laid before Parliament setting out progress and setbacks in implementing the Army 2020 plan. The first of these reports should be laid before Parliament in January 2015 … before the 2015 General Election and to inform the 2015 SDSR”.
The purpose of this amendment is to give effect to this conclusion reached by the House of Commons Defence Committee.
There can be no doubt about the magnitude of the changes under the Army 2020 plan. The Army 2020 document itself described the Army 2020 construct as representing,
“a fundamental and imaginative break from the way in which the British Army is currently structured”,
and said that the change was,
“as significant as any seen over the last fifty years”.
Neither did General Wall, Chief of the General Staff, dispute that the plans were radical: indeed, he agreed that they were when he appeared before the Defence Committee.
The government amendment which was introduced in Committee is now Clause 47 of this Bill. The Government had no problems agreeing to annual reports by each reserves force and cadets association on the capabilities of the volunteer Reserve Forces in relation to the enhanced duties that are being placed on the members of those forces being prepared and sent to the Secretary of State and for the Secretary of State to be required by law to place a copy of each report before Parliament.
Therefore, there ought to be no reason why the Government, as now called for by the Defence Select Committee following careful scrutiny of the future Army 2020 plan, should not also agree to provide Parliament with a similar annual report on progress on all aspects of the Army 2020 plan, with its significant changes in the future role and structure of the British Army. The report, of course, would be about the Regular Army as well as the integration of the Reserves with the Regular Army. It seems rather odd that Parliament should be provided with annual reports about the Reserve Forces and their capabilities but not receive an annual report covering the position and progress of the Regular Army which, under Army 2020, is undergoing significant change, about which the Defence Select Committee has expressed real concerns and doubts in respect both of its implementation and its implications. I beg to move.
Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)
I have some sympathy with the amendment moved by the noble Lord. I think it is very important indeed. We know that the recruitment of reservists did not get off to a magnificent start and we hope that further steps are going to be more effective. We have to watch it extremely carefully. I noticed that one proposal is to encourage those leaving the Armed Forces—the regulars—to become reservists in this case. There are some difficulties for regular serving people moving into civilian street and trying to get jobs if they say, “I am liable to go away for six months at any time”. It is not the best way to encourage a prospective new employer to offer you an opportunity. The Government have in a sense created their own problem. If the economy is improving, as we hope it is, and if employment opportunities are improving, as we hope they are, that might not make it easier to attract more reservists or to recruit people for the Armed Forces on a regular basis. Therefore, whatever one may have thought about this, recent developments in eastern Europe do not encourage one to think that this is the time to slim down on defences any further than we have done. I support the idea that we should keep a close eye on the matter and I think that the points made by the noble Lord were fair. We should pay attention to what may have been a valedictory dispatch from James Arbuthnot as chairman of the Defence Committee. I may be wrong, but I think he is proposing to stand down from that position. He has done excellent work and this may be his last report.
Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)
My Lords, the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, raises an important point. Despite a lengthy explanation, the point is whether an annual 2020 plan would help. I have some questions for my noble friend the Minister. What sort of manpower on an annual basis would be needed to prepare such an annual report and would that have any effect on the use of our fighting manpower? Will he also comment on how much information is already in the public domain? That point was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, who said that the information is available but not in a complete format. Perhaps my noble friend can say whether such an annual report, if it showed deficiencies, would aid our enemies rather than the country. I am all for transparency but we are talking about the defence of the realm.
Lord Craig of Radley (CB)
My Lords, I have one very small comment. It would seem to be quite wrong to restrict such an annual report to the Army. It would be necessary, if such an approach were to be adopted, for the report to cover all three services in full.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
I absolutely agree with my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig on that point. On reading the Defence Committee report, Future Army 2020, I was concerned to note two statements:
“We are surprised that such a radical change to the Army’s structure … was not discussed at the National Security Council”,
and,
“We note that the Secretary of State for Defence accepts that Army 2020 was designed to fit a financial envelope”.
The financial envelope includes not just the Army but the other two services. If we look at history, an annual debate was held in both Houses on the estimates for the Navy and the Army. We are therefore putting back history, as it were, if we have an annual estimate. Particularly in this case, I note the suggestion that the first discussion should be in January 2015 because, of course, when the strategic defence review 2010 was introduced it was clear that its achievement was dependent on the money that would be available in 2015. Looking around, it seems pretty obvious that that amount of money may not be available—in which case, all three services will have to face a review of the current plans.
Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)
My Lords, I very much echo the sentiments of my noble friend Lord King. I think there is a general feeling that in the latest cutbacks in the forces the Army seems to have taken a rather greater cut than the other two services. Considering that the Army has been deployed almost continuously since the Troubles began in Northern Ireland in 1969, one has slightly to question the wisdom of the Army seemingly taking rather more punishment than the other two services.
However, I do think that the Opposition have a bit of nerve in tabling this amendment, which somewhat echoes the amendment withdrawn by the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, because, at the end of the day, we are paying now for the legacy that this Government inherited when they took power at the beginning of this Parliament. If you have £40 billion of procurement that has not been funded, you obviously at that stage have a serious problem. Something went badly wrong. When the aircraft carriers were ordered by the previous Government the roof had fallen in on the economy and there was clearly no money to pay for them. It does not matter whether they were a good idea, the money was not there and the Defence Council went ahead and ordered them. For some extraordinary reason, there was no ministerial override from the Permanent Secretary saying that the money was not there. That strikes me as a very serious shortcoming in the way in which our affairs are being run. Let us face it, there is always a temptation for politicians to order things that they cannot afford. On the other hand, we look to our civil servants to preserve the integrity of the finances of the department, and that did not seem to happen. I consider that the Army is suffering from some very bad decisions that were taken in the previous Parliament and the legacy of an overhang of unfunded procurement. Savings had to be found somewhere; and it is the Army. It is extremely regrettable that the Army has to take the punishment in this way.
Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)
My Lords, I was not intending to intervene in this debate but feel that I must, in order to correct some of the myths—which is a polite way of putting it—just purveyed by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton. I was of course the Minister responsible for defence reform in the last three years of the last Government and, indeed, possibly the Minister to whom the noble Lord was referring when he talked about ministerial responsibility. I must tell him that during that time we always stayed within our annual cash limits. So far as the longer-term financing programme was concerned, we were fully and adequately funded on the basis of a 1.5% real terms increase in the defence budget, which was our policy at the time. It was a correct policy and I wish that it had been continued. It was very regrettable that this Government came in and made excessive cuts in public spending, which drove the economy down. The economy was reviving before we left office. The House will recall that in the first half of 2010 the economy grew, at first, by 0.3% and then by 0.7%. When this Government came in with their excessive spending cuts, the growth fell away again. The economy has been in the doldrums, more or less, ever since. That was a mistake made entirely by this Government.
In my view, the decisions of the previous Government on defence procurement were thoroughly responsible. It was very necessary to provide for two carriers; it is an essential arm in our ability to intervene around the world, irrespective of whether we have friendly powers that are willing to provide us with airfields a suitably close distance to where our troops might be deployed or where we need to bring influence or physical power—kinetic power, if necessary—to bear. That was a right decision.
It was a crazy decision to cancel those aircraft carriers—or, at least, to cancel the carrier strike capability of the nation for 10 years. Of course we need two aircraft carriers, because otherwise we cannot be absolutely certain that when we need an aircraft carrier it will be available and will not be in refit. The decisions of the last Government on defence procurement were thoroughly responsible. They were certainly funded. I am sorry to see that, after all the denials that have been made over the last few years by everybody who actually knows the facts, the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, should still be purveying a completely untrue account of events.
Lord Stirrup (CB)
My Lords, let me add very briefly my weight to the comments of my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig, with whom I agree. It may be worth the House reflecting, first, on the fact that the current Chief of the Defence Staff has given his view that his top concern in terms of personnel pressures actually lies with the Navy. Secondly, a few moments ago we were debating the consequences of Russia’s action in Ukraine and the importance of NATO preparedness in the face of that. NATO’s greatest weakness—and, indeed, our own—and Russia’s most likely avenue of attack, should anything go awry, is likely to be in cyberspace. Noble Lords might like to reflect on whether this country is investing enough in that area.
It is clear that this country was previously not investing enough in the defence of the realm and that, in the light of the current situation, it is not investing enough now. As my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham has said, if the Government—whoever forms the Government in 2015 and beyond—do not live up to the requirement to increase defence expenditure in real terms in that year and in each year beyond, our situation will only get worse.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever) (Con)
My Lords, Part 3 of the Bill makes important changes that have been broadly welcomed by noble Lords. They will help revitalise our Reserve Forces and, along with the other measures in the White Paper, make them feel valued and valuable and, crucially, more usable.
The changes we are making to our Reserve Forces are part of what is known as Future Force 2020, which will provide military capability in a different way from the past to deliver the range and scale of military forces and skills required. The whole of the Armed Forces, not just the Army, is being transformed to meet the likely future demands on defence. There is often a narrow focus on numbers when concerning changes to the Armed Forces. I am therefore pleased that this amendment focuses more on capability.
The changes we are making to our Armed Forces are guided by the defence planning assumptions, the unclassified version of which is published in the SDSR. Detailed assessments of our force structure’s capabilities are undertaken against a range of scenarios, but they are not put into the public domain for very good reasons of national security. In capability terms, the unclassified defence planning assumptions outline that Future Force 2020 will still enable us to conduct an enduring stabilisation operation of up to 6,500 personnel, one non-enduring complex intervention of up to 2,000 personnel, and one non-enduring simple intervention of up to 1,000 personnel at the same time.
The Army will be structured around the reaction force and the adaptable force. The former are high readiness forces that will provide the Army’s conventional deterrence for defence and will be trained and equipped to undertake the full spectrum of intervention tasks. The latter will be geared more towards defence engagement and homeland resilience, but with the ability to conduct combat operations, particularly enduring stabilisation operations. So we have designed a flexible, adaptable and capable force structure that enables the Army to meet likely future threats.
Noble Lords will recognise that there has been considerable debate about Future Force 2020. To focus narrowly on the Army is, I believe, not helpful and misleading, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, said. The other two services are vital to the UK’s defence capability. The Army cannot and does not operate in isolation, even in landlocked countries such as Afghanistan. If we are to consider the capability of our Armed Forces, we must do so in the round, collectively. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, made the point very well about the recent comments of the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Royal Navy. We expect the changes we are making under Future Force 2020 to take effect by 2020. We have acknowledged that between coming out of Afghanistan and fully implementing the Future Force 2020 changes, there is some risk attached, but asking for an annual report on the capability of the Army now would be premature and rather misleading. It is only fair to judge the effectiveness of Future Force 2020 from that year onwards.
