Grand Committee
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn) (Con)
Good afternoon, my Lords. If there is a Division in the House while we are sitting, the Grand Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Communications Act 2003 (Disclosure of Information) Order 2014
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
That the Grand Committee do consider the Communications Act 2003 (Disclosure of Information) Order 2014.
Relevant documents: 26th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, this order provides for the disclosure of information between the telecommunications regulator Ofcom and four other public bodies allowing those bodies to carry out their regulatory duties more effectively, providing greater protection for consumers. The four bodies in question are the Information Commissioner, the Insolvency Service, the Financial Conduct Authority and the subsidiary of the FCA, the new Payment Systems Regulator.
At present, Ofcom is prohibited from disclosing information to these bodies without the consent of the regulated businesses concerned. Ofcom may disclose information to nominated bodies, including the former Office of Fair Trading, whose work is now covered by the Competition and Markets Authority, and government Ministers in respect of certain functions which those bodies perform.
As the Committee will be aware, nuisance calls are a source of great inconvenience for many. Direct marketing certainly has a useful role to play and can, for example, enable us to take advantage of cheaper energy tariffs and lower mobile phone bills and to make donations to charities. It is also right that should we choose not to receive unsolicited calls or text messages, our choice should be respected by the industry. There are regulations in place that enable consumers to make such choices and provide for enforcement action to be taken against those organisations that break the rules. However, it is clear that the laws are not working as effectively as they could be and further action is needed.
Over the past 18 months the problem of nuisance calls has emerged and become a high-profile issue with complaint numbers about unsolicited marketing calls being made to the Information Commissioner—who has enforcement responsibility for unsolicited calls and text messages—rising rapidly in recent years. That is unsurprising as Ofcom research in May last year indicated that 82% of consumers received a nuisance call on their landline telephone number. I should stress that although nuisance calls are a source of inconvenience and annoyance for many, this is a particular concern for the elderly and for those who are housebound, for whom such calls cause great anxiety and distress. Such consumers are also more vulnerable to the potential fraud and scams which are an unfortunate by-product of the world of low-cost mass communication in which we now live.
It is therefore no surprise that the issue of nuisance calls has been the subject of Private Member’s Bills in the other place by Mike Crockart and Alun Cairns, and in this House by my noble friend Lord Selsdon. It has also been the subject of an inquiry by the All-Party Group on Nuisance Calls and by the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, as well as the topic of several debates and numerous Parliamentary Questions. It has also been taken up as a campaign by the consumer group Which? calling for government and industry to do more to protect consumers. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all who have raised this issue, particularly my noble friend Lord Selsdon.
In relation to the Information Commissioner, this order permits Ofcom to disclose information that it obtains during its regulatory activity. It will enable information to be disclosed that can be used to take more robust enforcement action against those organisations that are deliberately disregarding the existing regulations by making calls and sending texts to consumers. The fact that the conduct of organisations is being noted by Ofcom and details disclosed to the Information Commissioner will, we believe, act as a stronger deterrent.
Addressing the problem of nuisance calls is a priority issue for the Government. Indeed, we committed to introducing this measure in our strategy paper Connectivity, Content and Consumers: Britain’s Digital Platform for Growth, which was published on 30 July last year. We subsequently confirmed that we would be introducing this measure in our Nuisance Calls Action Plan, which we published on 30 March. We have received widespread support for this reform.
The order also enables Ofcom to disclose information to the Insolvency Service to help to tackle directors behind what are called “phoenix” companies, which provide communications services but do not always supply services as promised. This often results in financial loss to consumers who have paid for a service that is not delivered. Ofcom can issue a penalty of up to 10% of turnover but often the company will enter into insolvency to avoid paying, only to reappear under a different name. The company will also usually transfer its customer base before winding up the original company and then continue to harm the same customers. This measure helps to enable the Insolvency Service to consider taking action against company directors for misconduct as directors. That action may result in a ban from acting as a director of a company for a period of time. Also, action by the Insolvency Service on the basis of information provided by Ofcom may provide a better deterrent for other directors planning to commit similar misconduct.
I also referred to disclosure to the Financial Conduct Authority. The Government are taking action to ensure that UK payment systems and services meet the current and future needs of consumers, businesses, other users and the wider economy. Payment systems enable funds to be directly transferred between individuals and institutions. A prime example is LINK, which underpins the ATM network in the United Kingdom.
In December 2013, the Financial Services (Banking Reform) Act gained Royal Assent. The Act provided for the establishment of a new competition-focused, utility-style regulator for payment systems in the UK. In March this year, the Chancellor announced in his Budget Statement that the concurrent competition powers of the new Payment Systems Regulator would be brought forward to 1 April this year.
The Government recognise that the new regulator faces a significant challenge to build up its capacity and expertise in relation to the market place that it will regulate—in particular, with regard to communications companies that are increasingly becoming important in the electronic payments market. More people than ever are able to link their bank accounts to an application and to make payments via their telephone or tablet device. Online platforms such as Google and Apple offer payment mechanisms via their app stores and are developing new ways to access more traditional payment systems. The UK Payments Council has built a central database, enabling customers from eight large UK financial institutions to make payments to and from an account simply by using their mobile telephone number.
Many of these communication companies are regulated by Ofcom and therefore, as communications networks and their relationship with payment systems evolve, Ofcom’s ability to provide knowledge and expertise of this to the Financial Conduct Authority and Payment Systems Regulator will support effective collaboration with these organisations and help ensure that consumers are not put at risk by any improper activity carried out.
It is important to note that Her Majesty’s Treasury brought into force separate legislation in April that enables the information that the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payment Systems Regulator capture to be disclosed to Ofcom. The Treasury will also be consulting in the second half of this year on which payment systems will be designated for regulation going forward.
This is an important measure for the bodies concerned as it will enable them to undertake their regulatory duties more effectively in the future and further interests of consumers. I assure noble Lords that we will continue to work closely with regulators, industry, parliamentarians and the consumer group Which? to promote effective regulation and, most importantly, to secure consumer protection, particularly, as I said earlier, for the elderly and the vulnerable, who need the most protection. We believe that this legislation is necessary and proportionate, and there will be no cost to business. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of the intent behind the order. I make it clear from the outset that we support these changes. Although the authors of the 2003 Act were quite rightly cautious about encouraging the exchange of too much personal information between government agencies, I am sure we nevertheless accept that in the field of communications the world has moved on significantly and that the current restrictions are preventing our regulators from carrying out their functions effectively. It therefore makes sense to extend the definition of the Information Commissioner, the Financial Conduct Authority and the Payment Systems Regulator as relevant persons and relevant functions under the Act. It also makes sense that Ofcom can disclose information to the Insolvency Service in pursuit of the directors of phoenix companies who are deliberately manipulating the system to avoid being brought to book when enforcement action is taken against them.
These changes provide small but helpful ammunition in the fight against the much bigger problem of nuisance and fraudulent calls. However, I doubt that many of the millions of people plagued by these calls would take too much comfort from the proposals before us today, particularly since—as the Minister has acknowledged—it is the elderly and vulnerable who are most at risk of distress and exploitation from them. Will the Minister take this opportunity to update your Lordships on what further steps the Government are planning to take to tackle this menace? For example, I have had sight of the Government’s Nuisance Calls Action Plan, which was published earlier this year and acknowledges that there were more than 120,000 complaints about these calls in a six-month period alone. However, the action plan seems to lay great emphasis on reducing the legal threshold and increasing fines for those companies, rather than providing mechanisms for preventing the calls in the first place. It seems that consumers are being left to fight their own battles with these nuisance callers, rather than having a right to be protected from the unwanted calls.
There are several devices on the market to help consumers filter or block these calls. Having looked into these devices on behalf of my elderly mother who suffers from these calls—which I am sure a number of noble Lords will also have experienced—I know that they are very expensive. One of the market leaders, trueCall, costs upwards of £160 to install. Does the Minister accept that these devices would not be necessary if the Telephone Preference Service, which already exists, were working effectively? It should filter out these calls but is not carrying out that function as it should. Does he agree that one way of empowering consumers would be to provide caller identification free on all telephones so that people knew who was calling them before they picked up the phone? Finally, does he accept that the regulation of this sector is still too complex and that what is needed is a one-stop shop—a single phone line and website—for citizens to report nuisance calls?
I am very aware that I have extended the scope of this debate slightly beyond the specifics of the order before us. However, I hope the Minister will acknowledge that these are real concerns and provide some further assurance that the Government are taking these matters seriously and have deliverable plans to ensure that these unwanted calls will stop. I look forward to his response.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the order impacts positively on Ofcom’s ability to disclose information to the four bodies that I outlined and I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness for the support that she has given to it. We are at one on the fact that we need to tackle this growing issue—that is precisely why the Government have brought forward their proposals—and I am grateful to have this opportunity to outline some of the further steps that we will be looking at.
I can assure the noble Baroness that we would not be undertaking this measure if we did not think that this was an extremely serious point and if we were not particularly concerned about the elderly and vulnerable. They are the ones whom we overwhelmingly seek to protect, as well as protecting the general population and the consumer as well.
Our action plan also noted our proposed consultation on whether to lower the legal threshold for the Information Commissioner to take an enforcement action, but in addition to the legislative proposals, the action plan seeks to improve information for consumers, industry best practice and call-tracing efforts, which will be aided by the meetings that are taking place with representatives of the telecommunications companies, consumer group representatives and interested parliamentarians.
The noble Baroness rightly raised the question of the effectiveness of the Telephone Preference Service. The service, which should provide protection to consumers from unsolicited marketing calls, may indeed not be as effective as when it was introduced in 1999. That has led to some consumers using call-blocking products and services. I reassure her that Ofcom and the Information Commissioner have undertaken research to determine how effectively the TPS is working, and we expect that those findings will be published next month. We will of course consider and review their findings and take action should it be required.
It was also announced in the action plan that a task force led by Which? will look at the issue of consumer consent in more detail and come up with recommendations for the Government later this year, which I very much look forward to reading. The noble Baroness also referred to providing caller line identification for free so that consumers can know who is calling. The Nuisance Calls Action Plan covers the provision of caller line identification, so that consumers know who is calling. We would prefer for the service to be provided free of charge but, ultimately, this is a commercial decision for service providers. However, TalkTalk, for example, has provided its additional services free of charge, and we very much hope that other service providers will follow that excellent example.
On the question of a one-stop shop, a single telephone line and website on which to report calls, we have ensured that consumers can now access information about reporting nuisance calls in different ways. Ofcom and the Information Commissioner have worked closely together to help ensure that information on their websites is both clear and consistent and provides quick links to further information and help. Also, Which? has developed a portal on its website, helping to direct consumers arriving at its website to the right place to complain about the different types of calls and texts.
I particularly reassure the noble Baroness that we will continue in our efforts to promote consistency in the information provided to consumers across different communication channels.
Efficient and effective regulation is undoubtedly in the interests of consumers, industry, regulators and government. We hope that this measure will help to achieve just that. It will simplify the process of disclosing information between public bodies with a view to enhancing consumer protection. It has been actively sought by Ofcom in respect of nuisance calls, and the bodies affected also approved the measure, which, as I said, has been welcomed widely. I should add that it will not in any way add burdens on business, as it targets those who break the law; and, equally importantly, it will not encroach on the privacy of any consumers or businesses.
The primary driver for this reform was the need to take action on nuisance calls. This is an issue that the Government take extremely seriously. It is pertinent to note that this measure was announced in our Nuisance Calls Action Plan, which took account of much of the debate in your Lordships’ House and in the other place. Against a backdrop of a very high number of complaints to the regulator and the need for greater enforcement action, it is imperative that we act, and act quickly.
I again reassure the noble Baroness that we take this matter extremely seriously. We all know of people who have been affected by this. It is our duty to act. It is for those reasons that I commend the order to your Lordships.
Arrangement of Business
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Colwyn) (Con)
My Lords, I have taken advice from the Table. In the absence of an Opposition, it is in order to go ahead with the following order.
European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and Protocol thereto on matters specific to Aircraft Equipment) Order 2014
Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Grand Committee do consider the European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and Protocol thereto on matters specific to Aircraft Equipment) Order 2014.
Relevant documents: 26th 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, this is quite a technical order whose purpose is to specify the Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment and the Protocol thereto on matters specific to Aircraft Equipment as a European treaty under Section 1(3) of the European Communities Act 1972. For the ease of discussion, I shall refer to the convention and the protocol as “the treaty”. Once the order has been made by the Privy Council, it will enable the Government to make regulations to implement the provisions of the treaty using the powers in Section 2 of the European Communities Act.
I shall take a few moments to explain the background to the treaty to which the order refers. The treaty aims to make it easier to finance the purchase or lease of helicopters, airframes and aircraft engines over a certain size and engine capacity. It excludes military, police and customs equipment. Light aircraft are unlikely to meet the treaty’s minimum size and engine capacity requirements.
The treaty supports an important part of the UK economy—the aviation and aerospace sectors. Before outlining the treaty itself, I shall take a step back and consider these sectors, which make a significant contribution to the UK economy. The air transport sector’s annual turnover is £26 billion. This refers to the aviation sector, which provides around 120,000 jobs in the UK and supports many more indirectly.
Aerospace was among the first of the joint industry/government industrial strategies—one of 11—to be published last year. The aerospace sector, which covers manufacturing, has an annual turnover of £24 billion and supports 230,000 jobs across the UK. UK aerospace has a 17% global market share, making it the number one aerospace industry in Europe, second globally only to the US.
UK companies have key strengths in the most complex parts of aircraft such as wings, engines and advanced systems. The UK is also one of the few countries that can build and design advanced helicopters. The joint government and industry Aerospace Growth Partnership is investing in research and development projects through the Aerospace Technology Institute to keep the UK aerospace sector at the forefront of technology developments.
The Government recently announced a series of projects to be funded through the ATI. This includes £60 million of investment in a new aerospace facility at the manufacturing technology centre at Ansty, near Coventry; £13 million to improve the research capacity of wind tunnel facilities at seven universities—Imperial, Southampton, Oxford, Cambridge, Cranfield, City University London and Glasgow; and £60 million investment in seven new R&D projects spanning all four pillars of the ATI—wings, engine, aerostructures and advanced systems.
Having set the treaty in context, I return to the purpose of the treaty itself and how it supports the aviation and aerospace industries. The aviation and aerospace sectors are growing, and Airbus estimates that air traffic will increase globally by 4.7% over the 20-year period 2013-32, requiring approximately 29,000 new aircraft with a total value of approximately $4.4 trillion.
Purchasing or leasing the aircraft equipment is very expensive. Boeing estimates that global aircraft financing requirements in 2014 will be $112 billion. Average prices of aircraft can range from around $60 million to $400 million, depending on factors such as aircraft size, engine choice, performance capability and other design requirements. When purchasing or leasing aircraft equipment, most airlines are likely to raise finance through third parties, such as banks or capital markets, or, on occasion, manufacturers may provide financial support.
Airlines may also seek support in the form of guarantees from government or government-supported export credit agencies. ECA guarantees or insurance may be used in cases where banks are reluctant to lend the full amount due to the large risks associated with the loan and the airlines. Many of these financing sources are on an asset-secured basis. Should an airline default on its loan or enter insolvency, the financier would usually step in and repossess the aircraft to make recoveries against the debt.
Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2014
Baroness Verma
That the Grand Committee do consider the Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
Relevant documents: 26th 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 Renewable Heat Incentive Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2014.
Heat makes up 45% of the UK’s overall energy use and therefore represents a key part of our energy industry. Renewable heat will help businesses and community groups to manage their energy bills and will also continue to play a key role in delivering on our renewable energy targets and long-term carbon plan in an increasingly affordable way. The renewable heat incentive, the world’s first scheme of its kind, is the Government’s primary mechanism for delivering our ambition of a step change in how we produce our heat through the deployment of renewable heating technologies.
Recently—in March—we debated the regulations introducing the domestic RHI for households, and I am pleased to update the Committee that on 9 April this year the domestic RHI scheme was launched, delivering on our promise to support householders with the switch to renewable heating systems.
Initial feedback from both industry and consumers on the launch of the domestic RHI has been overwhelmingly positive. We have already seen the first owners of renewable heating technologies enter the domestic scheme, with 480 up to 4 May. The domestic scheme, unlike its non-domestic counterpart, is coupled with the Green Deal. We have now seen the first customers who have taken advantage of both schemes claiming the domestic RHI.
Today, the Government are introducing a series of improvements to the non-domestic RHI for businesses, delivering tailored, appropriate support to a greater range of renewable technologies in the scheme. These improvements go a long way to achieving the ambitious levels of deployment that we want and need in the renewable heating sector.
These regulations bring in changes to the non-domestic RHI in three broad areas: they improve and expand upon the range of technologies available in the scheme; they introduce improvements to the budget management mechanism, delivering greater value for money; and they bring refinements to the rules of eligibility and operation of the scheme.
We have come a long way since the RHI was first announced in 2011. With the launch of the domestic scheme and, now, the expansion and improvement of the non-domestic scheme, this is undoubtedly an exciting time for the renewable heating sector, reaffirming this Government’s commitment to renewables and to helping businesses and community groups to manage their bills.
Before I move on to the detail, it may be useful if I provide some brief background to what these amendments will achieve. The RHI is designed both to deliver the ambitious levels of renewable heat to meet our 2020 renewable energy targets and to set the foundations for the mass deployment of renewables in the 2020s and 2030s. Since the RHI’s launch in November 2011, we have seen good progress in the deployment of renewable heating technologies. We have received more than 5,000 applications, more than 4,000 have been accredited and over a terawatt-hour of heat has been generated and paid for.
However, we want to do more. We want to see more technologies supported, to provide more tailored support and to deliver more with the available budget. The non-domestic scheme in particular is intended to offer a range of renewable heating options. There are varying requirements across the non-domestic sector and we want to create viable renewable heating options across the breadth of the commercial, industrial, public and not-for-profit sectors. These amendments will widen the options available and offer more appropriate and bespoke tariffs for the full range of technologies.
I will talk further about the specific expansions and updates to the tariffs that we are introducing to the scheme following consultation on those expansions back in September 2012 and the confirmation of the policy in December of last year. The first technology that I will focus on is air-to-water heat pumps. Heat pumps have an important role to play in our long-term carbon budgets and in helping to manage energy bills. Support is needed now not only to incentivise renewable heating over fossil fuel alternatives in the short term but also to stimulate innovation and performance improvements in the longer term. We are proposing to introduce a tariff of 2.5p per kilowatt hour for air-to-water heat pumps.
I turn to the second of our new technologies: large-scale biogas combustion. Biogas and anaerobic digestion, in addition to being a source of renewable energy, is a sustainable solution to waste management and a key plank of our waste strategy. These regulations introduce new support for plants with capacity of 200 kilowatts and above. Support will be introduced through two new tariff bands: 5.9p per kilowatt hour for medium-sized installations and 2.2p per kilowatt hour for large installations—that is, those over 600 kilowatts.
In addition to new support, the regulations also introduce bespoke, improved support in the form of new tariffs for some technologies. The first of these is biomass combined heat and power. A key plank of the Government’s bioenergy strategy is that combined heat and power generation offers more efficient use of the biomass resources and should be promoted where possible. Biomass CHP systems are already eligible for the RHI under the tariffs available for biomass heat-only installations. CHP projects, however, have their own particular risks and costs associated with them, so a bespoke tariff is needed to bring forward the significant investment required for this important technology. The regulations introduce a tariff, based on detailed cost and performance data, of 4.1p per kilowatt hour. In order to ensure that only good-quality CHP receives the higher tariff, support will be contingent on obtaining certification under the combined heat and power quality assurance scheme.
We are also proposing improved support for deep geothermal heat, which is extracted from depths of below 500 metres underground. Deep geothermal has the potential to provide cost-effective, affordable, renewable low-carbon and non-intermittent heat to the UK. Its small service footprint and its ability to supply continuous heat on demand makes it an ideal fit for urban environments and it has been identified as a key technology for heat networks. These regulations introduce a new bespoke tariff for deep geothermal of 5p per kilowatt hour.
Baroness Worthington (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for her introduction to the regulations to be considered today. As we have spoken on the subject in the past, I reiterate our strong support for mechanisms to incentivise the uptake of renewable heat. Indeed, my Question in the House last week touched on that. We said that we would have a debate and here we are, so I am very grateful for this opportunity.
I have made these points in the past, so I will not spend too much time on them. We are very interested in the rates of deployment under the scheme and would like to see as much emphasis as possible from the Government on progress to date, an analysis of what could be done differently and how things can be improved to increase the rate of uptake. The time between now and 2020, when we face our renewables energy targets under the European renewables directive, will elapse quickly so it is important that we make good progress. As the noble Baroness pointed out, heat emissions account for 45% of our total energy system, so it is a hugely important area.
These regulations are welcome. There are many aspects of them which show that the Government are listening, having taken proper and due account of what stakeholders are feeding back, and have made appropriate changes. That is very welcome. Having said that, I still have a fundamental worry about the scheme being complex. Many elements are quite prescriptive. The schedules setting out all the budget elements per fuel type or per scale are complex. These sums of money are now being put into ever smaller parts, with digressions and various rules which are complex to understand. My fear is that if you are a small business or a company out there trying to build a business on the back of the regulations, they look very complex. My gut instinct is that markets thrive on simplicity, with the Government dictating outcomes and allowing the market to find the best solution. I recognise that in the renewable heat industry, we are dealing with a nascent market and it might need this kind of administratively controlled system to start it off, but I hope that we will hear from the Minister about the future support for renewable heat. Can we get to a slightly less administrated, inflexible system of budget management than we have and towards a broader, more market-based system, which it would benefit from? That is my first point.
The second general point is that in terms of value for money for the consumer, renewable heat provides some of the best and least costly options we have for decarbonising and diversifying our fuel mix. You can see that by looking at some of the pence per kilowatt hour tariff levels that have been set. Some of those technologies are very cost competitive with some of the renewables technologies that we are funding in the electricity sector.
In particular, that is true if we look at biomass. Not only do you find relatively cost-competitive rates at which you can deploy biomass—mainly commercially; I think that the domestic sector is slightly separate—you also save on fuel imports, because for every tonne of biomass that goes into an energy system, a large proportion of it can be converted into heat, whereas only roughly one-third of it can be converted into electricity. For biomass in particular, where there are some associated sustainability issues, it makes an awful lot of sense to ensure that your biomass goes into the heat network ahead and above of it going into the electricity network.
To what extent does DECC monitor the incentives that are in place and compare them against each other? What does the RHI biomass subsidy tell us compared to the subsidies being paid under the RO, the FITs and the CFDs that apply to electricity? Can we discuss whether those incentives are pointing in the right direction and whether we have the right incentives to deploy biomass in the most efficient way in both carbon and cost terms?
My other question is on the solar thermal element. The Minister mentioned that the cap of 10p per kilowatt hour has been maxed out for that technology but it is still less than the industry says it needs. I wonder about the rationale for setting the cap at 10p per kilowatt hour; it is probably somewhere in the literature and I apologise if I have not absorbed it. I would be interested to know whether some of the CFDs or feed-in tariffs that we are offering in electricity go beyond that 10p cap. If so, why are we capping heat but not electricity in the same way? I am curious about that.
I have one question about the changes to the way that projects will be accredited. The tariffs for CHP state that the rules will be relaxed to allow CHP units that have both fossil and biomass to be eligible. How do we then police that? We know that all our HI payments are on a deemed basis. If people have one unit that can fire on either fossil or biomass yet they get a deemed payment, what is the evaluation, monitoring and verification process and how will we police it to ensure that we do not create some kind of weird incentives there?
I have raised in the past my keen interest in bio-oils being used to replace heating oil. I think I am going to meet officials informally to talk that through; I mention it again because it is still a low-hanging fruit that we should explore having.
Those are my main points. I say again that the regulations are welcome. My questions are probing in nature and from a desire better to understand the regulations. I look forward to hearing the noble Baroness’s reply, and if she would care to meet on this topic subsequently, that would be great.
Baroness Verma
I am extremely grateful for the general support that the noble Baroness has given to the regulations. As she and I are both aware, given that the scheme is the first of its type in the world, there will be lessons to be learnt as we go in looking at how technologies respond and react to the work we are doing. As she rightly points out, renewable heat is really key to being able to manage some of the stresses that will be put on the power sector in the longer term.
To respond to one or two of the noble Baroness’s direct questions, she asked about the solar thermal element and the difference between the incentives there. The key, of course, is that to achieve our 2020 renewables target we have to be able to set tariffs to consider all technologies. The width of the question is about ensuring that all technologies are able to partake in there without distorting the market for any technology that wants to come in but cannot find space to be supported. Of course we have to work to value for money as well.
Law Commission
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to prioritise and clear the backlog of Law Commission bills awaiting parliamentary consideration.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend on the Front Bench is well aware that I am no lawyer. He and indeed other Members of the Committee may therefore wonder why I have trespassed into this rather specialist area of the legal world—the role of the Law Commission. The answer is that a few years ago, when the new procedure devised to enable your Lordships’ House to consider Law Commission Bills not only faster but more effectively was introduced, I had the privilege of serving on the first Bill so dealt with, the Perpetuities and Accumulations Bill, which gave me first-hand knowledge of the valuable work done by the Law Commission.
When I talked to staff at the Law Commission, in a rather charmingly self-effacing, self-deprecating way they described their work as being “care and maintenance”. That gravely underestimates the value of what they do. For example, their work on the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act—another Bill Committee on which I served—made significant improvements to the position of the man in the street seeking to obtain insurance. It restricted the ability of insurers to ask open-ended questions of the “Are there any other questions and facts that the insurer ought to be aware of” variety. The Bill Committee received evidence of cases where this had been much abused. An individual was refused treatment for his cancer on his private health insurance because he had failed to reveal to the insurer that he had visited his doctor—about flu, not cancer—a few weeks before his cancer was diagnosed.
I argue that the Law Commission does valuable work in improving equality of arms, in clarifying aspects of historical legislation that modern developments have made obscure, and generally—in that rather overused modern phrase—in helping to make the law fit for purpose. Of course, there are limitations to the work of the Law Commission. It must not and cannot trespass into party-political issues. Notwithstanding that, it provides a light-touch, swift way of keeping our law up to date. I was therefore distressed to learn that a number of Law Commission Bills that are, so to speak, on the runway do not appear to be being cleared for take-off. I want to focus on three of those now.
The first is a report on easements and covenants, published in June 2011—nearly three years ago. Inter alia, restrictions on landowners creating easements and covenants with variable impacts restrict their ability to obtain mortgage finance and so impact the development of large estates. The Bill would ease those challenges.
The second is an insurance contract law Bill, which is essentially a commercial follow-up to the consumer insurance Act that I referred to earlier. The Bill is particularly important for small businesses, such as a shop or a small family metal fabricating business, where the owners’ personal assets are co-mingled with those of the commercial operation. There is a practical reason for urgency on that Bill, in that Mr David Hertzell—the Law Commissioner responsible for all the work done on that Bill to date—retires in December this year. It would surely be an unnecessary own goal to lose his experience and expertise.
The third is a third parties (rights against insurers) Bill. A version of it received Royal Assent in 2010 but, for reasons that I have not been able to ascertain, it has never been implemented. It now needs to be updated by a short supplemental Bill. The Act’s purpose is to protect the insured where the insurer has gone out of business. It therefore has particular relevance for “long tail” claims, such as those relating to asbestosis.
The Government could, if they chose, quickly take forward that group of Bills. Are those Bills going to have the regulars of the saloon bar of the Dog and Duck dancing on the tables? No, they are not, but they are individually going to make a significant difference in their specialist areas. In particular, I venture the thought that your Lordships’ House is not going to be overburdened with legislation in the next Session. Therefore, what better way to use the House’s time and expertise than in considering these important but non-contentious pieces of legislation? I look forward to hearing, at least in outline, how my noble friend sees progress being made on these and indeed other Law Commission Bills.
A repetition of what happened to the Law Commission’s Bill on termination of tenancies for tenant default would surely be unacceptable. It was originally published by the Law Commission on 31 October 2006—seven and a half years ago. To date, no response to it has been forthcoming, from this or the previous Government. Governments are of course entitled to decline to take forward particular pieces of legislation but it is surely unacceptable not to respond to the Law Commission’s work. The Bill would do much to help businesses to stay in business by removing the perverse incentive that currently exists for landlords to change the locks on properties as early as possible. Sadly, the commission has concluded that since, as I explained, more than seven and a half years have now elapsed since the first consultation, the Bill is out of time. Consultation will have to begin again and all the public funds so far expended have been wasted.
For the remainder of my remarks, I will look forward at two Law Commission Bills currently in consultation. The first is the regulation of health and social care Bill. I have a shrewd suspicion that my noble friend Lord Kirkwood and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will wish to pursue this in more detail. Health and social care professional regulation is currently provided under the provisions of the Medical Act 1983 and a series of parallel Acts for other health professions. In the words of the General Medical Council, the Medical Act is,
“outdated, complex, highly prescriptive and difficult to change. This makes it difficult to innovate and respond quickly and efficiently to society’s expectations in a rapidly changing healthcare environment”.
This Law Commission Bill is different from most of those that have gone before in that it is long and complex. Most Law Commission Bills are quite slim but this Bill is telephone directory-thick, and of course it has the capacity to become party political. The Bill is in danger of falling between various stools. Nevertheless, for the reasons that I have already outlined, it is a badly needed Bill in order to keep our regulatory framework up to date and so improve the protection of patients. So where is this Bill now? Is it still a Law Commission Bill or will it become a Department of Health Bill? If so far it is neither, when will the decision be made as to which legislative process is to be adopted?
