House of Commons
Prayers
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Oral Answers to Questions
(10 years ago)
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Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
1. What steps his Department is taking to support schools in the provision of career guidance.
The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
From September, new statutory guidance for schools will strengthen the requirements for schools to build relationships with employers to inspire and mentor pupils and deliver careers advice.
Ian Mearns
The fact that careers advice has been completely delegated to schools is leading to growing evidence of a postcode lottery in provision. Unfortunately, Ofsted appear to be inspecting that aspect of provision with a light touch. That is leading to light-weight and inappropriate advice, lacking in impartiality and independence, with many youngsters ending up on courses that will not properly help them fulfil their ambitions and, in some areas, to increased drop-out rates. How will the Minister ensure that young people have their needs met through access to good quality, independent and impartial careers advice and guidance?
Matthew Hancock
It is true that in the past careers advice was not particularly well delivered as a policy, but the new statutory guidance, which will be in place from September, is all about strengthening the relationship with people in careers they are passionate about. Information is widely available: the issue is inspiration—
Matthew Hancock
The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but the evidence around the country is that more and more schools are getting in employers and those who have careers to offer, and lifting pupils’ eyes to the horizon.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
What did the Wolf report, which was welcomed by the Opposition, have to say about work-related learning?
Matthew Hancock
Work-related learning is an attempt to pretend that young people can be given a feel of what it is like to be in the workplace without putting them in the workplace. We care about high-quality work experience, because all the evidence shows that the more work experience young people do, the more likely they are to get a job.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Minister agree that learning to network and to make connections is also important? He did agree to come to Hackney to see some of the best networking and careers advice, and I hope that he will honour that commitment.
Matthew Hancock
I am keen to come to Hackney. We have been working on some dates, but we will renew our effort. I agree with the hon. Lady, not least because those who do not have natural networks through their family links often find it harder to break into high-quality jobs, and networking and mentoring can do an enormous amount to break down those barriers and improve social mobility.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
2. When he plans to publish the results of the recent consultation on fairer funding for schools; and if he will make a statement.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
Our consultation on fairer schools funding closed on 30 April. We are currently analysing the responses and will publish our final response next month.
Mr Walker
The Government have been right to commit to delivering fairer funding and I welcome the first small steps that have been taken. Schools in Worcestershire tell me that they are facing major challenges from increases in national insurance and pension costs. May I press the Minister to listen carefully to the concerns of the F40 authorities, which want to see fairer funding sooner?
Mr Laws
I congratulate my hon. Friend on the strong lead that he has taken in arguing the case for fairer funding, which is long overdue. As he has acknowledged, schools in his area will gain to the tune of some £5 million from the proposals that we made a couple of months ago. I repeat the commitment that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have made on previous occasions: we are committed not just to this first big step towards fairer funding, but to a national fair funding formula, which should have been introduced many years ago but which the last Labour Government did nothing to address.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
Head teachers in my constituency are concerned about their budgets for this year, and they tell me that the big effect will come with the Government’s changes to sixth-form funding. Will he look again at those changes?
Mr Laws
The hon. Gentleman will know that the Government have protected schools funding in the existing Parliament, and we have introduced a pupil premium to make sure that youngsters in more disadvantaged areas are also assisted. I agree with him that in the future we must make sure that education funding is as protected as possible across the system, and he will be aware of the announcement that the Deputy Prime Minister made on behalf of my party today. It is now up to other parties to make similar commitments.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
The move towards fairer funding in Northumberland has been welcomed by all my teachers and those in the F40 who are likewise affected. Will the Minister remind the individual councils of the F40 local authorities that all the schools in previously underfunded local authority areas should benefit, not just some chosen few?
Mr Laws
My hon. Friend is right that we want to see the money go from local authorities to schools. He will be aware that in his area the proposals that we consulted on involve a significant increase of some 6.4%, which is more than £10 million more for local schools. We want that money to go right through to the front line.
Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
When will the Minister agree with the wish of the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) to have a much broader review of funding? Children attending reception class in Wandsworth have almost twice the amount of money of children attending in Birkenhead. Neither of those two authorities was in the review. Given that the Government have been in power for four years, that national review is long overdue.
Mr Laws
I will not say gently to the right hon. Gentleman that, given that his party was in power for much longer than that, this could have been addressed by him. I will, however, accept the serious point he makes that we need not only to move to a national fair funding formula when we know the long-term spending plans, but that it will make sense for the next Government to consider all the different forms of deprivation funding, including a prior attainment area-based funding, to make sure that there is a coherent whole. I am very proud of what we have done on the pupil premium in this Parliament, but we ought to look in the round in the next Parliament.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
On fairer funding, is it acceptable that, according to a London Economics report today, academies have approximately £1,600 more to spend per sixth-form student than sixth-form colleges?
Mr Laws
The hon. Gentleman should know that, as part of the Government’s reforms to school funding, we are making sure there is consistent and fair funding across the system. Where there is not, we have been converging funding to ensure institutions are appropriately and fairly funded.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
3. What assessment he has made of the recommendations of Sir Martin Narey’s report “Making the Education of Social Workers Consistently Effective”, published in January 2014, on the training of children’s social workers.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
We welcome Sir Martin Narey’s report, and agree with both his analysis and approach to securing improvement. We are already putting in place some of his recommendations: the chief social worker, Isabelle Trowler, is leading work to define the knowledge and skills that children and family social workers need to practise effectively; and I announced last week that we are supporting a fourth cohort of the successful Step Up to Social Work programme.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the Minister for his response. Sir Martin Narey’s report rightly recognises the importance of quality social work placements. Is the Minister therefore concerned by reports that trainee social workers are instead being used to plug gaps left by the Government’s cuts to children’s services and provide cover for fully qualified colleagues? Does he agree that that is neither good for social workers’ development, nor for at-risk children?
Mr Timpson
I am always concerned when newly qualified social workers find themselves in a difficult professional position, whereby they feel stretched by the case they are having to deal with. That is why we have provided a large amount of money to ensure that their first year is supported by the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment programme, and why we are making sure that the £239 million we have already invested in social work training will be supplemented by the work of Sir Martin Narey and the chief social worker.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
We have had the reviews of Professor David Croisdale-Appleby and Sir Martin Narey, and we await the outsourcing report of Professor Le Grand. Do the Government think they know now what needs to be done to improve social work? If they do, when will they share their insight? Will they consult the profession on any intended changes, or simply seek to impose them?
Mr Timpson
All the work the hon. Gentleman describes has one pure motive: to raise the quality and status of social work right across the country. Part of that is making sure we take the profession with us. When I spoke to the British Association of Social Workers at its conference last week, I made it as clear as I could that whatever we do we will consult, review and ensure that any changes we make lead to the improvements that are our mission from the very start.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
4. What recent assessment he has made of demand for free schools.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
Free schools are proving tremendously popular. Approximately 24,000 pupils already attend free schools and many of those schools are already oversubscribed. Free schools are also more likely to be rated “good” or “outstanding” than other schools inspected under Ofsted’s new framework.
Mr Wilson
As my right hon. Friend knows, I am a keen supporter of free schools and I am delighted to hear about the success they are enjoying. However, it is also important that the Education Funding Agency finds the right sites for them, which is challenging in urban areas such as Reading and, in particular, Caversham. Will he therefore agree to meet with me and representatives from my local community to discuss the location of the Heights primary school? Further, will he agree that the community should have full transparency of information and related issues from the local education authority and the EFA?
Michael Gove
I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and to do everything I can to ensure both that the need for a new school is met and that the concerns across the community that he highlights are properly addressed.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State explain exactly what “security grounds” means when used to turn down a free school application?
Michael Gove
All free school applications go through a rigorous process that is policed by the Department’s due diligence and counter-extremism unit and will ensure that any inappropriate application that is put forward is not accepted.
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
21. The West Reading Education Network parents’ group is seeking approval to open a single academy trust secondary school next September. The same parents’ group set up the outstanding All Saints junior free school. Does the Secretary of State agree that this is exactly the type of excellent parent-led initiative that everyone in the House should be backing? It certainly enjoys cross-party support in Reading.
Michael Gove
I absolutely do agree. It is important to bear in mind that the All Saints school in Reading was outstanding in every category when it was inspected by Ofsted. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to ensure that the quality of education that Reading parents enjoy continues to improve.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Secretary of State agree that what we need in education is a balance between free schools and academies and a role, as there surely must be, for local democracy? Is this the resistance that the Prime Minister has to the expansion of the free schools programme: that there is not enough local democracy in it?
Michael Gove
I think it is important that there is a balance—I find myself increasingly in agreement with the hon. Gentleman. There is a role for greater autonomy—exercised by principals, driven by a sense of moral purpose—to improve education. It is also the case that there is a role for local authorities as well, not least when it comes to safeguarding children at risk.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
Does the Secretary of State regret the weak scrutiny—and, indeed, evaluation—of applications for free schools that has led to what must be, for him personally, some extremely embarrassing examples of poor educational provision?
Michael Gove
I do not mind embarrassment personally—[Interruption.] Just as well, some might say. What I do worry about is if any school, anywhere in the country, is not providing the highest quality education for children. One of the striking things about the free schools programme is that not only are schools more likely to be “good” or “outstanding”, but when schools have underperformed, we have moved rapidly to close them or replace the leadership of schools that have not been doing a good enough job.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Can the Secretary of State confirm that the architect of the free schools policy, Dominic Cummings, was in the Department last week, despite the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) saying in a written parliamentary answer to me that there was no record of his visit? Could that be because he wrote last week, in typically bad taste, that he always signs into Government Departments, including No. 10, under the name of Osama bin Laden? What on earth is the Secretary of State doing still relying on this man’s advice?
Michael Gove
The architect of the free schools programme was actually Andrew Adonis, not Dominic Cummings, as he himself has said. Free schools were a Labour invention—a point that was repeated by the former Prime Minister Tony Blair when speaking to The Times today. As for the hon. Gentleman’s points about former special advisers, all sorts of people from time to time seek to visit the Department for Education to exchange ideas with old friends and colleagues.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
6. What steps his Department is taking to strengthen relationships between local employers, schools and further education colleges.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
8. What steps his Department is taking to strengthen relationships between local employers, schools and further education colleges.
The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
We are in the middle of a big culture change, with more and more employers—
Mr Speaker
Order. Before the Minister gets ahead of himself, with characteristic enthusiasm and gusto, I think he will want to confirm to the House his intended grouping of Questions 6 and 8, which I think his briefing folder will tell him.
Matthew Hancock
I would be absolutely delighted to do so.
As I was saying, more and more employers are engaging with schools and colleges to inspire young people. As discussed earlier, we have strengthened statutory guidance for schools so that those relationships can help to inspire students into their careers.