Recognising the importance of routinely assessing the capabilities of our Armed Forces against the threats and challenges they may face, this Government instigated the five-yearly strategic defence and security review process. It allows for detailed consideration of changes in the strategic environment and the force structure required to counter the threats and issues identified. If we were to increase the frequency of those reviews to a yearly report on the Army’s fighting power, as this amendment suggests, we could reduce defence to a series of knee-jerk reactions, concentrating on only a small timescale and not allowing any kind of strategic decision-making and long-term planning.
The second reason for rejecting this amendment is that while one crucial role for the Armed Forces will be conventional deterrence, including intervention tasks should they be required, the range of tasks we ask of our Armed Forces is much broader. The armed services make a unique and valuable contribution to the security of the UK, her citizens and those around the world, through activities contributing to conflict prevention, defence engagement, involvement in international defence diplomacy and defence alliances, as well as contributing to peacekeeping, security operations such as counterpiracy off the coast of Somalia, and homeland resilience such as assisting with the recent UK flood relief work. The future force has been designed to be able to respond effectively to these international commitments and align them with national priorities. It therefore seems unhelpful to focus a report on the narrow concept of fighting power. A report focused solely on fighting power would not best reflect the development of the whole range of these capabilities.
Also, as the British Defence Doctrine points out, fighting power will always be considered relative to that of other parties. The notion of effectiveness itself will also change over time, as the strategic context and our national objectives change, making comparisons challenging. An assessment of fighting power would also represent a statement of the relative strengths of defence and could play into the hands of those who wish to reduce the security and relevance of the Armed Forces. We would therefore be unwilling to release a public assessment.
Lord Lee of Trafford (LD)
In terms of being open and honest, how is reserve recruitment going at present?
Lord Astor of Hever
I was coming on to that point in response to the point that my noble friend Lord King made.
The final issue that I need to address is the point that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser: if we are having an annual report on the reserves, why should we not have such a report on the Regular Army? The reserves are a unique set-up: part-time volunteers who juggle work, family and military commitments. In recognising the importance of the reserves and in seeking to revitalise them through the Future Reserves 2020 programme, it was considered important to have an external independent view of how we were doing because the changes impact on reservists, employers, families and communities.
The reserve associations are community-facing organisations which provide an essential bridge between our Armed Forces and the civilian population. An association exists for each of 13 administrative areas of the United Kingdom. They provide advice and support on behalf of our volunteer reserve forces and cadets, work with the chains of command of the Royal Navy, the Army and the Royal Air Force and establish and maintain links with the community. They therefore have the knowledge, skills and experience to report effectively and independently on the Future Reserves 2020 programme. Clause 47 puts that into statute. The reserve associations would not be able to fulfil that same role for the Regular Army, as that is not where their expertise lies.
My noble friend Lord King mentioned the reserves, and that recruiting got off to a bad start. My noble friend Lord Lee also asked about this. In the Ministry of Defence, we have given a lot of time to this issue. We are working hard on it. We have recently increased the bounty to encourage regulars to join the reserves, which was a point which my noble friend also made. Over the past three or four weekends, I have been out to see reserves training in Scotland and different parts of England. I can report that morale is high. The senior officers to whom I have spoken are optimistic that we shall reach the numbers that we have set out, so I am confident. I had organised for the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and two or three other Peers to visit the recruiting centre in Upavon. We had to cancel that because we had a Statement in the House, but I think that it is in the grid to have another visit there.
My noble friend Lord Palmer asked what manpower would be needed to prepare the report. The answer is a small number. My noble friend also asked what information is already in the public domain. The answer is plenty—the annual report and accounts and the Army 2020 update both cover progress in detail. He asked whether revealing deficiencies might help our enemies. We would not wish to reveal any weakness that may help our enemies, which will and does limit what we can release.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to “radical change” that had not been discussed by the National Security Council. I had better write to the noble Lord as I have quite a lot of information here that I am not going to be able to read out.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, asked whether we were spending enough on cyber. The Government have recognised the importance of addressing the cyber threat to the UK and we have established a joint cyber unit of regulars and reserves.
I hope that I have answered most of the questions, but if I have not I will certainly write. I have set out why I do not believe the amendment should be accepted and I ask the noble Lord to withdraw it.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, first, I thank the Minister for his reply and all noble Lords who have participated in this debate. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Davies of Stamford for responding to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, and do not intend to pursue it any further in the light of the response that my noble friend gave on that point.
A number of concerns have been raised. One is about the potential security implications of producing the report called for in the amendment and, indeed, the report called for by the Defence Select Committee. Since the report would be prepared by the Government and by the Secretary of State for Defence, one would assume that that in itself was a safeguard against anything being revealed that would put at risk our national security.
The issue was also raised that the report refers only to the Army and not to the other services. Obviously, that was in the light of the fact that this has come from a Defence Committee report which was geared to looking at the Army and Army 2020. Of course, if that is felt to be a major stumbling block, there is no reason at all why the Government—if that is their objection—could not come back at Third Reading with an amendment that included the other two forces. The alternative, of seeing this amendment not go through because it does not refer to the other forces, would simply mean that we end up with no report at all.
It is also worth stressing that the key element of the Defence Select Committee’s concerns was actually on the progress being made on the implementation of the Army 2020 plan. I went through the comments that it had to make at some length, because the comments were geared to real concerns about whether the plan would or could be implemented as intended and what the implications would be if it were. It was in that context in particular that the committee called for reports on the progress of all aspects of the Army 2020 plan.
I feel that I have addressed some of the concerns that have been raised. There can be no security implications when the report will be produced by the Government and the Secretary of State for Defence—they are not going to start revealing things that will be of use to those who are hostile to us. The concerns that have been expressed over the implementation of the Army 2020 plan are over how it is going to be implemented, whether it will be implemented as intended and what the implications will be. Primarily what is being sought are reports updating us on the progress that is being made and, as the Defence Select Committee said, detailing any setbacks there have been.
There are reports about what is happening with the reserves. I do not accept the Government’s argument that that is totally different from what is being asked in respect of the Army 2020 plan. They are both reports on progress being made towards implementing objectives set out for our future Army strength. In view of that, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Lord Craig of Radley
“( ) An order under subsection (1) to commence Part 1 may not be made before the Secretary of State has published a White Paper and an impact statement on any proposed Government-owned contractor-operated options compared with DE&S as modified by the Secretary of State commencing in 2014.”
Lord Craig of Radley
My Lords, the amendment relates to the commencement of Part 1. During earlier consideration of the Bill, both at Second Reading and in Committee, I and other noble Lords questioned why Part 1 should be enacted now. The Government had made it clear just before Second Reading that they did not intend to proceed with the GOCO model; instead, they would seek to strengthen DE&S—described as DE&S-plus—for the next three years, and maybe more, before reconsidering a GOCO solution.
It was explained that getting parliamentary time for a GOCO Bill at a later date might be difficult. The option of using the quinquennial Armed Forces legislation, due not later than November 2016, as a vehicle for Part 1 of the Bill might be adopted, but it could well be too early. Moreover, few would claim that a GOCO part would be a particularly comfortable companion to the Armed Forces Bill. This must be enacted before the five-year life of its 2011 predecessor runs out. Any delays in its progress through Parliament because of differences over the GOCO part would be best avoided. For these reasons, I now accept that the Armed Forces Bill would not be a suitable vehicle and that the inclusion of Part 1 in this Defence Reform Bill should stand.
However, because a GOCO model would be such a major step change in defence procurement arrangements and the timing of its introduction so undetermined, the Government agreed that both Houses should be given a legislative opportunity to reconsider Part 1 prior to its commencement. The Minister therefore added in Grand Committee the amendment that now forms Clause 50(3). This is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough.
Part 1 sets out a range of issues covering the arrangements and responsibilities of a GOCO. It contains a considerable amount of important detail; for example, on transfer of employees, financial provisions and protection of intellectual property rights. These and the rest of Part 1 are clearly essential information for any consortia that might wish to formulate a bid for a GOCO contract. In short, Part 1 is about process; it is not about principle. The principle is whether to replace DE&S-plus—not the current DE&S—with a GOCO. An affirmative resolution, the Government’s present position in the Bill, approves only Part 1 commencement and agrees the technical and administrative processes to be followed by a GOCO. This is surely not sufficient.
Ahead of passing the affirmative resolution, Parliament needs to consider as well the relative merits and risks of proceeding with a GOCO compared to those of what will be an up-and-functioning DE&S-plus. This is sometimes strangely characterised as being match fit. Would that equate to how prepared Chelsea were before thrashing Arsenal 6-0 last week, or to a joiner’s well crafted dovetail joint in a carpenter’s shop? It is not clear to me quite how MoD interprets such a vague phrase.
I turn to the amendment. The Government have acknowledged, in particular in a letter dated 19 March 2014 circulated last week among many of your Lordships by Mr Philip Dunne, Minister for Defence Equipment, Support and Technology, the need for a White Paper and an impact assessment prior to the statutory instrument. Mr Dunne says that the Government recognise that comparison between a putative GOCO and the contemporary performance of DE&S-plus is an essential prerequisite before formally approving commencement of Part 1. However, the Secretary of State has the power to set up a GOCO without the formalities of enabling legislation.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, before the noble and gallant Lord sits down, it may assist him and other noble Lords to know that the Government are prepared to support the amendment in principle and that we intend to bring forward a government amendment, achieving these aims, at Third Reading. I will, of course, respond fully to the issues raised at the end of the debate, in the usual way, but I want to make our intentions clear now.
Lord Craig of Radley
My Lords, that is obviously most welcome news and I thank the Minister and the Government for making it clear at this stage. On that basis, I will be prepared to withdraw my amendment. However, for the purposes of the debate, I beg to move.
Lord Rosser
My Lords, I speak to Amendments 10 and 11. In Committee, we argued that Part 1 of the Bill should be withdrawn, following the Government’s decision not to proceed with their proposal for handing over defence procurement to a company under contract to the Secretary of State. That decision was made following a lack of bidders. Instead, the Government announced their intention to go down the road of further developing the DE&S organisation in the Ministry of Defence by setting it up as a bespoke central government trading entity with effect from next month.
Lord Trefgarne (Con)
I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord, but I was expecting there to be a separate debate on Amendment 11 in his name. I am a little confused by the procedure that he is now proposing.