I now turn to an area in which I have long taken an interest—the world of charities. Charities and voluntary groups do wonderful work across our civil society—in particular, tackling those hard-to-reach groups that present particularly intractable and challenging social problems. To their great credit, the Government recognise the role of the sector, but the charity sector is much impeded by an outdated legal structure, notably the fact that the current law makes no distinction between the duties of a trustee of an ordinary trust as opposed to a charitable one. This, linked to the complications and complexities of what is known as permanent endowment, has significantly impeded the development of social investment and the consequent growth of charities that could benefit from the availability of finance so provided. A Law Commission consultation paper on these issues has recently been published and the consultation period closes on 18 June. I hope that my noble friend will be able to tell me that the Government propose to move forward swiftly to the implementation phase thereafter.
Before I conclude, I have one further point. The Lord Chancellor produces an annual report on the work of the Law Commission. A little bird told me that the report for last year was to be published last Thursday, 8 May. I have searched on the parliamentary website for it without success. Fearing that this only revealed my technological incompetence, I sought the help of the Printed Paper Office, also to no avail. I should be grateful if my noble friend could confirm its whereabouts.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is clearly more expert than I am at this. Half an hour ago, the Printed Paper Office told me that it did not have a copy. I now know its whereabouts. I thought that it might be published with a view to trying to spike my guns, but there we are. I look forward to the pleasure of reading it in due course.
I have argued that the Law Commission does valuable work that is far too valuable to be left to moulder on a Whitehall shelf. Proposals are awaiting implementation and the Government should use time in the next Session to bring these forward. I recognise that I have asked my noble friend a number of detailed questions, although I hope that I gave his office at least an outline of the lines that I proposed to follow. I would be perfectly happy if he were minded to write to me and Members of the Committee in reply.
What I am looking for is a general sense of urgency and commitment. Someone once described a Minister’s job as being a mixture of bomb disposal and Dyno-Rod. I want to be reassured this afternoon that my noble friend is the man from Dyno-Rod.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, and this is an important debate. I start by declaring an interest: I am currently chair of the trustees of the General Medical Council’s superannuation scheme. That might give a clue as to what I shall be talking about in the course of my brief remarks.
My noble friend Lord Hodgson has done the Grand Committee a great favour by tabling this Question for Short Debate. It is an important subject for the reasons that he described, but the timing of acquiring it is particularly valuable. It makes me think that we talk about the need to find ways to get adequate scrutiny for medical and other regulators, but actually the Ministry of Justice should have regular accountability sessions to Parliament. A Question for Short Debate such as the one this afternoon is an excellent example of that. It is something we should do annually because it is an important part of Parliament’s work carefully to scrutinise the invaluable work that the Law Commissions collectively, throughout the legislatures in the United Kingdom, do. They are of valuable assistance not just to Parliament but to us as individual legislators. My noble friend Lord Hodgson gets high marks for bringing this forward, and we should think about doing it more regularly in future.
I cheated; I spoke to the Law Commission and asked it where its annual report was, and it very kindly sent me a link, so I have had a chance, which my noble friend has not yet had, to look at that report. You would have to acknowledge that a fair amount of progress has been made. There is the influence that the Law Commission had on the Care Bill, to name but one, which is a massive piece of legislation and has taken up a lot of parliamentary time. That is an example of how the process should and can be used.
The Ministry of Justice deserves some credit for what has been achieved but I agree with my noble friend: there is emerging concern about the three pieces of legislation outlined in the annual report. If we can learn more about what is in the ministerial mind of the Ministry of Justice for those three pieces of legislation, that will be extremely valuable.
I want to make a point about time in Parliament. Although the value of the Law Commission is special, it is obviously no use whatever unless it can have adequate parliamentary time. My noble friend is right to say that there are two avenues into Parliament: the specialist procedure and the generality of proposals adopted by government departments are both available. He mentioned this in passing: I think that people will be puzzled by the excuse from time immemorial from business managers in Parliament—I used to be a member of the usual channels in the other place at an earlier stage of my parliamentary career, and business managers on the government side are always saying this—that they are strapped for time, and they would love to be able to help but they cannot because they do not have the appropriate slots. Ordinary people would be puzzled by that right now because parliamentary recesses, particularly this year, are more frequent and for a longer duration than in my experience they have been in the recent past.
My first question is, if the Ministry of Justice and the Law Commission are working closely together, why the Ministry of Justice is not knocking on the door of the business managers more regularly, saying, “If we’ve got a little bit more latitude in the business in front of the House, surely we can find a slot for some of this work”. I am sure that that must create a huge amount of frustration. The value of the Law Commissions throughout the jurisdictions in the United Kingdom is immense in the expertise that they make available to Parliament. Although my noble friend is right to guard against getting the Law Commissions involved in parliamentary or political controversy, the work that they do, the consultations that they carry out and the standing that they have with their interlocutors produce a quality of consultation that White Papers and Green Papers perhaps do not because they are necessarily promoted by government departments. The Law Commissioners must be very frustrated that they spend time on these measures and then find, as my noble friend reported, that some Bills are left languishing for seven and a half years. We have to work harder to find ways of getting parliamentary time for this important work.
In passing, I point out what we all know: the Queen’s Speech that we are looking forward to after the forthcoming Prorogation will contain—because they always do—a provision for other measures being laid before Parliament. That provision always gives some scope for Law Commission proposals and I do not think that we have been as assiduous and robust as we should have been in taking advantage of it. Indeed, we should be saying to the Law Commissions throughout the United Kingdom that over a five-year Parliament we will certainly guarantee them some time. There should be some understanding that there will be a bit of time for the special procedure and for government Bills. If the Law Commission sees fit to spend time giving careful consideration to some of these proposals for public care and maintenance and other revisions of our body of law, then the least we can do politically is to give it a better idea of what time will be available for that.
As my noble friend anticipated, I want to talk briefly about the case for early inclusion of the regulation of healthcare professionals in the upcoming Queen’s Speech. I want to put a single question to my noble friend on the Front Bench to which I do not know the answer. I do not know to what extent the Ministry of Justice has leverage with the usual channels—in my experience, not many people have leverage with the usual channels except the usual channels themselves. However, there must be some way for the Ministry of Justice to say, whether formally or informally, that it supports a piece of legislation. This is a substantial piece of legislation. It has 250-plus clauses, so fitting it into one parliamentary Session would be a tight fit, particularly in the next Session. We know when the election is going to be but I think that it will be an unusual, and perhaps an unusually unpredictable, space as far as parliamentary time is concerned.
I think that to go into the merits of the proposal would be technically out of order, but the need for it is great. I served for four years as a GMC member until last year, and enjoyed the experience. I even read distinguished reports written by some of our colleagues. In particular, the report by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, on the regulation of medical education was a very important piece of work, which I enjoyed. However, the one thing that I learnt, if I learnt anything, was that the Medical Act 1983 is no longer fit for purpose; it is fragmented, it is not suitable and it does not begin to deal adequately with nine different regulatory medical bodies, 32 professions and 1.44 million professionals. It is all about patient safety.
There is a point that I would make to my noble friend in seeking his assistance in getting some leverage for this measure to be included in the Queen’s Speech as either a draft or a full-blown Bill. My spies tell me that the worry in the Government is that health will be too tricky an issue in an election year. However, I think that patient protection is very important and, although contentious, if it were adopted by a department, it would be a departmental Bill and could become part of the political give and take. I think that such a Bill would be well received. It would certainly be treated very seriously here in the House of Lords, and there is the expertise in this House to do the measure justice. With that, I ask my noble friend to think very carefully. If he does have any influence with the usual channels, then if this is not in the Queen’s Speech there should at least be something that indicates what it is going to happen to it. The alternative is that this massively valuable work will be lost. The Queen’s Speech after the upcoming one will be in a very difficult set of political circumstances so we have to grasp the moment now, and we need his help to do so. I hope that he can help the Grand Committee by giving us that assurance today.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I am delighted to take part in this debate, initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts. Although much of what I was going to say has already been said by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope, I will re-emphasise it because it just goes to show why the medical profession feels that this particular part of the Law Commission’s report is so important. As the noble Lord said, it is not about health but about the protection of patients and the public, for better healthcare.
It is on that basis that I wish to speak about the Law Commission’s Regulation of Health and Care Professions Bill, which sets out the framework that will cover all nine health and social care regulators—not just the medical regulator but the medical councils. I declare no current interest regarding the General Medical Council, although of course I am a doctor and have been a member of the GMC and, as the noble Lord said, I produced a report on medical education in recent times.
In 2011, the Department of Health published a Command Paper called Enabling Excellence, which set out the Government’s position on the regulation of healthcare professionals, so there is no doubt that as long as three years ago they intended to do something about healthcare regulation. The Command Paper announced that the Law Commissions of the UK would review the legislation underpinning each of the professional regulators. They wanted the commissions to address four key areas: first, the independence of the regulators, with emphasis on addressing the current dependence on government for legislation; secondly, the simplification of the legislative framework, giving regulators greater autonomy to decide how to meet their regulatory duties; thirdly, reducing the cost of regulation, with emphasis on the scope for mergers, the consolidation of functions, the reduction of registration and fitness-to-practice costs and co-operation on quality assurance of education; and, fourthly, accountability—the greater independence granted to the regulators would be matched by a commensurate strengthening of their public and parliamentary accountability for their performance, including widening the role of the Professional Standards Authority.
As recently as April 2014, following the conclusion of the review, the Law Commissions of the UK published the draft Regulation of Health and Social Care Professions Bill, to which noble Lords have already referred. It is now the Government who need to take the next step, and it may well be for the Department of Health in England—with the assistance, I hope, of the Ministry of Justice—to decide how it wishes to take the Law Commission’s Bill forward. I hope, as do other noble Lords, that it will be in the Queen’s Speech on 4 June.
For its part, the GMC strongly supports the introduction of the Bill, which provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to provide a long-term legislative framework that would enable the GMC and other regulators to innovate and respond quickly and efficiently as society’s expectations change in the years to come, as the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, referred to. The Bill would allow the implementation of a range of long-awaited reforms that are not possible under our current legislation, and would enable greater opportunities for collaboration between the different regulators.
Let me give some background. The Medical Act 1983, which provides the GMC with its statutory powers, was designed for a different era. Like the legislation underpinning other professional regulators, it is outdated, complex, highly prescriptive and difficult to change. The regulation of healthcare professionals Bill, on the other hand, would ensure that the GMC and other professional regulators were much less reliant on government lawyers and archaic procedures to modernise professional regulation. Currently, rules and regulations made by the General Medical Council are in the form of statutory instruments and require the involvement of the Department of Health in England, the Privy Council and Parliament. The process is interminably slow. This Bill proposes wide-ranging powers with its own rules, subject to a duty to consult, which would allow for more efficient and modern practices by the regulators.
There are a number of reforms that the General Medical Council and other health professionals would look to implement as quickly as possible if the Bill were taken forward. I will give examples. There are a range of reforms that the council and other regulators would implement to improve their fitness-to-practice procedures for the benefit of patients and employers. Currently, they are cumbersome and lengthy. Many of these reforms have been consulted on already and received widespread support but cannot be implemented without new legislation. There is a need to speed up fitness-to-practice processes and to be able to appeal panel decisions when the General Medical Council feels that they do not protect the public—and the key role for the GMC is to protect the public. It also needs to be able to strike off automatically any doctor who has committed a serious crime such as rape without the need to refer to a panel, whereas now there is a need to do so.
The GMC would also be in a better position in having management with legal chairs and requiring doctors who have restrictions on their practice to undergo checks on their performance before a full return to work. The legislation does not now allow for that. The draft Bill goes some way to implementing a number of these reforms. Clearly, despite its many clauses, it will require a great deal of scrutiny and improvement, but I am sure that we are up to it.
The regulation of healthcare professionals Bill will provide the flexibility to approve education and training obtained in a range of programmes. Let me briefly refer to why this is essential. It will enable the General Medical Council and other regulators to address the current problem of having to recognise or derecognise an entire institution because one part of the programme offered by that institution fails to meet standards, even though other programmes may be acceptable. Because of that difficulty, we often find that the GMC is reluctant to take that action. These changes will enable the GMC better to support the efforts of UK universities and other educational institutions to deliver UK education and training overseas, which would be of enormous benefit to the United Kingdom and its reputation worldwide as a centre for education in healthcare.
In addition, the Bill will provide a way to introduce the more nuanced suite of regulatory sanctions recommended by the recent review of quality assurance in medical education—even though I might have had some say in that. The Bill could also enable greater efficiency among regulators, with more opportunities for co-operation. The regulators would have a new duty to co-operate with each other, which they currently do not, as well as being able to delegate any of their functions to another regulatory authority.
In conclusion, simplified legislation would allow the professional regulators to be much more flexible and innovative in using regulation to support and promote safe, compassionate patient care for patients. All eight of the professional regulators agree that:
“This will be a once in a generation opportunity to bring long awaited reform to ensure that the health professionals who treat us are properly trained, competent and up to date”.
The Minister may not feel that it is for the justice department to bring such a Bill forward, but I am sure that he and the department are in a highly respected position to influence other departments in addressing this issue, and at least to indicate that they will bring this Bill to Parliament in the next Queen’s Speech.
Lord Beecham
My Lords, I commend and support the noble Lords, Lord Kirkwood and Lord Patel, for their urging of the Government to proceed with the important legislation that they have described to the Committee in this debate. I will speak more generally about the work of the Law Commission. I plead guilty to technological ineptitude of a high order, but I was nevertheless able to download the report that was published, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said, last Thursday and able to obtain a hard copy this morning, so I have a slight advantage over the noble Lord in the ineptitude stakes when it comes to this debate.
It was interesting to read the Report on the Implementation of Law Commission Proposals. It is an annual report published by the Ministry of Justice, and it finds the Lord Chancellor in splendid Candide mode. He reports in his foreword that new procedures were introduced in 2009 and have,
“reduced the time and resources required for a non controversial Law Commission Bill to pass through Parliament”.
He refers to the Government’s “improved record on implementation” during the year and claims that there has been,
“significant progress on implementing the Commission’s proposals”.
He holds,
“the excellent work of the Law Commission in very high regard”,
and says that,
“the progress we have made during this past year demonstrates the continued relevance and resilience of the Commission’s work”.
Well, no doubt it does, but it would be more persuasive of the Secretary of State and the Lord Chancellor if in fact some of the long-outstanding proposals made by the commission had been activated during that time, or indeed an even longer period of time. After all, as we have heard, a number of proposed Bills have lain around for some considerable time. There has been the electronic communications code Bill, referred to in paragraph 45 of the report, which was published in February 2013 and to which apparently a response is indicated by the end of 2014. That means it will be nearly two years before someone in Government gets around to responding. Then there is the public services ombudsman Bill, referred to on page 49, which was published in 2011 and to which a response is apparently to be made available this summer. If a local authority took three years to respond to something, the Local Government Ombudsman would be rather critical of what little progress had been made.
The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, referred to the Bill about easements. That is not a matter likely to inflame public opinion or, I suspect, cause a great deal of division among Members of either House. Yet, as he pointed out, it was published in 2011 and a response is apparently due—I do not know whether the Minister or his advisers can tell us exactly when, but it is some time this year. Certainly, that is another three-year period. It is even worse for the High Court criminal procedures Bill, which was put forward in 2010. At page 55 we learn that a response will be made in the summer of 2014. That is a four-year gap.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, rightly pointed out, there is the important termination of tenancies for tenant default Bill, which has been around for, as he said, seven and a half years. It is fair to say that the previous Government talked about doing something and did not get around to doing it, but it is four years on even since those days. It is interesting that in the 2013 implementation report, the Government stated that they had “discussed the proposals” and were,
“continuing discussions with the Commission”,
in relation to commercial tenancies. Those were referred to especially by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. It will be interesting to learn if the Minister is able to update us today or subsequently on just how far those discussions have gone.
I have a closer interest in another aspect, which is private tenancies. A year ago, the Government were saying that they were also considering whether improvements could be made to the evictions procedure in the residential sector. Before Mr Grant Shapps—or Michael Green, as he is otherwise known—begins to accuse the Government of Venezuelan tendencies in respect of private rented property, perhaps the Minister will indicate whether the Government are seriously looking at this issue. They have been rather dismissive of proposals made by the Labour Party about elements of security of tenure, yet at least a year ago they were talking about looking seriously at precisely those issues.
In addition to those matters, there are still a number of outstanding matters in which the Government have apparently abandoned any prospect of taking Bills forward. With regard to the participating in crime Bill in May 2007, the cohabitation Bill in July 2007 and the conspiracy and attempts Bill in December 2009, the Government have indicated that they have no intention of taking up those recommendations for reform during the current Parliament. So that is one complete Parliament—one and a half, in two cases—gone without any action being taken, with no good explanation why the Government have come to that conclusion.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
I had conversations with the Law Commission about where we were on these various issues. In two of the cases that the noble Lord has mentioned, the commission was concerned that they would get it into the arena of party-political warfare and concluded that it was not suitable to proceed further. That was the commission’s conclusion, not the Government’s. It is not a fair accusation that the Government have not acted; the Law Commission itself felt that these were not the right areas for it to be involved in.
Lord Beecham
The noble Lord may be right in respect of bringing stuff forward at the last minute in a five-year Parliament, but years have gone by. It cannot be said that political considerations would have been particularly relevant two or three years ago on matters that by that time had already been outstanding for four or five years. If these matters had been political, they would not have been included in the Law Commission’s programme in the first place or indeed agreed by the Government, because the Government agree these things. On the timing of an eventual Bill, I take the noble Lord’s point—it would perhaps be inappropriate to do that in the run-up to an election—but we have no indication at all of why the Government decided not to proceed with these Bills.
There are a couple of other Bills where apparently some sort of conclusion may be expected. There is a remedies against public authorities Bill, which celebrates its fourth birthday in 10 or 12 days’ time, on which the ministry committed to providing by Easter 2014 a complete analysis of the results of a pilot scheme. Are the Government ready to pronounce upon those results and, therefore, their intentions regarding that Bill? The other Bill to which there was a commitment to provide a response during the summer is a High Court jurisdiction in criminal cases Bill, which is now nearly three years old. Will we in fact get a response this summer, and is it possible for what I suspect will be such highly technical matters to be brought forward during the dog days of this Parliament—although, frankly, it does not look as though there will be much else to do? Then, as I said, there is the public services ombudsman Bill, to which a response was expected from the Cabinet Office, not the Ministry of Justice, by Easter. I am not aware that any such response has been in the public domain; again, perhaps, if not today then subsequently, we might find out.
All this raises questions not about how the commission works—it is doing its work—but about how that work is received and dealt with at the government end. It was interesting to read the triennial review of the Law Commission on this subject. Paragraph 43 asserts:
“The Law Commission faces many difficult challenges at the moment. It is currently developing its 12th Programme of Law Reform in an uncertain climate. The Protocol governing the Commission’s work provides that before approving the inclusion of a project in the overall programme the Lord Chancellor will expect the relevant Minister to give an undertaking that there is a serious intention to take forward law reform in this area”.
Touching on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, it then asserts:
“With the timescale for the 12th Programme spanning the next General Election, the Commission and Ministers will be making decisions in a context where there is a great deal of uncertainty about whether the incoming Government will support any project”.
That raises two points. First, in respect of matters that cannot be concluded in this Parliament, will the Government facilitate discussions between the Opposition and the commission about what a future Government might do? I ask that particularly in the light of recent decisions by the Prime Minister not to facilitate discussions between the Civil Service and the Opposition until much later this year—much closer to a general election than has been indicated in the past. As noble Lords will understand, I have very strong objections to that of a political kind. However, with Law Commission Bills we are not talking about highly controversial political matters anyway. I cannot see that discussions would be at all embarrassing to the Government; these are not government policies that will be under review. I cannot see any difficulty in facilitating a discussion between the Opposition and the commission about the commission’s own agenda. It would be helpful to an incoming Government, which I hope to see—and which noble Lords opposite hope not to see—or for any future Opposition to have that kind of relationship with the commission, so that the whole process can be accelerated and the Law Commission does not have to start from scratch.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. Did the party opposite avail the Conservative Party of such an opportunity when they were in power?
Lord Beecham
I have no idea, but I am not bound by every decision, right or wrong, made by the previous Government. I hope that they did. I might equally ask, did the noble Lord’s party ask for such a facility? I assume he does not know that either. Let us start from a clean sheet, and suggest that it is an innovation that would be worth pursuing, whatever the Government of the day. It is not a political issue: there is nothing between us politically in this agenda.
The second thing sits rather oddly with the following paragraph of the triennial review report:
“The continuing pressures on public finances will add to these challenges”.
I wonder why that should be the case, unless the commission’s manpower has been reduced, or the capacity within Government departments to deal with it has been reduced. For the most part, these are not expenditure-related Bills. The report goes on:
“This has brought to the fore the need to clarify the Commission’s funding model so that clear principles are established. To live within its means the Commission will need to be flexible and agile and will have to make difficult choices about the projects it takes on”.
Yes, but I repeat: is the financing a real issue? I have spoken for 13 minutes; I shall be very quick now.
My last point is that the Lord Chancellor currently produces a report on behalf of the Government as a whole. There does not seem to be a proper connection between the relevant departments and the Ministry of Justice in the course of the consideration of implementing these programmes. It seems to me to be necessary for there to be a single body, and it may well be the MoJ, to oversee the whole process from the government side. That is where the delays seem to occur. There may or may not be good reasons for them but no one on the government side seems to be taking responsibility for the overall programme. If they did that, we might not have the disappointment that has been voiced by other noble Lords today, and we might have a better realisation of the commission’s objectives, which the Government certainly share, in principle.
Lord Brooke of Sutton Mandeville (Con)
If the Lord Chairman will allow me, may I ask a question before the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, sits down? It looks as though he would be prepared to answer one. I volunteered in the Chamber when the new arrangements came in—I think the noble Lord was by then in your Lordships’ House. When my brother was chairman of the Law Commission, he made considerable progress by the conversations he had with the shadow Law Officers in what was then the Labour Government. I am not in any way seeking inside information, but I would be interested to know whether that route was being pursued today in the same way that it successfully was in those days.
Lord Beecham
That is really the point that I was making about the commission. I confess that I cannot say what approaches my colleagues in the other place have made as shadow Law Officers, and I do not think that the Minister would know either. I will certainly look at that from my party’s perspective.
Lord Faulks
My Lords, I am aware of the limited time I have been given. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has somewhat exceeded his time. He properly asked me a number of questions, as have other noble Lords. I will do my best in the limited time to answer as many of them as possible, but I am sure that noble Lords will appreciate that time does not allow me to give as much detail as I would otherwise have liked.
I begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Hodgson, who describes himself as no lawyer, but he is quite right to bring this matter to the attention of your Lordships’ House and he has performed a valuable service in so doing.
The Law Commission is the statutory independent body created by the Law Commissions Act 1965 to keep the law under review and to recommend reform where it is needed. The aim of the commission is to ensure that the law is fair, modern, simple and as cost-effective as possible. I speak from my own experience that, in decades gone by, the Law Commission would produce valuable reports but, sadly, often little was done with them because there was not sufficient political will, time, or whatever to bring some of its sensible suggestions into force.
However, in the past few years, the Law Commission, in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, has engaged in a major exercise to enhance its profile within Whitehall and to increase the level of implementation of its work. Elements of that include the introduction of the new procedure, to which we have had reference, in your Lordships’ House for the consideration of non-controversial Law Commission Bills; a statutory duty on the Lord Chancellor to report to Parliament on implementation of Law Commission work—that is perhaps a partial answer to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood; and a statutory protocol on the relationship between the Law Commission and government departments. Those actions have resulted in a more efficient and streamlined way of working for the commission. As much was recognised in the recent triennial review undertaken in respect of the Law Commission, which was reported to this House. The review identified a number of areas of particularly good practice by the Law Commission and its sponsor team at the Ministry of Justice. It commended the open and transparent approach to law reform and policy-making as an exemplar of open policy-making.
When the commission examines a particular area of law, it first establishes the scope of its work in conjunction with the relevant government department. It then consults on existing law and on proposals for change. It makes a report to the Lord Chancellor or the relevant Minister with recommendations and reasons. The report may—and often does—include a draft Bill giving effect to the commission’s recommendations. The Bills are referred to as Law Commission Bills.
Since the new procedure was put in place in 2010, six Bills have been through the Law Commission Bill procedure. As your Lordships will appreciate, there are practical reasons for a limit to the number of Bills that can go through the procedure in a Session, but as and when opportunities have arisen, Bills have been taken forward using that special procedure.
It is perhaps important also to stress that we use what might be described as the normal procedure wherever possible to take forward the commission’s recommendations. For example, most of the recommendations in the Contempt of Court—Juror Misconduct and Internet Publications report were included in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill introduced in Parliament in February 2014, and which is part of a carryover Bill, which will be considered by your Lordships’ House during the summer or perhaps in the autumn.
The special procedure has helped to clear the previous backlog and significantly reduce delays. Bills that have benefited from this new procedure include the Trusts (Capital and Income) Act 2013—the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, will be familiar with that—the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012, with which my noble friend Lord Hodgson will be familiar, the Third Parties (Rights Against Insurers) Act 2010, the Perpetuities and Accumulations Act 2009, referred to by my noble friend, the Inheritance and Trustees Powers Bill; and the Partnerships (Prosecution) (Scotland) Act. With the exception of the Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Bill, which is awaiting Royal Assent, all are now Acts and have made important changes to the effectiveness, efficiency and quality of the law.
In March 2010, the Lord Chancellor and the commission agreed a statutory protocol governing how government departments and the Law Commission should work together on law reform projects. We see this as a key document for ensuring a more productive relationship with the Law Commission and improved rates of implementation of Law Commission reports.
The protocol covers the various stages of a project: before the commission takes the project on; at the outset of the project; during the currency of the project; and after the project. It applies both to projects set out in one of the commission’s regular programmes of law reform and to projects which arise out of individual referrals made to the commission. The protocol applies only to projects which the commission takes on after the date on which the protocol was agreed, although government departments and the commission have agreed to take it into account, as far as practicable, in relation to projects which were in progress at that date. This protocol does not apply to commission proposals for consolidation or statute law revision. I commend the protocol as a thorough and efficient process.
During the debate, reference was made to what might or might not need to be included in the Queen’s Speech. The Committee will of course appreciate that I am not in a position to comment on the contents of the Queen’s Speech. I take account of what the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, said about the other measures that it provisionally contains and I undertake to bring the contents of this debate to the attention of the Ministry of Justice—and further, if necessary. I cannot give any further assurance beyond that. However I can say, counter to the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that there is a good level of communication between the Ministry of Justice and the Law Commission, particularly in relation to the forthcoming programme. The consultation for the commission’s 12th programme closed on 31 October and the commission is currently reviewing the suggestions that have been made. It has submitted proposals, and the main part of its law reform will then be set for the following three years.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, referred to the report of the Law Commission's proposals and criticised certain delays in some areas and the failure to implement—or not to take up—certain proposals. Although the Law Commission provides invaluable assistance to any Government of whatever colour on law reform, there is no obligation on the part of a Government to bring forward proposals: it is a question of using a valuable resource. For example, the noble Lord referred to remedies against public authorities. I was one of the consultees on that particular exercise. I can say that there was far from agreement among the consultees about the correct way forward. The fact that the Law Commission examines a subject and comes up with proposals does not necessarily mean that it has provided the perfect answer, although very often it provides valuable assistance.
I should make some observations about the Lord Chancellor's Report on the Implementation of Law Commission Proposals and the duty introduced by the Law Commission Act 2009 for an annual report. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has already read it, and the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, will be able to read it shortly. It was published on 8 May, so this is a timely debate. On easements and covenants, I refer the noble Lord to paragraph 52, on the insurance contract Bill, paragraph 8 on third parties’ rights against insurers, paragraph 32 and termination of tenancies paragraph 61, which may assist his reading thereafter.
The report shows that a number of Law Commission proposals have taken effect:
“The Trusts (Capital and Income) Act 2013 has come into force, as have the amendments to the Companies Act 2006 which streamline the system for registering charges and securities interests granted by companies. In furtherance of the Commission’s function to repeal laws that no longer serve any useful purpose”—
another important part of its work—the largest ever Statute Law (Repeals) Act, removing more than 800 Acts from the statute book, received royal assent on 31 January, 2013 and came into force immediately.
Perhaps I may deal with one area which I know several noble Lords were concerned about, which was the regulation of healthcare professionals. Rightly, there was reference to the considerable amount of work that was done in that respect and I think that there will be a lot of sympathy for the observations made by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, about the need to consolidate and improve the regulation of healthcare professionals.
The Law Commission began its work in response to the Department of Health’s White Paper in 2011. It carried out research into the then current regulatory system for healthcare professional regulation in preparation for its public consultation, which opened on 1 March 2012. It ran for a total of 13 weeks, and the Department of Health submitted a response. Following analysis of the responses to the consultation exercise and engagement with the Department of Health and other key stakeholders working to develop its policy, the Law Commission published its report and recommendations alongside a draft Bill on 2 April 2014. On behalf of my colleagues at the department, I would like to say thank you to the Law Commission for the significant amount of time and effort that has been put into developing such a detailed and thorough analysis. I can tell the Committee that the Department of Health is considering the Law Commission’s proposal with great interest and will produce a formal response in due course.
Of course, there has also been the report by Robert Francis QC, containing a total of 290 recommendations, a number of which related to the regulation of healthcare professionals, which will also bear considerable consideration. I know that officials at the Department of Health and the Nursing and Midwifery Council are currently working on the possibility of secondary legislation and associated amendments to the NMC rules which will give the NMC power to carry out its fitness to practice and registration functions more efficiently. The GMC and the NMC are also working together with other healthcare regulators to agree a consistent approach to being open and honest. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, will know only too well, the explicit professional duty of candour, much debated in your Lordships’ House over the years and which is now a firm recommendation, is likely to find its way into law in due course.