Julie Elliott
I thank the Minister for his answer, but a recent report from the university of Bath showed that 60% of school and college governors said that employers were not proactive enough about becoming school governors and thereby taking a formal role in education. Given the importance of employers in improving the employability of our young people, what are the Government going to do about that?
Matthew Hancock
Absolutely—strengthening the role of employers in governance and on careers advice, and inspiring pupils are vital, and a whole programme of work is under way to encourage more employers. One thing we can do is make it easier and bring about a brokerage so that employers who want to get involved can do so without too much bureaucracy and with the support of their local schools.
Mrs Glindon
Churchill community college has been judged outstanding by Ofsted, and the inspector said that the school prepares young people well for their future. Will the Minister say how his Department will get employers directly involved in curriculum support so that young people at Churchill—and elsewhere—can capitalise on their excellent education and be successful in the world of work?
Matthew Hancock
Yes, absolutely. One example is the introduction of tech levels for those between 16 and 19 who want to go into vocational education, which will get them into a job. These qualifications have to be signed off as valuable by an employer before we will accept them as tech levels, thus demonstrating the line of sight from work that exists in all educational vocational education.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
As the Minister said, it is vital for schools to forge strong links with businesses to ensure that school leavers are not just numerate and literate, but employable. Does he agree that organisations such as the Education Business Partnership can often play a significant role in building these links?
Matthew Hancock
Yes, I do. There is a huge array of organisations. Only this morning, I was launching Careers Lab with Steve Holliday, who runs National Grid. That is another organisation, like the one my hon. Friend mentioned, that can help to broker links between employers and education, which are so important after the systems were separated for far too long.
Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)
Following on from that, one way to enthuse young people in engineering is to give them first-hand experience and use role models. What is the Minister doing specifically to encourage engineering companies to go into schools and enthuse young people?
Matthew Hancock
I am delighted to say that there are over 20,000 ambassadors from engineering who go into schools under the STEMNET—the science, technology, engineering and mathematics network—programme. It is just one example of the organisations that can help to bring employment and education together.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
7. What steps he is taking to adopt a revised funding formula for schools.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
Our proposal to allocate £350 million to the least fairly funded local areas in 2015-16 is the biggest step towards fairer schools funding for a decade. This puts us in a much better position to introduce a national fair funding formula when multi-year spending plans are available.
David Mowat
The Minister may be aware that Warrington is ranked 137th for funding out of 152 authorities. As a comparator, Westminster, which is ranked 10th, receives £3,000—60% extra—more per child each year than Warrington. It was therefore disappointing that in this new allocation, Westminster received a big uplift and Warrington received nothing—perpetuating that differential, which is really unacceptable. Will the Minister explain the logic behind that, and does he agree that we need to move to a national formula very quickly indeed?
Mr Laws
I would make two points. First, what we sought to do in the announcement of a couple of months ago was address the issues not just of low funding, but of unfair funding. It is still possible for some parts of the country that are not the lowest funded to be underfunded, as we saw in the announcement. As for comparing Westminster with Warrington, although traditionally thought of as an affluent area, Westminster has had something like 50% of its children entitled to free school meals over the last six years, so it benefits, quite rightly, from high levels of disadvantage funding. Secondly, I agree with my hon. Friend in that his points make the case for moving on from this allocation to a full national fair funding formula in the next Parliament, to which both our parties are committed.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
The Education Select Committee heard evidence that secondary schools in areas that will not receive extra money under changes to the funding settlement will face a £350,000 a year shortfall due to increasing costs. Meanwhile, £400 million of basic need money has been used on free schools. Instead of spending it on them, would not that basic need money have been better spent on the schools now facing a shortfall in their basic needs?
Mr Laws
I do not accept the premise of the question. Many schools whose areas are not benefiting from the uplift are in areas with high levels of disadvantage and deprivation that have benefited enormously from the pupil premium that we have introduced. As for basic need, we have allocated considerably more than the last Government, which is why we are able to have a very ambitious programme for new schools and extensions across the country.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
North Yorkshire is a very sparsely populated rural county, and is one of the 40 least well funded. Is my right hon. Friend aware of the problem of funding small schools in rural areas of that kind—which includes the problem of sixth-form funds—and will he address it?
Mr Laws
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. As she knows, North Yorkshire is one of the areas that will gain from the measures that we proposed a couple of months ago. It was set to gain by £7.2 million under the proposals on which we have consulted. The sparsity issue is also extremely important in areas such as North Yorkshire, and we have therefore introduced a sparsity factor to allow local authorities to protect schools in areas where children would otherwise have to travel an unacceptable distance.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
As was pointed out earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), it is the sixth-form sector that is really being hit by funding cuts. Is the Minister aware of the impact survey conducted by the Sixth Form Colleges Association, which was published today? I hear reports that officials have been asked to prepare further cuts, which will be announced in September. May I urge the Minister to think again? The sector simply cannot take any more cuts.
Mr Laws
I understand the concerns of the 16 to 19 sector. Ministers are very alive to those concerns, and we will consider them carefully before we set our final spending plans for 2015-16. I do not know whether the Labour party has made any commitments on school funding into the next Parliament, but I suggest that the hon. Lady and her hon. Friends make the same commitment that the Deputy Prime Minister has made on behalf of my party today.
Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
10. What steps he is taking to obtain data from HM Revenue and Customs to improve the development of destination measures for school leavers.
The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
Data from HMRC can potentially help to show where young people go from educational institutions. We are consulting on how destination data should be used in the league tables, and we know that some of our changes will require changes to legislation.
Mr Stuart
During the last Session, an attempt at change was made in a private Member’s Bill. I hope that the Minister is telling us today that he will make it a Government priority to strengthen destination data, as the Select Committee recommended, so that we can give schools an incentive to take account of not just short-term exam results, but the long-term interests of the child.
Matthew Hancock
The use of destination data in league tables is one of the biggest changes that the education reforms will bring about. It will require legislative change. The clauses that were proposed during the last Session are about to find their way into legislation, which will be published soon.
Mr Speaker
I thought that the hon. Lady was seeking to catch my eye. Never mind; there will be other opportunities I call Margot James.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
In my borough of Dudley, young people leave school at 16 to pursue A-levels and other forms of post-16 education at local colleges. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need a system of destination measures that will enable us to track the progress of students back to the school that they attended before reaching the age of 16?
Matthew Hancock
Holding schools and colleges to account for their exam results is important, but it is equally important to be clear about where young people end up. That, I hope, will give schools an incentive to provide a broader education, emphasising knowledge, skills and behaviour, so that school leavers will be able to do what everyone wants them to do, and fulfil their potential.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
11. What steps he is taking to ensure that admissions processes in free schools and academies are fair.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
Free schools and academies must comply with the school admissions code. The criteria that are used to decide the allocation of school places must be “fair, clear and objective”. Anyone who considers that a school’s admission arrangements do not comply with the code can make an objection to the schools adjudicator.
Graeme Morrice
What steps will the Secretary of State take to strengthen the code and the role of the adjudicator, as proposed by Labour?
Michael Gove
The adjudicator is already capable of making binding determinations, and has already been clear about the schools—whether they are academies, free schools or other schools—that have not subscribed to the requirements for fair admissions. Let me add, in relation to the broader question of admissions in general, that it is this coalition Government who have ensured that schools can give preference to students from poorer backgrounds through the pupil premium, and have used the admissions code to advance social justice, which the last Government signally failed to do.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
12. What provision has been made to fund the furnishing of new school buildings built under the Priority School Building programme.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
The Priority School Building programme provides funding for fixed furniture and equipment. Where a school is increasing in size, the PSBP also provides funding for loose furniture and equipment, such as tables and chairs.
Mr Cunningham
A school in my constituency, Ernesford Grange community academy, has just had a new school building built under the PSBP. However, the Education Funding Agency has informed it that there is no funding to cover furniture for the new building. That is presenting a serious problem for the school—and, I am sure, for many other schools. Will the Government try to find funding to help buy desks and chairs for the new builds, or meet me to discuss the situation?
Mr Laws
Of course I will look into the issue or meet the hon. Gentleman. Where funding is needed to fix furniture and equipment, we provide that centrally. The hon. Gentleman has three PSBP projects in his constituency. All of them are going to be receiving some funding for fixed equipment—over £1 million in total. Where there is existing equipment that can sensibly be reused in the new buildings, we ask schools to do that, but if the hon. Gentleman thinks that is posing problems, I will be happy to look into the detailed circumstances.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
This morning I visited the Holmesdale community infant school in Reigate, a very successful and popular school which is seeing a significant number of new places being provided under the new schools programme. However, with the doubling in school numbers over the past decade, there is chaos outside; there are enormous problems with traffic, which requires changes to the road structure. Is it possible to arrange some form of funding that covers the entire scheme of both setting up new school places and supporting them effectively?
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Although the Government’s commitment to rebuild the Duchess’s community high school in Alnwick is very welcome, the problem of furnishing a new-build school is arising there. Will the Minister discuss with me how we can meet that problem?
Mr Laws
I will be happy to have those discussions with my right hon. Friend. I am sure he accepts that where there is furniture and equipment that can sensibly be reused, it should be—it would be ridiculous in these times to waste good furniture and equipment—but where there is a need for support, we will certainly consider that.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
13. What progress his Department has made on increasing the number and quality of apprenticeships for 16 to 18-year-olds.
The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
We are on track to deliver 2 million apprenticeships over this Parliament. We will continue to focus on raising quality, insisting that all apprenticeships are jobs, have a minimum duration of a year, include on-the-job training and meet the needs of employers. As a result, the number of full apprenticeships—those with a planned duration of a year or more—for 16 to 18-year-olds has doubled.
Jason McCartney
Since 2010, an average of 433 workplaces in the Colne and Holme valleys and Lindley employ apprentices, many of which are supported by the excellent local Kirklees college. What are the Minister and his Department doing to support our wonderful further education colleges in helping to deliver these fantastic apprenticeships?
Matthew Hancock
More than ever, companies are involved in delivering apprentices and having apprentices. Colleges are increasingly providing the training for apprenticeships, but it is also important that we raise quality by ensuring that employers write the training that is required for young people to learn the skills necessary to get a good job.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Sadly, some young people and their parents still see apprenticeships very much as an easy option, so what are the Government doing to better sell the benefits of apprenticeships, and to increase the number of higher and advanced-level apprenticeships, as an alternative pathway to that provided by degrees?