Lord Rosser
I understand that I am in order in speaking to the amendments in the group. The two amendments in my name are Amendments 10 and 11, but I will refer later to Amendment 9, which has already been moved. I have been advised that I am not out of order in making the contribution I am making, so I intend to continue.
Lord Trefgarne
In fact, it is open to any noble Lord to ask to have a particular amendment debated separately. I do not propose to do so on this occasion, but it is open to any noble Lord to do so if he wants.
Lord Rosser
I was talking about our view that Part 1 should be withdrawn and about what happened in Committee. The Government declined to withdraw Part 1. We felt, and still feel, that it should be deleted because it provides for an untested and untried major change in defence procurement which the Government do not now intend to introduce and for which they cannot and will not be able to produce any evidence that it will provide a better alternative at some time in the future than either the existing arrangements or, significantly, the further developed DE&S model, which is not even yet up and running. That will now be a matter for a future Government, if that future Government decide to proceed with the GOCO option.
In Committee, we also moved an amendment, which we regarded as very much second-best behind the withdrawal of Part 1, for a super-affirmative order which would be required to be passed by both Houses before Part 1 could be brought into force. We have included a similar amendment in the group that we are discussing. I do not intend to go through in detail the arguments that we put forward in Committee in support of the super-affirmative. They are recorded in the Hansard of the Committee stage. They set out in detail what the super-affirmative would provide for as set out in these amendments.
The super-affirmative order is not something novel. It has been used by this Government. They added the super-affirmative procedure to the recent Crime and Courts Act in respect of any future order made by the relevant Secretary of State to modify the functions of the National Crime Agency. That super-affirmative provision in the Crime and Courts Act requires the Secretary of State to consult the persons who would be affected by an order to modify the functions of the National Crime Agency and lays down minimum periods for consultation and subsequent scrutiny. It also requires the Secretary of State to have regard to any recommendations or representations made by Parliament during the scrutiny period with the subsequent option of laying a revised draft order. I again simply make the point that we are not talking about a minor change that might be made in the future on the basis of affirmative orders but about an untested and untried major change in defence procurement involving more than £10 billion of taxpayer expenditure each year.
The amendment that has been moved by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley, is an improvement on the current provision in the Bill, and we heard from the Minister—if I understood him correctly—that he will come back with an amendment at Third Reading which will be in line with that moved by the noble and gallant Lord. However, while that amendment provides for a White Paper and an impact assessment, it does not provide for an independent assessment or the involvement of the Defence Select Committee prior to an affirmative order being considered. It thus appears not to provide any minimum timescale between the production of the White Paper and the impact statement for consultation and scrutiny before any vote in Parliament.
It is worth pointing out that government departments do not always produce adequate and appropriate information to support orders they place before Parliament. We had yet another example of this only last night in this Chamber in respect of a Home Office order. Your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee had criticised the poor quality of documentation produced by the Home Office accompanying the order and had written to the Minister of State concerned to voice its detailed concerns. When the committee received the Minister of State’s reply, it found that letter equally disappointing and wrote in its report on the order being considered last night that,
“we found the letter to be no more convincing on the merits of the policy than the Explanatory Memorandum”.
Our super-affirmative would address those potential concerns about the quality of documentation as there is provision for independent assessment and the involvement of the Defence Select Committee.
I take note of the intervention by the Minister to indicate—if I can use the expression—the Government’s acceptance of the amendment in the sense that the Minister intends to come back with a government amendment which, as I understand it, will say either the same thing or much the same thing as the amendment tabled by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig of Radley. Obviously we will want to look at the amendment that the Government table at Third Reading and determine whether to support it or whether to seek to amend it.
Lord Roper (LD)
My Lords, in view of the remarks made by my noble friend the Minister in his intervention in the speech of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, saying that he intends to accept the principle of Amendment 9, I can be a good deal briefer than I would otherwise have been. Broadly, I felt after the discussion in Committee and subsequent consideration—particularly after the discussions with Mr Dunne—that it would be very important to get in the Bill the assurances about the material that the Government would produce before a decision was made on the affirmative order. That, of course, was a government amendment that was introduced in Committee after representation from a number of us that a decision should be made by affirmative order and that one could not just use Part 1 of the Bill without any further parliamentary consideration.
I believe that the situation here is the right way for us to proceed. The super-affirmative procedure to which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has just referred was discussed in some detail in Committee, and I initially saw some advantage in having a mechanism whereby one could look at this more carefully. On further examination, I took to heart the Minister’s view that this was rather a heavy way of tackling the problem, and that it would be possible for Parliament to be properly informed so that the debate on the affirmative order could be effective and efficient with the sort of procedures that are in Amendment 9. I therefore believe that Amendments 10 and 11 are too elaborate and that the lighter proposal in Amendment 9 is the one that the House, in principle, ought to accept, although of course we will be doing that at Third Reading rather than today.
Lord Stirrup
My Lords, I, too, have my name attached to Amendment 9. I do not wish to make the mistake of failing to accept yes for an answer, so I will merely say that I am extremely grateful to the Minister for agreeing to take this away. I look forward to seeing the amendment as drafted by my noble and gallant friend Lord Craig at Third Reading.
Lord Trefgarne
My Lords, like other noble Lords I have had some reservations about the GOCO proposal but I am bound to say that my noble friend the Minister has gone a long way to meet those concerns. His observations this afternoon and his acceptance in principle of the amendment proposed by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Craig, has further assisted me in this matter. That said, Amendment 11—I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, was anxious that we should discuss it at the same time—goes much too far. The GOCO proposal, which we have already discussed, is adequately protected by the steps which my noble friend has made. Therefore, the call from the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for a super-affirmative resolution is very much over the top in this particular circumstance and I hope he will not press it. The amendment will achieve nothing, save a further significant delay to a measure which all sides of the House agree has considerable merit and the potential to save the taxpayer a considerable sum in the future. I believe this super-affirmative resolution amendment was tabled only last night and I suggest that it therefore bears all the hallmarks of rather hurried drafting.
Lord Astor of Hever
My Lords, the amendments in this group deal with the issue of parliamentary oversight and scrutiny of a future decision to proceed with a GOCO. The question of what information should be available to Parliament has been discussed extensively during the passage of the Bill, and that debate has been carried on this afternoon. As I have already indicated, the Government support Amendment 9 in principle and intend to bring forward a government amendment at Third Reading. We think that Amendment 9 strikes the right balance between ensuring Parliament has sufficient information to consider a GOCO proposal and not setting undue constraints on a future Government, the Defence Select Committee or the commercial process.
Amendment 9 requires the Government to publish an impact statement and White Paper before proceeding with a GOCO. The Government have always been clear that Parliament should be able to debate and consider in detail a decision to proceed with a GOCO in future. We agree that that would be a major decision and that it is right that Parliament should have the opportunity to hold the Government of the day to account for such a decision, should they decide to proceed with Part 1 of the Bill. We have also been clear that we expect any future Government to publish an impact assessment on the options before proceeding with a GOCO and to issue a White Paper setting out those options in detail.
We have discussed the issue of parliamentary oversight and scrutiny of a future decision to proceed with a GOCO in great detail, both in Committee and with interested colleagues, and I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions to that debate.
The requirements set by Amendment 9 seem reasonable, as they would impose two statutory requirements on the Secretary of State before an affirmative order to commence Part 1 could be laid before both Houses of Parliament. That would ensure that Parliament had sufficient information to properly debate the GOCO proposal under consideration before Part 1 could be brought into force.
We acknowledge the merit of some form of statutory requirement to provide detailed information on the GOCO proposals in future and that it is reasonable to put such a requirement into the Bill. We did not initially think that a statutory requirement was necessary, but we have been convinced otherwise by noble Lords from all sides of the House. That is an example of what the Members of this House do best—ensuring that legislation is properly scrutinised, and amended where necessary. We will therefore bring forward a government amendment at Third Reading that will make it a legal requirement for a future Government to publish appropriate information on the GOCO options before the order commencing Part 1 is brought forward.
We think that Amendments 10 and 11 go too far. They would do two things. First, they would place in statute the need for a future Government to publish a number of documents before proceeding with a GOCO. Secondly, they would make the affirmative commencement order that brings Part 1 into force subject to the super-affirmative procedure.
I will deal with those two things separately. On the publication of documents, the requirement would be for an impact assessment that covers specific options. This in itself does not present any difficulties; as I said earlier, we are prepared to accept a statutory requirement to produce an impact assessment.
However, proposed subsection (2B)(a)(iii) in Amendment 10 goes too far in that it requires the impact assessment to include any options that may be recommended following consultation with the Defence Select Committee. That is a very unusual provision. It effectively sets a statutory requirement for a future Government to consult the Defence Select Committee on the way forward. Although the Ministry of Defence would, of course, welcome any report that the Select Committee produced on the department’s proposals, we need to be very careful in this House about setting out statutory requirements on a House of Commons Select Committee. The Defence Select Committee already has the power—if it wishes—to look at any aspect of MoD business and I do not think it would be right for us to tell it what it must do. It is for the committee, not us, to decide what its programme of work should be.
On the other parts of Amendment 10—which would require an independent report on the options and the Defence Select Committee to review and report on that report—again I think this is too much. I really do not see what an independent report would add to the impact assessment set out earlier in the amendment, which would already set out the issues and analysis objectively. I do not think it is right to make it a legal requirement for the Defence Select Committee to review such a report. This raises fundamental questions about fettering the ability of a Select Committee to decide its own programme of work and it would be wrong for this House to direct what a Commons Select Committee must do.
Amendment 11 would also make the commencement order for Part 1 subject to the super-affirmative procedure. This would require the Secretary of State to consult on the order, including with anybody recommended by the Defence Select Committee. This would seem completely unnecessary given the requirement to publish an impact assessment and totally inappropriate in relation to a commencement order. Super-affirmative procedures may be appropriate where secondary legislation covers significant policy matters but not in relation to commencement orders. It is not clear what we would consult on given that the order will simply say when the provisions should come into force. Amendment 11 confuses the issues. I accept that there is a need for Parliament to consider any GOCO proposals but I fail to see what would be achieved by the requirements in Amendment 11. It would not provide the House with any more scrutiny of the proposals in question and introduces an unnecessary and overly complex procedure where none is required. I must therefore strongly resist Amendment 11, which I think is both unprecedented and wholly inappropriate.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said that the super-affirmative procedure would be unprecedented for a commencement order. The other circumstances in which super-affirmative procedures are used are very different. There is no precedent for using a super-affirmative procedure for a commencement order. A super-affirmative procedure is relevant only where an order covers significant changes in policy or has significant legal effect. A commencement order does neither.