I fear that I am unable to commit further than that, but I hope that noble Lords will find some encouragement from that.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
Before the Minister sits down, the question I asked was whether the Ministry of Justice could add its considerable weight to what I know is the view in the Department of Health that it is important to make some progress with that legislation in some way in the next parliamentary Session. Is the MoJ willing to support that view to the people putting together the proposals for the parliamentary programme for the next year?
Lord Faulks
The MoJ has a role by statute to liaise with the Law Commission. That is about as far as I can take it. I personally have sympathy with the concerns expressed. So far as that assists, I hope that I can bring them to the attention of my masters, as it were, in the Ministry of Justice. I fear that I cannot go any further than that. I think that the noble Lord will understand that.
I think that that has dealt with most of the main issues. As I said, the particular concerns of my noble friend Lord Hodgson are, I think, largely met in the report. That is not to say that they are not of considerable importance—they are. However, I respectfully reject the suggestion that the Government are sitting on their hands in respect of the unimplemented proposals. I hope that I have explained that there has been a great deal of progress. Of course, some have not been progressed at the pace that some would like, but there have to be priorities. To give one example, on one aspect of potential reform that has been mentioned, the termination of tenancies project, which relates to the Law Commission report published in 2006, we accept that that is a very long period between publication and decision, but we hope to reach a final decision this year.
The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, was critical of the Government’s criticism of his party’s suggestions in relation to private landlords and security of tenure. I think that the debate so far has focused on whether or not rate freezes of three years were necessarily a good idea. The noble Lord eschewed party politics and then proceeded to indulge in it. I respond by saying simply that the case for rent control is far from clear.
Lord Beecham
I did not raise the issue of rent control; I was talking specifically about security of tenure.
Lord Faulks
There is a complete answer to the concerns which the noble Lord was raising; perhaps I will not indulge myself by going into it now. Suffice it to say that the whole question is extremely difficult. I hope that he will accept that we operate continuously in a challenging economic environment. We have made significant progress in implementing the commission’s proposals. This Government, as, I am sure, does the party opposite, hold the Law Commission in very high regard. We continue to work with constructively with it. We have made great progress and can demonstrate by what has happened and what continues to happen the continued relevance and resilience of the commission’s work.
House of Lords
Immigration
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Holmes of Richmond
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to remove international students from the headline immigration figures.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)
My Lords, the Government publish immigration statistics broken down by category. The number of student immigrants may therefore be easily distinguished from other migrants. The independent Office for National Statistics’ net migration statistics include students, and the Government have no plans to remove them. This makes no difference to the policy, which is that there is no cap and genuine international students are welcome.
Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)
My Lords, the message must be clear to international students: we want you and we welcome you. Can my noble friend the Minister assure the House that the Government are doing everything to ensure that, when it comes to global higher education, the brightest and the best choose Britain?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I think that the whole House will agree with those sentiments. It is certainly the Government’s policy, and I hope that it will be possible to persuade universities and Universities UK to take this opportunity to improve our position as the second provider of higher education to the world student population. This is a great opportunity for us, and we need to be united in sending that message.
Lord Bragg (Lab)
My Lords, do the Government fully understand the damage that is being done? I speak as chancellor of the University of Leeds. I refer not only to the damage in fees, which is well over £1 million or £1.5 million—a lot to any university—but to the fact that we are excluding more than 23% of people from China and India. Does the Minister understand the value of those contacts, their value to our future negotiations, prosperity and culture and the lessening of value of our academic status in the world by this policy?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Lord will know that there is no cap on numbers. We welcome the brightest and the best, and I wish that noble Lords would take that on board and persuade those universities where they have responsibility that this is the Government’s policy. If I may say to the noble Lord, visa applications from students sponsored by universities increased by 7% in 2013, and applications from students going to Russell group universities rose by 11%. That is not an industry that is suffering as a result of government policy; it is an industry that is taking advantage of government policy to show what a good offer we have for students.
Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
My Lords, I warmly welcome the Government’s wish to make it clear that overseas students are extremely welcome. However, I have two questions for the Minister. First, why do we need to continue to include international students in our overall immigration figures when Canada, Australia, the United States and our other major rivals see no need to do that given that these are not migrants but visitors who will return home? Secondly, what is the effect of a reduction in overseas students on our crucial STEM courses—that is, courses on science, technology, engineering and computing—as many of those courses are at risk if they do not retain, and increase, the present proportion of overseas students?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I must correct my noble friend on a matter of fact in that all our major competitors, including the US and Australia, count students as migrants. I hope I may explain why that is the case. In 2013, 115,000 people who came to the UK as students extended their stay—70,000 or so, or 62%, for further study and 38,000 for work. The Tier 4 system offers flexibility to allow these high-value individuals to extend their visa. However, not to include them as immigrants is against the practice in other competitor countries and is against our interests in making sure that we know who is here, why they are here and what they are doing when they are here.
Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister recognise that this is not a problem of statistics or the presentation of statistics? I entirely agree with his very welcome statement of the Government’s intentions but will he add just a few words—that in future the Government do not intend to treat students as immigrants for public policy purposes?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I have to make it clear that we treat them as immigrants for statistical purposes. The point of my argument is that students come here not just for six months or so but to pursue a course of study and, following that course of study, they go on to do other things. We delude ourselves if we think this is an alternative track that we can separate out from migration in general. The point I have made is that it makes no difference to our policy position, which is that the brightest and best should come here. I did not answer my noble friend’s question on STEM. Of course, STEM subjects are important. That is why STEM students from China went up by 7%, those from Malaysia by 1% and those from Hong Kong by 20% between 2011 and 2013. We are at one on this and I wish that noble Lords would accept the Government’s good faith in that regard.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend assure the House with regard to a major problem that we all experienced in the House of Commons for many years of students signing up to study at not very reputable places and then disappearing? Is that problem over?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Yes, my Lords. As my noble friend will know, institutions which were guilty of that practice are no longer able to sponsor students. I accept that universities are acting in good faith in conducting their responsibilities in this regard. All I am saying is that the Government’s position is that we want to back them in making sure that we tell the world what a good offer we have in this country for students.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
Is not the problem that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is actively trying to make sure that many students come here but the Home Office is doing its best to make sure that they do not get in? This has been exemplified by the warm words said by the Minister today, which are simply not believed in many of the places that traditionally have sent students here. What is he going to do to go on the front foot and get out there and persuade people that Britain is indeed open for business and that our education system is something that they should be joining?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I do not think that the noble Lord would have any doubts as to my good faith in this matter, and I am sure that that is true of most noble Lords because it is not the first time that we have discussed this issue. Indeed, it has been a theme over the past 12 months since the committee reported to the House. I am anxious to join noble Lords who have responsibility within universities in making it clear that the Home Office policy is not about making it difficult for these people to be here; it is about facilitating their studies and encouraging them to do so. As the noble Lord will know, during the passage of the Immigration Bill through this House we debated this very issue and I said that I hoped to meet Universities UK to talk about it, and that remains my intention.
Independent Living Fund
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Campbell of Surbiton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how the assessment guidance to local authorities under the Care Bill will address the particular needs of people transferring from the Independent Living Fund.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, one of the key principles of the Care Bill is that people who require care and support should have choice and control over their lives. The Bill requires that all assessments will consider the person’s needs, well-being and desired outcomes. The requirements of the Bill, and of guidance supporting implementation, will apply equally to all adults having an assessment, including those who are transferring from the Independent Living Fund.
Baroness Campbell of Surbiton (CB)
I thank the Minister for his considered reply but, given the Government’s emphasis on people who have direct experience of using care and support services being centrally involved in their design and delivery, will the Minister please explain why his Government think it unnecessary to set up a reference group, including disabled people, the Independent Living Fund, local authorities and civil servants, to oversee this very important ILF transition?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Baroness will know that she and I had a very useful meeting last week and I, with my honourable colleague Norman Lamb, undertook to her that we would give that proposal serious consideration, which we will certainly do. I will be in touch with her in the coming weeks to arrange a further discussion about this. We are absolutely committed to co-production in this and to involving stakeholders wherever possible.
Baroness Wilkins (Lab)
My Lords, given that the Government have set the national eligibility criteria at a level that will not provide sufficient support for independent living, will the Minister say whether and how the Government will monitor the level of unmet need of the transferred ILF clients if elements of their package are not eligible for local authority funding?
Earl Howe
My Lords, 94% of ILF users receive support from both the ILF and the local authority. Local authorities will assess those who are transferring from the ILF. If a person is assessed as not having eligible needs, the Care Bill provides authorities with a power to meet those needs, and they do so. Authorities should also advise on what preventive services, information or advice, or other support may be available in the wider community to help them achieve their particular outcomes.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, while the Government’s policy of localism is to be generally welcomed, does my noble friend not agree that there should be some exceptions? If, as a result of devolving the Independent Living Fund, some severely disabled people can no longer afford to live wholly independent and fulfilling lives, how is this in the best interests of those disabled people? Will he explain, bearing in mind the high cost of social care and residential care, how that will be in the best interests of the taxpayer?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the provisions in the Care Bill will apply equally to everyone with care and support needs, including those who are currently receiving support from the ILF. The aim of the ILF is to support independent living for disabled people. The overarching aim of the Care Bill is to give people with care and support needs more choice and control over their lives. It focuses specifically on their well-being and the outcomes that they want to achieve, and puts them at the heart of the system. That would be my reply. There is no question of forcing people into residential care. The starting point is: what are the needs and wishes of the individuals involved, and how can care be built around those?
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, can the noble Earl guarantee that no current recipient of the fund will lose out when money is transferred and it is the responsibility of local government? Will he tell the House why this money is not being ring-fenced? Will he acknowledge that in two recent examples of money being transferred by his department to local government—the Healthwatch budget and the public health budget—local authorities have not passed on the full amount? How will he ensure that local authorities spend that money on independent living?
Earl Howe
As the noble Lord knows, local government social care funding is not ring-fenced. We believe that allowing local authorities the flexibility to manage their budgets locally means that they can respond to local needs and priorities better. The Care Bill, as I have just said, will require local authorities to involve the person in the development of their care and support plan and, as far as possible, agree that with them. The person’s care and support plan may be different from their current package, but the central point is that they will be at the heart of the process to ensure that the package provides them with choice and control over their lives.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the Government’s recently published strategy, Think Autism, vowed to help people with autism spectrum disorder to live independent lives. However, the abolition of the Independent Living Fund withdraws the very scheme that was set up precisely to help those vulnerable people to live in the community. How many people with autism spectrum disorder currently receive support under the Independent Living Fund and will therefore be affected by this closure?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I do not have that figure in my brief but the number of people receiving payments from the Independent Living Fund is relatively few in comparison to the total number of people receiving adult social care and support. If I have any further figures that I can supply to the noble Baroness, I shall be happy to write to her.
Lord Laming (CB)
Will the noble Earl share with the House the objections to ring-fencing this fund during the initial period to make sure that we have certainty that the money will be used for the purpose for which it is intended?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the issue is that we essentially have a two-tier system. That is at the heart of why the ILF is being disbanded over the next year or so. As a result of that, we know that there is some cross-subsidisation, with local authorities using ILF money to off-set the cost of social care. We are rechannelling that money to local authorities in the expectation that they will use it for adult social care, as I have said. It is not, however, ring-fenced.
National Health Service: Nursing Staff
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Kennedy of Cradley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps are being taken to ensure adequate levels of nursing staff in the National Health Service.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, patient safety is paramount. Patient safety experts agree that safe staffing levels should be set locally. Local NHS organisations are best placed to determine the skill mix of their workforce and must have freedom to deploy staff in ways appropriate for their locality. We have commissioned NICE to develop guidance on setting safe staffing levels and to endorse safe staffing tools. If hospitals do not have sufficient nurses, the Chief Inspector of Hospitals will take action.
Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)
As today is International Nurses Day, will the noble Earl join me and many others in this House in paying tribute to the hard work of our NHS nurses? Further, can he explain why, since 2010, the actual number of qualified nurses has fallen and nearly 4,000 senior nursing posts have been lost? What are the Government going to do about that worrying reduction in experience and skill in nursing in our NHS?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I readily join the noble Baroness in paying tribute to our nursing workforce, whether in acute settings, in the community or, indeed, in any other setting. In fact, if the noble Baroness consults the official statistics, she will see that there are more nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff at present than there ever have been in the history of the NHS. Since the election, more than 5,100 more nurses are working on our wards, there are more than 1,700 more midwives and more than 2,000 more health visitors. We have been able to fund these increased numbers by a reduction in administrative staff—today there are more than 19,600 fewer administrative staff. I would be interested to hear where the noble Baroness gets her figures from but, as she will have gathered, mine are completely in the other direction.
The Lord Bishop of Oxford
My Lords, given the court ruling last week against Thanet Clinical Commissioning Group saying that it was obliged to follow NICE guidelines unless a special factor could be determined that would justify departure, will Her Majesty’s Government give an assurance that the same test will apply to NHS trusts in regard to the ratio of nurses and patients?
Earl Howe
The guidance issued today by NICE on staffing ratios, to which I think the right reverend Prelate is specifically referring, is in draft, but the deputy chief executive of NICE has stressed that there are no floor or ceiling numbers on the required number of nursing staff that can be applied either across the whole of the NHS or in a particular ward setting. What the profession is seeking, and what NICE is looking to give it, is a reference tool or guideline that will enable it to judge correct staffing levels in accordance with the particular circumstances of a ward and the skill mix of the staff on that ward. It is a guideline rather than a mandatory prescription.
Baroness Manzoor (LD)
My Lords, my question relates to specialist nurses. NICE has issued guidelines in relation to TB, and I am delighted to see that Public Health England has also issued a strategy on TB, making it a key component. However, there are variations in the number of TB nurses within trusts. How are the Government and NHS England going to adhere to the ratios that have been advocated by NICE?
Earl Howe
My Lords, as regards specialist nurses, the Government have supported the development of a range of specialist roles within the profession. In the end it is for local NHS organisations, with their knowledge of the needs of the local population, to invest in training for specialist skills and to deploy specialist nurses. We recognise that more could be done by some local healthcare organisations in this area, and Health Education England is able to support employers with continuing personal and professional development—but within clear limits. The planning process has created an opportunity for employers, through the LETBs—local education and training boards—to prioritise investment in this area.
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, the number of nurses may have gone up a little, but the main problem is the marked reduction in the number of senior nurses on wards. These are the women and men who are in charge of a ward and make sure that care is properly delivered at the ward level. Does the noble Earl consider that this particular loss is because we do not reward and value these key individuals well enough to recruit or retain them?
Earl Howe
My Lords, as the noble Lord will be aware, finances in the NHS are tight. However, as I said earlier, there are now 5,100 more nurses on our wards than there were in May 2010. That must indicate that nursing is still an attractive profession for the brightest and the best of our young men and women.
Lord Willis of Knaresborough (LD)
My Lords, will my noble friend accept that nurses do not work in isolation and that in order to deliver the high-quality care and safety that the Government rightly demand, the whole of the caring workforce needs to be properly trained and properly educated? What steps are being taken to ensure that healthcare support workers in particular—there are more than a million of them—get the training that they deserve to give patients the care that they too deserve?
Earl Howe
My noble friend is right. He may be aware that last month Health Education England, Skills for Care and Skills for Health launched the pilot for the new care certificate, which is taking place across a range of health and social care settings. It will test a set of standards designed to help employers to assess not only workers’ skills, but also the knowledge, behaviours and values that are required to deliver compassionate and high-quality care. That pilot will continue throughout the summer and, subject to evaluation, it is planned to introduce the care certificate next March.
Ratification of the Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict
The Earl of Clancarty
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will introduce legislation to ratify the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and accede to its two protocols.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble (Con)
My Lords, I am not in a position to say when the Government will introduce legislation to facilitate the UK’s ratification of the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two protocols. I confirm our commitment to heritage protection and our respect for other nations’ cultural property. That is why we have pledged to introduce legislation as soon as parliamentary time allows.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is a growing feeling that, if we do not ratify this treaty, at the very least we shall not have the necessary moral authority to speak out on, as well as to help to protect against, the destruction and theft of cultural heritage that continues to occur? The Government have been saying for years that they will ratify the treaty when parliamentary time allows. There is now plenty of parliamentary time. Will the Government get on with it?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I of course understand the noble Earl’s position. It has not been possible for either the current or the previous Government to secure the parliamentary time needed to pass the relevant legislation. It was necessary for both Governments to take it up by giving priority to measures for economic recovery and reform.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister recognise that there has in recent years been a considerable and avoidable loss of cultural heritage as a result of armed conflict? Does he not acknowledge that in 2008 the previous Government published the draft Cultural Property (Armed Conflicts) Bill for consultation? We have had 10 years since the Government’s concerns were removed by the passage of the second protocol. Can he not find some time for this? Parliament would be very keen to see this enacted.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, again I understand my noble friend’s position. It will help if I say that, because of anticipation of this country’s adoption of the convention and its protocols, it already informs the Armed Forces’ law of armed conflict doctrine and training policy, particularly with regard to respect for cultural property, precautions in attack and recognition of the protective emblem.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister’s words are welcome as far as they go, but will he acknowledge that Governments have on previous occasions made exactly the same commitment as he has done today, yet the situation has persisted—disgracefully—that Britain is the only significant military power not to have ratified the convention? On this one issue at least, will the coalition parties set aside their differences and agree to put this measure in the Queen’s Speech?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I am certainly not privy to the content of the Queen’s Speech. It would be fair to say that the coalition has taken forward many measures that are in the national interest. I am aware of and understand entirely the feelings of your Lordships and many outside who want legislation on this matter.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I must apologise to the Minister. I am afraid that was overenthusiasm because something did just cross my mind: is this is an issue of time or of inclination?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I think I have emphasised in my replies that this is a question of time. We have pledged that we wish there to be legislation, as indeed did the previous Government. I have read the draft Bill published in January 2008. However, for very legitimate reasons, the previous Government felt that legislation was required to deal with the economic crisis. That is what the coalition Government have done and I believe it is bearing fruit—which is, after all, in the national interest.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I do not think that any noble Lords would doubt the inclinations of my noble friend. However, 10 years is quite a long time and 60 years is even longer. We have just had an extra week of Easter Recess and we have an unnecessary extra week of Prorogation. Can we not just find a little time to get this very necessary measure—on which my noble friend protests that everyone agrees—on to the statute book?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My noble friend, as ever, makes a compelling point. However, I am afraid I am not a magician and I cannot will the parliamentary time. During this Session, we have undertaken a lot of very important work in the national interest, which is what your Lordships’ House does. I was looking at the recess weeks—they have been the same for the past three Sessions.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, the moral case for adopting this legislation is unanswerable. As we have heard, it is not really credible to say that this is about parliamentary time. I have heard what the Minister has said. Will he give a personal commitment that he will do what he can to ensure that this measure is included in the Queen’s Speech?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I am afraid that really is rather above my pay grade. I understand entirely what the noble Lord is saying. We would ideally like this to be put on the statute book but we are not in a position to do that at the moment. What is important in practical terms is that our Armed Forces are very conscious of the protocol and the convention, which is why they adhere to what is intended. I have some very interesting details on what we have been undertaking in Afghanistan, for instance, where we very much adhere to the requirements of the convention.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
Would my noble friend accept that one of the prime casualties of any armed conflict is the truth, and that we set up the Chilcot inquiry to establish the truth into that tragic war in Iraq? That report has now taken longer to write than World War 1 took to fight, and there is a rumour abroad that it is being held up by the intransigence of one very wealthy man. Would he not accept that the nation’s interests, and the interests of truth, far outweigh the interests of any one man and can he tell us when that report will be published?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I thank my noble friend but all these reports take their course and take their time. However, it is obviously very important that we have this report and have it in the proper time.
Transport for London Bill [HL]
The Chairman of Committees
That the Commons message of 7 May be now considered; and that the promoters of the Transport for London Bill [HL], which was originally introduced in this House in Session 2010–12 on 24 January 2011, should have leave to suspend any further proceedings on the Bill in order to proceed with it, if they think fit, in the next Session of Parliament according to the provisions of Private Business Standing Order 150A (Suspension of bills).
Scotland Act 1998 (Modification of Schedule 5) Order 2014
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That the draft order laid before the House on 17 March be approved.
Relevant document: 24th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 7 May.
Merchant Shipping (Convention Relating to the Carriage of Passengers and their Luggage by Sea) Order 2014
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Kramer
That the draft order laid before the House on 24 March be approved.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 7 May.
Immigration Bill
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
17:37 - Division on Motion B1 - Ayes: 193 / Noes: 286 - Motion B1 disagreed.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That this House do not insist on its Amendments 16 and 24, to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reasons 16A and 24A.
Lords Amendments 16 and 24
“Child trafficking guardians for all potential child victims of trafficking in human beings
(1) If a relevant child has arrived in the United Kingdom and is a potential victim of trafficking in human beings, an independent child trafficking guardian shall be appointed to represent the best interests of that child.
(2) The child trafficking guardian shall have the following responsibilities to— (a) advocate that all decisions relating to the child are made in the child’s best interest;
(b) ascertain the child’s wishes and feelings in relation to those decisions;
(c) advocate for the child to receive appropriate care, safe accommodation, medical treatment, including psychological assistance, education, translation and interpretation services as required;
(d) assist the child to access legal and other representation where necessary, including, where appropriate, to appoint and instruct legal representatives on all matters relevant to the interests of the child;
(e) consult with, advise and keep the child informed of legal rights;
(f) keep the child informed of all relevant immigration, criminal, compensation, community care, public law or other proceedings;
(g) contribute to identification of a plan to safeguard and promote a durable solution for the child based on an individual assessment of that child’s best interests;
(h) provide a link between the child and various statutory and other bodies who may provide services to the child, accompanying the child to any relevant meetings;
(i) assist in establishing contact with the child’s family, where the child so wishes and it is in the child’s best interests;
(j) where appropriate liaise with an immigration officer handling the child’s case in conjunction with the child’s legal representative;
(k) accompany the child to all interviews with the police, the immigration authorities and care proceedings;
(l) accompany the child to any court proceedings; and
(m) accompany the child whenever the child moves to new accommodation.
(3) A child trafficking guardian must have completed the training required in subsection (7) and may be—
(a) an employee of a statutory body except for an employee of a local authority;
(b) an employee of a recognised charitable organisation; or
(c) a volunteer for a recognised charitable organisation.
(4) A person discharging duties as a child trafficking guardian shall not discharge any other statutory duties in relation to a child for whom they are providing assistance under this section.
(5) Where a child trafficking guardian is appointed under subsection (1), the authority of the child trafficking guardian in relation to the child shall be recognised by any relevant body.
(6) In subsection (5), a “relevant body” means a person or organisation— (a) which provides services to the child; or
(b) to which a child makes an application for services; or
(c) to which the child needs access in relation to being a victim of human trafficking; or
(d) any court or tribunal that a child engages with.
(7) The Secretary of State shall by order—
(a) set out the arrangements for the appointment of a child trafficking guardian immediately after a child is identified as a potential victim of trafficking in human beings;
(b) set out requirements for the training courses to be completed before a person may exercise functions as a child trafficking guardian;
(c) set out the arrangements for the supervision of persons discharging duties as a child trafficking guardian;
(d) set out the arrangements for the provision of support services for persons discharging duties as a child trafficking guardian; and
(e) designate organisations as a “recognised charitable organisation” for the purpose of this section.
(8) A person’s appointment as a child trafficking guardian for a particular child under this section shall come to an end if—
(a) the child reaches the age of 21; or
(b) the child leaves the United Kingdom.
(9) In this section, a child is considered to be a “potential victim of trafficking in human beings” when a referral has been made to a competent authority for a determination under the identification process required by Article 10 of the Trafficking Convention (Identification of Victims) and there has not been a conclusive determination that the individual is not such a victim.
(10) For the purposes of subsection (9), an individual will not be considered to have received a conclusive determination that the individual is not a victim of trafficking in human beings if—
(a) an individual is appealing or seeking judicial review of the conclusive determination; and
(b) the appeal or judicial review is not completed.
(11) In this section—
“competent authority” means a person who is a competent authority of the United Kingdom for the purposes of the Trafficking Convention;
“relevant child” means a person who is under the age of 18 and who— (a) requires leave to remain in the United Kingdom whether or not such leave has been granted; or
(b) is a national of an EEA state other than the United Kingdom; “the Trafficking Convention” means the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (done at Warsaw on 16 May 2005);
“trafficking in human beings” has the same meaning as in the Trafficking Convention.”
The Commons disagree to Lords Amendment No. 16 for the following Reason—
16A: Because it would involve a charge on public funds, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason, trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient.
24A: Because it would involve a charge on public funds, and the Commons do not offer any further Reason, trusting that this Reason may be deemed sufficient.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)
My Lords, I have no doubt that we all wholeheartedly agree across the Floor of the House and in Parliament generally that there is a fundamental need for victims of child trafficking to receive the very best support that we can possibly offer them. Noble Lords will be aware of this Government’s absolute commitment to stamping out modern slavery, including child trafficking, while building on the UK’s strong track record in supporting and protecting victims. It is because of this commitment that this Government have signalled their intent to bring forward legislation to tackle the scourge of modern slavery. We intend to bring it forward as soon as parliamentary time allows. In addition, we are driving forward a range of non-legislative measures to tackle modern slavery and ensure that victims are identified and supported both inside and outside the criminal justice process and that perpetrators of this abhorrent crime are brought to justice.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, my noble friend Lord McColl, Mr Frank Field and others for their engagement with us outside the House on this issue. I am also grateful to the other members of the Pre-Legislative Scrutiny Committee for their hard work in scrutinising the draft modern slavery Bill. I agree with the committee’s aims to make life as difficult as possible for slave masters and traffickers and to transform the position of victims of slavery, including children.
Lord Spicer (Con)
My Lords, would the Minister like to add Anthony Steen to that esteemed list?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am very happy to mention Mr Steen, whose work has been exemplary on this issue. I willingly accede to my noble friend’s suggestion.
Noble Lords may or may not be aware that there have been a number of meetings to discuss this important issue over the past few weeks, involving not only myself but also the Home Secretary and our legal advisers. This reflects our determination to listen to concerns and to ensure that we are doing all that we can to deliver our common purpose, which is to ensure that we deliver the best support that we can for this particularly vulnerable group of children.
The cross-party engagement on this issue heartens me greatly and shows just how much we are pulling in the same direction to ensure that trafficked children—arguably some of the most vulnerable children in our society—obtain the protection and care that they so desperately need, whether they have been trafficked across or within our borders. The passion and fervour with which noble Lords have campaigned to achieve the goal of giving these children the care and support that they need and deserve is laudable and I hope that we have demonstrated in our conversations with the noble and learned Baroness and others outside the House and within the House of Commons that we wholeheartedly share the desire to do just that.
We are extremely grateful to all involved for working with us in the spirit of co-operation to find a workable solution that will bring the very best outcome for these children. I am pleased that we now have some consensus across Parliament about the best way forward on the important issue of ensuring the right protection and support for child victims of trafficking. By announcing in January the trial of independent specialist advocates for child trafficking victims, the Government sent the strongest signal of their commitment to take action on this matter.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
As an amendment to Motion A, at end to insert “but do propose Amendment 16B in lieu”.
“Report on provision of child trafficking guardians for child victims of trafficking in human beings
Within twelve months of the date of dissolution of the current Parliament, the Secretary of State shall report to both Houses of Parliament on the provision of child trafficking guardians for child victims of trafficking in human beings.”
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I put down this amendment during a period of intense discussions last week in order to make it possible to continue the discussions with the Minister, the Home Secretary herself and the lawyers in the Home Office. I am absolutely delighted with the prospect of these pilots; the sooner they come into effect, the better. I am entirely happy with what the Minister has said: it covered every aspect of what my amendment says, but in the right place. I recognise that it is much better to have this enabling clause, together with a report by the Home Secretary in the modern slavery Bill, when it comes before both Houses of Parliament.
With that, I thank first the legal team in the Home Office, particularly the senior legal member of that team, Harry Carter, who could not have been more helpful to me. I am very grateful for the discussions with the Home Secretary and was particularly grateful to get just the e-mail I needed over the weekend from the noble Lord the Minister from Lincolnshire. With all of that, I beg to move and shall subsequently beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
I wish to speak on this amendment—forgive me for being so tardy—as I just wish to place certain things on record.
I support the amendment tabled by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and am deeply disappointed and irritated by the amendment tabled by the Minister. While the noble Lord has just set out his reasons for not accepting the original amendment tabled by the noble and learned Baroness, the only reason given by the House of Commons was one of financial privilege. As has been said on other occasions, when the Government use financial privilege as the reason for rejecting amendments in the Lords, it too often looks as though the Government simply do not have sufficiently strong arguments to counter the just and moral reasons given by the Lords. Yes, I well understand that it is the Speaker who decides whether or not financial privilege should be applied, but the Government could have asked the House to waive financial privilege and chose not to do so.
This is frustrating for us but, more importantly, it has real implications for the small number of vulnerable children who are subjected to the evils of trafficking. These children have suffered the worst kind of traumatic experiences and they are desperately in need of a guardian, appointed on a statutory basis, to accompany them,
“throughout the entire process until a durable solution in the best interests of the child has been identified and implemented”.
On the subject of financial privilege, I ask the Minister to provide us with the Government’s computation of the predicted costs of the amendment that was rejected in the Commons.
Again I place on record my thanks for the extraordinary diligence and dogged determination of the noble and learned Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord McColl of Dulwich, to get justice for trafficked children. I also say to the Minister that I still do not understand why the Government have been so reluctant to act before now, why they could not have agreed to amendments in earlier Bills and why there was no provision for guardians in the draft modern slavery Bill. I know that pilots have now been announced, but if that has been the Government's intention for some time, why was there not an enabling clause in the draft Bill? I am pleased that the Government clearly now intend to introduce an enabling clause by amendment, but they could have done so much more.