Matthew Hancock
Our vision is that when young people leave school or college, they have the opportunity to go to university or into a high-quality apprenticeship. We have a programme of reform to increase the quality of apprenticeships, including offering more English and maths and a minimum duration. Undoubtedly, there is more to do to persuade people that apprenticeships are of high quality and that apprenticeships can get them anywhere.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
24. For too long, young people have been encouraged to take vocational qualifications that are below par. Does the Minister agree that, to rectify that, we must focus on the quality of apprenticeships and vocational training, because that is exactly what employers are desperate for?
Matthew Hancock
I agree very strongly with my hon. Friend. In fact, we have defunded more than 4,000 qualifications for under-18-year-olds in order to concentrate scarce resources on the qualifications that are valuable. Within apprenticeships, all the evidence shows that training while in work increases young people’s life chances, because it gives them the skills, as well as the knowledge and the behaviour needed to get a good start in a career.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Will the Minister say what support he will give care leavers to access high-quality apprenticeships?
Matthew Hancock
Through care to work, we have a specific programme to support care leavers to get into apprenticeships. Apprenticeships are part of our programme of ensuring that every young person in our country has the opportunity to reach their potential.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
If the Minister is looking for an example of best practice, I draw his attention to the scheme launched in Colchester earlier this year to recruit 100 apprentices in 100 days. Through a partnership of the Colchester Institute, the Colchester Daily Gazette, and the National Apprenticeship Service, 160 apprentices were recruited.
Matthew Hancock
I pay tribute to the Colchester Institute and the Colchester Daily Gazette. Many local papers get involved in promoting apprenticeships, because they are part of a culture change in our country. When young people leave school or college they can go to university or into an apprenticeship, both of which can help them reach their potential.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Small and medium-sized businesses provide almost 60% of all private sector jobs, but they are saying that the Government’s reforms on apprenticeship funding will make it much harder to offer up-front training and create opportunities. With only 8% of all employers in the UK currently offering apprenticeships, when will the Government admit that their rhetoric does not match the reality on apprenticeships?
Matthew Hancock
I am slightly surprised to hear that question. In the hon. Lady’s own constituency, the number of apprentices over the past few years has increased by 85%, giving more chances to people. Recently, representatives of half a million employers, mostly small employers, wrote in to our consultation to support the direction of travel, which is supported by the shadow Chancellor.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
14. How many disadvantaged two-year-olds received the 15-hour free entitlement to child care in the latest period for which figures are available?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)
In May 2014, 116,000 two-year-olds were in early learning places, which is 89% of the 130,000 allocation. That means that more two-year-olds are getting a good start in life, preventing a gap from emerging with their wealthier peers when they start school.
Alex Cunningham
I do not think that the Sutton Trust feels that provision is that good or comprehensive. Oxford university research shows that the Government are failing to provide sufficient good-quality places for children already covered, and that they should get that right before expanding the scheme. Will the Minister accept its advice, or will she just push ahead with poor-quality provision, which will do our children little if any good?
Elizabeth Truss
Well, 90% of those two-year-olds are in good or outstanding places. I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that, in June, very high-quality places opened in his own constituency of Stockton at Tilery primary school. We are making it much easier for schools to offer those places to two-year-olds, which typically have teacher-led provision.
Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)
The two-year-old offer is strongly welcomed by many families in my constituency, and there are around 3,600 two-year-olds in Norfolk eligible for that support. Will the Minister confirm that all local authorities have the name and address data from the Department for Work and Pensions so that they can contact eligible families to encourage them to take up their entitlement, just as Norfolk county council has done?
Elizabeth Truss
My hon. Friend is right that the local authorities have that data from the DWP. Furthermore, they have a role in promoting high-quality places. For example, we are giving school nurseries, through the small business, enterprise and employment Bill, the ability to offer places to two-year-olds. Local authorities have the ability to encourage their local schools to offer those places.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
19. New analysis released by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) today shows that two thirds of councils do not have access to good-quality places for the most disadvantaged two-year-olds. I asked the Minister about this in Westminster Hall in March, but we know that some families and children are still missing out. What guarantee will the Minister give me that all two-year-olds who are entitled to a good-quality place in Lewisham and across the whole of England this September have access to them?
Elizabeth Truss
As I mentioned, local authorities have a role in encouraging schools to offer places. We know that more than 30% of early education places are in schools for three and four-year-olds, but not yet for two-year olds. That is why we are working with local authorities such as Lewisham, which we have given part of an £8 million grant, to make sure that schools are opening from 8 am to 6 pm and offering provision for two-year-olds.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) has said, too many of the most disadvantaged two-year-olds are not in high-quality provision. In addition, the freedom of information request that I released today shows that nearly half of councils lack sufficient places to meet the extension of free child care provision for two-year-olds in September 2014. That is a shortfall of 44,000 places for this year. Added to the shortfall that the Minister has just announced, that makes a shortfall of 60,000 places in the Government’s flagship two-year-old offer. What is she going to do about that?
Elizabeth Truss
The hon. Lady should be aware that there are 300,000 available places across the country, and that it is the role of local authorities to make sure that they are open for two-year-olds. She might want to listen to comments made by the former children’s Minister, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), about the previous Labour Government’s role:
“The sensible policy direction would have been to locate more and more of our childcare offer in schools rather than build other buildings.”
This Government are doing what the previous Government did not, by enabling schools to offer those places. Very few school nurseries are currently open between the hours of 8 am and 6 pm. Why does the hon. Lady not work with local authorities to help them make that happen, rather than complaining about their failure to act?
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
15. What assessment he has made of the work in primary schools of the Numbers Count programme.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)
I am in favour of any intervention that improves numeracy. Improving children’s numeracy is vital for life chances. OECD research shows that an adult with strong numeracy skills is three times more likely to earn good wages and be in good health. That is why we are raising expectations in maths right through the age range.
Duncan Hames
This area is vital, and I was impressed with the Numbers Count classes being provided at Staverton primary school in my constituency, which I visited recently. Those classes, it was feared, would be lost across the country under the comprehensive spending review. Is it not the case that only the pupil premium ensures that even in traditionally underfunded local authorities—areas such as Wiltshire—children are getting the dedicated, personalised interventions that they need at school?
Elizabeth Truss
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. We are giving head teachers the power to decide which programmes are most useful for their students. That is why we are establishing 30 maths hubs across the country to provide advice and expertise and to look at top-performing places such as Shanghai and Singapore, where students are three years ahead of their British peers in maths by the age of 15.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Maths is an absolutely essential skill in today’s society. Does the Minister agree with me that we need qualified, professional maths teachers to inspire children with an understanding of, and a love and enthusiasm for, maths? Is she proud that thanks to this Government, an A-level student may be better qualified in maths than his or her teacher?
Elizabeth Truss
I agree with the need for very good teachers in maths, which is why we offer the highest levels of bursaries and scholarships in the subject. We have also set up a new programme of maths and physics chairs, sponsored by organisations such as Samsung and GlaxoSmithKline. I can report that a high number of people with PhDs in maths are already applying for the programme, and they will be in our schools from September.
Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)
16. What steps he has taken to reduce absenteeism in schools.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
We have strengthened the rules on pupil absence and published clearer advice to schools. School attendance has improved significantly, with 7.7 million fewer school days lost in 2012-13 compared with 2009-10.
Sheryll Murray
I have been approached by many parents in my constituency who work in the tourism industry and simply cannot afford to take holidays during the busiest time, school holidays. What can be done to help these small business owners take holidays with their families without fearing punishment or hurting their children’s education?
Mr Laws
I know that this is a real issue in constituencies such as that of my hon. Friend. Indeed, last year about a third of all children in Cornwall’s primary schools missed school for a term-time holiday, a figure higher than the national figure for primary schools, which is about 20%. That is clearly not acceptable. I would say two things to my hon. Friend. First, head teachers retain the discretion to grant leave in exceptional circumstances. Secondly, and more significantly as regards the cases she raises, we are deregulating so that all schools control their own term dates from 2015. That might give schools in her area greater flexibility to make a judgment about when to have their holidays and about what the right time might be for them.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
17. What steps his Department has taken to increase the number of primary school places in a) Winchester constituency and b) England.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
During this Parliament, the Department has allocated more than £5 billion in basic need funding to help local authorities in England create the additional places that will be needed.
Steve Brine
I have campaigned throughout this Parliament to secure new primary places for my constituents. We now have a combination of additional places at existing schools and brand-new provision at the excellent new Westgate all-through school, which is the first in Hampshire. The Government should be very proud of it. Does the Minister acknowledge that Hampshire, like so many other areas, is using the additional funding he mentioned not to fund an ideological whim but to do the basics and secure new primary school places for families who need them?
Mr Laws
I agree with my hon. Friend, who will be interested to know that the allocation of money to Hampshire for basic need has almost quadrupled between the time of the previous Labour Government and the present coalition Government. We have allocated £88.9 million to basic need in Hampshire between 2011 and 2015; that compares with just £23 million over a comparable four-year period in the previous Parliament.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
18. What change there has been in educational attainment in a) Kettering constituency, b) Northamptonshire and c) England since May 2010.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
Attainment has risen in all the areas mentioned from 2010 to 2013: in Kettering from 55.4% to 57%, in Northamptonshire from 51.9% to 58.1%, and in England as a whole from 55.3% to 60.8%.
Mr Hollobone
Northamptonshire is one of the fastest growing counties in the country and Kettering is one of the fastest growing parts of Northamptonshire. What special extra help is Her Majesty’s Government giving to boost educational attainment chances in constituencies such as Kettering that have a high population growth rate?
Mr Laws
I agree that there are challenges in Kettering and Northamptonshire, including from the rising pupil population. In that part of the world not only are we delivering the pupil premium and the additional interventions to support better school leadership, but we have almost doubled the allocation of money for new places for basic need from £29 million in the last Parliament to more than £55 million in this Parliament.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
At the weekend, Her Majesty the Queen was pleased to confer knighthoods and damehoods on a number of outstanding teachers. May I add my congratulations to those of others to Andrew Carter, Barry Day, John Dunford, Anthony Seldon, Nicola Nelson-Taylor and Erica Pienaar? There are many outstanding teachers in our schools today and we should celebrate their work. I am particularly pleased to acknowledge that there are teachers from the recently judged by Ofsted “outstanding” Warmsworth primary in Doncaster in the Gallery today, and I congratulate Mrs Marshall on her superb Ofsted.
Dr Huppert
The Secretary of State is right that there are many excellent teachers. Is he aware of the evidence that has been produced by the “too much too soon” campaign about play-based learning? What assessment has he made of the benefits of a sustained period of creative play-based learning before children are exposed to more formal learning environments?
Michael Gove
Early years practitioners know that we need both structured play and appropriate introduction at the right time to more formal methods of learning to get the most out of every child. We are very fortunate that we have not just a revised early years foundation stage but more and more talented people teaching in the early years.