I thank my noble friend Lord Roper for his support and wise advice during the passage of the Bill. I also thank my noble friend Lord Trefgarne for his support. Given that the Government have made it clear that they support Amendment 9 in principle and that we intend to bring forward a government amendment at Third Reading, I ask the noble and gallant Lord and other noble Lords not to press their amendments in this group.
Lord Craig of Radley
My Lords, I thank the Government and the Minister once again for deciding to take away Amendment 9. I also thank very much the noble Lord, Lord Roper, the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, and the noble Lord, Lord Levene—who regrettably was not able to be present—for their support and I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Apprenticeships
(10 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Young of Norwood Green
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to increase the number and quality of apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds.
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, by our normal conventions, we would start the QSD but there was wide expectation in the House that there would be a vote now and at least half of our speakers are not present. Perhaps I may put it to the government Whip that she adjourns the House during pleasure for 10 minutes so we can all assemble for the next debate.
Baroness Jolly (LD)
I beg to move that the House do now adjourn until 5.49 pm.
Lord Bates (Con)
I beg to move that the House do now adjourn for a further five minutes.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, now that we are all sitting comfortably, we can begin. In a recent debate about apprenticeships I was accused of being churlish, so I will endeavour today to keep my criticism constructive and reasonably positive.
The beginning of March was National Apprenticeship Week. Should we be celebrating? I will give the Government one cheer. They definitely recognise the importance of apprenticeships and vocational training. There is more investment in training and I was pleased to see the announcement in the Budget. However, announcing expenditure is one thing; driving up the number of apprenticeships is the real task that we face. Surely, the major question that we need to address is the nearly 1 million NEETs in the 16 to 24 age category—those who are not in employment, education or training. I took those statistics from the Library briefing.
We can muck around with statistics, but at the end of the day that is the problem we face. Even if we look at different groups, eventually we will be faced with people looking for jobs and apprenticeships. Of course, the situation with graduate recruitment is not particularly rosy, either. However, I want to focus on the 16 to 18 year-olds because they are the most important group. If we do not find a way of motivating and incentivising them, we know their capacity to lose hope in ever gaining meaningful employment and all the bad things that can flow from that.
When the Government quote figures on apprenticeships, I have complained time and time again because they always include the over-25s. I have said that I am not going to be churlish and so I hesitate to use the word “disingenuous”. However, the figures are certainly misleading. My fear is that it could lead to complacency. Although the government statistics have shown significant growth in the number of apprenticeship starts between 2008 and 2012-13, the recent trend for numbers of apprenticeship starts for 16 to 19 year-olds has actually shown a decline in both 2011-12 and an alarming 12% decline in 2012-13 from the previous year. Those are figures from the Skills Funding Agency. In the period reported, apprenticeship starts as a whole increased by 113%, which makes you think, “Good”, until you disaggregate it. The growth in apprenticeships for the 16 to 19 year-old age group during the period was only 12%, while apprenticeships for those aged 24-plus grew by an astonishing 293%. I will come back to the question of apprenticeships for those aged 25 and over.
One of the good results of calling a debate—I am grateful to all noble Lords who have agreed to participate in it—is the briefing you are sent. I received a really interesting briefing from the City & Guilds Group. It points out that apprenticeships are still seen as being “just for the boys”. For instance, the difference between the advice received by men and women is particularly notable in the construction industry, where only 0.6% of women are encouraged to make it their career compared with 12% of men. The same worrying statistics can be seen throughout apprenticeships in relation to the advice that young women are given as opposed to that given to young men. We need to work a lot harder if we are going to encourage more young women to take up apprenticeships.
The area I want to focus on now is the construction industry. I recently received a letter from the noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, giving a breakdown of construction apprenticeships. The figures set out in his letter suggest that things are looking reasonably rosy. However, perhaps I may suggest to the Minister that he looks at a report on construction apprenticeships issued just yesterday by a cross-party group of parliamentarians. It states that some 182,000 construction jobs will need to be filled by 2018, but last year only 7,280 construction apprenticeships were completed. The report includes some recommendations that were made in the 2011 review by Doug Richard:
“Apprenticeships should be redefined. They should be clearly targeted at those who are new to a job or role that requires sustained and substantial training … There should be recognised industry standards at the heart of every apprenticeship”,
which should be linked to professional registration. The report also recommends that all apprentices should achieve NVQ level 2 in English and maths. Doug Richard thinks that apprentices aged over 25 should not actually be called apprentices. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those recommendations. The Chartered Institute of Building has talked about a 33% decline in apprenticeship starts in construction. Surely that is another worrying statistic.
The Minister should take a look at the briefing provided by the Local Government Association. I shall start with the positive. It states:
“We welcome the measure in the Budget 2014 to extend subsidies to create youth apprenticeships. However, it will not resolve the structural issue facing young people. This requires ambitious reform, bringing skills and employment services together around local labour markets”.
The briefing says that the current system is not working for 16 to 19 year-olds. The number of under-19 apprenticeship starts rose for a bit, but then declined over the past couple of years. It goes on to say that the increase in apprenticeships can largely be seen in only a small number of sectors that are generally associated with low skills. It also talks about instances of large employers using apprenticeship funding to subsidise training for existing employees, and issues with leading apprenticeship contractors effectively exploiting their workforce.
The Government are seeking to improve the qualifications and the skills requirement for apprenticeships. I am not arguing about that, but where I think that the Government do need to be careful is with regard to the new GCSE requirements in both English and maths. These are demanding requirements. It is interesting to look at the briefing from the Oxford Cambridge and RSA organisation, which says that the really important thing about getting qualifications for young people and improving their ability in English and maths, which we know is an employer requirement, is to ensure that learning is contextualised. We can see that feedback coming. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, is not present today but if you look at the success in university technical colleges, you know that that is good advice.
As I have said before, the quality of careers advice in most schools is still appalling, with very few examples of young people being encouraged to go for apprenticeships. The drive is still to push people towards A-levels even though we know that there is real need and demand for apprenticeships. What more could the Government do? Time and time again I have made the point that if the Government really want to send a positive signal to employers—boy do we need to do that as the best statistic I have found on how many employers recruit apprentices is 13%—surely it is time that they made it clear that bidders for public procurement contracts will be required to indicate the number of apprentices they are going to employ. To drive up the number of apprenticeships, as we should be doing, and to win the battle against youth unemployment, we ought in a way to be putting the country on a war footing. We ought to be determined not to have another lost generation of young people.
In the Local Government Association briefing there are some good examples of authorities such as Lincoln which has appointed apprenticeship champions and driven up the numbers of apprenticeships for those aged 16 to 18. We need to ensure that all schools, colleges and universities are themselves recruiting apprentices. We ought to drive up the number of group training associations and apprenticeship training agencies. I look forward to the Minister’s response and I thank those who are going to participate in the debate.
Lord Monks (Lab)
I thank my noble friend Lord Young for initiating this important debate. Unlike him and certain others here, I was never an apprentice but I went to a boys’ technical school and most of my contemporaries went into apprenticeships in manufacturing or in construction. A decade later I was working on the training brief in the TUC in early 1970s, and the apprenticeship system started to collapse—I do not think that there was any direct relationship between my presence in the TUC and what was happening in the country. The apprenticeship system had covered 44% of boys leaving school at the minimum age and about 4% to 5% of girls, but those numbers plummeted, particularly for boys.
Why was that? First, there was a feeling among employers that those who were doing the training were losing staff to those who were not—that poaching was rife—and the lack of a collective approach was a factor. Industrial training boards, instead of being strengthened, were weakened. I must acknowledge too that there was a growth of a youth culture of having money. If you could earn more money at the age of 16 in a labouring job than you could in an apprenticeship, the lure of the youth culture was a major factor that turned many young people away from apprenticeships. Later, other factors clicked in as universities expanded. The attractions of higher education—“uni”, as became the common phrase—became overwhelming to many young people, and was supported by parents. The privatisation of a lot of the utilities in particular, which trained more people than they needed themselves, contributed to this collapse in apprenticeships outside of some blue-chip companies and one or two exceptional industries.
We have come a long way from the apprenticeship model which has survived, albeit not without problems and pressures, on the other side of the North Sea and of the channel. I well remember a visit I made to an apprentice school for motor mechanics in Vienna, where I took part in a discussion in English with the students. I told them their English was excellent and they said, “All our drawings are in English; we have to work in English”. Their apprenticeships were done in a foreign language, which was extremely impressive and showed the high quality of the apprenticeships and the veneration of the concept which existed there. Where we have 11 apprentices for every 1,000 employees, Germany, Switzerland and, I think, Austria—as well as, interestingly, Australia, which is a different culture and more like ours in some ways—have round about 40 per 1,000 workers. Switzerland has a lot of apprentices and not so many young people going into higher education. The university route there has not got the same cachet as it seems to have here. However, we know that even in those countries apprenticeships are under pressure: a lot of young people are aiming for higher education and some employers are looking to substitute much cheaper and shorter training courses, linked to specific jobs, for more expensive ones. It is not a paradise over there, but we succumbed to these pressures to a greater degree and earlier than others.
I am also in the camp welcoming the resurrection of apprenticeships which was started under the previous Government and has been continued under this one. There is a lot to be proud of. There is a lot of agreement in this area, although from our side, as my noble friend indicated in his opening speech, we would like things to go more quickly and more purposefully on this issue. The point he made about procurement was very important—we should know what employers are doing. Looking at what training is going on and the apprenticeship model in particular should be part of the purchasing process of public authorities. Investors in People may be a very useful initiative for this purpose.
I know the Government have started to think about this, but we need to do more to make sure that the minimum wage is properly paid. At the moment, the estimate from the latest apprentice pay survey is that 30% are being paid illegally, which is a very high figure: three out of 10 kids, and in some cases adults, are not getting what they are entitled to. We also know that the whole scheme in most sectors is still geared towards white boys—if I can put it like that—rather than girls or ethnic minorities, who do not feature too strongly in quite a lot of sectors.