In the absence of the amendment passed by this House, an enabling clause in the modern slavery Bill is welcome, but what would trigger that enabling power? Despite what the noble Lord just said, I am still slightly concerned about the statutory basis for the scheme. I want to be absolutely clear that, when a guardian feels the need to give instructions to a lawyer where a child is incapable of doing so, that lawyer will have the statutory basis to be empowered to represent the views of that child. Can the Minister give that assurance?
I also have a question about the timings. Could the Minister confirm that the trial will start on 1 July? Could he further tell the House when the pilots are due to end? As he would understand, it would be unacceptable if, when it came to the report that is in the amendment of the noble and learned Baroness, the Government were able to say that they had not had time to assess the outcomes of the pilots. I want to ensure that the timescale works.
The Minister in the other place said that the trial would cover 23 local authorities. Will all trafficked children be placed within those authorities, so that all trafficked children are covered by the trial?
I will mention one thing that may seem a bit pernickety. I was slightly concerned by some of the reasons given by the Minister in the other place for rejecting the noble and learned Baroness’s earlier amendment. He said one reason was that it dealt only with children under immigration control and that he wished in the modern slavery Bill to craft provisions covering all trafficked children. Of course, there was nothing to prevent the Government accepting the amendment and then repealing the provision if necessary when replacing it with a clause in the modern slavery Bill.
As I said, I welcome the fact that the Government are now introducing an enabling clause, but I am frustrated that it has taken such a long time. I am also rather frustrated that, in the end, the Government took the advice from the Speaker that financial privilege should be attached to this specific amendment. Sometimes, of course there are questions of money but in this case the money is negligible. Sometimes there are questions of politics but this issue has had cross-party support throughout. I am just frustrated that it has taken so long to get to where we are. Of course, I trust what the Minister said. I just seek clarification on the various questions I asked.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I note that at the last stage the noble Baroness and I both used the term “dogged” to describe the work done by those who advocated—if that is not the wrong term in this context—the guardianship provisions. I sense that the House would like to move on as there is so much agreement, so I will go straight to the one question I have left of those I had on the amendment.
There is a difference, in the normal understanding of the terms, between “advocacy” and “guardianship”. They are not the same thing. Of course, the detail of the role will be described when we come to the legislation so we will then understand just what it will cover. No doubt we will discuss that. The one question I have left for my noble friend that has not already been asked is: how will the Government assess and evaluate the trials or pilots—whatever we call them—including assessing the need for the provisions that are not included in the trial? The noble Baroness mentioned the one about being instructed and being able to carry out instructions, which I was also concerned about that because of my own professional background. If the trials do not cover a part of the role, how are we going to know whether that role was necessary? I hope my noble friend can explain what the approach to the assessment and evaluation will be.
Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
My Lords, I also have a question before we conclude the debate on this issue. I add my warmest thanks to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, for the huge efforts which have gone into doing this, which I am sure the entire House appreciates.
My question is slightly different and relates to how the so-called “relevant child” is to be identified. Can the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, say anything about what instructions are likely to be given to the police and the border agency regarding determining whether a child is being trafficked? We are all well aware, not least within the European Union, that there is a very high level of child trafficking and that many of those children are not identified as being trafficked until it is too late and they have been handed on to another round of this ghastly trade. It may be too soon and he may have to wait for the modern slavery Bill, but it would be very helpful indeed if the Minister could say something about the operational effect on the police and border agency relating to how they deal with children who might, conceivably, be trafficked, but where it is not quite clear that they have been.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I have one brief question. No one can doubt my commitment to this group of children and to the work of my noble and learned friend Lady Butler-Sloss and the noble Lord, Lord McColl. It is crucial that we move forward and I am particularly grateful that the Government have decided to do this with a pilot. The questions that have been asked during this short debate reflect the complexity of the issue. Having been the deputy chair and chair of CAFCASS for some eight years, I know how crucial it is to ask the question about the difference between advocacy and guardianship. I presume these issues can be worked through during the pilot.
I am concerned that the funding for the pilot, and for any future programme, should not come out of local government funding for child work generally or out of funding that would otherwise support children in the community. As a vice-president of the Local Government Association, I am quite clear that there are children who are, in many ways, equally vulnerable in their own homes—and some more so—who need equal support from social workers, who are extraordinarily pressed at the moment, as are the workers in CAFCASS. As the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition mentioned, there are financial questions, so I simply want the assurance that this money will not come out of mainstream childcare funding.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for all his help and co-operation. He spotted three of us plotting in a corner of your Lordships’ House and, instead of avoiding us, he made a bee-line for us and was open and friendly. We are very grateful to him, especially on the about-to-be statutory basis of the role. In our amendment, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and I were concerned to ensure that the role of advocate met with international best practice, as well as taking advice from charities that have practical experience in supporting trafficked children.
Finally, I thank the Government for listening to us, obstinate and difficult though we were on some occasions. We are grateful that it has turned out well. Thank you.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this has been an interesting and useful debate. I deliberately did not mention the reasons for the Commons rejection when I made my introductory speech. It is for Erskine May rather than a humble Minister to determine these matters. I thought it was more important to present the arguments on the issue to the House. I am pleased that we have had a chance to reconsider this. These past few days have been very useful. I think noble Lords who have been involved will agree with that.
I thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Howarth of Breckland, and my noble friends Lady Hamwee, Lady Williams and Lord McColl for their contributions on these points. On the point made by my noble friend Lord McColl, we agree that these roles must have a statutory basis so that they have the respect and co-operation of all the various agencies that will engage with supporting the child. We will ensure that provisions in future legislation will deliver this. I will welcome the continued engagement of all noble Lords who have spoken on this issue. I doubt that noble Lords will be prepared to let this matter go on the back burner. I am sure that we will be under pressure and that I will be answering questions on a regular basis about how things are going.
Once we have a provider for the advocacy position in place, I will be happy to place in the Library the sort of detail that has been asked for today by noble Lords. I would like noble Lords to be informed of where we are on the issue. On the particular request for interested Members of the House to be able to visit trial sites, I will ask officials to discuss this request with the service provider and local authorities. I doubt very much whether a request of that nature would be refused.
We all agree that these children are incredibly vulnerable. As I have said, we cannot prejudge the outcome of the trials, although I am sure the Secretary of State will want to ensure that the learning from the independent evaluation is acted upon so that every child gets the most appropriate possible care.
The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, asked what would trigger the enabling power. The Secretary of State will want to ensure that the learning from the independent evaluation will influence the way in which the power will be exercised. There needs to be a connection between what we learn from the trials, the nature of the problem, the ability of the trials to address the problem and other aspects which become apparent to us during the course of the trials. Perhaps that answers the question asked by my noble friend Lady Hamwee about how it will be judged. It will be judged by a proper evaluation of the trial within the 23 areas in which it is taking place.
I think there is a general feeling that we know we have to make a success of this because it is a great opportunity to help these most vulnerable people. It is patently obvious to me that we share the desire to protect and support these vulnerable children. The disagreement is not about whether support and protection are required, but about how we legislate to provide it. The Government are totally committed to running the trials to ensure we have the very best insight into what these trials need.
My noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby wanted to know about how the operation would be conducted in other areas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, asked how the funding would be dealt with. I do not have to say to the House that funding will clearly be an important issue to get right. If the resources are not available, the project will not be successful. We understand that. How the funding is actually found is an important element of what we will learn from the trials. There will, of course, be a certain amount of lead-in time for the organisation that will supply the service. I therefore confirm that because of the delay it will not now be possible to begin the trials by July. It is now intended that they begin by the end of September, and the Home Secretary will announce the provider shortly.
I thank noble Lords for their agreement that this Bill is not the place for the issue to be resolved, and for not insisting on the guardians amendment that we discussed on Report.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for saying that it is not now envisaged that the trials will start before September, and of course I accept that. However, the amendment proposed by the noble and learned Baroness states that the report should be ready within a year of the dissolution of Parliament, before the next Parliament begins. Can the Minister confirm that there will be enough time for the pilots to be appraised before the report referred to in the amendment comes before Parliament?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Yes. I can also confirm that the way in which the enabling clause will be constructed will make it clear that there will be tabling of regulations designed to bring in the necessary power. There will also be a section that will ensure that the report is delivered so that we do not have to wait. Therefore, there will be an opportunity to discuss the report before the regulations are actually tabled. We have to make up for some lost time here. I am not saying that it was the will of the House that these matters were delayed but, as it turns out, we have delayed a process that I agree is quite time-sensitive. However, I think all noble Lords will agree that it is most important of all to make sure that our judgment is right on the issue and that when we introduce child advocates we do so in a proper fashion.
Baroness Williams of Crosby
I apologise to my noble friend for interrupting. Given the shortage of time and the hope that we will bring in this pilot scheme as early as September, can the Minister give an assurance that the discussions that I referred to with the police and the border agency can take place before that, so that we are well set up to try to identify children who have been trafficked?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I will certainly recommend that that is the case. It seems essential that we make sure that we know how the trials fit in with people who, under existing arrangements, carry out responsibilities connected with this area. They are diverse, as my noble friend points out. The border agency, the police and local authorities are all involved in this area, and getting them to work in a proper and co-operative fashion to make a success of this project is essential.
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions today, inside and outside the Chamber. We are bound to return to this issue in detail as time goes by. In the mean time, I hope that the noble and learned Baroness will agree to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, for the second time this afternoon, I apologise to the House, and particularly to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, for trying to cut short any discussion—it has been extremely interesting and very constructive.
I will say two things about the Government. First, I am very glad that we got so far; that seems to me to be a real step forward. I thank the Minister and the Home Secretary for the fact that the dreaded issue of finance being raised in the Commons did not frustrate us in having a really constructive discussion with which finance had absolutely nothing to do. The Government are therefore really to be congratulated for being prepared to talk to the noble Lord, Lord McColl, and myself despite that issue having been raised in the other place. I am very grateful for that.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That this House do not insist on its Amendment 18 and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 18A and 18B.
Lords Amendment 18
“(1) A Committee of members of both Houses of Parliament shall be established to consider and report on whether section 40 of the British Nationality Act
1981 (deprivation of citizenship) should be amended to enable the Secretary of State to deprive a person of their citizenship if—
(a) the citizenship status results from the person’s naturalisation, and
(b) the Secretary of State is satisfied that the deprivation is conducive to the public good because the person, while having that citizenship status, has conducted him or herself in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom, any of the islands, or any British Overseas Territory, even if to do so would have the effect of making the person stateless.
(2) The Committee shall consist of six members of the House of Lords nominated by the Chairman of Committees, and six members of the House of Commons nominated by the Speaker of the House of Commons, to be appointed on the passing of this Act to serve for the duration of the present Parliament.
(3) Any casual vacancy occurring by reason of the death, resignation or incapacity of a member of the committee shall be filled by the nomination of a member by the Chairman of Committees or the Speaker of the House of Commons, as the case may be.
(4) The quorum of the committee shall be two members of each House and the committee shall be entitled to sit and to transact business whether Parliament be sitting or not, and notwithstanding a vacancy in the membership of the committee.
(5) Subject to the above provisions, the committee may regulate its own procedure.”
Commons Disagreement and Amendments to the words so restored to the Bill
The Commons disagree to Lords Amendment No. 18 and propose Amendments 18A and 18B to the words so restored to the Bill—
(c) the Secretary of State has reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able, under the law of a country or territory outside the United Kingdom, to become a national of such a country or territory.”
“(3) After section 40A of the British Nationality Act 1981 insert—
“40B Review of power under section 40(4A)
(1) The Secretary of State must arrange for a review of the operation of the relevant deprivation power to be carried out in relation to each of the following periods—
(a) the initial one year period;
(b) each subsequent three year period.
(2) The “relevant deprivation power” is the power to make orders under section 40(2) to deprive persons of a citizenship status in the circumstances set out in section 40(4A).
(3) A review must be completed as soon as practicable after the end of the period to which the review relates.
(4) As soon as practicable after a person has carried out a review in relation to a particular period, the person must—
(a) produce a report of the outcome of the review, and
(b) send a copy of the report to the Secretary of State.
(5) The Secretary of State must lay before each House of Parliament a copy of each report sent under subsection (4)(b).
(6) The Secretary of State may, after consultation with the person who produced the report, exclude a part of the report from the copy laid before Parliament if the Secretary of State is of the opinion that it would be contrary to the public interest or prejudicial to national security for that part of the report to be made public.
(7) The Secretary of State may—
(a) make such payments as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate in connection with the carrying out of a review, and
(b) make such other arrangements as the Secretary of State thinks appropriate in connection with the carrying out of a review (including arrangements for the provision of staff, other resources and facilities).
(8) In this section—
“initial one year period” means the period of one year beginning with the day when section 40(4A) comes into force;
“subsequent three year period” means a period of three years beginning with the first day after the most recent of—
(a) the initial one year period, or
(b) the most recent subsequent three year period.”
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I beg to move Motion B in my name: that this House do not insist on its Amendment 18 and do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 18A and 18B.
Now, we had some lively debates on this issue, particularly on Report. I listened with great care to the views expressed on all sides of the House. I responded as fully as I could to a great number of questions to ensure that the Government’s position was clear. Noble Lords have sought to replace the proposals originally in the Bill with a measure to appoint a committee of the House to look at the issues in detail. That approach has been rejected by the House of Commons.
Amendments 18A and 18B restore the clause to the Bill, but with some key changes that respond to the concerns that were raised in this House. This is a narrowly drawn provision, which is proportionate to the risk created by harmful individuals. It is compatible with our international obligations, and closes a loophole in our law that has been highlighted by the Supreme Court. Noble Lords were concerned that the Home Secretary should not be able to deprive an individual of their citizenship in circumstances under which they had no recourse to another nationality.
When I spoke in earlier debates, I was clear that in most cases we would expect those who were deprived to be able to acquire another nationality. Amendment 18A now provides for a position where the Home Secretary can deprive an individual of their British citizenship only when they already hold another nationality or when she reasonably believes that, under the laws of another country, they would be able to become a national of that country. That is a significant change. It means that, in cases where the Home Secretary does not reasonably believe that the person has a right in law, she will not be able to take deprivation action.
We recognise that this is not likely to be a straightforward decision as, of course, every country operates its own nationality law. As we have made clear through the debates in both Houses, the Home Secretary would reach a decision only after very careful consideration of the facts of an individual case. She will reach a decision based on whether she reasonably believes that the person has recourse to another nationality under the law of another country. In doing so, she will naturally have regard to practical and logistical matters related to that. If the person was at real risk of persecution from that country, that would also be relevant to whether they were able to acquire that nationality. However, in most cases, the basis of the Home Secretary’s decision will be the law of the other country. Although aspects of these cases are likely to turn on closed material that will not be disclosed in full to the individual, the question of whether a person is, under the law, able to acquire another nationality is unlikely to be secret.
It has been suggested in previous debates that the Home Secretary’s decision to deprive should not take effect until an individual has secured another nationality. That requirement would render this provision ineffective. Indeed, such a requirement is really a description of the law as it stands. We must keep in mind that these individuals have acted in a way that is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK. We cannot compel them to take action to secure the nationality of another country, and it seems unlikely that they would lightly accede to a request to do so knowing that the consequence would be that we could then deprive them of British citizenship. Therefore, that cannot and must not be a barrier that prevents the Home Secretary taking action to remove their British citizenship where she reasonably believes that they are able to obtain another nationality, and we should not attempt to impose an arbitrary timescale within which that other nationality will be obtained.
Concern was also expressed previously that the power would be exercised in an arbitrary way. That will not be the case, as my next few comments will illustrate. The Home Secretary will certainly not take these decisions lightly. Ministers fully recognise that depriving a person of British citizenship is a serious step. That is why the threshold for use of the power is set at a high level and why decisions will be taken only after a great deal of research and careful consideration. This is not a speculative power: the Home Secretary must rely on the circumstances that apply at the time she makes her decision. She cannot simply assume that a person will be able to avail themselves of another nationality.
We have been clear that the power will be used in only a small number of cases. The existing power to deprive on non-conducive grounds has been used 27 times since 2006. Noble Lords will be aware that it is a long-standing practice of government not to disclose in public data that could damage national security or operational effectiveness, or which could cause individuals to be identified. That is why I cannot agree to requests to provide more detailed information to the House. Our position is based on clear advice from the agencies responsible for protecting our national security. I have, however, written to the chairman of the Joint Committee on Human Rights to make clear that such information would be shared with the individual whom we propose should conduct periodic reviews of the power introduced under this clause, who would have the appropriate security clearances. I have also expressed willingness to provide a private and in-confidence briefing to the JCHR if such arrangements would be acceptable to the current chairman, Mr Hywel Francis.
Any individual who is deprived of their nationality has a right of appeal under Section 40A of the British Nationality Act 1981. That appeal is to the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal—or, more likely in these cases, which may rest in part on closed evidence, to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission. The court will consider whether the Home Secretary has exercised the power lawfully and therefore whether she had reasonable grounds to believe that the person in question would be able to acquire another nationality.
I turn to Amendment 18B, which reflects the position that I took on Report and responds to the request made by a number of noble Lords that there should be an independent review of the operation of the power. Our proposals provide for a review after the first 12 months following commencement and triennial reviews thereafter. This review cycle recognises that the power will be exercised in a small number of cases only, and a longer period of review will ensure that there is a better evidence base to consider. Reports of the reviews will be laid before Parliament.
Noble Lords previously noted that there would be sense in combining this review role with that of the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. I can only repeat what was said by the Immigration and Security Minister, Mr James Brokenshire, in another place, when he noted that the Home Secretary is certainly minded to discuss this role with David Anderson QC once the measure is on the statute book. She will want to consider with him whether this additional role can be accommodated without detriment to his existing responsibilities.
I am also aware that it has been noted that our amendment about an independent reviewer does not include the word “independent”. That is not a trick. The wording reflects that in analogous statutory provisions for reviews, perhaps most notably that of Section 36 of the Terrorism Act 2006, which relates to reviews by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. In other words, the provision that created the post of independent reviewer of terrorism legislation does not use the word “independent”, either. I can assure noble Lords that the person who carries out these reviews under the Immigration Bill provisions will be independent.
The amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, would restore to the Bill the measure that would provide for an appointment of a committee of the House to examine the Government’s proposals. The Government’s position remains that this would be an unnecessary and undesirable step. It is unnecessary, because our proposals have been given a proper degree of scrutiny by Members of both Houses of Parliament and by the Joint Committee on Human Rights as well as outside commentators. The Joint Committee has acknowledged that the proposals are consistent with our international obligations and, although we have heard other opinions expressed, those have not been supported by evidence of customary international activity that contests the Government’s position that we are acting in accordance with international law. The amendment is undesirable, because we are seeking this power to fill a gap in our law—one that has now been highlighted by the Supreme Court and one that individuals will attempt to exploit. That cannot be right, which is why we feel that we are right to insist on our amendment.
The government amendment is now very narrowly drawn—much more so than before—and is targeted at a small number of very harmful individuals. Your Lordships’ House has quite properly carefully scrutinised the Government’s proposals and asked the House of Commons to examine this issue again. It has now done so and clearly resolved both to reject Lords Amendment 18 and to agree the government amendments by a significant majority. Now that the elected House has reaffirmed its view on this matter, I urge noble Lords not to insist on their amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his care in initiating this debate and addressing some of the issues that have been raised here and in the other place. When your Lordships’ House voted by a majority of 62 to refer the issue of making someone stateless to a Joint Committee of both Houses, it did so not to frustrate the Government in any way but to assist them in their deliberations.
I will not rehearse the detail here but it was clear that the Government’s proposed new clause to extend the power to deprive an individual of naturalised citizenship, and in so doing make them stateless, had not been adequately or effectively considered in the other place. As we have said before, the amendment was tabled 24 hours before Report and there was no prior consultation or consideration in Committee, just a last minute amendment and short debate before it was accepted. I note the point the Minister has just made about adequate consideration having been given to the measure recently in the other place. However, it has to be said that even then the Deputy Speaker asked for brief speeches because of time constraints. We believe that further and more detailed consideration should be given to the matter in your Lordships’ House. In contrast to the other place, we had two excellent debates in Committee and on Report. The outcome of those two debates was that this matter required further examination because of the importance and complexity of the issues raised. An amendment was then tabled in my name and in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, and the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, was passed by 62 votes, and returned to the other place for further consideration. The other place rejected our amendment. However, we welcome the fact that the Government have taken note of some of the issues raised in our debates and have brought forward their own amendments. Government Amendment 18A refers to the reasonable grounds that the Home Secretary would have to have before making a naturalised citizen stateless, and government Amendment 18B is about a review. We certainly welcome the fact that the Government recognise the deficiencies in their original proposal and have sought to deal with some of the difficulties.
The reasons the Government gave for bringing forward the proposed new clause was the Supreme Court’s judgment in the Al-Jedda case, in which it was ruled that by depriving Mr Al-Jedda of his naturalised citizenship on the ground that that was conducive to the public good, the Secretary of State had made him stateless. The Supreme Court quoted from the Government’s own guidance in saying that it was necessary for a naturalised citizen to hold another citizenship not merely to apply for it, or have the right or the ability to apply, for the Secretary of State to be able to withdraw citizenship and in effect make them stateless, which she should not be able to do. As I have confessed before in your Lordships’ House, I am not a lawyer, and I listened with great care to those who have far greater legal expertise in this area than I do. However, it seems that by amending the law through Amendment 18A to ensure that the Secretary of State must have reasonable grounds for believing that the individual is able to acquire another citizenship, she would be able to deprive him of his British nationality in those circumstances even if it made him stateless. I think that the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Taylor—used the phrase “recourse to apply”. However, I reread what the Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire, said in the debate in the other place. At col.191 of Commons Hansard of 7 May, he said it was important that the person was able to acquire another nationality, and repeated that at col. 192. At col. 194, he said that there should be the “ability to obtain citizenship”, but then said at col. 195 that the Home Secretary had to be,
“satisfied of their ability to seek the citizenship of another country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 195.]
We need clarity on that point. Is it a question of being able to gain citizenship or the ability to seek citizenship? All those phrases were used by James Brokenshire in the other place. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, said in your Lordships’ House on 19 March that,
“to take away someone’s citizenship, it is not reasonable to say that you assume that they can get another country’s citizenship. It is only reasonable to say that you know that they have another citizenship; anything less than that is wrong. It may not be convenient, but it is not right”.—[Official Report, 19/3/14; col. 213.]
I would therefore welcome further clarification from the Minister.
In the Al-Jedda case, the Secretary of State referred to the original nationality that Mr Al-Jedda held, whereas this amendment, if I have understood it correctly, refers to the Home Secretary having “reasonable grounds” to believe that they could obtain citizenship of any country. In which case, does this government amendment go further than what is required to comply with the Al-Jedda judgment?
Although the Al-Jedda judgment represented an important principle in this debate, it was not the only issue that gave us cause for concern. Questions and issues remain around both the principle and practical implications, which I hope the noble Lord will address in his response. It was the lack of certainty on those points and those that arise from the new amendment that led to the need for further, more detailed examination by a Joint Committee. Perhaps I may therefore raise the concerns that remain about the implications for our relationship with other countries. I have read the legal opinion of Professor Guy Goodwin-Gill, who is a professor of international refugee law at the University of Oxford, a senior research fellow at All Souls College, and a barrister at Blackstone Chambers. His opinion from looking at international law is that the Government’s proposals risk damaging international relations and could lead to breaches of international obligations. I know that the noble Lord rejects that, but Professor Goodwin-Gill has provided a 20-page opinion that raises a number of issues that, at the very least, should be further considered and addressed to the satisfaction of your Lordships’ House.
I greatly welcomed the Government’s commitment to respond to that opinion. I was sorry that it arrived so late on Friday in order for us to have an opportunity to look at it. I am sorry that robust responses were not available for earlier consideration. However, I have now had the opportunity to read that response. Although it deals with various treaty obligations, it does not address the practical or diplomatic implications that I raised previously. We all know that the fight against terrorism is international and global. That highlights the need for international co-operation and collaboration. We really need proper and proportionate consideration of the implications for national and international security. This amendment would allow terror suspects to be loose and undocumented in any country where they happened to be when their citizenship of the UK was revoked. When citizenship has been withdrawn from citizens who are overseas, will the country that has admitted that individual in good faith on a British passport be consulted or advised at any stage that that person has had British citizenship withdrawn from them—even after citizenship has been withdrawn?
The noble Lord will recall that Professor Goodwin-Gill stated:
“Any state which admitted an individual on the basis of his or her British passport would be fully entitled to ignore any purported deprivation of citizenship and, as a matter of right, to return that person to the United Kingdom”.
The Government dispute that but the Minister confirmed to me in his letter of 25 March that the Government have not discussed the development of what was then Clause 60, on deprivation of citizenship, with other countries and do not consider it necessary to do so. I still find it quite incredible that the Government do not think that they have to consider other countries and debate this issue with them prior to implementation. In his letter, the noble Lord also relied on the statement that other countries allow for deprivations to make people stateless. He used, as the Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire, used in the other place, the Republic of Ireland and Belgium as examples. I was not aware of the position of Belgium on the issue and whether it has made anyone stateless in recent years, but the Minister could have quoted Tunisia, Lithuania, or countries that have rendered political opponents or ethnic minorities stateless—such as Zimbabwe, Burma, Serbia and Russia.
This country has a proud record over half a century of opposition to making individuals stateless. What about our relationship with, for example, the USA, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Scandinavian countries and Italy? These countries have not taken a power to make citizens stateless. Again I looked at the response of Professor Goodwin-Gill in reply to the Government’s response. He took the view—I do not know whether this is correct; it is one of the reasons why we consider that such examination by a Joint Committee of both Houses is essential—that it would appear that Her Majesty’s Government have never accepted that another state has a right and is able unilaterally to denationalise its citizens while they are present in the UK, so making this country responsible for its residents’ safety and well-being. Are we imposing an obligation on other countries that we would not ourselves accept?
I should like to raise a second issue which was also raised in the other place and it would be helpful if the Minister could respond on this point specifically. It concerns what will happen if someone cannot obtain another citizenship despite their very best efforts to do so. The Government propose that the Home Secretary has to have reasonable grounds for believing that someone can acquire another citizenship, but what if they cannot? It has to be recognised that although someone may be entitled to apply for the citizenship of another country, they may not in practice be able to acquire it. The Minister admitted as much in his letter to me of 25 March when he said:
“The number of people affected by this new provision will be very low and not all remain stateless as some may be able to acquire or re-aquire another nationality”.
I know that that was written before the new amendment but it does not change the position of a person’s statelessness or ability to gain another citizenship.
In responding to similar questions in the other place, James Brokenshire referred to those who make no effort to obtain another citizenship. But that is a completely different point. If the Home Secretary’s belief that they could obtain another citizenship was reasonably held but it was wrong and they were unable to do so, what action could then be taken to avoid a lengthy period of statelessness? The Minister talked about not wanting an arbitrary time limit for such a decision to be made, but there is no time limit in the amendment for the Secretary of State to look again to see whether it was a reasonable decision which was not correct.
The Minister spoke of a limited form of leave to remain being available to those stranded in country. What form would that take and what are the state’s obligations? How does that make UK citizens safer? If someone from outside the UK cannot obtain another citizenship, what are the implications? They may not be in their country of birth or of a previous citizenship. Given that our Government have had no discussions with other countries about this, the point being made by Professor Goodwin-Gill about being returned to the UK has to be a possibility at the very least. The country that admitted them in good faith has done so as it believed them to have British citizenship at the time. They will not be admitted back into the UK so I am slightly alarmed that they might end up like the character played by Tom Hanks in the film “The Terminal”. I do not know whether the Minister has seen the film but it is based on a true story of the case of Mehran Karimi Nasseri who, having been expelled from Iran, was refused entry to London and sent back to France where he was arrested. I will not go into the details but he ended up spending 18 years in Charles de Gaulle Airport because he was stateless. That is not the only example, but I hope that it is the most extreme one. I found several cases of people being detained at airports for several weeks or months.
If the purpose of the clause is to make us safer from terrorists, we need greater clarity and certainty on what happens to those who become stateless, particularly those from outside the country. Unless there is certainty, we could end up in some kind of legal quagmire with cases being taken to court because of the lack of certainty. I am sure we all want to avoid that.
I shall touch briefly on Amendment 18B. We welcome the review outlined by the Minister. I recall that a similar amendment was tabled on Report by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. This amendment differs in that the amendment of the noble Baroness referred to an annual review, which I think would be a much improved position on waiting, after the initial one-year review, for one every three years. That seems to be a very long timescale for the power that the Secretary of State wants to take.
Our concern remains that this amendment still allows for what the Supreme Court described as the “evil of statelessness”. Although the government amendment offers some concessions to the concerns raised by that particular case, I would welcome further clarity from the Minister as we are not yet convinced that the argument has been made for individuals who are terror suspects and are stateless. I am looking here at the interests of national and international security. I shall listen carefully to the debate, to the legal expertise that we have in your Lordships’ House, and to the Minister’s response. However, we need a full examination of this issue to ensure that we fulfil our obligations without making people stateless, given the difficulties and concerns that that raises. I beg to move.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister, Lord Taylor, to the Immigration Minister, James Brokenshire, and to the Bill team, who have devoted an enormous amount of time to this difficult issue and have held meetings with noble Lords who are concerned about it. For reasons that I will seek to explain, I think that the Government have made a very substantial concession on this issue in Amendment 18A, following the success of the amendment that I moved on Report.
Before briefly explaining the reasons for taking that view, perhaps I may mention that the original unacceptable clause—it was unacceptable—has been improved only because of a coalition, if that is not now an unacceptable political term, of the Opposition, led by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, who has worked tirelessly and skilfully on this issue throughout the passage of the Bill through this House, with considerable support from the Cross Benches and a very substantial Liberal Democrat rebellion on Report. I would add that there was support from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Howe of Aberavon, who also voted for the amendment. As a result of that voting decision, the new paragraph added in the House of Commons very substantially reduces the risk of leaving an individual stateless, although I recognise that such an event is still possible if the Secretary of State’s assessment, although reasonable, turns out to be inaccurate for whatever reason.