Mr Speaker
Order. It is of course disorderly to refer to the Gallery, but I feel sure that the occupants of it will be revelling in the praise that the Secretary of State has generously conferred on them. On this occasion, his disorderly conduct is readily excused, but only on this occasion.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
I fully associate myself with such disorderly conduct in the House and congratulate those inspiring school and college leaders who have rightly been recognised by Her Majesty the Queen. Teaching is a moral mission, and it should be celebrated as such.
In 2010, the Department for Education was warned of threats to schools in Birmingham, but for four years, on the Secretary of State’s watch, his Department failed to act. The chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, is now urging the Government to provide greater public assurance that all schools in a locality, regardless of their status, will discharge the full range of their responsibilities. When will the Secretary of State accept that micro-managing schools from behind a desk in Whitehall does not work, and that we need a proper system of independent, local accountability?
Michael Gove
I suspect that that question will be shown not only on BBC Parliament but on UKTV’s Gold channel, because it is a magnificent repeat. The hon. Gentleman asked precisely that question in his speech last week. The truth is that we took action to deal with extremism in schools, which the last Government never did. We have also taken action to introduce no-notice inspections, which will ensure that Her Majesty’s chief inspector has the powers, which he was denied under the last Government, to deal with the problems that started under the last Government.
Tristram Hunt
The reason I am asking the question again is that we are still searching for an answer. Labour’s answer is absolutely clear: we need directors of school standards, independent of local authorities, to ensure a robust system of local oversight. The Secretary of State’s policy involves more Whitehall centralism, more unqualified teachers, and less collaboration and accountability. Is it not the case that even those on the Government Benches now realise that Birmingham has shown that his school model is bust?
Michael Gove
I have to say that the hon. Gentleman did rather better at reading out his question this time than he did last week, so I suppose it really was worth that exercise in déjà vu all over again. The truth is that Labour’s policy is opaque and unclear. At different times, the hon. Gentleman has been in favour of free schools and greater autonomy, and against them. He is currently in favour of abolishing the national curriculum in all schools, but David Blunkett, the man who advises him on schools policy, is in favour of imposing it in all schools. As I have said before: inconsistency, thy name is Tristram.
Mr Speaker
Order. I think that the Secretary of State was referring to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). I feel sure that he was.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
T3. Last week, the Secretary of State described the safety of children as central to his Department’s mission. In March, prompted by information arising from the police investigation into Jimmy Savile, he ordered investigations into 21 schools and care homes. How will he co-ordinate that work with similar investigations in the NHS and report the findings to the House?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
Clearly we remain committed to doing everything we can to learn from whatever happened in those cases. In his written ministerial statement in March, the Secretary of State set out the process for doing that. My Department will be working closely with the Department of Health, in conjunction with the work being done by Kate Lampard and the work that Lucy Scott-Moncrieff will undertake to provide independent oversight of the process. Discussions between the Departments have taken place, and we hope to be able to say more about the outcome of both the investigations in the autumn.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
T2. Will the Minister tell us how many schools are being built as a result of his programme, and how many have had their conditions improved?
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
Yes, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we are building, rebuilding and upgrading more than 900 schools during the course of this Parliament. We have also recently announced a Priority School Building programme to rebuild many of the schools that are in the worst condition, including many that were not even on the list for Building Schools for the Future.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
T6. We are in the third year of phonics tests for six-year-olds, and I understand that the tests have shown an improvement in decoding skills. What action will the Minister take to ensure that we are stimulating the enjoyment of reading?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)
Last year’s results from the progress in international reading literacy study—PIRLS—showed that the number of children in this country who are reading for enjoyment is going up; it has resumed considerably over the past few years. We have fantastic schemes to encourage students to read, such as the summer reading challenge. This year’s challenge is the mythical maze, which will challenge children to find their way around a labyrinth and introduce them to fantastical creatures from the world of legend and mythology.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
T4. Further to his somewhat unilluminating response to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), will the Secretary of State tell the House—and if necessary write to me—on how many occasions his former special adviser Dominic Cummings has visited the Department for Education since he left the Secretary of State’s employment, and whom he met on each occasion?
Michael Gove
I will consider carefully, as ever, the hon. Lady’s question, but it is instructive that with many educational challenges in her constituency, she chooses once again to disappear down the rabbit hole of Whitehall process, rather than seeking to stand up for her constituents.
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
T9. The Secretary of State will recall from our meetings in the Department that there is concern about the funding of the transition from three-tier to two-tier education, particularly in my constituency. Will he confirm that under this Government, funding for extra primary school places is nearly double what it was under the previous Labour Government?
Michael Gove
I absolutely confirm that increase in funding, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend who has been as tenacious as a Doberman Pinscher with a bone between its jaws in ensuring that children in Bury St Edmunds and across Suffolk get the support they need financially and educationally.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Ambitious about Autism recently reported that some 28,000 children, or more, have been informally and illegally excluded from schools. Will the Secretary of State tell the House what action he will take to protect some of our most vulnerable children?
Michael Gove
Children on the autistic spectrum often present with types of behaviour that can in certain circumstances lead to disciplinary and behavioural problems. The answer, of course, is to ensure that we are in a position to identify the needs of those children earlier. Later today the House will debate some of the consequences of legislation that we have introduced to improve identification and support of all children with special educational needs.
Gordon Birtwistle (Burnley) (LD)
My constituent Jack Entwistle is a lively 11-year-old who suffers from autism. He is being denied education suitable for his needs by Lancashire country council, and unfortunately he is not alone. Will my right hon. Friend meet me to try to end the discrimination that Jack is suffering from the education department at Lancashire county council?
Michael Gove
I will ensure that a Minister meets my hon. Friend, whom I thank for his dogged and determined work on behalf of his constituents. We have both had our frustrations with Lancashire county council over the years, but any vulnerable child in Burnley has a highly effective champion in my hon. Friend.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State tell the House exactly when Dominic Cummings ceased to hold the pass that allowed him access to the Department for Education?
Michael Gove
I think it was Jimmy Carter who was once attacked by critics for worrying about exactly who was using the tennis courts at the White House. I am not responsible for the allocation of passes to the Department for Education, but I am always happy to welcome constructive critics such as the hon. Lady for an enjoyable discussion over a cup of tea whenever she wants to come to the Department.
Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)
The rise in the number of apprenticeships in my constituency has contributed to a 52% fall in youth unemployment since the last election. Will the Minister join me in congratulating local employers who are taking those youngsters on, and colleges such as Selby college and York college whose work in that area is doing so much to provide life chances and career prospects for those young people?
The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)
The increase in apprenticeships across the country is helping to tackle youth unemployment. There has been a sharp fall in youth unemployment in many parts of the country—including that of my hon. Friend— with a fall of more than 50% over the past year, which is seriously good news. There are many contributory factors to that, not least colleges that work extremely hard to ensure that young people get jobs, as well as employers who create that prosperity, thanks to our long-term economic plan.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
What will the Government do about the fact that there are more than 4,000 infant school children in classes of more than 30 in the north-east and North Yorkshire?
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
Thinking that it faces too many bureaucratic hurdles, the Local Government Association is looking for more powers to interfere in free schools and academies. All too often, local authorities are the bureaucratic hurdles, holding back inspired head teachers, inspirational boards of governors, and parents who want a better future for their children. Will my right hon. Friend resist these efforts by local government to take back controls?
Michael Gove
My hon. Friend is a man after my own heart. There are some outstanding local councils, not least, for example, in the north-east and Darlington. They do a great job in supporting head teachers to raise standards and exercise a greater degree of autonomy. Sadly, however, there are those who want the creeping tendrils of bureaucracy once again to choke the delicate flower of freedom, and I am afraid that the Opposition Front Bench is a particularly rank unweeded garden when it comes to nurturing those tendrils.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State expect multi-academy trusts, which are significantly changing the way in which their services are delivered to their academies, fully to consult their head teachers and local governors before these changes are set in train?
Michael Gove
I would expect all multi-academy trusts to do everything possible to ensure that the local community and those involved in the delivery of services were appropriately consulted. I look forward to chatting to the hon. Gentleman when the Education Committee next meets so that he can expand on that point.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
The number of apprentices in Harlow has increased by more than 80% during the past year. Will the Minister look to increase the prestige of apprentices and create a royal society of apprentices, which would improve their status and encourage more people to do apprenticeships?
Matthew Hancock
I am delighted that, like many other places in the country, the number of apprentices in Harlow is increasing, and the number of employers taking on apprentices is increasing. During the last year, the increase in those applying for apprenticeships through the apprenticeship vacancy website rose by 50% to 1.5 million, not all of them in Harlow, but many. The culture of apprenticeships is on the rise again in Britain.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Has the Secretary of State noticed the groundswell of opposition to the proposal that the Government might privatise child protection services in local authorities? Has he clearly got the message from people as diverse as Professor Eileen Munro and Caitlin Moran in The Times that that is an unacceptable place for privatisation?
Michael Gove
I have enormous respect for both Eileen Munro and Caitlin Moran in The Times, and I have been influenced by both of them in different ways. I should stress that we are not proposing the handing over of services that are there to protect vulnerable children to people who are after a fast buck. We have an innovation programme that has been endorsed by many leading organisations, charities and third sector organisations that work with the most vulnerable children. The problem at the moment is that far too many local authorities either require improvement or are very poor in the way in which they look after these vulnerable children. We need to work with external organisations to ensure that those children have the best possible future.
Petition
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Would it be in order to congratulate you on the preferment that was shown to you in the Queen’s honours, Madam Deputy Speaker? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
It is a pleasure and a privilege to present a petition on the removal of trees from Thirsk Market Place on behalf of residents of Thirsk and Malton. The petition is in the name of Mike I’Anson, the chair of Thirsk Community Woodlands Group, Lesley Rolfe, a resident, and 1,011 other petitioners, which underlines its importance. I add that trees are the logo of the Conservative party and people do love their trees in local areas.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Thirsk and Malton,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that Hambleton District Council has not explained in detail how it came to its decision to remove five healthy birch trees from Thirsk Market Place; further that the trees were located in a conservation area; and further that the Petitioners believe that no public consultation was undertaken in relation to the removal of these trees.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to encourage Hambleton District Council to replace the five trees which were removed and further requests that the House urges the Government to call Hambleton District Council to account for its actions.
And the Petitioners remain, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
[P001358]
Prison Overcrowding
(10 years ago)
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Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice if he will make a statement on the Government’s response to the prison overcrowding crisis.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
Let me start by challenging the premise of the question posed by the right hon. Gentleman. We do not have a prison overcrowding crisis. Today’s prison population is 85,359, against a total useable operational capacity of 86,421, which means we have more than 1,000 spare places across the prison estate.