The other point to make is about the importance of employer and union co-operation in this area. I was very proud when I was at the TUC of being one of the instigators of Unionlearn, and of the idea that unions could use their influence to get people to have a go at learning who did not have the experience of getting glittering prizes at school and for whom learning was frightening. We could reach parts that employers on their own could not, and that relationship was very important. Although welcoming the Government’s commitment to supporting Unionlearn, I ask the Minister whether they intend to continue that commitment into the future and to give that very worthwhile and big-scale scheme the support it really deserves.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, my involvement with apprenticeships started with the noble Lord, Lord Young, a good few years ago when the Bill went through. At that time it was pointed out to me that everybody had to pass an English and maths test, and the language was, “Give the employers what they want. They want good English and maths”. I stood up and said, “What about dyslexics?”. Noble Lords said, “Of course, we do not want to remove anybody from employment here”, and I went away. I made a huge mistake that day because initially the Act stated that everybody needed English and maths, and that was seen to be the priority. It was decided that this overrode the Equality Act—wrongly and illegally—and we got ourselves into a horrible mess, which was resolved only three and a half years later during the course of a Bill. I just point out that anything, no matter how well intentioned, can go wrong, and apprenticeships are right there with everything else. Nobody intended it to happen, but then officials decided, “This is what we had said and we defended it”. Most politicians saw the mistake and said, “That cannot be right”, and then we had to fight our way—more or less machete our way—through the levels of resistance. I take a big slice of the blame pie for not coming back to the noble Lord, Lord Young, at a later stage in that Bill to demand an explanation of what should happen, but I could not quite believe that anybody would do anything that dumb. My naivety, after nearly three decades here, still surprises me.
Where are we now? We have the apprenticeship system, which takes over most of the further education training in this country. Everything is being drawn towards the apprenticeship system. Yet how are hidden disabilities and disabilities generally being dealt with in this system? People with dyslexia are the biggest group; I do not think anyone has argued about that. It is reckoned to be about 10% to 20% in certain parts of the state, but we use 10%. We still have a problem in that we have only just got the examination system to take on board that reasonable adjustments should be made to the online test to use technology that is well established in higher education. We have only just got that in. There are increasingly worrying signs that the trainers and providers within the colleges do not know what they are doing with the dyslexic in the classroom. Therefore, neither do colleges and their support work. Can my noble friend give me some idea of how this has developed over time and what pressure will be exerted to make sure that colleges, employers and trainers all understand this vast array of difficulties that they will encounter?
Why is it important here? It is because dyslexics should be overrepresented in something that uses practical skills. At the moment, in higher education you are fine; we have a very well established system there with the DSA. I declare an interest in that from one of my outside activities. However, in the further education sector we do not have that culture. It is there to an extent in schools but it is still hit and miss. If you are to get into that tough-to-reach 20%—the 20% who were not getting five GCSEs—you must be prepared to deal with these groups. You must have a very well established SEN structure that knows how to deal with young adults. If we are talking particularly about the young, we are talking about somebody who has already failed within the classroom and for whom this is a bad experience and a bad place to be. If you do more of the same, you will fail again.
What are we going to do about this? We have to try to get in here. I never wanted to become the person who has to stand up and make the same speech, or a variation on the same speech, every time we talk about apprenticeships. I am sure I could bore your Lordships’ House on other subjects with equal vigour. But we need a structure here that goes on. We have established for colleges, trainers and employers an incentive to go on, because they can get them, finally, through the exam. I deliberately concentrate on that because that was the model we went through in schools for getting through O-levels when they started and now for GCSEs, A-levels and degrees. If you have a reason to get the person through and they can pass, or stand a realistic chance of passing, suddenly everybody can buy in. That process will be quicker and easier if we insist on having decent training in that process.
We are starting on a process. The entrance-level qualifications are probably very important to this group I am talking about, so I think that level 2 has a place for getting people at least involved in their training. However, unless you can ensure that the experience of receiving training is there, you will not maximise it and get the people involved. I look forward to hearing what progress will be made, because we cannot ignore this, and dyslexics are only one group within a very large group.
Lord Martin of Springburn (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Young, on obtaining this debate. I was gently reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, that three of us taking part in this debate were all born within a mile and a half of one another: himself, the noble Lord, Lord Haughey, and I was on the north side of the river. Glasgow is also well represented by the noble Lord, Lord Macfarlane, who is a good friend and was an employer in my constituency through Diageo and employed many good apprentices.
When I had the privilege of being Speaker, I was shocked that this Palace of Westminster did not employ any apprentices. I called together the heads of the craft departments, including catering and banqueting, and asked them if they would co-operate in an apprenticeship scheme. All of them agreed to do so. The apprenticeship scheme has been very successful. I was stopped by a young person recently who told me he had applied for the Speaker’s apprenticeship scheme and had now qualified as an electrician. I asked him whether his mum and dad were proud. He said, “They were so proud on the day that I completed my apprenticeship”.
That is the important thing about an apprenticeship: it not only gives dignity to the young person, it gives dignity to parents and grandparents—everyone in the family. When you look round this very Chamber, Pugin himself was an apprentice. It was not through university that he did the marvellous things that he did here, but was because he was an apprentice. We have upholstery, carpet-laying, the beautiful Throne with the gilt decoration, the ornate brasswork—all of that can be passed on to apprentices. If they are not able to continue their employment in the Palace of Westminster, we have given them a skill that they can go anywhere in the world with, and they are able to use their hands.
I congratulate the Government on ensuring that the £1,500 can go not only to those aged between 16 and 18 but those aged up to 24. It should be remembered that some young men and women, because of circumstances—perhaps because they were not paying attention or because they could not get employment in the area they were living in—have to come into apprenticeships late. It is good that the Government have made a facility to give grants to employers that are willing to give adults apprenticeships. Why should it be only school leavers who get training in apprenticeships? It should be the case that anyone who wants to learn is never refused.
As we know, the £1,500 gives protective clothing to the young person who is employed. It is not about an employer getting something extra. Whenever they get that £1,500, it is handed over to the apprentice by giving them tools and protective clothing. I say to the Minister: I hope that the good work has continued. I hope that the House authorities remember that it would be a sad day if we were encouraging private employers to take up apprenticeships but did not do so within the confines of our own building.
I have mentioned before in supplementary questions that there are areas—in Scotland, Ireland and parts of England, such as the north-east—which are remote and rural. They may be lovely places to spend your childhood but, when it comes to getting an apprenticeship, there are not many employers around. If a trainee goes to university, there is a hall of residence. If, however, a youngster wants to get into, say, the aero-engine division of the aircraft industry, it may be that there is no accommodation for them. They may have to go perhaps 30, 40 or 100 miles away from home with no relative to put them up. I hope that we will be able to accommodate our apprenticeships and our craft apprentices the same as we do students. I do not see any reason we cannot do that. In fact, it would be a sad day if we could not.
I know that the Government and employers have a lot on their plate. In the old days, however, when you had big employers—the shipyards and Rolls-Royce, which I worked in—no one gave a great deal of thought to being self-employed because you went from one big employer to another. Nowadays, young craftsmen have to think in terms of being self-employed. I hope that, in an apprenticeship, there is some education given to youngsters to say, “Look, don’t be frightened of becoming self-employed”.
Baroness Prosser (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, would like to thank my noble friend Lord Young for securing this debate. In last week’s debate in this Chamber on the future of employment, among others the noble Lord, Lord Giddens, addressed your Lordships’ House and suggested a slightly scary scenario relating to the growth in the influence of technology and the use of robots. He set out what this would mean for the future job prospects of today’s and tomorrow’s youth. I am not going to concentrate on that particular dilemma, although I hope someone in Government or in a think tank is doing so. Suffice it to say the world of work has already been turned upside down with the help of technological innovation and the influence of globalisation. Without looking at the changes yet to come, we know that the range of skills and the areas of knowledge required by today’s labour market are very different from those needed 20 or 25 years ago. The question of how we increase the number and quality of apprenticeships is, therefore, welcome indeed.
First, let us consider how we think young people are being prepared to take up an apprenticeship. We need trained and able people in various sectors of the economy, but none more so than in science and engineering. It is agreed and understood that the country has a severe shortage of people qualified in these fields and that, of those who are, too many are concentrated within the older age range. If this problem is to be dealt with by the new, young blood, why are we paying so little attention to the importance of good-quality careers advice? We are the only country in the developed world which spends more on careers advice for older people than it does for the young. The Department for Education spends just 0.04 % of its budget in this area.
Why is not more effort being made to encourage, enable and reward schools and colleges for engaging with employers and for widening their horizons to get more girls into the traditional STEM areas of study? This is not beyond the wit of man—or, for that matter, woman. For example, girls could be taught in separate classes for maths, science and computer studies, allowing concepts to be presented in ways more appealing to girls. This does not have to be a permanent arrangement but a “separate to integrate” approach. Work recently done by the TUC shows very serious stereotyping within the take-up of apprenticeships. The statistics read as though it were 1914 rather than 2014: health and social care—83% female; vehicle maintenance and repair—98% male; children’s and young people’s workforce—93% female; electrotechnical—98% male. The salary returns for these particular choices also tell us why the gender pay gap is so alive and well. I know that many of the better employers are trying hard to break down these stereotypical barriers, but government can play a part as well. How about fiscal incentives for companies to give girls more taster days and more opportunities for work experience?
Secondly, what are the Government and the public sector in general doing to play their part in improving the number of opportunities for apprenticeships? Greater participation by government departments would send a very important message. In addition, the leverage of procurement is a powerful tool, as has already been mentioned. Government and public contracts over a certain value should carry with them the absolute requirement for the contractor to engage with the apprenticeship programme, and to ensure that opportunities are available in equal measure to both male and female applicants and to applicants from the black and minority ethnic community.
I have just a couple of final thoughts. In 2011-12, almost 84% of the growth in the number of apprenticeships was in just 10 sectors of the economy, and those mostly in low-paying areas. We are not keeping pace in engineering and construction, where we need to up the game. We also need to keep a watchful eye on standards within apprenticeships. A one-year training course is not an apprenticeship. Ensuring that the skill level reaches level 3 and above will be important to support and monitor. The role of sector skills councils is important here. They can help employers find their way around funding options and can help to ensure that training programmes are bought into and understood by the workforce as a whole.
I hope that the Minister will bring this debate to the attention of his counterparts in the Department for Education, because this is an interdepartmental responsibility and the policy will be successful only if there is an interdepartmental response.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)
My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Young, for bringing this important debate to the House. It is about the number and the quality of apprenticeships that government has been able to establish. Like the noble Lord, I started by looking at the statistics. As he pointed out, starts in apprenticeships are up. Between 2009-10 and 2012-13, they increased from 270,000 to 495,000. I pay tribute to the previous Labour Government for laying the foundations for this increase. Equally, the coalition Government have done much to build on the foundations that were laid then and we see it in this figure of 495,000, which is almost the half a million that has been cited.