I have written to the Minister giving him notice of a number of assurances that I seek and which I consider are important to the understanding of the protections which are contained in the new paragraph. The first is this. I understand that the reasonableness of the Secretary of State’s conclusion that another nationality is open to the individual will be open to challenge in the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, and that SIAC will have the power to determine whether the Secretary of State does have reasonable grounds for her belief that the individual is able to become a national of another country. I understand from the Minister’s opening remarks that he agrees with that.
The second assurance I seek is this. Does the Minister agree that the material which is relevant to the Secretary of State’s decision on this point—that is, the ability to acquire another nationality—would be very unlikely to be secret? The material would be provided to the applicant’s lawyers so that it could be fully debated in any appeal to SIAC. I would be grateful if he could confirm that.
Thirdly, am I correct in my understanding that the new provision means that the Secretary of State has no power to take away British citizenship if the matter depends on a discretionary judgment by the foreign state? I think that the words in the new paragraph, “able to become”, must mean that the matter is in the hands of the individual, who needs only to apply to the foreign state, pay the relevant fee, provide the relevant documents and show their entitlement. The paragraph does not say “able to apply”. There is good reason to interpret this provision narrowly: namely, to prevent deprivation of British citizenship where it would leave people in limbo, with the risk of statelessness if the foreign country decides not to exercise any discretion in favour of the applicant. I therefore think that this provision means that at the time of deprivation of British citizenship, the individual must have a right to citizenship under the law of the foreign country. Does the Minister agree?
I seek reassurance on a fourth point. I think that the word “able”, which is the word in the new paragraph, must mean that there is no practical impediment to obtaining the foreign citizenship. For example, if there is reason to think that the foreign state will not apply its own laws, or will not do so within a reasonable time, the Secretary of State simply could not remove British citizenship. Does the Minister agree?
Fifthly, the word “able”, as well as general principles of public law must mean that the Secretary of State could not exercise this new power to take away British citizenship where, although the person is entitled to acquire the foreign citizenship, there is good reason for their being unwilling to do so. An obvious example is where the individual is a member of a group that is persecuted in the country concerned. Does the Minister agree that it would be wholly wrong and unlawful for the Secretary of State, if she accepts that those are the facts, nevertheless to go ahead and deprive that person of British citizenship?
Sixthly and finally, I think that the word “able” and the general requirement that the Minister must exercise her power in a reasonable manner must mean that the courts would apply a “reasonable link” test. By that, I mean that the clause could not be applied by reference to an individual’s rights to acquire citizenship in a country with which he or she has no close link other than an entitlement to nationality. For example, surely the Secretary of State could not rely on the entitlement of a Jewish man or woman to citizenship of the state of Israel under the law of return if the individual has no other link with the state of Israel; or rely on a wife’s right to acquire the citizenship of her husband in a country that she has never visited. I have not thought up these examples. I take them from the judgment of Lord Wilson for the Supreme Court in the Al-Jedda case last October, at paragraph 23. Therefore, the sixth question is: does the Minister agree in principle that there must be a “reasonable link” test implicit in this paragraph, so that the clause could not be used in circumstances that would, in the absence of a reasonable link, be wholly unreasonable?
On the basis of my understanding of this clause, this is a substantial and welcome concession by the Government. I hope that the Minister can reassure the House that my views are consistent with the Government’s interpretation, because it is what the Minister says that the courts may look at in future.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)
My Lords, I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and I should declare an interest because, like the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I am a member of Blackstone Chambers, the same chambers as Professor Goodwin-Gill. As the House will understand, barristers are not like solicitors: we are not in a firm and are perfectly capable of taking completely different views from some of our colleagues. I have of course read Guy Goodwin-Gill’s opinion and his supplementary opinions but I do not think that they focus on the particular issues, practical and otherwise, with which we are concerned in this debate.
As the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, indicated, the Joint Committee on Human Rights welcomes the concession that has been made. I was one of the rebels—in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick—and am personally satisfied, for the reasons that the noble Lord gave, that the concessions obtained in the other House ought to be acceptable and are in accordance both with international law and with the principles of our own constitutional system of government and law. However, I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that the questions that he has raised are the right ones, and my support for the Government’s position is dependent on satisfactory assurances being given. It is very important that they are given, because one of the advantages of the Pepper v Hart doctrine is that what is said by the Minister in reply will give guidance about how this important provision is to be interpreted.
I very much welcome the shift that has occurred and the fact that it has occurred because of pressure from across the whole House and not simply from one party. I do not agree with the position now being taken by Her Majesty’s Opposition—unless it is a probing position. If they were to press their difference of opinion to a vote, I would support the Government.
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)
My Lords, on Report, I added my name to those of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, in proposing what is now Amendment 18. I did so because, consistently with what I had previously said in Committee, I was so strongly opposed to the United Kingdom lending itself to what has been called the evil of statelessness, with all the reputational damage which that would have occasioned to this country. It seemed to me at that stage imperative that there should be pre-legislative scrutiny, as Amendment 18 essentially proposes, before any such extreme position should be adopted.
On Report, I recognised that amending the legislation, short of leaving people stateless, could indeed well be justified. I will quote just a sentence from what I said at that point:
“By all means, let the Government reverse the decision last year of the Supreme Court in Al-Jedda and legislate, as Lord Wilson in his judgment there implicitly suggested, to allow us to deprive someone of their British citizenship, provided that they can then immediately acquire the nationality of another state, as, indeed, it was assumed in the course of the litigation in that case that Mr Al-Jedda himself could have done”.—[Official Report, 7/4/14; col. 1174.]
Noble Lords should remember that this power is to be available only in the case of someone who has gained his British citizenship by naturalisation and who then betrays the trust that we as a nation put in him and acts in a way which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of this country. Provided that that person can then become a national of another country so as not to be rendered stateless, as was assumed in Mr Al-Jedda’s case, I see no real objection to our depriving him of the protection that we ourselves earlier conferred upon him. The Government’s very welcome amendments seem to limit the power precisely to these circumstances. My understanding of the new paragraph that it is proposed be inserted into the nationality Act under Amendment 18A is that it is precisely the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I will not go into all the points again, but it is plain that it refers to a present entitlement and not simply to a right to apply. The language is “to become” a national of another country, not “to seek to become”. Provided that that is so and provided that the Minister gives—as I fully expect him to—all the assurances that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has invited him to give, the Government have properly given way on this critical issue and, if the matter is put to the vote, I shall support the Government.
Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (LD)
My Lords, I also put my name to the amendment at Report. I have listened with great care to what the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has said. It seems that his remarks, if they are adopted by the Government, indicate that the shift in the Government’s position is substantial. If they are not adopted by the Government, they amount to a demolition of the substance of this shift. I see the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, nodding at that. I, for one, shall be listening extremely carefully to the Minister’s response to the six points made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick.
I want to remind the House why it is important that the Government acknowledge those points. The Home Secretary’s reasonable belief that a man or a woman may avail themselves of the nationality of another country will not assist a citizen in whose case that belief turns out to be ill-founded. He or she will be deprived, in Hannah Arendt’s phrase, of the “right to have rights” and locked out of any mechanism at all for achieving those rights for ever, until another state decides to take this individual on. If that is the position that the Government’s shift leaves us in, as a potential result of decision-making in the Home Office, then this shift does not go far enough.
For my part, I remain of the view that the United Kingdom should not embrace a policy where one of its potential results is statelessness, associated with so many of the degenerate states of the 20th century, and where the outcome, if it is statelessness, is so hostile to human dignity in its most basic form. This is particularly so where that policy is also bound to strike against the international accord that is so central to the maintenance of security both between and within states. In the long run, we cannot and will not make the United Kingdom a safer place by dumping our security threats abroad, sometimes into states where the capacity for dealing with them is completely debased, so that they simply grow. I agree with Professor Goodwin-Gill that a rule-of-law country accepting a United Kingdom citizen on the basis of his passport, lawfully certified and issued by the United Kingdom Government, will be perfectly entitled to respond to our unilateral withdrawal of that passport by insisting that the United Kingdom take this individual back. Which of your Lordships can doubt that if the tables were reversed we would take precisely the same approach?
I will conclude by speaking frankly. The history of this matter is that it appears to have been conjured up to serve an entirely party-political purpose in the midst of a debate in the other place. It is illiberal, it is an affront to civilised international relations, it will not improve our security and, in all likelihood, it threatens a legal and diplomatic quagmire, to no useful purpose and to the detriment of the reputation of the United Kingdom.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, who made a very powerful speech. I welcome the fact that there has been movement on the part of the Government in these amendments, and I very much welcome the helpful questions posed by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, who has played such a role in getting us to where we are now. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, acknowledged, some people may still be made stateless as a result of the clause. Therefore, I am not as happy as some other noble Lords appear to be—or perhaps content is the word—and I support Motion B1.
In the Commons, some of the most pertinent questioning came from the Government’s own Back Benches. Sir Richard Shepherd asked,
“how the people of Britain will know that the action has been taken in a rational and reasonable way, when it is obscured from public view”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 194.]
Dr Julian Huppert asked:
“What will happen if somebody in the UK goes through the process, the Home Secretary believes that they are able to get citizenship from another country and they make a bona fide application for that citizenship, but it is turned down?”.
In effect, this was also the question posed today by my noble friend. When pressed—and he had to be pressed—the Minister, James Brokenshire, responded that they could be given,
“limited restricted leave to remain”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 196.]
But that is not a satisfactory substitute for citizenship and the rights that go with it.
My noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws and others have expressed very grave concerns that the Government may well be waiting for someone to be out of the country to deprive them of citizenship. One concern of the Joint Committee on Human Rights was how often that has happened under the current powers. I very much welcome the fact that the Minister said he has responded to the Joint Committee’s latest letter about that and that he will make that information available to whoever is given responsibility for the review. I thank him for that.
In the Commons, James Brokenshire prayed in aid the fact that the matter had been considered by the Joint Committee on Human Rights as well as in another place—that is, here—to argue that,
“it is not correct to say that it has not been subject to careful consideration”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 213.]
Indeed, the Minister made the same point earlier. But the Joint Committee on Human Rights was very critical of the speed with which this measure was introduced and we—I am a member of the committee—made it very clear that we believed that a public consultation,
“would have made for better informed parliamentary scrutiny of the Government’s proposal”,
and that the Joint Committee that was proposed would allow for just that kind of proper scrutiny.
Your Lordships’ House made it very clear that it did not consider that there had been sufficient scrutiny by passing the amendment with such a significant majority. The only thing that has happened since then is that the House of Commons has debated for only 90 minutes something of such grave constitutional and moral importance. I really think that the case for a Joint Committee still stands. Indeed, the Home Affairs Select Committee, which published its report on counterterrorism after the debate in the Commons, has supported Lords Amendment 18, which underlines the point made by a number of organisations outside this House that the measure does not guarantee security against terrorism in any way.
I, too, have read the legal debate between the Government and Professor Goodwin-Gill. As a non-lawyer, I am not in a position to be able to judge that debate. Surely, however, the fact that there is such disagreement reinforces the case for a Joint Committee to tease out these very serious legal matters. The Floor of the House is not the place to do that. As the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, has already made clear, so much is at stake. I quoted earlier the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who is now in his place, because what he said was so important. He said:
“Statelessness is one of the most terrible things that can befall anyone”.—[Official Report, 19/3/14; col. 212.]
The Minister spoke of the evil of statelessness. Another expert in this area said that statelessness was a recipe for exclusion, precariousness and dispossession.
We have not completely averted the danger that we will make somebody stateless as a result of the amendment, welcome as it is. I hope, therefore, that noble Lords will stand firm and support Motion B1 because the amendment does not provide a cast-iron guarantee against the evil of statelessness.
Lord Avebury (LD)
Like other noble Lords, I welcome the concessions that have been made by the Government which do, to an extent—although this could be argued—reduce the risk that an individual might become stateless. However, the risk still exists and I still have some concerns apart from those that have been expressed so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. I agree that we need answers to those questions, but I would like to touch on some other concerns.
We have already heard that the Government recognise what the Supreme Court called, in the case of Al-Jedda, “the evil of statelessness”. They now purport to address that evil by providing in their Amendment 18A that the Secretary of State has “reasonable grounds for believing” that the individual she is depriving of his citizenship will be able to become a citizen of some other state to which he formerly belonged. That assumption has been made by other states from time to time, including—as the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association has pointed out—the Dominican Republic, in the case of persons born in Haiti, and Zimbabwe, in the case of all residents who might have had a claim through having been born in some other country. In the UK, too, the Government asserted for many years that persons of Indian origin who lived in Hong Kong had the right to reclaim the nationality of China—until finally in 2006 we satisfied them that they were wrong.
No doubt Ministers will say that what is now proposed is different, because instead of treating a whole class of persons the same, each case will be examined individually. However, in the case of the people who were formerly dual Malaysians and British Overseas Citizens, and had renounced their Malaysian citizenship in the hope of getting full British citizenship, they had all applied individually and had all been rejected. It was only after several years of correspondence and meetings with Ministers that in October 2013 the then Minister wrote to me asserting that an agreement had been reached with the former Malaysians on a scheme under which they would return to their country of origin, where they could enter a process of regaining the equivalent of indefinite leave to remain after five years; and after a further unspecified time, they would be able to resume Malaysian citizenship. During the whole of that period they would of course remain effectively stateless, as they had been during the latter years of their residence in the United Kingdom.
I wrote to the new Minister, James Brokenshire, on 11 February, asking if I could have a copy of the agreement he had reached with the Malaysians, having had no response to a verbal request made to his predecessor. I also asked about the experience of the one guinea pig returnee under the new arrangement. Having had no answer, I wrote again on 15 March, reminding the Minister of my earlier letter. After two further months, I had had no reply until, finally, after a telephone call this morning, the Minister’s reply arrived by e-mail.
Lord Hope of Craighead
My Lords, I will add a footnote to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. I join them in welcoming Amendment 18A and Amendment 18B, which falls to be read together with it. Two questions lie behind one’s examination of Amendment 18A. The first concerns the point mentioned by the Minister once, if not twice. Is the wording of the provision compatible with our international obligations? The second concerns how the provision will work in practice. This will be the subject of the reviews referred to in Amendment 18B.
On the first point, the Minister said—I think twice, possibly more often—that the wording of the provision is deliberately narrow. He said it was narrowly worded and precisely targeted; it had to be narrowly worded and precisely targeted to meet the requirements of the convention. The international obligations are found in the European convention on nationality of 1997. It is worth reminding ourselves that the preamble says that it is concerned to avoid cases of statelessness “as far as possible”. The principles set out in Article 4 include that,
“everyone has the right to a nationality … statelessness shall be avoided”,
and,
“no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his or her nationality”.
I think it is well known that Section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981, as substituted by the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, was framed with very close regard to the provisions of that convention. One can see it, too, in the amendments introduced by the Bill. The second condition set out in new Section 40(4A) refers to the situation where,
“the Secretary of State is satisfied that the deprivation is conducive to the public good because the person, while having that citizenship status, has conducted him or herself in a manner which is seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom”.
The phrase “the vital interests” is a precise quotation from Article 7(1)(d) of the convention and one can see how closely tied the wording of the statute is to that of the convention. It is important that the wording should be narrowly framed in order to meet what the preamble and Article 4 were talking about, but that has another significance when one looks at how the wording will work in practice. It is well known that the courts will construe legislation on the assumption that Parliament has intended to legislate in accordance with this country’s international obligations. One would expect a court to have regard to the wording of the convention and to construe the words narrowly. They are narrowly worded but they will be narrowly construed, too. The key words already identified are “is able”. It is not “maybe” or a possibility; it is “is”, in the present tense. “Able” is itself a powerful word, and the new Section refers to being able to become a national of a country, not to an ability to apply or be considered.
One other point is worth mentioning to appreciate the full package with which this House has been presented. Section 40of the British Nationality Act, as amended, describes the obligation of the Secretary of State in the event of an order being made under that section. It states:
“Before making an order under this section in respect of a person the Secretary of State must give the person written notice specifying … that the Secretary of State has decided to make and order”—
this is really important—
“the reasons for the order, and … the… right of appeal”.
These things must be set out in the written statement. Particularly important is the reference to reasons, which will be examined with great care should the matter go to appeal.
There is just one point that is worth bearing in mind: the reference to rights of appeal. Concern has been expressed by Liberty, and perhaps others, about the situation in which somebody would find themselves when faced with a written statement of this kind when abroad and the prospect of an order of this kind being made against them. It would seem to require exercising the right of appeal from abroad. That is a practical problem which those individuals might face.
My concern is whether the review referred to in Amendment 18B would be capable of picking up practical issues of that kind. It is difficult for us at this stage and in these situations to forecast the future with any precision, but that is the kind of practical point—envisaging how the issue will be worked out in practice—that will require very careful consideration. The more disadvantaged somebody would be by having to exercise his right of appeal abroad, the more concerned one would be about the fairness of the provision and, indeed, its compatibility with the convention. When the Minister replies, will he be good enough to cover that point about the scope of the review and whether it would include the kind of practical problem to which I have just referred?
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
I have concerns about the shift by the Government, although I welcome that there has been a shift in the way that has already been described. My concern is that reasonable grounds to believe that a person may be able to acquire another nationality does not really deal with the difficulty we face in the circumstances in which these cases arise. The cases that have taken place so far in which people have had their citizenship removed have almost invariably—certainly in my experience—involved persons abroad. The reason given is that the person is a threat to national security. I raise this question, among those already raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope: would another country seriously consider giving nationality, even to someone who might have the ability to apply for nationality of that country, if it knew that British citizenship had been removed on the grounds that the person was believed to be in some way linked to, or to condone, international terrorism? Do we seriously believe that another state is likely to grant nationality to someone where that has been the basis for the removal of citizenship by Britain? My grandparents were Irish, and I am sure that I am entitled to apply for an Irish passport, although I have never done so, but would Ireland seriously be interested in acquiring a citizen who has already been deemed by Britain to be involved in supporting, condoning or in some way furthering terrorism? We have to be real about the circumstances that we are contemplating.
I want to add a number of questions to the ones that have already been asked.
Lord Quirk (CB)
Does the noble Baroness not note that there is a difference between the case she mentioned—of someone who would almost certainly be refused citizenship by the putative country—and the wording here, which is, “able to become”, not, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, stressed, “able to apply”? Therefore, the premise is that the Secretary of State had already considered the point that the noble Baroness made and that she was convinced that were the person concerned to say, “I wish to be”, he or she would become a citizen of the said country.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws
There can be all manner of speculation about whether, if someone was born in, for example, Somalia but left at the age of three, Somalia might afford citizenship to them. Would Somalia give them citizenship in such circumstances if Britain had removed citizenship on the basis that they were a threat to national security here? Would Pakistan? Would Syria? Would Egypt? The test of reasonable grounds for believing that the person would be able to acquire another nationality does not answer that question. What if they cannot do so? That is the question that my noble friend Lady Smith raised, and at the moment it has not been answered satisfactorily. I wait with interest to hear what the Minister says.
There is a second matter: what constitutes service? It ties in with the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. What constitutes service when somebody is abroad? Is it good enough to serve notice on relatives living in Britain? Why should it be assumed that they would be able to inform adequately a person who is living somewhere else that they have had their citizenship removed? I would be very interested to hear the Minister’s response to what constitutes service. If someone is in a place such as Syria or Somalia, what is the likelihood of being able to serve notice—in the way that we understand service normally in law—on somebody in a war-torn area or a place where there is chaos and little in the way of government as we understand it?
What do we do about the issue of appeal, which was just mentioned by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope? At the moment, the normal period for appeal in the rules of citizenship is 28 days, and nothing suggests that that would change. Is someone in Somalia expected to be able to appeal within 28 days, not having been in receipt of service but having been informed days before, over a very poor telephone line, that they have the right of appeal but time is about to run out? What is the answer to the question of the appeal period?
If a person is unable to acquire another citizenship, will the withdrawal of citizenship then be negated? Will it fall away, and will the person then reacquire their British citizenship? Are we giving that as a guarantee? Will we see reinstatement if no other state is prepared to follow through?
I ask those who are international lawyers, or international lawyers advising the Government: when someone has a right to citizenship, is there not always a level of discretion in a state to say, “Yes, you are entitled because you were born here, but then you went away and you became a British citizen, but we are not going to allow you to apply and become a citizen of this country now because we believe that there is intelligence of your conducting yourself in a way that might be inimical to our national interests”? The question is much more complicated than is being suggested by the way in which the Government are seeking to appease us at this moment. That is why those of us who were concerned about this issue wanted there to be a much more considered review before the law was changed. I fall in line with others: I should like very clear answers to some of the questions raised by the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Macdonald, and by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, and to the questions that I have raised, before I would be satisfied that the movement by the Government has been far enough.
This is an issue of high moral import. This is an issue that affects not only us here, but which will be looked at around the world. There will be implications for people in other parts of the world, too. I ask the Government to take great care over the answers that are given because, as we have heard from others, courts will deal with applications, appeals and reviews based on some of the answers given today.
Baroness Hamwee
My Lords, noble Lords will be glad to know that I will be as energetic as I can in editing my remarks to exclude questions which have already been asked. However, I retain some points and concerns on the amendments, including on the principle.
Questions have been asked about what is meant by being “able”, and also about the practicalities of the matter. The Minister in the Commons said: “I am sure that”, the Secretary of State,
“would … have to consider practical issues and the other surrounding circumstances … She will, therefore, wish to consider those other practical or logistical arrangements as part of her determination”.—[Official Report, Commons, 7/5/14; col. 193].
Can my noble friend give the House assurances as to how all that will actually be reflected in statute or, if not in statute, then in guidelines? I mention here the guidelines published by the UNHCR on statelessness, which specifically refer to the application of nationality laws in practice being,
“a mixed question of fact and law”.
On the right of appeal, the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, has said that he trusts that there will be an assurance that the issues will be dealt with as open evidence. I add to that, while having the same hope, that if there are aspects which cannot be dealt with openly, will the provisions—I do not much like them, but they are what we have got—on gisting and special advocates apply? I have seen some doubt as to whether that would be the case.
On the amendment for review, I am glad that the Government have tabled this, as I did both in Committee and on Report. However, I stressed then the importance of independence. That term is missing from the Government’s amendment. Perhaps I can put it this way to my noble friend: can he confirm unequivocally that the review will not be in the hands of somebody who is within the Home Office?
Like others, I would welcome this being a matter for the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. Concern has been expressed about resources, but whoever does the job is going to need the resources to do the job. I, too, have a question about why, after the first year, it should be triennial. If we are dealing with small numbers, then the job should be correspondingly small. I also ask the Minister to give us an assurance that the Government will support the reviewer undertaking more frequent reviews if he considers that they should be undertaken.
In debate, we have barely touched on the impact on communities of whom an individual in question is a member. I would support the appointment of the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, because that postholder deals with people who are in rather connected situations where other measures might be applicable—and, indeed, might apply if deprivation is not to be used. It is clear that there is a danger that the use of the state’s powers, which focus on neutralising—if that is the word—the individual without considering the negative effect on the community, is an issue, as well as the specifics for the individual and their family. I am sure that the independent reviewer would focus on that as well.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this has been an extremely good debate: a serious one, on a very serious issue. We have been fortunate to be able to hear from a large and well qualified body of the Members of this House. I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, and I will do my best to provide those assurances that have been sought by noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in welcoming the Government’s move in tabling their amendments in the Commons, wanted assurances. I am most grateful to him for letting me have sight of the things he was concerned about so that I was able to address them. I can say the same of my noble friend Lady Hamwee, who did not raise all the issues she had intended to because they had been raised by other noble Lords. However, I think that that most noble Lords have a similar need for reassurance, and I am well aware of the responsibility to provide that assurance to Members of the House.
Perhaps most important is the whole question of the meaning of “reasonable grounds to believe” and whether those reasonable grounds of belief are appropriate for determining the ability of a person to acquire another nationality. The Home Secretary’s decision must be “reasonable” based on the evidence available to her on the nationality laws of those countries and the person’s circumstances. That will include having regard to any practical arrangements, but those will vary from case to case, and it is not possible or appropriate to speculate about what weight those issues would carry in a particular case. “Satisfied” has been interpreted to mean that SIAC decides for itself whether a person is a dual national. In some circumstances a person, after being deprived of British citizenship, may take steps which guarantee that another country will not recognise him or her as a national. The appeal should therefore review the decision at the time it was made, which is why the phrase “reasonable grounds to believe” instead of “satisfied” is used.
Both the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, asked what the position would be if the foreign state had some discretion in whether to approve an individual’s request for citizenship. I think that the noble Baroness went as far as to say that she thought that there were likely to be grounds for discretion in almost any case. The clause refers to whether under the laws of a country or territory a person is able to acquire the nationality of that country. The key issue will be whether the Secretary of State reasonably believes that they are able to acquire the nationality. It does not say that the person must have a right—an automatic entitlement—to that other nationality. Where there is a discretionary judgment there may be reasonable grounds to believe that the discretion will be exercised. However, reasonableness would require something more than saying that the person should apply for the exercise of a general discretion to grant citizenship to any country that has such discretion. I hope I make myself clear on that. The Home Secretary must have reasonable grounds to believe that, at the end of any application process—if one is required—the person will become a national of another country.
Lord Pannick
If I understand him correctly, the Minister is saying that the application of this clause will depend upon the particular facts of the particular case. Can I ask him whether, among the relevant facts that the Secretary of State will take into account in deciding whether to apply this clause, and how it should apply, she will consider whether the individual has any link with the country concerned other than the ability to apply for nationality, and whether the relevant facts will also include whether the individual has a good reason for not wanting to apply for nationality in that country—for example, because of persecution?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I certainly can confirm to the noble Lord that one of the factors that has to be borne in mind by a Home Secretary considering these matters is the question of possible persecution. I assure the noble Lord on that in relation to the specific case that he mentioned and on the relevance of all factors that may impinge on a decision, which would include the ability of the person to acquire nationality in another country. They will be considered fully by the Home Secretary in all respects. The noble Lord asked about whether the person had an association and so on would be considered. I am sure that these are the sorts of things that the Home Secretary will have to consider in considering whether to exercise the powers in this clause. I am grateful to the noble Lord. He has been a great encouragement in the initial meetings that we had when we discussed these issues. Incidentally, the House should know that we are very much at the position that was suggested by a number of noble Lords right at the beginning; I am pleased that I have been able to satisfy some of the learned opinion that has been available to us here in the House.
Lord Avebury
Would the Secretary of State have the power to consider the case whereby a person has an entitlement to nationality of a state such as Saudi Arabia where his residence could be more harmful to the United Kingdom than if he were in the UK itself—as one knows from the fact that the vast majority of people who committed the 9/11 atrocity were nationals of Saudi Arabia? If we send people back to Saudi Arabia and they become involved in these offences, it would be immensely harmful to the interests of the United Kingdom.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am sure that the Home Secretary will not exercise powers, which are clearly very important powers, carelessly or in any way that would damage the interests of the United Kingdom. I can assure the noble Lord that all such factors will be considered by the Home Secretary when she considers the question of deprivation.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the time he has taken and the effort he has made to address the points that have been raised in the debate. I concur entirely with his remarks about internal and international security. Obviously, the first duty of any Government is to keep their citizens safe and secure at all times. There has to be consideration of those issues when they are brought before your Lordships’ House. I can assure him that our consideration of these issues has at its heart the security of this nation and our international obligations to tackle terrorism. As the noble Lord said, I am grateful to all those who have spoken in this debate. We have benefited from substantial legal expertise. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Lister for confessing that, like the Minister and me, she is not a lawyer. It is significant that even with the legal expertise in your Lordships’ House there is no complete agreement among lawyers, either. We made that point earlier.
I welcome the fact that the Government have moved away from the position that they took previously when the issue was debated in Committee and on Report. I welcome the answers given by the Minister. A lot of the debate hinges on one particular issue. I am grateful for the advice given to me by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, in the conversations we have had. One of his questions summed up clearly the issue of the power to take away British citizenship if it relies on a discretionary power of another state. The noble Lord was very honest in his response to that. We have no power to know what another state will do. Other states have discretionary powers on whether to make people citizens.
The Government’s Motion rests on whether somebody is able to obtain citizenship. It hangs on the interpretation of that. We have concerns in that we want to avoid at all costs somebody becoming stateless—the evil of statelessness via the Supreme Court—and the dangers that that would bring to citizens of this country and abroad. I mentioned that James Brokenshire, the Minister in the other place, gave three different interpretations of what being able to obtain other citizenship could mean. If somebody is unable to obtain another citizenship and they remain stateless, at what point would the Home Secretary have to say, “We have a problem; this person does not have citizenship of any country”? There is a danger in leaving somebody abroad who we think is a danger to this country and involved in terrorism, who is stateless in another country or who remains in this country and cannot travel.
The noble Lord, Lord Lester, said that the intention was that those who are dangerous should leave—but they cannot do so if they have not got citizenship of any other country. The noble Lord also made the point that our position has changed. I can assure him that our position has not changed. These are the very same issues we raised in Committee and on Report, and we wanted to consider them in the light of the changes that the Government have made.
We have to consider the practical and diplomatic implications here. I know the Minister says that there is no need to discuss this issue with other countries, but he was not even able to confirm to your Lordships’ House that, if we remove citizenship from an individual who we suspect of being involved in terrorist activity while they are in another country, we would notify the Government of that country that we were doing so. That seems to be a rather irresponsible attitude and I worry that we will be passing the problems of terrorism on to other countries when international co-operation is so essential.
I do not wish to detain the House. We have had an interesting and worthy debate on this issue. What the Government have not been able to do, however, is rule out the possibility that we will make people who could be highly dangerous stateless. All it requires is that the Home Secretary must have reasonable grounds for believing that an individual can obtain other citizenship—but if those grounds are wrong and the individual cannot do so, we do not know what will happen to that individual.