By next April, we will also have opened an additional 2,000 places. That includes four new house blocks, which will start to open from the autumn. We also have a number of additional reserve capabilities to cope with unexpected pressures. At the time of the election next year, we will have more adult male prison places than we inherited in May 2010, despite having to deal with the financial challenges that the last Government left behind.
Since last September the prison population has started rising again. This has happened for a number of reasons, including the significant increase in the number of convictions for historic sex abuse. These are people who committed appalling crimes and probably thought they had got away with it. I am delighted to find the space for them behind bars.
As that increase has been greater than expected, I have agreed to make some reserve capacity available to ensure that we retain a sufficient margin between the number of places occupied and the total capacity of the system until the new prison buildings come on stream later this year. That means in reality that in a number of public and private prisons a few more prisoners will have to share a cell for a few weeks. We might not need those places, but I would rather they were available in case we did need them.
I am also taking steps to address what I believe is a weakness in our prison system: the fact that we have no access to the kind of temporary or agency staff routinely found in our health and education systems. I am establishing a reserve capability among former staff to give us the flexibility to adapt to short-term changes of population by bringing reserve capacity into operation. We currently have some staff shortages in London, particularly because of the rapid improvement in the labour market, and this step will help us to cover any gaps.
Let me also set out for the House how we are managing the prison estate. My objective is to bring down the cost of running the prison estate while maintaining capacity levels. An important part of that is replacing older, more expensive prisons with new or refurbished capacity that is less expensive to run. For example, in the past two years we have opened 2,500 new places, with a further 2,000 places due to open in the next nine months. That has enabled us in that period to close a little over 4,500 places in older prisons, saving us a total of £170 million during the current spending review period.
In addition, we have launched a benchmarking programme across the prison estate to bring down costs. I introduced this programme in the autumn of 2012 as an alternative to privatisation, at the request of the Prison Governors Association and the Prison Officers Association. Indeed, the leaders of the Prison Officers Association sat in my office and described my decision to do so as a “victory” for them. I am grateful to our staff for their hard work in taking these difficult changes forward.
The programme of change has been praised by the National Audit Office and by the Public Accounts Committee and its chairman. The National Audit Office said recently:
“The strategy for the prison estate is the most coherent and comprehensive for many years, has quickly cut operating costs, and is a significant improvement in value for money on the approaches of the past.”
We will end this Parliament with more adult male prison places than we inherited, more hours of work being done in prisons than we inherited, more education for young detainees than we inherited, and a more modern, cost-effective prison estate than we inherited. That is anything but a crisis.
Sadiq Khan
The complacency of the Justice Secretary and the extent to which he is out of touch are breathtaking. He appears to think there are no problems in our prisons and that MPs can be kept in the dark about the fact that Ministers are demanding that already overcrowded prisons squeeze in another 400 inmates over the next few weeks. For example, Wandsworth prison in my constituency, which should have 943 inmates, currently has 1,597 and is operating at 169% capacity. But that is not the worst of it. This Justice Secretary has asked it to provide even more spaces.
MPs are kept in the dark about the fact that over the past five months 600 emergency places have been bought from G4S, Serco and Sodexo—at what cost we do not know. We are kept in the dark about the fact that prison staff who were made redundant and paid off are now being paid to return to work owing to the chronic shortage of staff—at what cost we do not know.
The Justice Secretary seems to think that there are no problems in our prisons. The NAO and the PAC do not agree with him. The chief inspector of prisons disagrees, as we heard this Saturday, and as he has said in every report he has written over the past two years. We disagree, prison governors disagree, prison staff disagree, experts disagree, and bereaved families disagree. Last month alone there were 11 self-inflicted deaths in our prisons. The Education Secretary may laugh; those families do not laugh. Can the Justice Secretary confirm that that was the case last month? Can he also confirm that last year self-harming, suicides and assaults on staff in adult male prisons went up?
Since May 2010, this Government have closed 18 prisons and cut 6,000 staff, yet the prison population remains broadly the same. This crisis is of the Government’s own making. Does the Justice Secretary think that there is any link between that and the 60% rise in the use of the riot squad to deal with serious disturbances in our prisons last year? Does he accept responsibility for the fact that it is his policies that have led to the wrong sorts of prisoners being sent to open prisons and released on temporary licence? Does he agree with the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), in whose constituency Ford prison is located and from which 90 offenders are currently on the run? He said on Saturday:
“It’s becoming a pattern…the wrong people are being sent to Ford.”
When did the Justice Secretary’s officials first warn him about the need to take emergency measures to deal with the most recent shortage of prison places? How many prisons are currently operating on half regime because of staffing shortages, meaning that prisoners are not working or going on courses, as they should be? What additional contingencies does he intend to put in place to deal with the possibility of disturbances in prisons?
On this Government’s watch our prisons have become unsafe warehouses, rather than places where offenders can be rehabilitated. It is important that we get answers to these crucial questions if the public are to have confidence that prisons will continue to punish and reform while keeping prisoners, prison staff and the public safe.
Chris Grayling
Having listened to those comments, Members might never know the truth. Prison overcrowding is lower under this Government than it was in the last four years of the previous Labour Government. Let me walk the right hon. Gentleman through the operational capacity for adult males in our prisons: in May 2010 it was 80,269; today it is 82,395; and in 2015 it is predicted to be 85,133. That means the capacity for men in our prisons is increasing. The tornado squads, which deal with serious incidents, have dealt with half the level of activity seen in 2007.
I think that the right hon. Gentleman needs a little bit of a lesson in what a prison capacity crisis really is. It is having to introduce a special scheme to let prisoners go home after serving a quarter of their sentence because there are not enough places to keep them in. That is what Labour did. It is deciding to shorten everyone’s sentence by a few weeks because they did not plan for the places needed. That is what Labour did. They let out more than 80,000 people early, and 1,500 of them committed suspected crimes when they should have been in prison. That is my definition of a prison overcrowding crisis, and it happened under Labour. Now they have the nerve to call sensible contingency planning a crisis, even though they were the ones who were forced to rent out thousands of police cells across the country because they ran out of space.
I make no apology for the fact that under this Government more people are going to prison, and they are going to prison for longer. I have a strategy in place to ensure that we will always have the space for them.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Why should Britain find it necessary to have a higher proportion of its population in prison than almost any other western European country?
Chris Grayling
Of course, we have a much lower proportion of our population in prison than many other countries, but I would like it to be smaller. That is precisely why I believe that the reforms to the way in which we rehabilitate offenders—for example, supervising offenders who go to jail for less than 12 months, who currently get no support, guidance or mentoring—will make the kind of difference that enables us to bring down our prison population in future. That is a goal we should all share.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
The chief inspector stated in his report on Oakwood prison that it was easier to obtain an illegal drug in prison than to obtain a bar of soap. He also stated that one of the main reasons for that is prisoners refusing to be tested for drug use. There is not a single prison in this country that is free from illegal drug use. When can we expect at least one to be cleaned up?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the proportion of positive drug tests in our prisons has fallen sharply in recent years; that is to be encouraged. I am confident that Oakwood’s upcoming inspection report will show a significant improvement. The hon. Gentleman is, of course, a Welsh MP; one of the Welsh prisons—Parc, a large new prison that had some teething problems—has turned into one of the best performing prisons in the estate. I am confident that the same thing will happen to Oakwood.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
My right hon. Friend should be commended on the energetic way that he, in an unprotected Department, has sought to contribute to meeting the Government’s wider economic objectives. He is entirely right that the overcrowding crisis was inherited in 2010, but is it not about time that we started thinking about the long term—about addressing the issue of the 20,000 prisoners who are in overcrowded conditions—and began to look properly at reconstituting a privatisation programme, so that we can have better-manned prisons with more efficiency for the taxpayer?
Chris Grayling
The approach that we have taken on privatisation has been to privatise individual services in the way that was recommended by the Prison Governors Association, because we needed to drive through savings quickly across the whole estate, rather than across part of it, but my hon. Friend’s point is sensible. I do not want a prison population the size of the one we have, but nor do I ever want a court to be unable to send an offender to prison when it believes that it should do so. That is why our rehabilitation strategy is so important. The way we will bring down the population of our prison estate is by preventing people from coming back to it, rather than by not locking them up in the first place.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
What consideration has the Secretary of State given to treating drug addiction as a health issue, rather than a criminal issue? If he did that, he would have far more space in his prisons.
Chris Grayling
My Department and the Department of Health have jointly launched an integrated drug rehabilitation service in north-west England, which will ensure that rehab continues beyond the prison gate and is afterwards delivered by the same people. I am very much of the view that we have to tackle drug addiction, but we have to make the best use of the time in which we have people in custody, so that we ensure that they do not come back because of their addiction, that we get them off drugs, and that they do not reoffend.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I do not lie awake at night worrying about prisoners being in overcrowded conditions; if they did not want to be in overcrowded conditions, they should not have committed the crimes that got them sent to prison. Will the Secretary of State do more to encourage the Chancellor to find more money for prison building? If he is looking for suggestions as to where the money could be found, perhaps it could come from the £20 billion a year we give to the EU in membership fees, or from the overseas aid budget. When it comes to tackling any prison overcrowding issue, will he pledge not to do what the last Labour Government did in letting out prisoners before the end of their sentence?
Chris Grayling
This is what baffles me about the Opposition’s questions and challenges over this issue, because I am precisely not letting out people who should be in prison. I am simply taking sensible precautions to bring on additional capacity. I have to say that if prisoners have to share a cell, I do not regard it as a great problem. I think that the courts should be able to send people to prison if they want to, as does my hon. Friend.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
In early 2010, when the Prime Minister first took office, he promised to take an axe to the number of foreign national prisoners in prisons. The figure then was 11,135. Will the Secretary of State tell me what progress has been made, because by my calculations, the number has reduced by about 40 a year?
Chris Grayling
The figure is, of course, now coming down. It is lower than it was when we took office, and it is roughly proportionate to the number of people in the population who were not born in the UK. We have to bear in mind that one of the reasons why we have a high proportion of foreign national offenders in our jails is that when the Labour party was in government it had a reckless policy on the number of people allowed to migrate to this country.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
I have three excellent custodial institutions in my constituency: Rye Hill and Onley prisons, and the secure training centre at Rainsbrook, all of which have fantastic staff and do a brilliant job. I welcome the answer to the urgent question, which was spurious at best, but will there be a recategorisation of prisons? Her Majesty’s prison Onley is heading down the track of being fully made up of sex offenders, and it perhaps deserves recategorisation.