However, like the noble Lord, Lord Young, I noticed that the increase was not evenly distributed. The numbers for the 16 to 18 year-old group were down by 4%. The number of 19 to 24 year-old apprenticeships was up by 42%, but the big increase, as the noble Lord pointed out, was in the over-25 group, which saw a rise of 350%. In terms of numbers, therefore, there is undoubtedly an increase. The noble Lord, Lord Monks, mentioned that the nadir point for recruiting apprentices was in the early 1990s, when the number of apprentice starts was below 100,000. It has been building up since then.
On quality, the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, talked about looking at where the increases in the number of apprenticeships have taken place. In health and social care, they were up by 197% between 2009-10 and 2012-13; in business, administration and law, they were up by 84%; and in retail and commercial enterprise, they were up by 64%. This compares with construction, planning and built environment, in which they are down by 7%. In engineering and manufacturing technology—vital to rebalancing the economy—they are up 24%, which is still well below some other areas. In information and communications technology, they are up by 2%. Looking at those figures, I reflected on the fact that we frequently praise the German system of apprenticeship but we should recognise that this applies to 15 to 19 year-olds and provides them with a foundation of skills for life. This compares with the United Kingdom where our young people are not going into apprenticeships, in spite of the fact that the Government pay all the costs for 16 to 19 year-olds. It is rumoured that the Government may well ask employers to contribute rather more than they do at the moment. I fear that, if that happens, it will kill apprenticeships for 16 to 19 year-olds although they are a vital part of our raising of participation.
What is holding it up? First, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, and others that careers education has a major influence. There are still far too many schools where apprenticeships and vocational training are seen as second best to university. Most teachers know very little indeed about vocational routes to work. We need to make sure that schools are getting proper careers advice from properly trained and experienced careers advisers and that young people get the face-to-face advice that many of them need.
Secondly, the Government are putting a great deal of emphasis on employer ownership of apprentice training. I confess to some reservations about this because there remains a huge dearth of apprenticeships. My figures show that 9% of UK firms take on apprentices, though the noble Lord, Lord Young, mentioned 13%. This is a very small proportion. There are a huge number of applications to Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, whose apprenticeships are the cream. However, the average apprenticeship advertised by the National Apprenticeship Service gets six applications. We do not have enough of them and we must encourage firms to provide more. The answer probably lies in encouraging our small and medium-sized businesses to take them on. The £1,500 per apprentice that came in the Budget already applies to small and medium-sized businesses. Many of these SMEs are put off by the bureaucracy attached to apprenticeships and we need to encourage the expansion of group training systems and apprentice training agencies who take on the organisation of apprenticeships.
In a report published in 2007, your Lordships’ Committee on Economic Affairs concluded that apprenticeships were the most satisfactory route to skills below the graduate level and should be the standard method for providing education and training for young people in the 16 to 18 age group not going to university. We are still a very long way away from that.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, for instigating this debate and for stealing half my thunder by drawing attention to a report on construction industry apprenticeships which was released recently from a cross-party group of parliamentarians from both Houses, chaired jointly by the right honourable Nick Raynsford and myself. It was entitled No More Lost Generations: Creating Construction Jobs for Young People. If I only manage to impart one suggestion tonight to this House and to those outside who are following our debate, it is that everyone with an interest in the subject of apprenticeships should google “no more lost generations” and look at our report. It was written by Denise Chevin, supported by the Chartered Institute of Building and the Construction Industry Training Board, with input from the excellent charities doing great work—albeit on a small scale—to get young people into fulfilling construction jobs.
Our report highlights three stark facts. First, there are still well over 950,000 NEETs—young people between 16 and 24 years old not in employment, education or training. That figure was quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Young. Secondly, the construction industry is now expanding once again and will be creating 182,000 extra jobs alongside the need to recruit 400,000 building workers to replace those retiring over the next four years. Thirdly, despite these big numbers, there were only 7,280 completed apprenticeships in the sector last year, which was half the number of the year before. So we have 7,000 apprentices for a £100 billion-a-year industry that needs to draw in nearly 600,000 new workers by 2018.
In the absence of sufficient numbers of home-grown employees, the contractors—as they did for the construction of so many of the Olympic Games facilities—will import their labour from other countries, particularly from eastern Europe. I bow to no one in my admiration of building workers from Poland and the other A8 countries—the globalised labour market of the 21st century means that the skills of overseas workers can provide the construction industry with a labour force that provides quality at relatively low cost—but turning our backs on our own young people has huge financial and social costs. At the launch of our report, the deputy chair of the Construction Industry Training Board, Judy Lowe, quoted the extra cost to society of a NEET who never obtains a qualification or acquires the skills to hold down a proper job: £165,000. For young people who need the self-respect and sense of purpose that comes from being in employment, failure to acquire the necessary skills can lead to pretty miserable lives.
With the economy now recovering and the nation investing in construction in infrastructure—for example, Crossrail, HS2, power stations and, most labour-intensive of all, housing—we can get a double benefit by also creating the jobs that the young of this country need. Government support is vital. Training objectives need to be incorporated into public contracts. Moreover, the Chancellor has extended government support for housebuilding through the Help to Buy scheme, resulting in big jumps since the Budget of the share price of Persimmon, Bovis Homes, Taylor Wimpey and others. Perhaps the tit-for-tat should be a commitment from the housebuilders to skills training for home-grown talent.
Local authorities and housing associations can insist that companies bidding for their work must employ more apprentices. The use of planning requirements can support this. Local authorities also have the local contacts and local knowledge, crossing boundaries through the local enterprise partnerships, to be a focal point for initiatives that are tailored to the particular employers’ requirements in their locality.
To bring all this together and take forward the recommendations from the No More Lost Generations report, we called for a summit of construction leaders, convened by the Construction Industry Training Board and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. This could do for training what the 2001 construction summit did for safety. That summit led to a sea-change in attitudes to accidents and fatalities on building sites, to very great effect. A construction training summit would agree a new apprenticeship strategy, bringing together industry leaders, specialist contractors, housebuilders, local authorities, social landlords and central government. The response Nick Raynsford and I have received from the Construction Industry Training Board’s chairman, James Wates, has been very positive. The CITB is setting up an apprenticeship commission to take forward this plan and report to a construction training summit.
We have also had a positive response from BIS Secretary of State Vince Cable. His sympathy for these aims is well known and I hope he will agree to jointly sponsor the construction leaders summit later this year. What is certain is that it would be the height of folly not to use the revival of construction in the UK to provide fulfilling careers for tens of thousands of our young people who must not be another “lost generation”.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, I must declare an interest because I am running a social enterprise in this patch, the Good Careers Guide, which you can bing if you do not want to google. We have been having a wonderful time with companies. There is such a spirit of collaboration abroad—with them, with their organisations and with schools organisations, too—and there is a real determination to get together and solve the problems of how kids comprehend careers, of how businesses get on with schools and of how apprenticeships become valued as a decent alternative to academic education. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Best, that the construction industry is as enthusiastic as any other, and I shall look forward to his conference and hope that we may end up as part of it.
To return to the subject in hand, which is on how to increase the number and quality of apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds, I think the answers are about information, appreciation and support. It is very hard within the context of a school to find that out what 16-to-18 apprenticeships are out there. We need a place where people can go to find out—but not, as the Deputy Prime Minister said, a UCAS, which is a horrible, inward-facing and unco-operative organisation. What we need is something that is facing outward and that sees its business as running an API, not a fortress, so that all sorts of institutions that have contacts with young people can easily get at the information on apprenticeships which they need to advise them. I think that would be a great way forward and I very much hope, if Mr Clegg has anything to do with it, that is the direction that he eventually takes.
Second is appreciation. There is a general feeling that apprenticeships are of mixed quality. That is not good. That is how we came into the business of the Good Careers Guide, taking the genetics of the Good Schools Guide and seeing what we could do for apprenticeships. It is proving immensely popular with companies, I am delighted to say. They really see the need to be seen as quality providers. It is important to parents particularly, and to others who are advising young people, that they understand where an apprenticeship leads to. How will it be rated by other employers once it is completed? Where will it lead to in terms of a career? The progression is immensely important, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, commented.
In that context, it is important to say to the Government that they are on the wrong track when they say that,
“once the reformed GCSEs are implemented, all apprentices will use GCSEs … to meet the English and maths requirements”.
What is important is context. If you are in an apprenticeship, what is motivating you is the context. The mathematics and English you use must fit in with that context. English and maths GCSEs are designed to move people on to A-levels; they are not designed for the whole variety of employments and apprenticeships that are out there. What is important is that the English and maths that one learns in an apprenticeship is part of a progression which leads—as, again, the noble Lord, Lord Young, said—to recognised professional qualifications. The English and maths should be sufficient for that, but there should be no barriers on the progression of apprentices. They should be able to move on to degrees and what they have achieved as an apprentice should be recognised as sufficient for that. I hope that the NHS will wake up to the idea that you can start as an apprentice and end up as a nurse, which does not seem too hard to ask when you can start with Barclays as a NEET who has just come from jail and end up as a bank manager. There are companies out there which take progression seriously, and it is time that our public sector did so, too. We must pay apprentices properly; they should not be seen as a source of cheap labour but should receive proper remuneration.
We should also concentrate on support. Most of our employment comes from small and medium-sized enterprises, but it is difficult for them to take on the bureaucracy and the responsibility of an apprenticeship. The big companies can manage it—they have big HR departments, which can do what is required. We need to build up for smaller companies a structure of training providers which not only provide the training but do the pastoral care, too, looking after every aspect of the apprentice’s needs. The SME will then be able to concentrate on giving them a job and will not be asked to do things which go beyond its capacity. That is happening: PricewaterhouseCoopers organises it for the smaller companies and the financial industry; several of the sector skills councils have similar schemes; and QA, which is one of the training providers, is in that business. We are beginning to see that happening, and it needs to happen much more widely.
To quote one of the senior executives of a company whose training provision we were reviewing: “Apprentices are a total delight. They are quickly very productive, excited, eager, and bring new life to the business”. If tired old people like us can be cheered up by taking on apprentices, let us do more of that.
Lord Macdonald of Tradeston (Lab)
My Lords, in his Budget Statement the Chancellor said,
“we have doubled the number of apprenticeships, and I will extend the grants for smaller businesses to support over 100,000 more”.—[Official Report, Commons, 19/4/14; col. 789.]