The point was made when we debated this previously that we are not saying to the Government, “No, this must not happen”, but that there are still a number of questions which remain unanswered even at this late stage. They include the issue of what happens to someone when they have been rendered stateless and what the implications are for our relationships with other countries. The noble Lord, Lord Pannick, gave examples, and I am not sure that the Minister’s answer was that someone could not be made stateless.
Lord Lester of Herne Hill
I am most grateful to the noble Baroness. To be clear, what I said about the Opposition was not that they have not changed, but that they have not changed in the light of the changed circumstances of this concession.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
The Minister cheers the noble Lord on, but no one else is doing so. I said in response to the Government’s changes to their Motion that they do not remove the danger of statelessness. The noble Lord referred to the Pepper v Hart ruling, and he is absolutely right. What the Minister here and the Minister in the other place say is very important, but we have now had many interpretations from Ministers of what the amendment actually means.
Again, this has been a useful and interesting debate which I value, but we are seeking certainty on a number of issues, and that has not been forthcoming today. I believe that this matter would benefit from further consideration. It does not have to delay business. We are at the end of this Session, but it could be brought back quickly at the start of the next Session. It is important that we understand the implications for the security of this country and for individuals living in it. Accordingly, I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Arrangement of Business
Baroness Anelay of St Johns (Con)
My Lords, there is a question that I have been asked on many occasions over the past week and I am now able to answer it. Now that the progress of business is certain, it may be for the convenience of the House if I indicate that I expect Royal Commissioners to attend this House at the end of business on Wednesday this week to signify Royal Assent to several Bills and to prorogue Parliament until 4 June. The exact time of the ceremony will be settled on Wednesday itself, once the flow of business in both Houses is clear.
Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her statement advising the House of the date of Prorogation. I make one simple point. We on these Benches have long predicted this particular day in view of the flow of government business. However, the House is being underused. It is clear from the figures that we are losing about 10% of active days of consideration in your Lordships’ House. I am sure my colleagues share my view that this is highly unsatisfactory. We do a very good job and we do it well, but it is not right for the Government to play fast and loose with this House when it comes to the proper consideration of business.
I welcome what the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, has said, and I am glad that the statement has been made. It gives some certainty to Members of your Lordships’ House. However, the other matters bear further consideration.
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, in the past the Leader of the Opposition has made points about sitting patterns, and certain figures have been shown to her. Therefore, I am more than a little surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, continues to allege that this House is somehow sitting for some 10% less than its normal pattern. I just happen to have the figures with me.
The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, raises a serious point. This House is very adept at holding the Government to account and I know that it will continue to do so. The Opposition Front Bench is charged with that task and always carries it out to a high level of ability. I do not underestimate that at all.
It might be helpful if I refer to the working days available to this House. Without wishing to be too tedious, over the three most recent Sessions, if one looks at working days lost—in other words, working days on which we did not sit—at Christmas 2011 it was 10, at Christmas 2012 it was 10 and at Christmas 2013 it was 10. At Easter 2012 it was 15, at Easter 2013 it was 15 and at Easter 2014 it was 15. At Whitsun it was six days in 2012, including the extra bank holiday for the Diamond Jubilee, last year it was six and this year it will be six. With regard to Prorogation, in the Sessions 2010-12 and 2012-13 it was four days. For Prorogation last year it went up to seven. It has come down to five this year. There has been a perception—it is only a perception—that we have had longer, because of the way in which public holidays fall for Easter, Whit and Prorogation. On this occasion, Prorogation and Whit happen to be consecutive, but they would have happened anyway. I have plenty more figures, but that shows that we have a pattern and that we have kept to it.
Comments have been made about the Summer Recess. It is true that we went down to nine weeks last year, but it was 10 the year before and it is 10 this year. I have every confidence that this House will do the job that it does superbly, which is to hold any Government to account at all the proper times.
Lord Elton (Con)
Will my noble friend kindly tell us at what time the House will sit on Wednesday?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, the announcement I made was in the normal format but I know that the normal format is rather opaque, so I understand why my noble friend asked that question. I cannot give the exact time of Prorogation until Wednesday, because another place will still be dealing with divisible government business. As to the starting time, on Wednesday we will start at the published time of 3 pm. That is because it is appropriate for those who have their Questions that day to ask them at the time they expect. As I explained last week to the Opposition Chief Whip, it is appropriate that we and another place should try to get to the point of Prorogation at about the same time. In that way, there is only a small hiatus while the House adjourns during pleasure before we have the ceremony of the commissioners. We shall begin at 3 pm on Wednesday, by which time I hope to be able to give a better indication of exactly when on Wednesday Prorogation might be.
Lord Martin of Springburn (CB)
I put it to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, as gently as I can that, while I understand all the difficulties that can be brought about by Prorogation, it should be borne in mind that many of us travel a considerable distance to come here. In doing so, we usually make arrangements a fortnight in advance for Monday to Thursday. The change to a Wednesday therefore causes considerable difficulties in arrangements for those Members who are travelling several hundred miles. I have accommodation in London, but I know that other colleagues who have to stay overnight have to make not only travel arrangements but overnight bookings. Perhaps this can be considered in future.
Lord Bassam of Brighton
I have a simple question. Will the noble Baroness agree to publish, in a letter placed in the Library, the stats on a per annum basis for the number of sitting days that the House has had since 2010?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, I can certainly look at that and see what helpful figures—helpful to the noble Lord—we can give. With regard to advance notice, I sympathise with those noble Lords who travel a great distance here and try to have some regular pattern of attendance. The problem normally arises only with Prorogation, as it is simply impossible to predict when it might take place. I follow the pattern, which has always been the case, that one can make the announcement only once this House has completed its legislative business. That, of course, does not include statutory instruments but only the substantive primary Bills themselves. I could have waited another 24 hours, because normally one gives only 24 hours’ notice. However, I am always keen to give as much advance information as possible because I recognise, with sympathy, that Prorogation can cause a particular difficulty.
Education: Free School Funding
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will repeat in the form of a Statement the Answer to an Urgent Question given in another place this afternoon by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education. The Statement is as follows.
“I am delighted to be able to update the House on progress in providing new school places. Just last week, the Public Accounts Committee congratulated the department on the clear progress that has been made in delivering new school places through the free school programme, with costs significantly lower than under the previous Government’s school building programme.
Free schools cost around half what schools built under Building Schools for the Future cost. Thanks to the savings we have made, and thanks to the success of our long-term economic plan, we have been able to invest far more than the previous Government in creating new school places, especially in areas of need. We are investing £5 billion over the life of this Parliament in giving money to local authorities for new school places. That is more than twice what the previous Government spent over the equivalent preceding period, despite repeated warnings that the population was increasing. We plan to invest even more in the next Parliament, with £7 billion allocated for new school places.
As a result, we have delivered 212,000 new primary school places between 2012 and 2013 and we are on course to deliver another 357,000. Thanks to the efforts of many great local authorities, we now have fewer pupils in overcrowded primary schools than we had in 2010. As well as the expansion of existing local authority provision, we have also created, on top, 83,000 places in new free schools. The budget for these schools has been just under 10% of the department’s total capital spend.
Free schools are, so far, outperforming other schools inspected under our new and more rigorous Ofsted framework. Schools such as Dixons Trinity in Bradford and the Canary Wharf free school in Tower Hamlets have been ranked outstanding months after opening. Free schools are now oversubscribed, with three applications for every place and, indeed, the longer free schools are in place, the more popular they are. Schools such as the West London Free School and the London Academy of Excellence are becoming the most oversubscribed schools in their area.
It is important to remember that we have met the demand identified by local authorities for new school places and have also set up seven out of 10 free schools in areas of significant population growth. Indeed, as the National Audit Office has pointed out, £700 million of the £950 million spent on the free schools so far opened has actually augmented the money given to local authorities for new school places. Other free schools have been set up to provide quality provision where existing standards are too low or school improvements have been too slow.
We should never be complacent about educational standards but we should today take time to thank local authorities and all our school leaders and teachers, because no child in this country is without a school place, fewer are in overcrowded schools and Ofsted reports that more children are being taught good and outstanding lessons by more highly qualified teachers than ever before.
In short, thanks to the rigour with which we have borne down on costs, the innovation unleashed by the academy and free schools programmes, and the success of the Government’s economic strategy, we have been able both to provide all necessary school places and drive up quality across the board”.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for the Statement. However, the fact is that the free school project is becoming more and more a source of embarrassment for this Government. In short, the Secretary of State seems to be running out of friends. Last week, the Public Accounts Committee reported that at least £240 million had been spent on building 42 free schools where there is no shortage of school places, diverting money away from the areas of greatest need. Meanwhile, it seems that the Treasury has raised concerns about the runaway costs of free schools, at both official and ministerial level. Even the DfE’s own civil servants are scrabbling around to effect some political damage limitation from the fall-out of the failing free schools. Now their coalition partners, the Lib Dems, are alleging that the basic needs budget—intended for extra school places in the most overcrowded areas—has been raided to expand the free school programme.
I listened carefully to the Secretary of State’s response to this accusation in the other place. He seemed to deny that the basic needs budget had been—or would be—raided to fund free schools and, indeed, he claimed that the free schools budget would be reduced if necessary to fund the basic needs programme. Can the noble Lord clarify who is right on this matter—David Laws or Michael Gove? Will he also acknowledge that the shortage of primary school places continues to be an issue and that, at the next election, more infants will be taught in classrooms with more than 30 pupils than was the case in 2010? When will the Government finally introduce some proper controls on this runaway expenditure, as demanded by the Treasury and the Public Accounts Committee? Does he accept the latest Ofsted evidence that free schools have a failure rate of 11% compared to just 3% for maintained schools, so they are not the great success story that Michael Gove likes to claim? Finally, does he have some sympathy with the Conservative Association in Crawley—home of the disastrous Discovery New School—which, when asked if it would like a ministerial visit, replied, “Please send anyone but Michael Gove”?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is of course only doing her job in pointing out the few failings in the free schools programme. However, overall, the programme is a massive success, as witnessed by the number of MPs across the other place this afternoon who praised the free schools in their constituencies and by the massive demand from parents, witnessed by their being three times oversubscribed.
Overall, free schools are far more likely to be rated outstanding within only a few months of opening than other schools. Any failings in our school buildings programme is but nothing compared to the massive failure of the previous Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme, which ran at least £10 billion over cost. That failure was coupled with their complete failure, apparently, to anticipate the looming crisis— despite repeated warnings and their immigration policy—in school places which we are now fixing.
I thought that the Public Accounts Committee report was very balanced and very fair. In particular, it was quite muted compared to the committee’s 2009 report into the Building Schools for the Future programme, which contained phrases such as,
“poor planning and persistent over-optimism”,
and said the department had,
“wasted public money by relying on consultants”,
and was “complacent”.
Rather than the free schools building programme taking money away from basic needs, it is in fact enhancing it: £1.1 billion has been allocated for 174 free schools, 70% of which are in areas of basic need; in the free school round announced in January this year, all our new maintained schools are in areas facing a shortage of places; and it looks likely that the latter will pretty much be the case as well for the new round to be announced shortly. We have been able to meet the demand for school places which we were left with by the previous Government, who in fact reduced the number of primary places by 200,000 despite the warnings. The noble Baroness referred to the Discovery New School. We have closed half of another school. We have in fact closed schools with 200 places in them which compares with the 150,000 new places that we have created under the free schools programme.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
Will my noble friend confirm that one of the most heartening aspects of the free schools programme is that every free school is opened only after extensive consultation with the local community? By the time the free school is open, it has huge community support, and the parents who have been involved in the setting up of the school have overwhelming enthusiasm and are greatly involved in the life of the school in a way that, in my experience, has been seen in very few local authority schools.
Lord Nash
I can confirm what my noble friend says. I encourage noble Lords from across the House to visit schools such as Dixons Trinity Bradford, Reach Academy Feltham, Canary Wharf College or ARK Conway Primary Academy, all of which have been rated outstanding within months of opening.
Lord Storey (LD)
The Minister is right to point to the fact that there are problems of overcrowding in maintained schools. In fact, a survey by the Local Government Association found that in 2012 one-fifth of primary schools were full, with the obvious problem of increased class sizes. Will the Minister confirm that every parent who wishes to send their child to a maintained primary school will be able to do so? Will he confirm or deny that no money has been diverted or augmented from the basic needs budget to the free schools programme? Will he confirm that it is still government policy that no free school should be run as a business? This has somehow been caught up in the issue of the meals programme for key stage 1 children. Will he confirm that the Government are fully committed to that programme?
Lord Nash
Local admissions arrangements are for the local authority in the area, although it is true that virtually all academies and free schools use the local authority admissions process. I have already answered the second point about money being directed from basic needs to free schools. We have a very strict policy: no free school or academy can be run as a business. Indeed, no one with any close relationship with a free school or academy can provide any services to that school except at cost. The Government are fully committed across party to the universal free school meals programme.
Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister said that no money has been diverted into the free schools programme. Will the Minister confirm that the Treasury set a limit? If, for example, the per capita payment per pupil—not the building cost, but the per capita cost per pupil—is higher for free schools, then both the local authority maintained schools and the voluntary sector schools are deprived of resources. I, for one, take offence when it is said that free schools have more highly qualified teachers when actually they are allowed to employ unqualified teachers. I consider that to be a slur. I admit that I am biased, but does the Minister accept that in Lancashire parents join in their local schools, be they church schools—of which Lancashire has the largest number—or other schools? When the Minister says that seven out of every nine free schools are justified, two out of every nine are not justified. County schools, local authority schools and the voluntary aided sector cannot use that money if it is being spent to support a whim of the Secretary of State.
Lord Nash
All academies and free schools are funded on an equal basis to maintained schools. They may get some start-up grants, but their annual revenue going forward is equal. As regards the slur to which the noble Baroness referred, the Statement says quite clearly that Ofsted has reported that all schools, not just free schools, have more highly qualified teachers than ever before.
Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
My Lords, I understand that the very first duty of any education department is to ensure that every single parent will have the opportunity to place his or her child in a maintained school if that is what he or she wishes. I am concerned by what appears to be a fog of misunderstanding. My understanding is that there are at least 12 local authorities—I give as examples Teeside, Ruislip, Croydon and Bristol—where it is said to be impossible for a parent to find a place in a maintained primary school. That should be the first duty of Government. It would be very helpful if the Minister could say specifically that he does not know of local authorities that cannot find a primary school place for their children. If someone wants to send their child to a free school that is perfectly fair, but it should not be forced on them.
Lord Nash
I have said quite clearly that we have satisfied all the demand for free school places and we have funded local authorities to be able to satisfy that demand. Of course, we now have a system in which 60% of secondary schools and 12% of primary schools are academies. It may well be that in some areas the nearest school which the allocation process in the local authority directs parents to will be a free school rather than a local authority maintained school.
Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2014
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
19:08 - Division on Baroness Smith of Basildon’s amendment to the Motion. - Ayes: 125 / Noes: 216 - Baroness Smith of Basildon’s amendment to the Motion disagreed.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That the draft order laid before the House on 31 October 2013 be approved.
Relevant document: 13th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 31 March.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)
My Lords, the Government seek to control khat as a class C drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, to protect the public from the potential harms associated with this drug and the threat posed from its international trafficking.
Through the second draft order laid by the Ministry of Justice, the Government are seeking to extend the use of penalty notices for disorder—PNDs—to the offence of simple possession of khat, when it is the second time that the offence has been committed. By a negative instrument, the financial penalty for the khat PND will be set at £60. On the first occasion that an offence has been committed, a person is likely to be issued with a non-statutory “khat warning”. Anyone caught possessing khat for the third time or more will face arrest. This reflects the policing strategy for khat possession cases agreed with the national policing lead for drugs. Both draft orders were considered in Grand Committee on 31 March. The House will be aware that both draft orders have been approved in the House of Commons. I commend the two orders to the House.
Amendment to the Motion
Baroness Smith of Basildon
At end to insert “but that this House regrets that Her Majesty’s Government’s plans for the introduction of the Order do not include provisions for a 12-month review of the impact of the reclassification of khat in view of the highly unusual community focus of its use, for putting a detailed policing strategy in place before a ban takes effect, or for a health strategy to prevent a transfer of addiction to other substances; and do not commit the Department for International Development to do more work with the government of Kenya to alleviate the effect of the reclassification on the Kenyan economy.”
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation. I shall explain why we have brought this amendment before the House today.
It is around six weeks since we discussed this issue in Grand Committee. I thank the noble Lord for asking to meet me prior to this debate and for the discussion we had on the issue during the Recess. In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, responded for the Government. He agreed that this was a finely balanced decision. The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, the ACMD, does not advise that the drug should be banned, due to a lack of robust evidence. In fact, it considers it to be,
“a much less potent stimulant than other commonly used drugs”.
As I identified in Grand Committee, successive Governments have considered whether khat should be banned, but the evidence has not been clear or strong enough previously to support such a ban. It is clear from the evidence base in the Explanatory Memorandum and the Government’s assessment of the options that the decision remains a finely balanced one. One of the new considerations is the impact of the ban by other European countries.
Having considered the evidence, we accept that the benefits of a ban could outweigh the risks. However, as I stated previously, there are a number of assurances needed from the Government before that is clear. When we debated this in Committee and sought assurances from the Government, we did not do so unexpectedly. My colleague in the other place, the shadow Home Office Minister, Diana Johnson, had discussions with the Minister who had responsibility for this order. Curiously, this was not the Drugs Minister, Norman Baker, but another Minister, Karen Bradley. She spoke to her regarding our concerns and the conditions we consider to be essential if a ban is to be put in place. These were raised in the debate in Committee in the other place on 31 March and indeed in our own debate on the same day. I had also notified the Minister’s office of our concerns. Both Diana Johnson and I were disappointed with the responses from the Government, so this amendment is another attempt to seek reassurances from the Government on the implementation of such a ban. There are no surprises and no reasons of which I am aware that a full answer to the points we have raised should not be forthcoming.
I do not think I need to repeat the detail of the Committee debate on the harms of the drug or the risks associated with a ban. They are well documented in those debates, the Explanatory Memorandum, the impact assessment and, indeed, the letter from the Home Secretary. We are aware of the social and possible health harms associated with khat and which communities—largely the Somali and Yemeni communities—in the UK are most likely to use the drug. Overall, just 0.2% of the population have used khat but some 50% of Somali males are thought to be users, and up to 10% daily users. We are also aware that it is very difficult to separate the social harms of khat from the wider social issues faced by the Somali community and, to a lesser extent, the Yemeni and Ethiopian communities. We are also aware of significant and strong support from within the Somali community for a ban.
However, it must also be recognised that neither the ACMD nor the Home Office review has been able to isolate khat as the cause of problems or as exacerbating existing social problems. Khat has been linked to health harms including liver toxicity and tooth loss, as well as issues relating to the manner in which it is consumed, and mental health problems in the Somali community. But again, the evidence in relation to physical health is not considered by the ACMD—the committee that advises the Government on the misuse of drugs—as being robust enough to justify a ban.
We must also examine the risks of banning khat. We recognise that in assessing the risks we have to consider the risk of the UK becoming a hub for illegal exports to the US and other EU countries which have already implemented bans. I understand that is a key issue behind the Government’s intention to ban the drug.
In Committee, I asked the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, whether there was any evidence that khat imports into the UK were increasing and that the UK was being used as a base for illegal imports. He was able to advise that there had been a change although I am not 100% clear from the figures how significant that change is. Of course, that is a very reasonable issue for the Government to take into account and clarification of the scale of the problem would be helpful. When looking at the risks, it is relevant for the Government to consider the impact on the criminal justice system and to recognise that the enforcement costs may be high initially.
The Government recognise that there is a significant risk that a ban could damage community relations because khat use is both common and widely accepted within the Somali, Yemeni and Ethiopian communities. That would mean that banning khat would criminalise an established and accepted social practice.
The amendment would not prevent the ban but, because the impact must be fully understood and handled very carefully, we have identified four areas that are essential to ensure that any ban does not damage community relations and does not lead to khat’s displacement by other drugs, leading to more serious social and health impacts. As the noble Lord is aware, we wish to raise four issues that we think are essential before any ban should proceed.
The first is the review. Particularly because this is a very finely balanced decision, we think that there must be a review after 12 months that looks at the impact of reclassification, including on organised crime as well as community relations. That should include a monitoring framework, as outlined by the Home Affairs Select Committee; it was the second recommendation in its report. I know that the Government already collect some data in relation to drugs but, because khat is unique among drugs in that it is focused in particular communities, specific data need to be collected on community relations. Rather than that just being published as part of the overall publication of statistics and figures on crime, community relations and drug use, there should be a separate review published on khat.
One issue that the Minister very helpfully discussed with me when we met was policing. Because khat is highly prevalent in the Somali and Yemeni communities, the introduction of a ban would allow any Somali or Yemeni male to be subject to stop and search. I know that the Minister recognises that this could have a seriously detrimental effect on community relations, and the Government are bringing in changes to stop and search. Although we discussed this, it would be helpful if the Minister could put on the record how the Government will ensure that this does not undermine the Prevent agenda, which is now being focused on the Somali and Yemeni communities.
One risk that we can particularly identify, because khat is a social drug, is that it is linked to numerous businesses, including cafés and community centres, so policing has to be very sensitive to those risks. To ensure that this happens, we want a specific policing strategy, agreed by the ACPO lead for drugs and the Prevent team. That should be in place before a ban is in force.
I mentioned my meeting with the Minister and his officials. He was able to outline some of the issues regarding policing. I am aware that the Government are giving serious consideration to them. He agreed at that meeting to provide me with details and a copy of the draft guidance currently being considered but I have not yet had it. I know that he would want me to have a copy of that. It would have been helpful for the debate today but, if we could have a copy of that, it would be very helpful.
When we met I also reiterated the need for a programme of engagement and support for the Somali community. There needs to be some kind of education about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. As the advisory committee recognises, the evidence on the harms is not robust enough for a ban and the last thing that I think anybody wants to see is khat being replaced with illegal or prescription drugs or alcohol. That would be a very serious matter and could cause greater health harms. When we discussed this, the Minister was not able to provide me with any further information other than that he was sure that this was ongoing. These programmes will be essential, and if he is able to provide more information today that would be extremely helpful to our considerations.
My final point is on international development, an issue recognised by the Select Committee in the other place. The Department for International Development has to commit to work with the Kenyan Government to alleviate the effect of the khat ban on the Kenyan economy. When we discussed this, the Minister was confident that Kenyan farming was robust enough to diversify. He is more of an expert on farming than I am—I hope that will be the case. The Select Committee identified this as a very serious issue. My understanding is that the department is working with the Kenyan authorities. We need more information on this, as part of the review that should be undertaken and reported on in a year’s time, so that we can understand the work that is ongoing.
These are very real and genuine concerns. As I said, we are not opposing the ban but we really consider that before any ban is implemented these kinds of issues have to be considered and dealt with first. I hope that we will have a positive response from the Minister today. I beg to move.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I have difficulties with both the substance of the order and the amendment. It seems that we may be in a world of policy-based evidence and an amendment that is being brought to the House because the Opposition are looking for something to object to without objecting to the ban itself. The matters identified in the amendment seem to be good reasons to oppose the ban, but the Opposition support it.
The ACMD not only recommended no change in the status of khat—that it not be controlled under the Misuse of Drugs Act—but set out a number of other recommendations dealing with local needs assessments; education and prevention initiatives; culturally specific and tailored treatment and recovery services; partnership working; addressing the problems through engagement and dialogue with the local community and interagency working; working through community safety partnerships; and regular monitoring and returns. It also made a specific recommendation about data to form the basis of future research. Those would themselves have formed a very good amendment, but that is not what is before us.
The ACMD was quite clear on the merits of the ban. The Secretary of State, on the other hand, seems to be saying—if I can summarise it—that since it is banned in the rest of the EU, it must be banned here. The ban was announced last July. Will the Minister tell the House what evidence there has been of the drug’s use since that announcement? Some time has now gone by. Indeed, it has been banned in the rest of the EU since January of last year, so if there are concerns, some of those might have come to light.
One of the reasons that we are given for the proposed ban is the risk of this country becoming a regional hub or a haven for criminals. I was interested to read some of the characteristics of khat, one of which is that it has a very short life. The active ingredient declines a couple of days after being picked; it needs to be fresh for it to have an effect. I have no doubt that the users of it, as consumers, are as demanding as consumers of most products, so is it a genuine concern that we would become a regional hub, if what might be distributed through the hub has, in fact, lost its efficacy by the time it is traded on?
The risks identified from a ban include the users moving towards more addictive, harmful and expensive substances; a black market; and organised crime stepping in to supply the drug and criminalising—inevitably—the users. I appreciate the proposals about applying an escalator to how offences are dealt with, but we would be criminalising users and suppliers, and we know that one crime leads to another.
Of course, I am aware that the Minister in the Commons and the Home Secretary, in her response to the Home Affairs Select Committee, have presented the matter as finely balanced, and that the communities where use is widespread are divided. Looking at the reports, I have been wondering how broadly women in those communities want a ban and men do not. I wonder whether that is rather simplistic reporting. I find it difficult to believe that a ban would instantly lead to such a considerable behavioural change and make model husbands of former users. I have my doubts about that. There is one view that clearly comes from the Somali community, and that is that they would prefer their children to use khat rather than alcohol or tobacco. The ACMD has reported that the use of khat has been decreasing over recent years.
In the Commons, there was very little discussion—nothing from the Minister, I believe—about the broader issues of drugs policy or the wider context, to which reference has just now been made, of the economy of Kenya and the potential instability and risks associated with that. I would be very wary of banning something of cultural significance, with the risk of driving a wedge between the police and the already quite marginalised communities. The references in the reports to the use of khat at weddings made me think of sugared almonds at weddings in some other traditions and how one might respond to any suggestion that that tradition be changed. In summary, I am not persuaded by the orders, but I am not persuaded by the amendment: I would leave the balance as it is.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I support the amendment to the decision of Home Secretary to ban khat under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, although I identify with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, in relation to the amendment. There are very good reasons to oppose this ban. I make clear at the outset that if khat presented a serious health risk to users, I would support a ban on the importation and sale of the substance. On the other hand, we now have sufficient evidence to show that banning the possession and use of psychoactive substances—even dangerous ones—is counterproductive. Of course, the excessive use of khat by small groups of Somalis needs to be tackled; the question is how. We know that bans on possession and use delay treatment. They divert resources away from public health and education initiatives and into the criminal justice system. We also know that a criminal record is extremely damaging to anyone’s employment prospects. The criminalisation of these people will therefore tend to lead them to continue with their drug habit or—if they ever get away from it—to return to it. There are very severe and negative consequences of banning, particularly on the consumer side.
That is the evidence framework within which I have thought about the Home Secretary’s decision to ignore the advice of the ACMD and ban not only the supply but the possession and use of khat. This is a most serious decision for the communities involved, people principally from Somalia, Yemen and Ethiopia. The small but vociferous group of campaigners from Somalia believe that a ban on khat will get rid of the problems as they perceive them—social problems within families and so on. In reality, those using khat will continue using the substance at a vastly increased price. The Home Affairs Select Committee’s ninth report suggested that a hundredfold increase in price could be expected from a ban on khat. The khat user who continued to use khat would also risk, as I said, a criminal record. The alternative, to which other noble Lords have alluded, is that khat would be replaced by alcohol in particular. We know that alcohol is far more dangerous and would have all sorts all sorts of consequences that khat does not have. Either alternative, therefore, would be much worse than the status quo. I am not suggesting that the status quo is wonderful, but it is nothing like as serious as the possible consequences of a ban. The idea that the household would have more cash to spend on food is, sadly, a delusion. Some women might see their husbands spending £25 on khat and think, “I could do with that to buy some shoes for the kids”, but it is a little more complex than that.
The ACMD had clear, scientific reasons for advising the Home Secretary that,
“the evidence of harms associated with the use of khat is insufficient to justify control and it would be inappropriate and disproportionate to classify khat under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971”.
These are very strong words from the ACMD and, particularly, a council led by Professor Leslie Iversen, whom I know quite well and who is a highly regarded scientist known for his incredible moderation, gentleness and so on. He is not a wild man; if he allows such words to go forward to the Government, we really need to take note.
The two central findings concern the medical and social harms, as others have indicated. The ACMD concludes that khat has no direct causal link to adverse medical effects, other than a small number of reports of an association between khat use and significant liver toxicity—a small number and an association. In scientific lingo, as we know, “association” simply means that the two things tend to happen alongside each other. There is no indication of a causal link between the use of khat and medical consequences. On the question of anecdotal evidence of social harms, the ACMD concludes that its research into these has found no robust evidence that demonstrates a causal link between khat consumption and any of the harms indicated.
Professor Iversen emphasised in his letter to the Home Secretary that the council’s recommendations were based on a rigorous and systematic process of evidence-gathering and subsequent analysis of what was submitted and presented to it. In other words, as I understand it, the recommendations should not be set aside other than for matters of serious national security or national interest. Now my understanding is that the main reasons for the Home Secretary’s decision have nothing to do with medical and social risks, and are twofold. First, as others mentioned, Sweden and the Netherlands in particular have banned khat and would find it helpful if the UK took the same step in order to avoid this “hub”. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, dealt very effectively with that point, bearing in mind the very short life of the substances within khat that people are interested in.
The other issue raised, which I find utterly peculiar, is that there is some relationship between khat use and terrorism. That is quite remarkable. I will deal with the terrorism issue very quickly. A very small trade in a perfectly legal, low-cost substance in a few BME communities is just not a serious candidate for a terrorist threat or interest. Indeed, the ACMD was not provided with any evidence of al-Shabaab or any other terrorist group’s involvement in the export or sale of khat, despite consultation with the relevant national and international official bodies. I understand that the Home Secretary has claimed that the ACMD would not have been aware of these things. However, it was aware of the people who are aware of them—and consulted them. The fact that the ACMD picked up nothing in this area should be taken seriously. On the other hand, banning a substance such as khat and increasing its value a hundredfold or more really might interest terrorists. Even on that count, this ban could be—and could be expected to be—counterproductive.