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I am in favour of greater specialisation within the prison estate; it allows us to concentrate expertise in particular places. Of course, the biggest change in the estate will be the shaping of a system of resettlement prisons—that will begin later this year—to accompany our rehabilitation reforms, so that some prisons specialise in particular needs, as is the case in his constituency, and others are very much geared to preparing people who are in the last few months of their sentence for release, to try to reduce the likelihood of reoffending.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Swansea prison is the most overcrowded prison in the whole of England and Wales: it is at nearly double its capacity. What particular measures is the Secretary of State considering to alleviate the situation in Swansea?
Chris Grayling
The overcrowding levels at Swansea jail have barely changed in the past four years. Clearly, I would like to bring down the number of people in overcrowded jails, which is why we are increasing the capacity of the adult male estate and why I will bring new capacity on stream this autumn. Of course, two years down the track we will open the first new prison in Wales for a very long time. It will be the first since Parc prison and the first to be located in north Wales—it will be in Wrexham—which will ease pressures on the system in Wales and allow us to detain prisoners closer to home.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
When I was a shadow prisons Minister and Labour was in government, I visited about 70 of the 140 or so prisons, young offender institutions and secure training units throughout England and Wales. Despite the best efforts of the staff, those prisons were almost universally overcrowded and full of people who were unable to get educated or rehabilitated while in prison. My right hon. Friend has set in train a programme of rehabilitation which will ensure that those who are currently in prison will not go back. Will he push on with that programme with vigour?
Chris Grayling
Yes, I absolutely will. We will work on rehabilitation reforms post-prison and look to improve the level of work in prisons. We will also look to continue to expand education and training in prisons. We have, for example, set in train plans to double the amount of education in the youth estate. Those things simply did not happen under the previous Government. Labour Members accuse us of warehousing offenders, but I think they were the ones who were guilty of that.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has quoted the Prison Officers Association. He is not a man who would want to mislead or confuse the House, so may I tell him what the POA has said today? It has said:
“The decision by NOMS”—
that is, himself—
“to further ‘crowd’ the already overcrowded public sector estate by an additional 440 undermines the commitment that prisons will be safe, secure and decent”.
The POA describes that as
“the perfect storm of a rising population, a lack of staff and too few prison cells.”
Could the Secretary of State start listening to the prison officers themselves, for a change?
Chris Grayling
When we set about the current programme of benchmarking, I did precisely that: I listened to our staff and governors and accepted their recommendation, and I am implementing their recommendation thanks to the hard work of staff at all levels across the prison estate. The hon. Gentleman talks nonsense when he suggests I am not listening to the staff.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
This is an old story. Twelve years ago, the then Labour prisons Minister tried to defend a situation in which 20% of prisoners had to double up in a cell meant for one, saying this situation was only very limited. The problem is that there are twice as many people in prison than there were in 1993, costing £2.2 billion a year. Will the Secretary of State make it his aim to have fewer people in prison, particularly on short sentences, especially when we know that other sanctions are better at reducing reoffending and are preferred by victims?
Chris Grayling
My hon. Friend and I share the same objectives, and that is what our rehabilitation reforms are about. The truth is that approximately 95% of the people who end up in prison have already been through community sentences and probation work. We have to improve what happens at that stage and rehabilitation post-prison, but what we cannot do is simply not send to prison people who have committed serious crimes and are found guilty by the courts.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
The Secretary of State may know that I, too, have three prisons in my constituency. Just last month, the chief inspector’s report on Durham prison noted that it faced huge challenges and stated clearly that cells designed to hold one prisoner should not be used for two. At the time of the inspection, a prison designed for 597 prisoners was accommodating 940. Why is the Secretary of State not doing more to alleviate this appalling overcrowding, rather than seeking to exacerbate it?
Chris Grayling
I do not think the hon. Lady has been listening to what I have been saying. Today, despite the budget cuts we have had to push through, a smaller proportion of prisoners are being forced to share a cell than was the case under the Labour Government, who were in office until 2010. We are delivering a better performance for less money and in difficult circumstances. I am proud of that and Labour should be ashamed of itself.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
What impact is investment in IT having on the ability of the Department and prison management to manage the movement of prisoners, and will it in effect deliver better rehabilitative services in education for prisoners?
Chris Grayling
The IT work that is being done across not just the prison system but the criminal justice system is enormously important for the future not only in improving efficiency, but in ensuring a really joined-up approach from the time somebody is first arrested, through the court system and prison, to the support we provide post-prison and our probation work, and in understanding, should they reoffend, where they have had issues in the past. It is enormously important and it is already improving efficiency, but there is a lot more we can do.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
The rehabilitation of offenders and the control of their behaviour in prison occur best when they are close to family and friends who can influence their rehabilitation. How many prisoners are currently housed in prisons more than 60 miles from their home community?
Chris Grayling
I cannot give an exact figure, but I can say that as we introduce resettlement prisons in the last part of this year, the vast majority of offenders—not absolutely all, but almost all offenders—will spend at least the last few months of their sentence in the geographic area into which they will be released, which will help with precisely the links the hon. Gentleman talks about.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
Will the Justice Secretary confirm that there are more offenders in jail now than there were under the previous Government, and that crime is lower now than under the previous Government? Will he also confirm that there will be absolutely no repeat of the shambolic early release scheme, which saw 80,000 prisoners let out early, meaning that we had to prosecute hundreds of them, including for murder and other serious violent offences?
Chris Grayling
I completely agree. To be frank, I would like to have the capacity to unravel some of the residual schemes that I inherited, such as the home detention curfew scheme, which in my view should not have been introduced in the first place and which people struggle to understand. I will not be able to do that until resources are available, but it is certainly my ambition.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
In the light of what he has said, perhaps the Justice Secretary would like to spend the night at Swansea prison. It is the most overcrowded prison in Britain—I guess he would say it is the most popular—with two prisoners for every place. They are crammed in cells, with shared toilets, in sweltering heat, staying there day and night. Will he at last accept responsibility for the closure of 18 jails, the loss of 3,500 prison officers and the ever-escalating increase in the prison population that has led to an increase in assaults on prison officers and the deaths, suicides and self-harming of prisoners? Will he stand aside for someone who will not put at risk the public, prisoners and prison officers, and resign for his heartless, mindless incompetence?
Chris Grayling
Mr Speaker, sometimes you hear contributions in this House that are beyond parody. To be fair to the hon. Gentleman, he was not in the House during the last Parliament because he lost in 2005, but I do not recall that he called for the resignation of previous Labour Ministers when levels of overcrowding were higher.
Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what I have done in Wales. I have recognised the fact that that the prison system in Wales has a problem because north Wales does not have a prison, which means that prisoners from north Wales cannot be housed close to home. What have I done? I have won from the Chancellor £250 million-plus to build a new prison in north Wales. That is doing the right thing for the people of Wales.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
On prisons and overcrowding, according to a written answer to a question I asked, prisoners were given additional days for bad behaviour on 11,550 occasions in 2009. Will the Secretary of State clarify that this Government have done a lot to address the issue of bad behaviour, thereby affecting capacity in prisons?
Chris Grayling
We have introduced a tougher and more spartan regime in our prisons, as well as tougher penalties for those who abscond post-prison and break their licence conditions, who can now go to jail for much longer. Interestingly, the penalty that staff appear to believe is most valuable in dealing with troublesome prisoners is the removal of prisoners’ television sets from their cells when they behave badly.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Rehabilitation is important, and purposeful activity is particularly important, including the learning of musical instruments. Will the Justice Secretary ask his prisons Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), to approach with an open mind the meeting that I am having with him and Billy Bragg on Thursday, with a view to giving a positive response to our proposals if we can show that such rehabilitation will be of benefit?
Chris Grayling
I will of course ask my hon. Friend to approach that meeting with an open mind. However, although we want to encourage positive activities within prisons, there is a genuine issue for discussion about whether metal strings or metal ligaments should be made available, given that some people of course want to cause trouble in prisons.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
I welcome the increased prison capacity that has been announced today. One reason for the huge increase in the prison population is the reoffending that takes place. Labour identified that and spent £9 billion on it, but there has been little change. Will the Secretary of State say what is being done by this Government to ensure that prisoners do not reoffend when they leave prison?
Chris Grayling
That is at the heart of our reforms to the probation service, which will mean, crucially, that later this year we will begin to provide support, supervision and mentoring to short-sentence prisoners when they leave prison. At the moment, they get nothing at all and are left to their own devices, and nearly two thirds of them reoffend quickly. That is the biggest blot on our criminal justice system. Unlike the last Government, we are doing something about it.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
In a spirit of openness, perhaps the Justice Secretary will tell the House how much the emergency prison places that he has bought from private prisons are costing the public purse, so that we can ascertain whether they are more cost-effective than the prison places that he has closed.
Chris Grayling
I assure the hon. Gentleman that the marginal cost of an additional place within a prison is much lower than the overall cost of running a prison.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government’s focus on mentoring, rehabilitating and reducing the reoffending of short-term prisoners is one of the key drivers in reducing the prison population, and that it is a far better alternative than letting thousands of serious offenders out on the streets, as the last Government did?
Chris Grayling
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We have to bear it in mind that nearly 60% of the 50,000 people who are released on to the streets after short sentences each year reoffend. If we can bring that level of reoffending down so that it is closer to the level for those who go to prison for longer periods, it will significantly increase our success in reducing reoffending and, as my Liberal Democrat colleagues have said, bring down the prison population.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Last year’s inspection of Bristol prison found that the prison was dirty; that prisoners could not get clean clothes, clean bedding or cleaning materials; that it was easy to get drugs; and that about half the prisoners spent all day locked in their cells. How does the Secretary of State think such conditions help the rehabilitative process?
Chris Grayling
We are working as hard as we can to increase the number of hours that are worked in prisons, and the number is rising steadily. We have a very energetic team that is looking for new business opportunities. Of course, in a prison that is dirty, the most readily available work force to clean it are the prisoners themselves. In many prisons that I have been around, they are doing a first-rate job of that.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his robust response this afternoon and over the weekend in the media. I urge him to redouble his efforts to ensure that foreign prisoners are returned to their home countries as quickly as possible to serve their sentences, which relieves pressure on space and budgets.
Chris Grayling
I assure my hon. Friend that that remains a major priority. I pay tribute to the prisons Minister, who has successfully completed one prisoner transfer agreement and is discussing others. We need to do everything we can to return people to their country of origin as soon as possible, because it reduces the pressures on the prison population.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I remind the Secretary of State that the urgent question is the result of a report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons, which is independent, not of some political plot against him. I also remind him that when I was Chair of the Education Committee, we found that education, skills and rehabilitation in prisons were the first things to go to the wall when there was overcrowding.