That is, of course, welcome news. It builds on the progress made by previous Labour Governments and strengthens the cross-party consensus on the importance of vocational training.
As other noble Lords have already argued, more needs to be done, but we have surely come a long way since the 1990s, when apprenticeships were in danger of dying of neglect. By the time Labour left office in 2010, apprenticeships had increased significantly to almost 500,000. The forecast for this year is 931,000, for apprentices of all ages. While respecting the caveats of my noble friend Lord Young regarding the statistics, under Labour and now the coalition, apprenticeships are again being given the priority that they deserve.
I thank my noble friend and fellow engineer Lord Young for initiating this debate. I speak on the subject fondly, having served a five-year engineering apprenticeship after leaving school at 15. It is a rare pleasure, as my noble friend Lord Martin said, to speak in the company of two other time-served Glasgow craftsmen.
The focus tonight is on 16 to 18 year-olds and how best to improve the number and quality of the apprenticeship opportunities on offer. That concern is understandable. While those of my generation started their apprenticeships at 16, most of our recent successes have been in placements for those aged 19 and over. Remarkably, as has been mentioned, many of the new apprentices are over the age of 24, as my noble friend Lord Young highlighted.
The time served has gone down from five years to perhaps just one year, a minimum length introduced in 2012 to strengthen the quality and standard of training. On the positive side, while apprenticeships were once largely in manufacturing and almost exclusively male, today I am told that half the new apprenticeships are won by women. I say “won” because I read that the demand for places is 12 times the number of jobs on offer.
Other major changes are in the range of the jobs on offer. The top sector now for new apprentices is business, administration and law, which makes up 31% of the total. Next comes the health, public services and care sector with 24%, then retail and commercial enterprise with 20%. The traditional apprenticeship sector, engineering and manufacturing technologies, is in fourth place with 13%. However, that equates to 66,000 new apprentices, which is not negligible.
The breadth of these sectors, across both public services and private companies, offers job opportunities to applicants from very diverse backgrounds and with different attributes and educational qualifications. In our rapidly changing economy, this change in the nature of apprenticeships is both inevitable and largely positive. However, the particular problems of 16 to 18 year-olds remain a concern. In 2012-13 the number of apprentices from this age group was marginally lower than it was back in 2009-10. This may be explained in part by the requirement introduced last year for young people to be in education or training until they are 17—that age will be raised to 18 next year. On the plus side, the youth contract for 16 to 17 year-olds, launched in 2012, offers employers an enhanced grant of £2,200 per annum per head for each new recruit not in education, employment or training—the NEETs. The Government also forecast a boost in apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds this year, up from 179,000 to 257,000. That is quite a jump so I hope that they hit that target.
Your Lordships will be aware that many 16 to 18 year-olds would like nothing more than a job in our creative industries, where talent, drive and creativity often trump academic qualifications. The appeal is even greater when the commercial creative industries have a growth rate much higher than the rest of the UK economy. These creative industries are now estimated to make up almost 5% of all UK employment. The subset of arts and culture inside the creative industries employs more than 100,000 people directly and another 150,000 indirectly. However, at a meeting of the Performers’ Alliance here in Parliament yesterday, actors, musicians and writers complained that the recent changes to the curriculum in English schools meant that the teaching of arts and cultural subjects was suffering from the Department for Education’s emphasis on science, technology and engineering—the so-called STEM subjects. In a debate in your Lordships’ House last week, the accusation was made that music and drama classes were being cut back severely and that the number taking art GCSE had fallen by 14% between 2010 and 2013.
The fear is that pupils who might not aspire to university could be denied the creative input that might help them into an arts-related job on leaving school. Looking at the figures produced by the Government, apprenticeships for arts and culture jobs seem surprisingly limited—just 1,000 out of a total of 500,000. I know that there are many excellent skills programmes in the creative sector but they are often skewed towards highly qualified graduates and well connected interns. The initiatives of the Arts Council, UK Music and the BBC to offer more accessible apprenticeships are welcome but still number only in the hundreds. Does the Minister think there is a particular problem with availability of apprenticeships in the creative industries, and what measures might be taken to ensure that they increase in number and are made more accessible to those from less privileged backgrounds, especially for 16 to 19 year-olds?
Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of Housing 21, which benefits from funds for apprenticeship training in care and housing management services. I ought to begin by apologising for being churlish in calling the noble Lord, Lord Young, churlish the last time we had a debate on this subject. I think it was an initial reaction but it was also disrespectful given his deep commitment to this subject and, indeed, what he said today.
Maybe I should go on to say that the doubling of apprenticeships by this Government is one of their major achievements but it was built on the foundations laid by the previous Labour Government. All of us—such as the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and I—who were in the newspaper industry will remember, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, told us, the devastation of apprenticeships in the 1980s and 1990s. One of the great achievements of the past five years is that we have recovered from that devastation. This is against the background of a 7% fall in output; in many previous recessions, we would have seen a doubling of unemployment. Youth employment was high at the time of the recession, but it could have grown even more. Undoubtedly, the growth of apprenticeships has helped in the greater flexibility of the labour market in countering some of those trends. As a country, however, we still have a lot to understand as to why that flexibility has been so successful in countering the employment trends of the recession.
Getting the number of apprenticeships up has been a major achievement for the Government, but they have also been trying to address quality issues and to ensure that we are improving the quality of the training on the ground. We have heard today in the debate about the various efforts of the Government to improve the qualification standards, the Richard committee and the initiative to drive aspirations by including a route to university standards through the apprenticeship system. It is a remarkably popular initiative, and the problem for us is that supply is still not meeting demand.
Productivity and competitiveness in the economy can be addressed only through greater skills development and business development. As we go forward, the debate has shown us today that there cannot be any complacency in the sector. It is so important to us, as the economy starts to recover; we are already aware of significant skills shortages, which often take five to six years even to address, let alone to overcome.
What areas should our debate conclude need most attention? Many have been raised already. First, there is a continuing initiative to improve the standards of qualifications and training. We have to be careful that we do not get involved in excessive regulation, but we also have to make sure that, when we allow employers to have a greater say in the training requirements, they also make sure that those requirements are wide enough to deal with the wider needs of industry and not just their own companies.
This debate is meant to concentrate on the 16 to 18 year-olds, where we have heard that there is still disappointment on the training figures. The Government have estimates of what they expect to do this year. Perhaps the Minister could tell us whether we will see an improvement. That shift is important because the major beneficiaries of the expansion have been the over-25s, which may not be a bad thing. It may be that we have not dealt with that age group well before due to the problems that I mentioned earlier, such as the destruction of that sort of training in the 1990s. However, we must certainly address the 16 to 18 year-olds.
We have heard that the figures are still very disappointing in construction and engineering. I shall read the report of the noble Lord, Lord Best—I am glad for that prompt—but, although construction is a cyclical industry, we know that there are huge skills shortages that need to be addressed.
I welcome the suggestion in the Budget that there is to be further help for small employers. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, told us, there is huge capacity there; with the small number of firms taking up this initiative, there is a great potential to publicise and extend what we are doing.
Finally, we have heard about the importance of raising aspirations in our schools and the standing of apprenticeships. The noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, said that we need to give more attention to careers guidance. I hope that the progression to university-level qualifications through the apprenticeship system will provide an alternative route to self-improvement and career progression. The Government have made major inroads, but they must keep up the pressure to do much more.
Lord Haughey (Lab)
I begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Young for posing this Question today. The key word in the Question is “quality”. Some of the statistics that have been mentioned tonight may not relate to apprenticeships as we know them. My noble friend said earlier that some of these courses may be for only one year, and judging by some of the things that I have read in the past few weeks, some of the courses are for only six or 12 weeks, so I do not know how they can be billed as apprenticeships. A lot of people think that many apprenticeships have been watered down.
As someone who benefited from an engineering apprenticeship and is very proud to speak as the third member of the Glasgow apprenticeship union, the achievement of which I am most proud is that, over the past 20 years, I have managed through my own business to create 350 apprenticeship placements. Most of these people still work in the business today.
Some of these short-term training programmes presented as apprenticeships are very misleading. We will probably find that the 480,000 apprenticeships created over the past five years will not reflect the quality of the 480,000 or 500,000 in the previous five years. It is nothing short of tragic that 900,000 young people find themselves unemployed today. We have to create hope for these young people. It is due to the lack of opportunities that so many still find themselves out of work.
The biggest concern for me has already been mentioned: the decline in apprenticeships in the construction industry. The building of houses used to be a barometer of how the economy was doing—as my noble friend Lord Best mentioned. I read with interest in the last few days of the huge increase in the profits of builders and developers due to the Government’s guarantee scheme. Surely, we must be able to use this as a lever to guarantee apprenticeships in that industry.
Today, I sat through a debate on the Green Deal. I have to declare an interest here: I am involved in that sector. This initiative should absolutely have guaranteed thousands of new jobs in the central heating and cavity wall insulation industries. Unfortunately, that scheme is falling apart; day by day, it is becoming unworkable. I urge the Minister to revisit and have a look at what the Green Deal and the ECO deal were supposed to do in relation to apprenticeships.
Rather than having a go at the Minister, I would like to propose a suggestion to him. The Green Deal and the ECO deal have not worked, and there are more than 200,000 buildings in the UK that are more than 50,000 square feet. We have carried out a scientific test in our own building in Glasgow. If we created a position for a young apprentice energy champion in every building throughout the UK, the Government could award carbon credits or tax credits to the companies and we could create hundreds of thousands of jobs overnight—cost neutral. We have had a young energy champion in place in our building in Glasgow for the past nine months, working with Strathclyde University. We have done tests and we are saving between £8,000 and £12,000 a year. We pay the young person £15,000 a year. This is only by going about, turning off computers and switching off switches. He has also done something absolutely amazing: there are 900 people in my building who now think about energy efficiency every day. I urge the Government to have a look at this. This is a way in which we can generate jobs and give hope to 900,000 young people.
The great thing about this scheme is that it is an equal opportunities scheme. We have heard today about the lack of girls taking up apprenticeships. This scheme also could lead, through training, to that young person progressing from an energy champion to a fully qualified facilities manager earning perhaps £25,000 a year.