The first question one must ask on the hub possibility is whether the bans in these other countries are working. There is apparently no evidence that they are, or that they are even helpful. I would not expect them to be helpful. The idea that we follow other people simply because they want us to seems a little wrong.
I want to put a proposal with respect to khat. The Government introduced temporary-class drug orders for the purpose of controlling new psychoactive substances. I will not go on for very long on this but I want to put it forward. I applaud the Government for their policy. Its great strength is that these TCDOs do not criminalise the possession and use of these drugs while the TCDO remains in place. However, it provides for the ban of production and sale of substances that may prove dangerous. These orders were designed to enable the ACMD to analyse new drugs and determine whether a full ban under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 could be justified. The only possible justification given by the Government and Home Secretary—I emphasise that—for a ban of khat concerns the supply of khat to other European countries or supply involving terrorists, not that that point needs to be taken seriously. An order along the lines of a TCDO, which avoided criminalising users of khat, would fulfil the Government’s objectives while avoiding unnecessary and severe consequences for the BME communities affected.
The 12-month review proposed in the amendment would then evaluate a narrower issue: the supply ban and, for example, the price increase and illegal activity that will inevitably result. The ACMD could do that work, its findings could be put to the Home Secretary and, if the supply ban was seen not to be in the national interest, it could be dropped. If the ACMD recommended education and preventive initiatives, tailored treatments and other social interventions could then be funded instead of that money going into the criminal justice system. There is an awful lot to be said for that approach. The ACMD thought about this very carefully and that is what it came up with.
The above proposition is relevant even at this stage, if I may say so. We know that some 40% of legislation is never implemented. It is surely possible for the Government to implement only the supply side of their ban and defer—I hope indefinitely—the implementation of the ban on possession and use of khat. Such a plan would enable a more focused 12-month review, as I have already mentioned. I hope the Minister will be willing to take this idea away, even at this late stage: a supply ban only could be introduced and then evaluated to see whether it should continue.
Lord Rea (Lab)
My Lords, of course, in focusing on a topic such as this, almost everything that could be said has been. My noble friend already included four reasons in her amendment for not going ahead with the reclassification of khat. All four reasons were covered fairly fully by other speakers. There are a number of other cogent reasons why the Government should not go ahead with this proposal. Of course, a lot of them have been spoken to by other speakers as well.
Some of those reasons were stated very clearly in the report of the ACMD—which the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, described fully. That was sent to the Home Secretary in January last year and, after that, the Home Affairs Committee reported on this in November. I am not aware that the effects of khat have changed much since those reports were published. The ACMD says that khat has no causal link to adverse medical effects other than a small number of reports of an association between khat use and significant liver toxicity, which were not of sufficient importance to recommend controlling the substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, mentioned that it was an association, not a proven causal link. However, the report from the ACMD also had—as the noble Baroness said—a number of very useful recommendations to health and social care boards regarding khat that central and local government would do well to study and implement.
The main argument put forward by the Home Office for banning khat is that otherwise the UK might become a hub for its distribution—as mentioned by both the preceding speakers. However, if that were likely to happen it would already be occurring, whereas in fact the use of khat in this country—and I assume the importation of khat to this country, too—is falling. I repeat the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee: can the Minister give us any figures about the use and importation of khat in this country? Is there any evidence of the smuggling of khat out of this country to Europe? As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, that is very difficult because it must be done within two or three days or khat is more or less unsalable.
The most important reason for not going ahead with this order is—as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said—the unintended consequences that will follow. Just to start with, the use of khat will probably not come down any faster than it already is. Banning substances that are widely used has little effect on the level of use. This is a fact that Governments—not only this one—are rather reluctant to accept. Another serious consequence would be—as the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, said—to criminalise a section of an already poor and marginalised community: the Somalis in Britain and, to a lesser extent, some Kenyan immigrants and Yemenis. Perhaps the most important consequence might be the substitution of khat by more powerful alternatives, as already mentioned, including alcohol and other stimulants such as crack cocaine and forms of speed—amphetamines—or mephedrone. I join with other noble Lords and Baronesses in pleading with the Minister to reconsider the proposal to go ahead with this order for the very good reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, put so cogently.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I welcome this further opportunity to set out the Government’s approach, which allows me to focus, in particular, on the activities to support the successful implementation of the ban on khat. That has lain at the heart of concerns raised by noble Lords, which I take seriously. I am reassured that the points raised in today’s debate are nearly all matters that were taken into account in the early stages of our decision-making when we considered our response to the issues associated with this drug.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Rea, asked what new figures we had on this drug. The new evidence, including reports from law enforcement agencies, emerged after the ACMD published its report and the Dutch banned khat in January 2013. It pointed to an increase in the volume of khat in transit via the UK to European countries where it is banned. The latest update for the first three months of this year shows that 17 seizures of khat—with a combined net weight of over 11.5 tonnes—originating in the UK were made in France en route to other countries where it is banned, including Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. This is evidence that this country is becoming a substantial hub for this material.
Before I address the particular concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith—
Baroness Smith of Basildon
The Minister has given helpful figures, but can he give comparative figures on how the situation has changed over time? The premise is that if seizures of illegal imports are up, they must be up against another figure. I made this point in Committee; we had figures but not comparative ones.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I do not have those figures to hand. I think the noble Baroness will understand that, if this material is arriving here to be distributed to other countries, as I have illustrated, it confirms the view that this country is serving as a distribution hub in a way that would not have happened before those countries banned its use. That is the point which the Government have had to consider. The noble Baroness came to see us and we had a good and useful meeting, talking about issues that concern her. I will address these but I would like to consider the points made by other speakers first.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee wanted to know what the Somali network’s report had to say. An important aspect of this is that, according to testimony given by community leaders and mothers, several areas of a person’s life can be affected by khat use. Disagreements and frustration over drug use can cause family arguments and affect personal relationships; legal and health problems associated with khat use add to the strain on personal, financial and work relationships; and chewers of khat tend to be more inward looking rather than reaching out to others, fuelling further segregation. In other words, it can be anti-social in its impact.
The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, rang me this morning to advise me that she wanted some assurances on this issue. I cannot give her the assurances that she is seeking but I can, at least, explain the Government’s thinking. She asked what the ACMD thought of our decision to control khat. The ACMD acknowledged the lack of robust evidence on whether khat caused medical or social harm. It understood that the scope of issues that the Government will take into account to make a decision on drug control would go beyond the remit of the committee itself. Before the decision was publicly announced, the Government discussed it with the chairman of ACMD, who accepted that we came to a different view on this occasion, based on consideration of the wider issues beyond those that were the immediate responsibility of ACMD.
The noble Baroness asked about temporary bans. They form part of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 but they are very different. Temporary class drug orders were introduced as a swift legislative tool to tackle the fast-paced emergence in the UK of psychoactive substances or so-called “legal highs”. I have debated these with the noble Baroness on other occasions. In essence, they are used where there is an urgent or significant threat to public safety or health. There is often very little evidence of the harm these drugs do, for the simple reason that they have been available only for a matter of months, if not weeks. Under a temporary class drug order, the advisory council has just 20 working days to advise and only looks at medical harms. Temporary bans are the exception, not the rule, and only last for 12 months. Khat is not a new drug where such swift, temporary action is demanded.
The role of advisors is to advise—
Baroness Meacher
Does the Minister accept that the whole point about khat is that the ACMD did look at the potential medical and social harms and concluded that they did not justify a ban? The supply-side issues, which Professor Iverson accepts may be slightly beyond the council’s remit, are separate. My point is that if you accept the ACMD’s conclusions that the medical and social harms are low and would not justify a ban—and it was very clear about that—the case for criminalising possession and use really is not there. Hence there is a value in something akin to a temporary class drug order: I was not suggesting that you literally translate it completely. Does the Minister accept that focusing simply on supply makes sense, in terms of the Home Secretary’s comments and the evidence available?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I cannot accept that. When I spoke to the noble Baroness earlier, I said that I did not think I would be able to give her much comfort. We did not reject the ACMD’s report. As I explained, the ACMD is there to advise on particular aspects but, in the end, Ministers have to make decisions and be prepared to stand by them.
I turn to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. She has considerable concerns that we have not made proper efforts to prepare affected communities for this ban. I want to reassure her that we have done exactly that. We acknowledge that this is a finely balanced decision that needs careful and extensive preparation at national and local level. Our plans, which have been worked up over a couple of months, are in place and are ready to be rolled out once the draft order completes its parliamentary passage. We are waiting on a decision of the House to approve the order today.
I ask the House to note that, although we took a different view from the ACMD, we took on board its recommendations for locally led health and community-based interventions to meet local khat needs and for monitoring the situation in communities. I know that the noble Baroness would like to have a review after a year. We see it as a matter of continuous review and are specifying that a close eye will be kept on the impact of the ban. In this, we are going beyond the usual approach to the monitoring of newly controlled drugs, to ensure that locally and nationally collected data provide an evolving picture after the ban.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, as on many other occasions, I am grateful to the Minister for the time and care he takes in responding to issues raised in debate. I hope he understands that the only contributions made in your Lordships’ House today have expressed concerns about the Government’s actions regarding the ban on this drug. Our concern is that, with a decision as finely balanced as the Minister said, how it is implemented is very important.
I was somewhat surprised at the uncharacteristically ungenerous comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. She said we were looking for something to do. I find that a curious expression when we are looking at a very serious issue on a busy day in your Lordships’ House. These issues strike at the heart of how such a policy would be implemented. The noble Baroness said that she was unhappy with the amendment before us, but it is open to any Member of your Lordships’ House to table a regret Motion or any other kind of Motion.
We debated this issue in Grand Committee and today. Noble Lords will understand that there are grave concerns about the Government’s action. I am grateful to the Minister for giving us more information on policing. My greatest disappointment is on the issue of health. In a previous debate on drugs, to which I think the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, responded, I said that the FRANK website is not really an answer in cases such as this because somebody has to be interested in order to access it in the first place. As the Government are seeking to ban this drug, they have to be very proactive.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I am sure the noble Baroness will admit that this is not the sole intervention that the Government are making but is part and parcel of a package of health and community activities that the Government have commissioned. Public Health England is and will be very active in pursing this ban.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
That is helpful, and I look forward to receiving more information. The point is that the measures must be in place and understood prior to the implementation of any ban. My greatest disappointment is that the Minister has failed to commit to a review. For us, that is crucial. At the 12-month point, there should be a full understanding and published figures and information. Given that it is such a finely balanced decision, to say that there will be continuous review seems to be an opportunity not to have the serious review that we are seeking. I am grateful to the Minister for his response, but I am disappointed that he has not been able to address all the points that we raised. I wish to test the opinion of the House.
Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 (Amendment) Order 2014
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That the draft Order laid before the House on 4 November 2013 be approved.
Relevant document: 13th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 31 March
Licensing Act 2003 (FIFA World Cup Licensing Hours) Order 2014
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Taylor of Holbeach
To move that the draft Order laid before the House on 1 April be approved.
Relevant document: 26th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)
My Lords, this order makes provision for the relaxation of licensing hours in England during World Cup matches in which England is playing. The 2014 World Cup will be hosted by Brazil, and the difference between the respective time zones means that several matches will kick off late in the evening and finish after the traditional closing time of 11 pm. The purpose of the licensing hours order is to allow people to enjoy the matches while minimising the administrative burden on licensing authorities and licensed premises, which would otherwise need to provide notice that they intended to extend their hours.
Section 172 of the Licensing Act 2003 allows the Secretary of State to make an order relaxing opening hours for licensed premises to mark occasions of,
“exceptional international, national or local significance”.
The coalition Government consider that England playing in the World Cup is an event of exceptional national significance, which many people will want to celebrate together.
We consulted in March on whether to relax licensing hours nationally. We received nearly 1,500 responses to our online consultation: 500 of those were from members of the public and 75% of all responses were in favour of the national relaxation. In addition, we consulted key strategic partners who represent a range of views, including the police, licensing authorities, the licensed trade, residents’ associations and health bodies. Some of these stakeholders raised concerns about late-night drinking leading to crime, disorder and public nuisance. We have sought to strike a balance by limiting the periods when licensing hours will be relaxed.
We believe that the vast majority of people will enjoy watching matches responsibly. The British Beer and Pub Association, in partnership with the Local Government Association and the Association of Chief Police Officers, has published guidance for licensed premises which intend to show the World Cup matches. The guidance aims to encourage the licensed trade to work together with the police and licensing authorities to ensure the safety of the public.
The order would apply to all licensed premises in England. It will cover the sale of alcohol and late-night refreshment for consumption on the premises during those matches in which England is playing. It will apply for a maximum of four hours for matches with a scheduled kick-off time of 8 pm or later, to a latest time of 1 am.
The order will apply to England only. We consulted on whether the order should have effect in England and Wales, or England only. We received only 25 responses from people who live or work in Wales, just over 2% of the total received. While Welsh respondents wanted licensing hours to be relaxed during the World Cup, the majority favoured it being done using the existing system of temporary event notices, rather than a blanket relaxation. This is consistent with what the Government have done: a national blanket relaxation in England, with licensed premises able to use the temporary event notices in Wales.
The Government have sought the views of those who would be affected by a relaxation in licensing hours. We have carefully considered their responses, including concerns about increased crime, disorder and public nuisance, and balanced this with reducing the burden on businesses which would otherwise need to use a temporary event notice to extend their opening hours. We have limited the relaxation to a maximum of four hours after the scheduled kick-off time, to a latest time of 1 am. This is a modest relaxation in licensing hours to allow those who wish to celebrate the occasion to do so.
I hope that noble Lords will agree with the Government that the licensing hours order is an appropriate use of the powers conferred on the Home Secretary by the Licensing Act. With that, I commend the order to the House.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, briefly, this order that we extend licensing hours is an appropriate response to the celebration of a major national occasion. However, I would like to ask the Government a couple of other questions. The unfortunate fact is that things such as domestic abuse tend to go up when alcohol is consumed around sporting events. I was recently made aware of the White Ribbon Campaign, which tries to deal with other sporting groups, making sure that they are aware that this goes on and is unacceptable.
Will the Government be doing something to make sure that people such as, for instance, the football authorities—those who profit from this—accept that this type of behaviour is as unacceptable after the event as anything that would go on at the event, effectively making people aware that if you have had a few drinks and a great night out, you should not take out any frustrations on the person at home when you get back? It would be a good idea if that responsibility was passed on to all those who profit from this. Most people do not indulge in this; it is not a compulsory element, so a ban is not appropriate. Those who profit from this should be making sure that those who might use this as cover for anti-social behaviour, particularly in the privacy of a home, are aware that it is not acceptable.
I hope that the Government have a reasonably positive attitude towards this, if only as something that will develop out of this in the future. We must be aware that celebrations can mask anti-social activity.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for explaining the purpose and intent of the order, which we shall not be opposing as we accept that there should be arrangements for extending licensing hours during the World Cup. However, the order raises as many questions as it answers, although in one area it is very explicit. In paragraph 37 of the impact assessment, it says:
“While England are certain to be playing in the matches in the first period, there is a high probability that they will not be playing in the later matches”.
It is good to know what the Government think of England’s prospects.
As the Minister has said, Section 172 of the Licensing Act 2003 confers on the Secretary of State the power to make a national licensing hours order if she considers that a period—I gather it is known as the “celebration period”—marks an occasion of exceptional international, national or local significance. The specified period, which is part or all of the celebration period, cannot exceed four days but means that premises’ licences and club premises’ certifications have effect as if times specified in the order were included in the opening hours authorised by the licence or certificate. The alternative option available would be to use the existing system of temporary event notices, which means that decisions would be made locally and specific conditions could be attached to the granting of any notices to reflect the local situation, or an extension could be refused for specific premises about which there were concerns.
The Government have come to the conclusion that England’s participation in the World Cup this summer, however brief they think it might be, is an occasion of exceptional national significance which justifies the extension of licensing hours to enable fans to watch the matches at pubs and other licensed premises across the country. The other occasions on which the Section 172 power was used were the royal wedding in 2011 and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012. The football World Cup is now on a par with those two occasions, as the power has never before been used for a sports tournament. It would be interesting to know whether the Government will also consider the likely participation of the England women’s football team in the World Cup—which I think will be held in Canada next year—as a similar occasion of exceptional national significance.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I welcome the debate on this order. I am not entirely sure where the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, stands on the issue before us—
Lord Rosser
I thought that I made that clear when I started. I said that we were not opposing it as we accepted that there was a need to provide arrangements for extended hours during the World Cup. What I am raising with the Government is how views were sought from a number of stakeholders, to which I have referred. They covered the police and the Mayor’s office, as well as local government and residents, who were not saying that there should not be an extension but asked why we could not stick with the current procedure of temporary event notices, which allow local circumstances to be taken into account, rather than doing it on a blanket basis, which, unless the Minister is going to tell me to the contrary, does not allow local circumstances to be taken into account.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
It was that point of which I was uncertain—as to whether the Opposition were in favour of doing it through this measure. I am still unsure. I understand exactly what he has said—
Lord Rosser
I am asking the Minister to explain in rather more detail why, in the face of those points made by the organisations to which I referred, the Government are saying that the best approach is the national blanket decision rather than a continuation of temporary event orders. We are not opposing this order as we recognise that there has to be a facility for extension of licensing hours. But we are curious as to why the Government are so keen to go down the road of the national blanket order, which does not allow local circumstances to be taken into account, bearing in mind the nature of the comments that came back from the police and the Mayor’s office, residents’ organisations and the Local Government Association.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
Of course, the overwhelming number of comments were in favour of using this measure. I accept what the noble Lord says. He is quite right to challenge the Government on why they have made this decision. I think that England’s participation in the World Cup is an occasion that many people will want to enjoy in an atmosphere of clubs or bars where they will be enjoying themselves with other people. We consider it appropriate that the World Cup is seen as an event of exceptional national significance for the purposes of Section 172 of the Licensing Act.
Before I go on to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, I would like to respond to my noble friend Lord Addington, who mentioned the very serious consideration of domestic violence. It is interesting that we have a domestic violence debate tomorrow, which I am also involved in. In truth, there is very little recent evidence that shows that incidents of domestic violence increase during sporting events, although in the past there have been occasions when such phenomena have been reported. Women’s Aid will run a campaign to raise awareness about domestic violence during the period of the World Cup, and that campaign is supported by the Home Office.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked whether we are going to extend the blanket provision to matches when England is not playing, such as the World Cup final. It is acknowledged that an awful lot of people will probably watch those games, but the power under which this order is being made allows for the relaxation for events of exceptional national significance and we consider that this would not meet the criteria if England was not playing in the final.
On that basis, the noble Lord has clearly read with interest the impact assessment. I am pleased that he is impressed by the intellectual rigour with which the Government draw up those assessments. He is quite right. It says that England are certain to play in the matches of the first period of the tournament—I think that we can all agree on that—but that there is a high probability that England will not play in later matches. That is a matter of opinion, and I am sure that other noble Lords will have different views on that issue. But the use of Betfair and its interactive website was the basis for that assessment.
Lord Rosser
As I understand it, the Minister has said that a blanket order could not apply to the final if England was not participating in it. Am I not right in saying that Section 172 can be applied to mark occasions of exceptional international significance as well as national significance?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Lord is absolutely right, but the Government have not taken the view that that particular definition applies in this instance. We are limiting it to those games in which England is playing.
The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked about additional policing costs, crime and disorder and the cost to the taxpayer. We are mindful that late-night drinking can lead to crime and disorder as well as public nuisance but, because these matches will be identified and the situations known, the order is restricted to the sale of alcohol and late-night refreshment in pubs, clubs and anywhere else where alcohol is consumed on the premises. It is not an off-the-premises order.
The noble Lord asked about giving the police extra funding for this. No, this is not an event for which extra funding would be provided. He also asked whether there would be other occasions on which football events would be covered, and mentioned the women’s World Cup. Each occasion is assessed on a case-by-case basis, based on whether they could be considered of significance, alongside other circumstances, such as time, location, and the impact on public safety. Those things are carefully considered before orders such as this one are brought before the House.
The noble Lord asked how it would be possible to plan policing. The police will use their relationship with premises to determine which premises would be extending their licensing hours and will manage risks accordingly. He asked how we squared this proposal with our localism approach. The Government have decided that England’s participation in the World Cup is an exceptional national event. Due to the late kick-off times, which we cannot help, since Brazil is west of here, it is appropriate to relax licensing hours for a modest length of time in relation to these matters. This order provides a temporary change only in licensing hours during World Cup 2014.
Licensing hours have been relaxed before, as I have said. The order provides a temporary change, specifically for England’s matches. Future events and occasions will be considered on a case-by-case basis. This licensing hours order will reduce the burden on businesses, which is why we have chosen this path, when otherwise they would need to use temporary event notices to extend their opening hours. It will reduce the burden on licensing authorities, which would have to process the notices.
Lord Rosser
I am still not clear on the question of additional policing costs. Can the Minister say that the additional policing costs will be less than what the Government described as the benefit to on-trade premises of £1.35 million?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I cannot say categorically what the actual increase in costs will be and I certainly cannot state categorically the degree to which the order will increase police costs. I think that a far more difficult situation would arise if England were playing, clubs, pubs and bars were not open and there was informal activity on private premises. At least the order allows policing to be planned as it enables the police to know which licensed premises will be open during these events.
Lord Addington
Before my noble friend sits down, I hope that I can ask him one more question. I asked whether those who will profit from the World Cup will be given a little more encouragement to make sure that domestic abuse issues are brought to the public’s attention. As the audience we are talking about is predominantly male and the problem to which I referred is predominantly a male problem, this might be a good time to raise awareness of it and establish an ongoing duty in this regard. That was what I was trying to get at. I did not get a chance to speak to my noble friend about this issue before the debate as he has been so busy but I wonder whether he could give his thoughts on that issue.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I certainly understand exactly what my noble friend is saying. As I said, the Home Office is supporting an awareness campaign on this issue. I cannot give him a specific promise that there will be a continuing commitment in this regard. However, we will discuss this issue tomorrow afternoon and I hope that the noble Lord will participate in that debate. I am prepared to write to him about a continuing commitment if that would be helpful in the event that he is not able to attend tomorrow’s debate.
Lord Rosser
I wish to ask the Minister a question following what he said a moment ago—that premises which decide to stay open later under the blanket order will have to advise the police in advance of their decision to do so. I thought the Minister was arguing that the blanket order made it easier for the police to keep control of the situation. However, the letter from the Association of Chief Police Officers says that the advantage of temporary event notices is that they allow police forces,
“to adapt their public order plans to more accurately reflect the probable demand based upon targeted intelligence”.
Does it mean, therefore, that under this blanket order premises which are intending to stay open later within the terms of the order will have to advise the police in advance?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
No, that is not the case. However, the police will be able to ask whether such places intend to remain open. That is entirely up to them.
Lord Rosser
Can we be clear, therefore, that under the blanket order the police have to ask premises whether they are staying open whereas under the temporary event notice, where people would have to apply, the police would know in advance who would be staying open?
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
If the police consider it is important for them to know that information, they will ask the question. If they do not think it is important to know that, they do not have to ask the question; it is entirely up to them. It is a policing matter, not a question of the licensing arrangements. We are making it clear that the whole point of this measure is to liberalise the licensing hours available to licensed bars and pubs to enable them to have extra licensing hours, if that is what they seek, to enable their customers to watch matches and have a drink at the same time. I think it is quite clear what the arrangements will be. I would have thought that the noble Lord would accept that it is a perfectly sensible and practical arrangement. As I said in my opening speech—
Lord Rosser
The Minister says he hoped that I would accept that this is a perfectly practical arrangement. I have made it clear that there is no argument about the need for a procedure for extended hours. However, the points I am raising are ones the police have raised.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I think I have given the answer, have I not? My job is to present the reasons why we have chosen to go ahead with the order. We have done so because we consider that this is an event of national significance. As it is an event of national significance, we have decided that the Licensing Act approach is the right one to take to provide the opportunity for licensed premises to stay open during the matches. We have made it quite clear why we have done that. The job of the police is to maintain order. They are entitled to say that they do not particularly like our approach; that is entirely up to them. However, the Government have made this decision because they think it is in the interests of the public as a whole that they have an opportunity to view the matches while attending licensed premises. I think that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. The order is conditional on England playing in any particular match. The coalition Government believe that the decision to relax licensing hours for England matches during the World Cup strikes the right balance between recognising the benefits of alcohol when it is enjoyed responsibly and maintaining proper safeguards for the public. On that basis, I hope that these orders are agreed.
Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Conditions) Order 2014
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Taylor of Holbeach
That the draft order laid before the House on 9 April be approved.
Relevant documents: 40th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, 26th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)
My Lords, the order makes provision for the introduction of a mandatory licensing condition banning the sale of alcohol below the cost of duty plus VAT. Some noble Lords will notice that the substance of this order has been debated previously, as the Licensing Act 2003 (Mandatory Licensing Conditions) Order 2014. After some debate, the order did receive the approval of the House. Unfortunately, the process necessary for formal approval of the order did not take place, so we must give the order our consideration again.
The Policing and Crime Act 2009 amended the Licensing Act 2003 to confer a power on the Secretary of State to specify further mandatory licensing conditions relating to the sale and supply of alcohol. New Sections 19A and 73B of the Licensing Act allow for such conditions where the Home Secretary considers it appropriate for the promotion of licensing objectives. The order will apply to all licensed premises in England and Wales. Scotland and Northern Ireland are subject to different legislation.
The Government are committed to reducing alcohol-related harms. We have taken a decision to ban the sale of alcohol below the permitted price—that is, the cost of duty and VAT. This fulfils a commitment in the coalition agreement. It will ensure that the worst cases of cheap alcohol are banned from sale. The ban will prevent anyone selling alcohol at heavily discounted prices. A can—that is, 440 millilitres—of average-strength lager will now cost no less than 40p, and a standard bottle of 70 centilitres of vodka no less than £8.89. The ban aims to reduce excessive alcohol consumption and its associated impact on alcohol-related crime and health harms.
It is estimated that overall alcohol consumption will fall by 10.5 million units in the first year alone, resulting in 900 fewer crimes and 100 fewer hospital admissions. After 10 years, there will be 500 fewer hospital admissions and 14 lives will be saved each year. It is vital that we reduce alcohol-related harm, which is estimated to cost society £21 billion per year, with £11 billion of this being alcohol-related crime. In nearly half of all violent incidents the victim believed the perpetrator to be under the influence of alcohol. The most common type of anti-social behaviour experienced or witnessed—by one in 10 people—was drink-related. This measure will ensure that we take a step towards a much needed reduction in the £21 billion bill that this country faces as a result of alcohol.
In the previous debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, raised concerns regarding the evidence upon which we based the policy. I reiterate that the benefits of this policy have been assessed using the University of Sheffield’s School of Health and Related Research model. This is accepted as the best model available for estimating the benefits of this policy. I hope that the noble Baroness found helpful my correspondence following the debate setting out the modelling in more detail. More detailed information on the modelling used by the University of Sheffield can be found at annexe 3 of the impact assessment, which was published alongside the order.
My noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, who is not in his place this evening, raised during the previous debate a question on minimum unit pricing and its effects in Canada. As I noted then, the context of sale in Canada is quite different from that in England and Wales. I hope that my noble friend found my subsequent response outlining the studies helpful.
The modelling from the University of Sheffield estimates that this policy is worth £3.6 million a year in crime reduction benefits in England alone. This figure was laid before Parliament in the impact assessment and the Explanatory Memorandum. The health benefits have also been considered and again laid before Parliament. The Explanatory Memorandum notes an estimated benefit to the public sector in England alone of £1.15 million per year on average over the first 10 years. The impact assessment estimates the wider health benefits to society, as well as the public sector, to be £5.3 million per year.
While the reduction in average consumption is modest, this policy will impact the most on hazardous and harmful drinkers. We know that there is a direct link between the price of alcohol and the quantity consumed by the heaviest drinkers, who tend to favour the cheapest alcohol. We also know that hazardous and harmful drinkers generate the biggest costs for alcohol-related crime. What this policy seeks to achieve is 900 fewer crimes in the first year alone, with a reduction in hospital admissions from 100 in year 1 to 500 in year 10. Two consultations have been held on the Licensing Act and alcohol strategy, in 2010 and 2012-13. Following the results of the consultations, banning the sale of alcohol below the cost of duty plus VAT was considered to be the most pragmatic way with which to tackle the worst examples of cheap alcohol.
I hope that noble Lords will agree with the Government that the introduction of the ban is an appropriate use of the powers conferred on the Home Secretary by the Licensing Act 2003. Accordingly, I commend the order to the House.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful again to the Minister for his explanation, and I admire his ability to keep going today, as this is the fifth debate in which he has taken part. I do not intend to repeat the comments I made previously when this matter was debated. He will recall—he alluded to this—that I challenged the Government on the robustness of the evidence he provided for the policy and its impact. Indeed, I used the 32nd and 35th reports of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. I concurred with its conclusion that the effect of this policy, as outlined in the order, “appears to be negligible”. As I recall from the debate, he said that the level of reduction in alcohol consumption would be 10.5 million units in the first year. When the matter was considered further by the committee, it said that that was equivalent to one large glass of wine a year per individual. That does not have quite the same impact as saying 10.5 million units. There was no robust evidence to show that those who most needed to reduce their alcohol intake would do so under this policy.