Chris Grayling
There was no report from the independent inspectorate about this matter. We are increasing the amount of education in prisons where we can. I have just announced a doubling of the amount of education that is done by youth offenders in the youth offender estate. We are also launching a new secure college, which will have an education-focused curriculum. For reasons that completely escape me, the Opposition oppose replacing a prison-type institution that has bars on the windows with something more akin to a school or college that does positive skill building. I think they are bonkers.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
The fact that crime is down suggests that reoffending rates are coming down too. Will my right hon. Friend set out the coalition Government’s progressive, forward-looking rehabilitation measures that will reduce reoffending rates still further?
Chris Grayling
If I may, I will correct my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right that crime is falling. The number of first-time entrants into the criminal justice system is dropping as well. The challenge for us is that the level of reoffending has barely changed. That is the next frontier. That is why we are reforming the way we support and rehabilitate offenders, why there is a greater focus on education in the youth estate, and why there is mentoring and support for those who get short sentences. That is the way to take crime reduction to the next level.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
By exactly how many prison officers is the prison system short?
Chris Grayling
I expect to recruit about 80 to 100 temporary staff, and of course we have a recruitment process all the time. Like any big organisation with tens of thousands of employees, we have a constant process of people moving on and people being recruited and trained. As I outlined earlier, we need some 80 to 100 officers, but I want to build up a much larger reserve so that if we get fluctuations in future we have a pool of people we can draw on, in the same way as the health service and education system do.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I agree entirely with the thrust of policy from the Secretary of State and, of course, the excellent prisons Minister. In Wellingborough, we have a prison that is, rightly, temporarily closed, but which could be opened very quickly. The problem is not capacity across the nation; it is overcrowding in London. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the possibility of reopening the prison in Wellingborough?
Chris Grayling
I assure my hon. Friend that I am well aware of the situation in Wellingborough, and I do not intend to take any steps to dispose of that prison, because it is sensible for us to have reserve capacity available. I have no immediate plans to change the status of Wellingborough from being a mothballed site.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
A prison population of 86,000 would be far nearer 75,000 were it not for the large number of foreign national offenders in our jails. Surely it is possible to negotiate with the high-volume countries, such as Nigeria, Jamaica and Pakistan, for them to take back their offenders. If they will not, we should send them the bill, which is approaching £300 million a year. Will the Secretary of State put this issue at the top of his to-do list to address the issue of the number of people in our jails?
Chris Grayling
As my hon. Friend knows, this is a matter of great concern to Ministers. We are also seeking to speed up the formal deportation process through the Home Office. We need to reduce the numbers significantly, but it is proving to be a more stubborn and difficult task than any of us would wish. My hon. Friend should not, however, believe that we have anything other than a clear aspiration to do this. The sooner we can reduce that population, the sooner we can ease some of the other pressures on our prison system, or put in prison one or two other people we might want to see there.
Iraq and Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict
(10 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will make a statement on Iraq, and update the House on the outcome of last week’s global summit to end sexual violence in conflict.
The Sunni extremist group “Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant”—ISIL—launched a series of attacks and car bombings in Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, Samarra, Ramadi and Jalawla, over the last 10 days, culminating in the capture of Mosul on Tuesday. From Mosul, ISIL, with other armed groups, took control of the towns on the main route to Baghdad, including Tikrit, 110 miles north of the capital. The Iraqi security forces initially proved unable to resist these attacks, although there are now signs of a fightback in the area around Samarra.
These are extremely grave developments. ISIL is the most violent and brutal militant group in the middle east. It has a long record of atrocities, including use of improvised explosive devices, abductions, torture and killings. The reported massacre of 1,700 Shi’a air force recruits is more evidence of its brutality. ISIL’s aim is to establish a sharia Islamic state in the region, and it is pursuing these goals by attacking the Government of Iraq, gaining control of territory, and inciting sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims.
The group has bases in northern Syria as well as in Iraq. While the majority of its members are Iraqi or Syrian, it also includes a significant number of foreign fighters among its ranks. As I have previously told this House, we estimate the number of UK-linked individuals fighting in Syria to include approximately 400 British nationals and other UK-linked individuals who could present a particular risk should they return to the UK. Some of these are, inevitably, fighting with ISIL.
Over the last few days, I have held discussions with Foreign Ministers from the region, including Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari and Turkish Foreign Minister Davotoglu, with whom I discussed the welfare of more than 60 Turkish citizens kidnapped in Mosul. Our national interest lies in supporting a sovereign and democratic Iraq to resist those threats, offering assistance where necessary and working with others to prevent the spread of terrorism in Iraq and throughout the region.
On Friday, I held talks with Secretary Kerry in London. We agreed that the prime responsibility for leading the response to these events lies with the Iraqi Government. The United States, which is the country with the most appropriate assets and capabilities, is considering a range of options that could help the Iraqi security forces push back on ISIL advances. President Obama has been clear that action taken by the United States will succeed only if accompanied by a political response from the Iraqi Government.
We are taking action in three areas: promoting political unity among those who support a democratic Iraqi state and stability in the region; offering assistance where appropriate and possible; and alleviating humanitarian suffering. We have made it clear that this does not involve planning a military intervention by the UK.
On the first of these points, yesterday I underlined to the Iraqi Foreign Minister the need for his colleagues to form a new and inclusive Government who bring together all Iraq’s different groups and are able to command support across Iraqi society. ISIL is taking advantage of political disaffection, including among Saddam-era officers and soldiers, and Sunni tribal fighters, who have lost trust in the Iraqi Government. Overcoming this will require a concerted political effort by the Government, including working with the Kurdistan Regional Government against this common threat. I welcome the fact that the Iraqi Supreme Court has today ratified the large majority of the results of April’s elections, and I call on them to announce the full results as soon as possible to allow for the rapid formation of a new Government in Baghdad.
On our second objective, we are examining what more we can do to assist the Iraqi authorities directly in their security response. We are urging them to take effective measures to organise security forces effectively and push ISIL back from the areas it has occupied, while protecting civilian life, infrastructure and vital services. We are discussing with the Iraqi Government areas for co-operation, including the possibility of offering counter-terrorism expertise. We are also providing consular assistance to a small number of British nationals who have been affected. For this purpose, a UK Ministry of Defence operational liaison and reconnaissance team arrived in Baghdad on Saturday to help to assess the situation on the ground and to assist the embassy in contingency planning.
Thirdly, we have responded rapidly to the humanitarian emergency. About 500,000 people are reported to have been displaced in the north and now need urgent support. Last week, we were the first donor country to send a field team to the Kurdistan region, where they met UN and non-governmental organisation contacts and the Kurdish authorities. My right hon. Friend, the International Development Secretary announced on Saturday that we would provide £3 million of immediate assistance, including £2 million from the rapid response facility to NGOs for water and sanitation and other emergency relief and £l million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for mobile protection teams and establishing camps. We are considering urgently what further assistance we can provide.
The rise of sectarianism and religious intolerance is fuelling instability in the middle east. This has been compounded by the brutality of the Assad regime, whose relentless war against its own people has created an opening for extremists. That is why we will continue to support the moderate opposition in Syria, who have had the courage to fight directly against ISIL and other extremists, as well as urging the Iraqi Government to take the political and military steps required to defeat such groups in Iraq. We are also working to reinforce stability across the region, including through providing significant security support to the Governments of Lebanon and Jordan, as well as £243 million in humanitarian assistance to those countries. We will intensify our efforts in the coming days and weeks to tackle this serious threat to international peace and security.
Addressing the crises of today should never prevent us from dealing with the longer-term issues that are fundamental to conflict prevention in many parts of the world. Last week, I co-hosted the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, the largest ever summit held on this issue. It was attended by 128 countries, 79 Ministers and eight UN agency heads, as well as by presidents and prosecutors from the International Criminal Court and international tribunals, and more than 300 delegates from conflict-affected countries.
The summit had two primary objectives: to agree practical action to tackle impunity for the use of rape as a weapon of war and to begin to change global attitudes to these crimes. We opened the summit up to thousands of members of the public, at 175 public events. Our embassies held events to mirror what was going on in London for the entire 84-hour period and our intensive social media campaign reached all parts of the world. This was the most important milestone yet in our efforts to address this issue. My intention is to create unstoppable momentum in addressing these crimes, which are among the worst experienced in the world today.
We set in motion a series of practical steps and commitments. We launched the first ever international protocol on how to document and investigate sexual violence in conflict as a means of overcoming the barriers to prosecutions of these crimes. I announced £6 million in new UK funding to support survivors of rape, and the United States, Finland, Bahrain, Australia, Japan and others also made new and generous pledges. The African Union also announced a pilot project in the Central African Republic to respond to the urgent needs of victims of sexual violence. The Somali Government launched a new action plan on Somalia, supported by the UN and the international community, for addressing sexual violence, which has blighted the lives of thousands of women, men and children.
Within the summit, I convened a special meeting on security in Nigeria following the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in April and a summit on this issue in Paris last month. We agreed that a regional intelligence fusion unit should be made operational immediately. The countries of the region also agreed rapidly to implement joint or co-ordinated patrols along their borders, and Cameroon committed to add a battalion to that regional taskforce. The UK, US and France pledged to support these regional efforts. On behalf of the UK, I announced a separate package of support for Nigeria, including increased tactical training for the Nigerian army, assistance to regional security and intelligence co-operation, and a joint UK-US educational programme to educate an additional 1 million children in Nigeria. All the parties present also agreed on the need for UN sanctions against Boko Haram’s leadership and Ansaru, another dangerous terrorist organisation.
Finally, states and delegates at the summit joined together to sign a statement of action, uniting Governments, UN agencies, civil society, experts and survivors with a shared determination to tackle these issues. We will now work hard to ensure that the momentum is sustained and accelerated in the months and years ahead. We will publish a comprehensive report on the summit that will distil the expert recommendations that were made. We will turn our focus to practical implementation of the international protocol. We will continue to use our team of experts in conflict-affected countries. For the past two years, the United Kingdom has led the way internationally in addressing these vital issues and we must continue to do so until the scourge of sexual violence is finally confronted, addressed and defeated.
Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I thank the Foreign Secretary for his statement and for advance sight of it this afternoon.
Let me begin by turning to the Foreign Secretary’s remarks on Iraq. That country is today facing fundamental threats to its integrity, security and stability. Faced with a lightning advance by a few thousand Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant fighters from their base in Syria’s Raqqah province, the Iraqi army’s presence in the northern and western Sunni-majority provinces has effectively collapsed. Beneath these latest advances for ISIL lies the deeper and fundamental question, not just for Iraq, but for its neighbouring countries across the region: can they, in time, develop a pluralistic, democratic politics, where people live together as citizens, rather than dividing along sectarian, ethnic or religious lines? Alas, today, the answer to that question still remains uncertain.