Lord Layard (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise for having missed the deadline, but I would like to ask one simple question. In 2009, the previous Government’s apprenticeship Act guaranteed that, by 2015, there would be an apprenticeship for almost every 16 to 18 year-old who wanted one. That was a clear statement of priorities and a marching order to the National Apprenticeship Service. Unfortunately, the present Government repealed the guarantee and focused the biggest development in apprenticeships, as many noble Lords have said, on the older age group. Was that not a massive error and will the Government now revert to the priority for 16 to 18 year-olds that was embodied in the previous strategy?
There are many Cassandras, probably on both sides, who say that we will not get employers to be interested in young people under 19. Suppose we accepted that argument: what would follow? It would be catastrophic because there would be permanently high youth unemployment and millions of people who would probably never get a real skill. The top priority has to be getting people off to a good start at the very beginning of their working lives. The best evidence for that was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp: a number of OECD studies show that the countries with the lowest youth unemployment and the best level of skills in the lower-skilled parts of the workforce are those countries with the largest number of apprenticeships for school leavers.
What is the problem? In spite of some things that have been said this evening, the problem is not mainly with the aspirations of young people; it is with our employers and the way in which they are approached by the apprenticeship service. More than half of all large employers still have no apprentices. By contrast, in 2012-13, 800,000 young people aged between 16 and 18 registered as applicants for apprenticeships. How many got an apprenticeship? It was one in seven. That is the problem—the supply of apprenticeships is not there and that is a terrible reflection on the record of the National Apprenticeship Service as a generator of apprenticeships. It has simply failed, I suspect partly because it has not been told that that is what the service is meant to be doing for that age group.
What is the Government’s priority? Is it 16 to 18 years-olds or not? If it is, will the Government tell the National Apprenticeship Service very clearly that that is the top priority?
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to set out what the Government are doing to increase the quality and availability of apprenticeships for 16 to 18 year-olds. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, for tabling this important and timely debate on a topic that, given his apprenticeship background, is obviously dear to him.
It was a pleasure to listen to the informative contributions of so many Peers. I refer, in particular, to the noble Lord, Lord Haughey, who has come a long way from being an air conditioning and refrigeration apprentice engineer. His success in now running a company with 11,000 employees worldwide shows what an apprentice can do. I hope that his story inspires a new generation of apprentices. We appreciate the number of jobs that the noble Lord’s group creates for young people, who are often given number one priority.
This topic is close to my heart. I had no formal education before joining a company as a trainee accountant. That opportunity to learn on the job enabled me to qualify as an accountant. Life is all about learning, irrespective of age. Now I am doing a new apprenticeship at the Dispatch Box.
I commend my honourable friend the Skills Minister, Matthew Hancock, for his tireless enthusiasm and energy. He has delivered real improvements on apprenticeships and helped to give better life choices to countless numbers of young people across the country. From listening to the debate, it seems that we are on the right path but there is a lot more to do. As the noble Lord, Lord Young, said earlier, we should not get complacent about what we are doing with apprenticeships.
Apprenticeships benefit employers, apprentices and the economy. We need to ensure that world-class apprenticeships are in place for years to come. We have seen a record 1.6 million people start an apprenticeship since 2010. Yes, we have made enormous progress, and apprenticeships are very important to the futures of our young people, but there is so much more that we need to do. We are not complacent about what apprenticeships deliver, or how accessible they are to different people. We have made a commitment to deliver 2 million apprenticeship starts in this Parliament.
Apprenticeships have always been about quality, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said earlier. We have removed poor training provision and introduced a rule that every apprenticeship has to be for a minimum of one year. Over the past two years we have removed more than 54,000 short duration apprenticeships. Despite that, the number of apprenticeships for those aged 16 to 19 lasting a year or more went up by 30% between 2011-12 and 2012-13. Our aim is to raise the bar even further.
Apprenticeships are open to all. Because they are real jobs that lead to nationally recognised qualifications, recruitment decisions must rest with employers for apprenticeships as much as for other jobs. Our priority is to work with employers to increase the number of apprenticeship jobs for our young people. Apprenticeships must be high-quality, rigorous and focused on what employers need. We are using the apprenticeship reforms to address some of the barriers that employers say they face in recruiting apprentices. The reforms we are making will put employers in the driving seat of developing high-quality apprenticeship standards that deliver exactly the skills they need. Routing funding to employers will put them in charge of securing the most appropriate quality training and making providers more responsive to their needs.
Trailblazers led by employers and professional bodies are leading the way by collaborating and designing world-class standards for their sector. In the past, apprenticeships have been based on frameworks that run into hundreds of pages, often written in complex and technical language. The new standards are short, concise and written in a language that employers really understand. That will make apprenticeships very attractive to a large number of 16 to 18 year-olds.
We have already made great progress. The first 11 new apprenticeship standards have been published in occupations from aircraft fitter to software engineer. Phase 2 Trailblazers are already under way, covering an impressive 29 sectors and involving more than 340 leading employers.
In the future every apprentice will train towards the achievement of an employer-designed standard. The demand for higher standards will also stretch apprentices by setting higher expectations for achievement in English and maths and the introduction of a grading system will ensure that excellence is seen and widely recognised.
My noble friend Lady Sharp and the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, mentioned the duty of schools to secure access to independent careers guidance for all pupils in years 8 to 13. That is exactly what we are doing. The guidance also will include information on apprenticeships.
We want it to become the norm for our young people to go into an apprenticeship or to university—or both, in the case of some higher apprenticeships. We are striving for apprenticeships to be held in the same high regard as university degrees. Giving young people the choice of routes to the skills and knowledge they need by providing careers advice and guidance at the right time has never been so important.
We want our schools, colleges and universities, together with the National Careers Service, to engage, inspire and help young people to make the right choices. The noble Lord, Lord Young, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, pointed that out. Apprenticeships deliver and offer the ideal opportunity for ambitious young people to learn while earning a wage and also, of course, for employers to recruit the brightest and the best.
Higher apprenticeships are the key to providing able young people with the opportunity to undertake apprenticeship training at a level equivalent to a degree. The Budget announced £10 million in each of the next two years to support employer investment in apprenticeships up to postgraduate level. This will complement the additional £40 million announced in the autumn Statement for a further 20,000 higher apprenticeships, more than doubling current volumes.
We know that some people have the potential to benefit from an apprenticeship but cannot secure a place with an employer immediately. Our traineeships programme is helping 16 to 23 year-olds to develop the skills and experience they need for apprenticeships and other sustainable employment. We recognise that some of our younger apprentices require a greater level of supervision, guidance, education and introduction to the workplace. To address this under the new funding system, a simple one-off additional payment will be made to the employer once any 16 or 17 year-old is settled in their learning and workplace, having completed the first three months of their training.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the position of small and medium-sized enterprises. We are offering the apprenticeship grant for employers, which is a payment of £1,500 to smaller businesses offering a young person an apprenticeship. To date, the scheme has already helped 49,300 new apprenticeship starts. The additional £170 million over the next two years that was announced in the Budget will enable us to support the current very high demand for the grant by funding 100,000 additional incentive payments to employers. That represents a major boost to the job prospects of young people, in particular those aged between 16 and 18. However, this is just part of the success story of today’s apprenticeship programme. Figures show that 181,300 people aged 16 to 18 participated in an apprenticeship in the 2012-13 academic year, with an impressive total of 868,700 people overall participating in that academic year. That is a record number.
Apprenticeship starts for those aged 16 to 18 have broadly remained stable despite youth employment rates dropping by 39% over the past 10 years. This is the subject of today’s debate. It is a concern for us and for the department, and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Young, has raised the subject. I will ensure that I take it back to the department to make sure that progress continues to be made at all times.
Despite all this success, too many small businesses are still not engaged with apprenticeships. We are working with the Federation of Small Businesses and other stakeholders to ensure that our reforms are small- business and micro-business friendly. That is why all new apprenticeship standards will be approved only where they meet the needs of small businesses across the sectors.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Best, for sending me a copy of the report of the parliamentary inquiry entitled No More Lost Generations, also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Young. It headlines that we have 1 million NEETs aged 16 to 24. We are looking at a forecast of around 182,000 new construction jobs by 2018, but so far only just over 7,000 young people have completed an apprenticeship in the industry. We have to do better than that. The report arrived only this afternoon so I have taken just a brief look at it. However, the noble Lord can be assured that I will go through it and take it up with the department. It is interesting because it points out that one way of creating jobs for young people and giving them the skills they need is by training them for the construction industry. It is a sector that is going to grow further. If we do not do that, I am afraid that we will end up importing construction workers from the European Union, and that is something we want to avoid.
Several noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Young and Lord Macdonald, talked about support for 16 to 18 year-olds. On 4 March, we announced the second phase of the Trailblazer apprenticeship standards in 29 industry sectors, including the STEM professions, services and others. Apprenticeship training for 16 to 18 year-olds is fully funded by the Government to provide incentives to employers. The National Apprenticeship Service has been tasked with redoubling its efforts to support more 16 to 18 year-olds into apprenticeships.
The noble Lords, Lord Stoneham, Lord Monks and Lord Young, all mentioned the role of public procurement in terms of the use of government procurement to grow apprenticeships. Public procurement is a key means of upskilling local workforces and reducing youth unemployment. Including a requirement to take on apprentices can play a valuable part. The Government support the appropriate use of apprenticeships in procurement, as they can contribute to encouraging growth in the economy.
The noble Lord, Lord Monks, raised the issue of how apprenticeships can be seen as being “just for the boys”. Girls are being encouraged into apprenticeships as part of the broader push on the STEM subjects, but the noble Lord was correct when he said that the percentage of girls taking up apprenticeships is low. We need to encourage more young women to come forward. He also mentioned the minimum wage. From the information I have, an apprentice earns on average around £200 a week, although the minimum wage is only £2.68, which is due to rise to £2.73 in October.
My noble friend Lord Addington referred to the difficulties that those suffering with dyslexia have in undertaking apprenticeships. As a vice-president of the British Dyslexia Association, he speaks from great experience. Final data from 2011-12 show that 21,110 dyslexic learners participated in an apprenticeship programme. Dyslexia should not present a barrier. We shall continue to monitor this and to do more about it.
My noble friend Lady Sharp touched on a number of issues that I know she has championed. She is right to highlight the historical emphasis on pursuing academic routes over vocational routes. This Government have taken considerable steps to even this playing field and have given every young person a choice, but we continue to look for other ways of furthering this agenda.
I have not covered all the areas that noble Lords have raised this evening but I promise to write to them. I shall follow up with the department as well to ensure that it takes action. A lot is happening, but we need to do a lot more. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Young, for initiating this important and timely debate.