The Minister alluded to the letter that he wrote to me following the debate. I admit that I had not expected this order to come before us again. Had it done so with no changes, my comments would be very brief, but there are significant changes and new evidence to which he did not refer today. It might be helpful if I did so. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its 40th report drew attention to those changes. I share the committee’s disappointment that neither the Explanatory Memorandum nor the impact assessment was revised on being re-presented to your Lordships’ House in light of the strong and justified criticisms highlighted in the previous debate. It would have been helpful if those had been taken into account before re-presenting the Explanatory Memorandum and impact assessment to your Lordships’ House.
I will raise two issues on which I seek the Minister’s comments. In terms of new evidence, consideration of the Budget is important in assessing the impact of this policy. As was evident from the previous debate, there would be a marginal impact, which has failed to convince the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee that the costs to industry, which would be significant in implementing the permitted pricing policy, could be justified. The impacts would be low and marginal—one large glass of wine a year. The Wine and Spirit Trade Association claimed that the Budget would save the industry £175 million in additional duty payments. That, in turn, would bring down the permitted price at which alcohol would be sold. If the Minister is relying on a higher permitted price to reduce alcohol consumption, he perhaps ought to talk to the Chancellor, who has ensured that the permitted price will be reduced by the reduction and freezing of duty on alcohol.
Other evidence from the Cardiff University study was presented in the committee’s report. I do not know if the noble Lord has had an opportunity to read it, but it makes interesting reading around the reasons for a significant fall in violent crime. The study was unconvinced that alcohol pricing is the most significant factor. There was a 12% reduction in injuries from violent incidents in 2003 and, for the fifth consecutive year, the NHS has recorded a decrease in injuries from violence. This issue has to be looked at again, given the large implementation costs and the impact on the industry. What added value will this policy change brought forward by the order produce for the NHS and policing if you also take into account the economic and social factors, and the policing initiatives that have led to the fall in violent crime? What additional change will this order bring about?
Finally, the impact assessment suggests that doubling the level of alcohol excise duty will reduce alcohol-related mortality by an average of 35%, traffic-crash deaths by 11%, sexually transmitted diseases by 6%, violence by 2% and crime by 1.4%. Although the impact assessment does not specify the timeframe, it says that that would be the impact. That would be pretty impressive but it is not what this policy seeks to do. It is based only on maintaining the current level of excise duty, but the Chancellor reduced it in the Budget. Can we take it that we should now seek an increase following the reduction in excise duty?
We all want the harms from excess alcohol, to which the noble Lord referred in his comments on domestic violence, reduced. However, I have serious concerns.
Lord Tyler (LD)
The noble Baroness seems to be coming to the end of her speech. Can she be optimistic for once? We have so much pessimism from the Opposition. Will she make a firm commitment? Does the Labour Party understand that the principle of minimum alcohol pricing is important? Are we not all in favour? This order may not go far enough for her; I understand that, but could she for once be optimistic and say that this may be a step in the right direction?
Baroness Smith of Basildon
There is a coalition Government and it is pretty hard to be optimistic. It is not about minimum alcohol pricing; that would be a completely different debate. The Government have ruled it in, then ruled it out—it will happen, it will not happen. This is about a different issue altogether. I am questioning whether the measures taken and the wonderful responses and results they are supposed to give really measure up. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee does not think so, and neither do I.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, I tend to agree with my noble friend Lord Tyler. We have had situations today where the measures are agreed in principle but then the Government’s reasoning is challenged. This is another case in which the Opposition are not quite sure where to be on this issue.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
The Minister is right. It is the Opposition’s job to challenge the Government not just on policy but on implementation. In accusing the Opposition of being negative I remind him that this policy was looked at by a cross-party group of esteemed Members of your Lordships’ House on a Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. If I am negative and pessimistic, so are they.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
The noble Baroness is quite within her constitutional rights to be critical of the Government. If the Opposition welcome a change, which I am sure they do, it would be rather nice if they said so. After all, this policy will deal with a particular class of drinker that I think the noble Baroness and I agree is a problem. We are talking about hazardous and dangerous drinkers, the very people who are attracted by the offer of cheap alcohol, as existed in the past. This measure is designed particularly with them in mind. We know that savings to the National Health Service alone are £5.3 million and the costs related to crime are £3.6 million. We welcome the general trend of a drop in violence, and alcohol is only one factor in a number of measures being taken to deal with violence—just as price is only one factor to deal with alcohol abuse. It does not invalidate its use.
The noble Baroness asked about the Budget and whether we should have changed the figures in the light of the Budget. I emphasise that it is a targeted measure, as alcohol harms. It will stop the worst instances of deep discounting which result in alcohol being sold cheaply and harmfully. The whole point of the order is to ban the worst cases of cheap alcohol sales, but other actions that help local areas to identify and tackle alcohol-related issues are all part and parcel of the coalition’s commitment to dealing with alcohol abuse. I hope that the noble Baroness will recognise the purpose of bringing forward this order and welcome it. With that in mind I ask that the order be approved.
Representation of the People (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2014
(10 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 24 March be approved.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
In many ways I deeply regret that we are coming to this very late in an empty House. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, and I agree that this is a very important transition. It is in the interests of all parties that we get this transition to individual registration right. Perhaps—I raise this as a question for the new Session—it might be appropriate before the summer to have, if the Opposition care to suggest it, another debate on where we are and how confident we are that the transition is going ahead.
The Electoral Commission reported in its readiness report published at the end of March that significant progress had been made in preparing for the transition, and that there was no reason to delay the implementation of IER. Since the commission made its assessment, further progress has been made, particularly in the testing of the IT arrangements that will support the new system. Thus, all is going well. From my perspective all is going much better than I thought when I was originally briefed some 18 months ago. IER is set to start in June in England and Wales and in September in Scotland.
The draft instrument for England and Wales before the House today will enable a significant change to help the electoral registration officers—EROs—in two-tier local government areas to make their registers as accurate and complete as possible. The two instruments also make further refinements designed to get IER off to the best possible start. The significant change is that the draft regulations for England and Wales will provide for local data matching in two-tier areas. They will authorise EROs in two-tier local government areas, which are appointed by district councils, to inspect records kept by the county council and to make copies of information contained in them. This will remove the current anomaly that allows EROs in unitary authorities to inspect a wider range of locally held data such as—this is highly relevant to the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—lists of school students who are approaching voting age, than their counterparts in two-tier areas.
In addition, the regulations will authorise but not require the authority by which the ERO was appointed, and in two-tier areas the relevant county council, to disclose to the ERO information contained in records held by that authority. This can happen only if an agreement is in place between the authority and the ERO as to the processing of the information. This will put all EROs on an equal footing as regards the right to inspect information. It will also permit, subject to conditions, the disclosure of data by local authorities to EROs in a form suitable for electronic matching against the electoral register. The Cabinet Office ran pilot data-matching schemes in 2013 which indicated that as many as 100,000 eligible voters might be identified through two-tier data matching. I hope that your Lordships will agree that this measure will be very helpful to EROs in getting as many of these additional eligible people as possible on to the electoral register.
I know that there has been some disappointment that this instrument does not do more. I am familiar with the initiative in Northern Ireland to raise registration levels among attainers—that is, 16 and 17 year-olds—in schools. Bite the Ballot has been active in promoting a similar scheme in Great Britain, and I wish to take this opportunity to congratulate its members most sincerely on their efforts. The Northern Ireland initiative has worked well in the Northern Ireland context. That is why we have learnt from the work of Northern Ireland colleagues when considering what to do in Great Britain—but life moves on, and what works well in one place may well not necessarily work so well in another.
There are good reasons why we cannot simply replicate exactly the same approach for Great Britain. For example, the delivery structure in Great Britain is different. There is one single registration service in Northern Ireland as against 363 in Great Britain. Regulations in Northern Ireland enable the chief electoral officer to request post-primary schools to provide him with lists of the names, addresses and dates of birth of pupils. This would be almost impossible to replicate in a place such as London, where pupils at an individual school might come from any or all of London’s 32 boroughs, each with its own ERO, or indeed from local authorities outside the London area. Further, some students may not be British or Commonwealth citizens.
Crucially, we are introducing online registration for the first time. This was not available at the time of the introduction of IER in Northern Ireland, which was therefore required to be based on paper forms that EROs took into schools. We expect online registration to be by far the easiest way for young people to register, and the paper-based approach practised in Northern Ireland would therefore be a step backwards.
I understand, too, that EROs across Great Britain already take proactive measures to encourage young people to register to vote and to promote democratic participation generally. Local authority staff have made visits to schools and colleges to give talks on voter registration and to get young people to fill in registration forms. EROs have facilitated organisations such as the UK Youth Parliament by providing advice and equipment for running youth elections and have organised events such as “political speed dating” and young mayor competitions to encourage interest in democracy and put young people in contact with their elected representatives. Much is being done already on the mainland to encourage young people on to the register.
None the less, the Northern Ireland schools initiative has played an important part in providing the evidence and the business case for developing the Rock Enrol! exercise. Rock Enrol! is a learning resource that is freely available from the Cabinet Office. It gives young people the opportunity to register to vote and allows them to discuss the importance of doing so. The Government have announced that all local authorities in Great Britain, alongside five national organisations, will share £4.2 million in funding to maximise registration. EROs have been encouraged to use this funding to support the delivery of Rock Enrol! in their area in order to ensure that we target attainers effectively as part of our maximising registration work.
Your Lordships will have observed that these regulations do not include any provision for local data sharing in Scotland. This is because the different local government structure in Scotland renders unnecessary a provision for two-tier areas data sharing as drafted for England and Wales. However, the Cabinet Office is consulting EROs and local government bodies in Scotland to establish whether there is any need to make provision for disclosure of information to an ERO by the council which appointed him or her. If there is such a need, it will be included in a suitable future instrument.
I turn now to the provisions for the further refinements that we are making to the IER arrangements. Both sets of regulations will disapply the usual requirements for follow-up actions by the ERO where the ERO has invited a person to register to vote who he or she has reason to believe would, if registered, be registered as a special category elector such as an overseas elector, a person with a service declaration or an elector with an anonymous entry. These are small but important categories. The effect of the current regulations is that EROs are required to take specified steps to encourage applications to register in certain cases. They must send an invitation to register and, where necessary, two reminder letters and a canvasser to the elector’s residence.
There is, of course, some enthusiasm among EROs to be sent to canvass overseas electors in places such as the United Arab Emirates, Australia, New Zealand and Florida, but noble Lords will understand the issue of the costs involved. They will appreciate that these steps can be impractical and/or expensive, and the need for greater sensitivity in the case of anonymously registered voters will often make letters or visits undesirable. I can assure your Lordships that the legislation will not prevent EROs sending invitations to register to special category electors. It will merely change the subsequent actions from a mandatory process to one that will be at the discretion of the ERO.
The Government are working with the Electoral Commission to provide guidance to be issued to EROs in the summer of this year specifically encouraging them to be proactive in carrying out their duty of inviting those whose registration has expired to register. It will reinforce the need to send follow-up reminders to special category electors where the ERO believes that this will be effective.
The Government will introduce further secondary legislation that will require EROs to encourage special category electors to reregister before their registration expires. Under existing regulations, EROs are required to send a reminder to reregister to special category electors, excluding anonymous electors, between two and three months before their registration expires. The Government will amend these regulations to compel EROs to send an additional reminder. This has two advantages over the reminders sent following an invitation to register. First, it will reduce the burden on electors by preventing the need for a completely new application. Secondly, it will reduce both the cost and time burden on EROs by allowing electronic communication of the reminder notice.
The second instrument—the draft regulations for Scotland—also confirms that the date for the introduction of IER in Scotland will be 19 September 2014. The House will have observed that in this respect the regulations amend legislation that was passed quite recently. I ought to explain why that is. We are aware that the combined effect of previous instruments could result in a lack of clarity as to whether the start date for IER in Scotland is 10 June 2014 or 19 September 2014. The Electoral Registration and Administration Act 2013 (Commencement No. 5 and Transitory Provisions) Order 2014 clearly sets out that the start date in Scotland is 19 September 2014. The draft regulations for Scotland are intended to minimise any potential for confusion on this important point.
I reassure the House again that we are continuing to work to maximise electoral registration. We are considering running further data-matching pilot schemes, building on the work done in previous years to match electoral registers against data held by public authorities. This will help us see what additional data sets might be able to add to the processes for verifying electors’ details and helping find potentially eligible electors who are not yet registered.
The draft Representation of the People (Supply of Information) Regulations 2014 were laid on 6 May 2014. Should Parliament approve them, the regulations will allow political parties the information they will need to promote IER among electors who are not yet individually registered. This is in response to a request from the political parties that at the end of the 2014 canvass they should be given a specific new list of those electors on the register who have been carried forward but not confirmed or registered under IER. The parties have recently told the Cabinet Office that they remain in favour of such a list and are expecting it to be made available to them. I trust that the House will have the opportunity to consider that instrument in the near future.
I return to the two statutory instruments before your Lordships. Each will, in its own way, play a part in the successful implementation of individual electoral registration in Great Britain. I commend them to the House.
Amendment to the Motion
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
At end to insert “but that this House regrets that the Regulations do not go far enough to address the problem of young people not registering to vote and, in particular, that this statutory instrument is not more closely modelled on the proven and successful Northern Ireland Schools Initiative.”
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, in moving this amendment to the Motion, I first note that as far as it goes, this regulation has my support and that of noble Lords on these Benches. That is why my amendment is carefully worded in regretting the fact that it does not go further. The regulations are a useful addition to the tools that electoral registration officers have at their disposal to improve the accuracy of the electoral register. It is ridiculous that until this point, EROs in two-tier local government areas had no right to inspect records held by county councils that might have helped them to maintain improved accuracy of the register.
We have had many debates, discussions and questions about the electoral register, the registration process and connected matters in this Chamber and in the Moses Room. We have much more work to do in updating and improving the processes that we employ to ensure that they make a difference in getting the millions of our fellow citizens on to the register who, as I have repeatedly raised in this House, are eligible to be on the register but are not currently registered.
Like many noble Lords I have been out and about on the streets for the local and European elections. What I find particularly depressing is when you go down a street or on a council estate and you see gaps in the register—no one at the address is on the register to vote, but clearly somebody is living there. There are now too many of these gaps for it always to be because those people are not eligible to take part in elections. It is very depressing for anyone who believes in democracy and citizenship that people are not registered to vote. We could do much more to find new ways of identifying those people and getting them registered to vote. I have always thought that there must be more scope for looking at the way citizens engage with the state and making that engagement play its part in a process of checking if the person is registered to vote. There must be a presumption that the state has a duty to get its citizens registered to vote.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. We should be quite clear about the context of this—it is a very serious situation indeed. Under the existing register—even before we move fully through the transitional period into IER—the latest audit of political engagement by the Hansard Society shows that nine out of 10 people think they are on the existing register, while fewer than seven out of 10 of those in the 18 to 24 year-old group think they are on the register. That is actually wildly optimistic, as we know from the previous research that has been undertaken. At the time when we thought that more than 90% of people—92%, I think—were on the existing register, it was actually something in the 80s. It is not true that we can expect to move from a good situation to a less good situation—we are going to move from a not good situation to a potentially disastrous situation. Incidentally, in the 18 to 24 year-old age group, only 24% are certain to vote at the present time according to the Hansard Society audit. That is appalling—it is really serious. Of course, if it is only 24% of perhaps 50% who are registered, we are into very serious democratic deficit.
From these Benches, we tabled an amendment to the then Electoral Registration and Administration Bill in October 2012 which sought to “authorise or require” establishments providing secondary education to disclose information to electoral registration officers for the purposes of getting attainers—those rising to the 18 year-old threshold—on to the electoral roll. The instrument before us now goes some way along that road, and for that it is welcome. It authorises such information to be disclosed, but it does not require it. That is the importance of this opportunity to debate it this evening, however late it may be. I believe that the Government should think very carefully about going further.
My noble friend the Minister has set out a strong argument that a transition to individual electoral registration in Great Britain should be much better managed than the transition in Northern Ireland. I understand that argument. However, during the passage of the Electoral Registration and Administration Act, we argued successfully from these Benches for a longer transitional period. Before the Bill was introduced, we argued successfully to retain compulsory registration, to retain an annual canvass and to make the best possible use of data matching. That was all very welcome. However, we also went on to suggest that we should now be looking at votes for 16 year-olds and 17 year-olds, and we have recently reaffirmed that commitment at our York conference. As others in your Lordships’ House will know, I have been promoting a Private Member’s Bill, with cross-party support, to that end.
Bite the Ballot has done remarkable work in trying to increase awareness of the need for registration. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, who has today and on previous occasions been very active in promoting this campaign, has made it clear that it sees that there is a real problem that we should all face, and that schools are a critical and integral part of extending the registration process, making it possible to extend the franchise to more of those to whom it is now an important civic duty as well as a civic principle and right.
We should see a seamless path from the citizenship syllabus through the final years at school to the point where a civic adult is in a position to take the next step to becoming a full, integral participant in the electoral process. That is what democracy is all about. Given the very low participation levels among the 18-24 age group, it is incredibly important that, with IER, we make it clear to people who will remain in their home area only up to a certain point—often they are moving into further education or their first job away from their home area—that that is still the natural place for them to take the first step in this process towards registration, during their last few months or year in secondary education. We must create an environment where young people see the vote as part of their progress, with their peer group, towards civic adulthood. They will then go on to vote there on the first occasion, with their peer group. We know that if you start voting at the youngest possible age, you are likely to continue to register and to go on voting, rather than lose the habit.
I turn to my noble friend’s specific argument in introducing this debate. The complexity of introducing registration in schools in England and Wales—and Scotland, for that matter—is much more difficult than doing so in Northern Ireland; he spoke about the delivery mechanism. I do not accept that, simply because we now have a move towards online registration, the electoral registration officers in England and Wales would somehow find it more difficult to make that process effective in schools. Since most secondary schools are amazingly online these days—you go into a sixth form and see hardly a book—it would be impossible for the electoral registration officer not to make that process immediately accessible, available and natural within schools.
Of course, as my noble friend said, it is true that in Northern Ireland there is one chief ERO and a smaller number of schools to deal with. Indeed, in England, the interaction with schools and FE colleges might be more complex than in Northern Ireland. There are, after all, a plethora of different kinds of schools and FE colleges, but none of them is secret. Every local authority knows the schools and FE colleges in its area.
EROs in England, Wales and Scotland already deal with a great many complex interactions, the greatest of which is the administration of the annual canvass—the essential ballast and building block for a comprehensive register. The canvass is different in different parts of the respective countries of the United Kingdom, with different challenges and different approaches, but the duty to conduct the canvass and create a comprehensive register is the same right across the United Kingdom. We could have done better in this order than simply permitting schools and EROs to do this if they wish. We would be horrified if we simply permitted EROs in Great Britain to do the annual canvass and said, “It’s up to you. Don’t if you don’t want to. If you find it a bit difficult, don’t bother”. That would be ridiculous.
If we are really saying that the Government do not have confidence in our decentralised system of individual EROs in each local authority area, we should be very worried about the whole basis of electoral registration on the mainland. After all, it is the difficult places that are most important. If a school is difficult to make contact with or to get into, the chances are that that is all the more reason not to give up. The very fact that it may be difficult should not be any excuse for the Government to say that this should not be an obligation on EROs.
Can my noble friend the Minister give us some insight into the Electoral Commission’s view on all this? I have not seen any advice. As my noble friend will know, I have served on the informal cross-party advisory group for the commission. My impression was that it was very keen to build on the experience in Northern Ireland, where it was so successful. I do not understand, therefore, why the Government have taken a different view. I hope that my noble friend will be able to give us chapter and verse of the commission’s advice on this important issue. Is it really true that the Government think that EROs on the mainland have such a difficult task that they cannot be asked to do this job effectively? If so, that raises major questions about the whole administration of electoral registration and supervision of our democratic process. That is a very serious charge indeed.
In the mean time, we will have to see how things progress with this order and the regime that the Government are putting in place. But I put down a marker now that I and my colleagues will want to make sure that there is no suggestion that this implies a vote of no confidence in the whole localised system of electoral management in England and Wales. Meanwhile, in September of this year, we will of course have a very interesting pilot project about the registration of young people—in Scotland. I do not know what the latest position is. I have seen some information about the registration of 16 and 17 year-olds, but I hope and trust that the Administration in Scotland are now taking the opportunity to take the whole electoral registration process into schools and FE colleges to ensure that there at least in the United Kingdom we are getting young people involved in the democratic process. Surely that is an absolutely critical obligation on the United Kingdom Government as well. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend will be able to reassure us that this apparent retreat from what was such a successful initiative in Northern Ireland does not imply a vote of no confidence is what going to happen here on the mainland.
Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)
My Lords, I say amen to nearly everything that has been said here today. An opinion poll over the weekend asked voters how many of them knew the names of their MEPs, Members of Parliament or local councillors. It is amazing that fewer than half were able to name some of those people. That might even go for us in this Chamber. Democracy itself seems to be endangered at the present time. When people feel remote, when they feel that their votes and voices do not count, that is a very dangerous situation. We are talking not only about registering people to vote. We are talking about ensuring that they know something about the democratic process and that they know something about the policies, needs and opportunities of the society in which we live. Their hands must be on that pencil not just to say, “Ah, another voter”, but as somebody who has thought things through, because if we do not have this re-igniting of democracy, then we are in very great danger in elections this year, next year and after that.
It is an immediate and urgent situation to try to get young people in particular to vote. My noble friend Lord Tyler has mentioned how few—25% and then half that 25%—feel that they count at all in our society and in our democracy. Therefore, we have somehow to re-inspire people. What often gets young people to vote is the inspiration of a teacher, a lecturer or a friend—someone who tells them, “Look, your vote could count. Your vote is necessary”. When I was starting with Bite the Ballot, of which I am delighted to be the honorary president—or the honorary grandfather or great-grandfather by now—a small team of young people said, “We are going to do something to engage young people particularly in the democratic process” and they did. They had debates in Parliament and they were crowded. Young people who previously knew nothing at all about certain policies were inspired and became part of that movement.
The high spot we had recently was National Voter Registration Day on 5 February this year. On that one day a small team managed to register 52,000 people to vote. They were young people who were not interested before, but in schools, youth clubs, colleges and supermarkets there were 400 volunteers organising on that day. Some of them were not even old enough to be registered themselves; they were just so keen. Somehow, we have to see this re-igniting. Sometimes, the goings-on in Parliament as televised just turn people off. They think, “Is that what it is all about? Is that what it means? Why should we bother?” We have a responsibility here and in the other place to make people feel that they have confidence in the people they have elected and that they want to play a part in that process.
I must not speak for too long—I am a Methodist minister so I am allowed to do that sometimes—but I should like to refer to Northern Ireland which has automatic registration. It is dead simple. Somebody will go into a school, and the names, addresses and birthdays of the pupils will have already been collected. There is now a link between schools and the electoral offices. Attainers and those who are already 18 years old can register automatically. There are in England—my figures are as up-to-date as possible—3.2 million pupils in state-funded secondary schools. There are at least 216,000 in Wales and a further 290,000 in Scotland. That works out at some 800,000 new people eligible to be on the electoral register every year. If only they could be automatically registered. There could be an opt-out because some might have religious convictions and say “We don’t want to vote”. There would be an opt-out if they wanted one but otherwise they would be on the register. I hope that someone with a wee bit of inspiration and imagination would go to their schools or colleges and explain the procedure to them.
Bite the Ballot went into so many hundreds of schools and colleges. I did not think anybody could do all that but a small team managed to register 52,000 people. How many more could be registered if there was automatic registration? We have modern technology, digital channels, YouTube and ordinary television channels that could be used by the Government to share this inspiration in what is really a desperate situation. We want young people and others to exercise their vote and say “We have influence”. If people feel that they have influence and that their votes and voices count, there could be a great revival of democratic accountability and feeling here in the United Kingdom.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, I am not a Methodist minister and shall be very brief. I support very strongly the comments made by noble Lords about the importance of action in schools. Like them, I have been greatly impressed by the results of the initiative in Northern Ireland. Speaking as a strong unionist, particularly where Northern Ireland is concerned, I would regard it as an absolute tragedy if lessons that could be usefully drawn from that part of our country went by the wayside and here in Great Britain we failed to profit as we might. I hope that my noble friend will consider very carefully that which Northern Ireland might have to teach us in this matter. He is noted for his open-mindedness and there is perhaps merit in a little further consideration of what has happened in Northern Ireland.
He will be unsurprised that I listened with great interest to the comments he made on the implications of these regulations for British subjects living overseas who are eligible to vote here. I gained the strong impression from what he said that the effect of the changes will be to assist the efforts that some of us, including my noble friend Lord Tyler, are encouraging to seek greater registration among British citizens living abroad who are currently eligible to vote. I know my noble friend supports those efforts, too.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their various contributions. I will take all the thoughts back with me. Let me start by saying that we are all concerned about the problems of low registration. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, really talked about two different problems: we are mostly concerned here about problems in getting young people on to the register. There is another problem, which is people who actually do not want to be on it. We have all been through some of the estates where a large number of people are not on the register and quite strongly tell you—as they put their bull terrier on to you—that they do not want to be on it. That is of course another part of the problem.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I must say that though I may have had various dogs set on me for all sorts of things, it was never so that people would not go on the register.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
We recognise that we have a number of problems. My noble friend Lord Tyler referred to the recent audit of political engagement, which showed the level of political disengagement in the United Kingdom. I happened to be having my hair cut when Sky News ran its European poll on levels of trust in political elites. I regret to say that the United Kingdom comes alongside France and only just behind Belgium in the high levels of distrust in all our political elites. We share a common interest in reversing that and political parties have to work on it. The media have to make their own contribution and bear some responsibility for the rising levels of mistrust we have seen in recent years.
The majority of comments have been about how we get young people on to the register and, in the case of Lord Lexden, about overseas voters. I remind noble Lords that the Northern Ireland Schools Initiative does not automatically register pupils. The registration rate for attainers in Northern Ireland currently stands at 66%, not 100%. Students must still remember to bring in their national insurance number on the day the registration officers visit the school and then choose to register by signing the form.
As electoral registration officers and others go round secondary schools in England, Wales and Scotland, they will encourage pupils to register online in the borough in which they live. The two schools closest to Saltaire, Titus Salt and Guiseley, have a mixture of pupils from Leeds and Bradford. That is duplicated across West Yorkshire and, even more so, in London. This is part of the problem, but it will become easier with online registration.
I stress to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, that we are not in the business of permitting electoral registration officers to go into schools. A lot of registration officers have already been going into schools for a long time and we encourage them to do so. The Government are a little more reluctant to make this compulsory. The Rock Enrol! initiative was founded on the basis of the experience of Northern Ireland. The business case for its development and ensuring that we were targeting attainers effectively came out of that as part of our work to maximise registration. EROs have been encouraged to use the funding provided by government for maximising registration to support the delivery of Rock Enrol! in their area.
We all understand that there is a great deal more to do to reverse the level of disengagement among young people and older people. We have failed over many years to produce effective citizenship education in our schools; that is another area to which we need to return. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, asked whether votes at 16 would help in this regard. Perhaps we need to have that debate. I feel that it would also help if local government were stronger and more local so that people actually knew some of their elected representatives.
At the moment I do not have the recommendations of the Electoral Commission on this; I will write to the noble Lord as soon as I discover what they are. However, we are encouraging EROs to work on this and we are providing funding. Two of the five organisations to which we have provided specific funding—UK Youth and the Scottish Youth Parliament—specifically focus on this area. That will help us as we go forward. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, suggested, making sure that young people know something about the political process is part of a wider problem on which successive Governments have not done enough over the past 25 years.
I turn to the issue, raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, of overseas voters and how to encourage them. I have learnt, over the past few months, that the number of overseas voters follows a cyclical pattern. It rises in the run-up to a general election and falls off again immediately afterwards. This is completely understandable. Perhaps we may hope that the fixed date of next year’s general election will encourage a larger rise. It was more than 32,000 at the 2010 election. We are working on this by putting advertisements on a number of websites to encourage those living abroad to think about registering. We have made it easier for them to register by reducing the number of documents they have to provide, and we support the efforts that others are making in this respect.
The Government do not think that we can do this on our own. We are working with Bite the Ballot and other voluntary organisations. We are encouraging political parties to do their bit. The other regulation I mentioned takes us further down the road. I assure noble Lords that although we have not entirely duplicated the Northern Ireland Schools Initiative, the Rock Enrol! initiative draws on it. Electoral registration officers on the mainland are already doing the work that the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, would like them to do. The Government will follow that, and we hope that the outcome will be registration at least as high as in Northern Ireland. I repeat that there, sadly, it is only two-thirds. We will do our best to hit that target.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Tyler, Lord Roberts and Lord Lexden, who made excellent points. I agree almost entirely with what they said. I found some of the Minister’s response a bit unconvincing, and I think we will be returning to this many more times.
The point I found most unconvincing was about the one electoral registration officer in Northern Ireland, where, as the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, said, it works fine. The idea that the more than 300 EROs in England and Wales and the Electoral Management Board in Scotland will not know their local college and school and so could not possibly do it right is just nonsense. We hear lots from the Government about localism and all sorts of things.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That is not the point. Of course, we all know our local college and school. The problem is that you cannot go into a school with a set of forms and encourage young people to fill them in because they do not all live in the same authority. Particularly in London boroughs, you are very often dealing with pupils from a number of different authorities, so if one were to do it on paper, that would be extremely complicated. That is why I stressed that the move to online registration gives us a much easier way of coping with this diversity of electoral authorities.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I am still not very convinced. Luckily the Electoral Commission now produces standard forms. I think the Minister may need to go back and reflect on that a bit more in government. That is not a credible argument.
I am very tempted to test the opinion of the House on this, but at this time it is probably not worth me doing so. I assure the Minister that I will come back and test it on a future date. I hope he will come back with a few more convincing arguments than those tonight. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Representation of the People (Scotland) (Amendment) Regulations 2014
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft regulations laid before the House on 24 March be approved.
Relevant document: 25th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Motion agreed.