Inevitably and understandably, these events have rekindled the debate around the military intervention in Iraq 11 years ago. For most British people, including many of us who supported the action at the time, the fears of those opposed to the intervention have been vindicated by subsequent events. It is futile to deny that subsequent history, as surely as it would be folly to repeat it. Yet it is also facile to suggest that the crisis affecting Iraq today can be attributed solely to the consequences of intervention. Such an account denies the truth that the slide towards crisis in Iraq has been exacerbated by the civil war in Syria. Today these are two nations sitting astride the Sunni-Shi’ite faultline, engulfed increasingly by sectarian violence, while the rest of the region has looked on as sectarian tensions rise.
Tragically for Iraq, the hallmark of Nouri al-Maliki’s Shi’a-dominated Government has been a sectarian rather than an inclusive approach. Indeed, the welcome progress made by the leadership of the Kurdistan Regional Government since 2003 serves only further to highlight the extent of the Iraqi central Government’s failures in moving the country forward. Will the Foreign Secretary set out what specific steps the UK Government are taking, in co-ordination with allies, to encourage that formation of a new Government in Iraq? Beyond his conversation yesterday, what contact is being planned to urge Prime Minister Maliki to take concrete measures to reduce sectarian tensions, empower regional Governments and re-professionalise the Iraqi armed forces?
Today and in statements made over recent days, the Foreign Secretary confirmed that British military intervention in Iraq is not being contemplated. I welcome this assurance. Will he further give the House the assurance that the Government will not agree to any proposals significantly to increase the nature or scale of support that we are already giving to the Iraqi Government without a much wider debate in Parliament, and indeed the country?
It is clear that Iran is heavily engaged in Iraq today, so it was disappointing to hear Tehran apparently rule out direct talks with the Americans earlier this morning. I welcome confirmation that the Foreign Secretary has been in touch with his Iranian counterpart earlier today, but does he agree with me that there is now an urgent case for ensuring an effective British diplomatic presence in Tehran to help co-ordinate such discussions and to advance dialogue?
As the crisis continues, the scale of the humanitarian suffering inevitably grows, so I welcome the additional humanitarian funding that the Government have already announced, but will any further requests from Iraq’s Government for additional humanitarian support be considered promptly?
Many British citizens will have watched the scenes both in Syria and Iraq in recent days with growing concern and anxiety, so it is right that we pay tribute today to the work of the British intelligence and security forces, which are doing vital work to keep us all safe. Will the Foreign Secretary set out the Government’s latest assessment of the threat posed by British citizens returning from the region? I know that the Foreign Secretary will be concerned, too, about the safety of British diplomatic staff in Baghdad, Irbil, and Basra, so can he assure us that all the necessary plans are in place to guarantee their safety? The most urgent task now is for Iraq’s leadership to unite and galvanise its response to this crisis—the future of the whole country and the fate of millions of its citizens depend upon that.
Let me turn now to the preventing sexual violence in conflict summit in London, which was a genuine credit to the work of campaigners and activists around the world who have tirelessly worked to raise this issue up the political agenda. The British Government, and the Foreign Secretary personally, have done a great deal in recent months to help do just that, and I commend him sincerely for his efforts.
The Foreign Secretary was right to say in his statement that the priority now must be to translate words into practical action. I welcome the further £6 million pledged by the UK to support survivors of sexual violence in conflict. The statement of action to tackle the culture of impunity surrounding sexual violence in conflict, to which the Foreign Secretary rightly referred, was indeed an important step forward. Alongside agreeing a coherent legal framework, will he set out what further steps will be taken to help tackle some of the underlying issues that contribute to impunity, such as the independence of the judiciary within conflict-affected states? I look forward to the publication of the comprehensive report on the summit. Could he give us an indication of when we can expect it to be published? The real test now is whether the summit in London can make a difference on the ground in conflict zones around the world. The Foreign Secretary will certainly have our support in his work to ensure that it does.
Mr Hague
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. There is a huge amount of common ground on both these subjects. As he said, now is an important moment for seeing whether pluralistic, truly democratic politics can be created in Iraq. He made some references to the history and debates surrounding intervention, and I agree with what he said about that, too, in that there are many roots to what is happening here, including the growth of sectarianism, of religious intolerance across the middle east and, of course, the crisis in Syria. We must not think that everything that happens is a result of western action or inaction, although our actions can, of course, have a very important effect.
As for the specific steps that we are taking to encourage that pluralistic and inclusive politics, the primary step is, of course, persuasion. This is a sovereign country. I have put that argument—not for the first time—to Iraqi Ministers, who have been making the case directly to Prime Minister Maliki, among others, for some time, and our embassy is busily engaged in doing that with Iraqi Ministers now. However, I think that what has happened in Iraq over the past week will be a very vivid demonstration to Iraqi leaders that this is necessary, and is in their own interest. It is not just desirable as a point of political principle. It is essential for the future of Iraq that Sunni, Shi’a and Kurds work together—that all who support the existence of an Iraqi state work together—and if what is now happening does not demonstrate that clearly to them, nothing will. We will always try to persuade, but events on the ground are demonstrating the need for this.
The right hon. Gentleman endorsed what I had said about our approach to questions of military intervention. I am sure that, if there were a substantial change in that policy, I should be back here explaining it to the House, or asking permission for it, depending on the circumstances. He asked about relations with Iran. As I said in my statement, over the last few days I have talked to a number of Foreign Ministers around the region. As well as those whom I mentioned in the statement, I have talked to Ministers in Israel and Iran. Indeed, I spoke to the Foreign Minister of Iran on Saturday about a number of matters, including the situation in Iraq. He said that there was a case for a further step forward in our bilateral relations. I have discussed that with him, and I shall have something more to say about our discussions imminently—in fact, very imminently, if the right hon. Gentleman is here tomorrow. That is a heavy hint. However, our work on that is distinct from discussions on Iraq, which is partly why I shall address those separately.
As for humanitarian support, the right hon. Gentleman can be absolutely sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development and her Department are very quick to react. They have had the first field team in the north of Iraq in the last few days. They work closely with all the United Nations agencies, and envisage that more support may be necessary. Of course, we keep the safety of our staff in Baghdad under close review.
I was grateful for the right hon. Gentleman’s supportive remarks about the work of the Government and many people around the world on the preventing sexual violence initiative. As he said, the key thing now is to turn that into practical action. I am convinced that if everyone who was at the summit last week now did what is set out in the protocol and the declaration on ending sexual violence in conflict, it would make a huge difference throughout the world. We all understand that a great deal of work will still be necessary to ensure that practical actions are taken by prosecutors in independent judiciaries, in military training and in the changing of laws. However, I believe that we have given real momentum to that work, and that it is an essential part of what I have described as a great strategic prize of this century: the full social, political and economic empowerment of women everywhere. We in the Government will remain utterly dedicated to that.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
In the light of Tony Blair’s protestations to the contrary, I commend the shadow Foreign Secretary for making it clear that he accepts that the crisis in Iraq today has its roots in the chaos that has continued since the ill-judged invasion of that country in 2003.
Does the Foreign Secretary agree that long-term stability in Iraq cannot be achieved until the Iraqi Government accept the need to incorporate and absorb the Sunni population in Government at the highest levels, proportionate to their legitimate entitlement, and will he make it clear to the Iraqi Government that serious support from this Government will not be possible until that happens?
Mr Hague
Yes, I do agree with my right hon. and learned Friend. Only yesterday, I made it very clear to the Foreign Minister of Iraq that the support that will be received from the rest of the world will be closely related to progress made on that issue of bringing Shi’a, Sunni and Kurds together. This is essential. As I mentioned in my statement, President Obama has made it clear that support of various kinds from the United States may well be conditional on political action by the Iraqi Government, so that message is very clear.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
I commend what the Foreign Secretary said, and also what my right hon. Friend the shadow Foreign Secretary said in his careful remarks about the history here, but may I press the Foreign Secretary a little on the issue of Iran? I welcome the imminent statement he is due to make tomorrow, which I assume means there will be a strengthening of relations, but does he recall that after 9/11, and until, frankly, the Khatami Government were undermined gratuitously by President Bush in his axis of evil speech, the Iranian Government gave the British and American Governments very good, positive and trusting co-operation in respect of the removal of the Taliban? Does he also accept that, with the current Rouhani Government, there is an opportunity to build more positive relations, because the Iranians have a similar interest to us in ensuring their neighbour is a stable democracy and not reduced to the chaos it is in now?
Mr Hague
Yes, of course we do have, going back over many decades and including now, important common interests with Iran, and that includes stability in Iraq and, indeed, in Afghanistan. There are also many other issues, such as dealing with the narcotics trade, on which Iran and the UK have common interests, and that is a very good argument for trying to advance our bilateral relations. Of course we also have to deal with the issue of Iran’s nuclear programme, which was something else I discussed with the Foreign Minister at the weekend, and there will be further negotiations this week. We also need Iran to make its contribution to stability in the region by ceasing its support for sectarian groups in other parts of the region. We look to Iran to do those things, but do we have some common interests? Yes, we do.
Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
My right hon. Friend will recall that I and my right hon. and hon. Friends at the time were unequivocally opposed to the military invasion. Notwithstanding that fact, I can tell him that I am sympathetic to the view that it cannot be credibly said that the invasion is the sole cause of the present situation in Iraq, although it is, I think, now generally accepted across the House that it has most certainly made a significant contribution.
May I turn, however, to the issue of Iran, properly raised by the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw)? There is no question but that the United States and Iran have different motives, but as the Foreign Secretary acknowledged a moment or two ago, they have common interests, so co-operation between them, even if covert, would be in the interests of us all.
Mr Hague
Well, of course covert co-operation is not something I will speculate about on the Floor of the House; it is not my habit to do so for very good reasons. Of course those common interests with Iran are there in respect of the stability of the entire region. That is very clear, but I stress again that Iran can do a great deal for stability across the whole of the middle east by desisting with a nuclear programme that threatens nuclear proliferation across the region and by ceasing support for sectarian or terrorist groups elsewhere. There is a heavy responsibility on Iran, as well as on all of us to do what we can to improve relations and to get that point across to Iran.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
The past is always with us. We are urged to learn from our mistakes, and I am delighted to hear that the British Government have learned and that there will be no military incursion in this particular war. May I also add my voice to those that have already been raised to say that the British Government should encourage Iran to think again, to work with America and our allies, and to bring its best efforts to bear on ending what is, in the Foreign Secretary’s own words, a Government of sectarianism and religious intolerance? Surely the way to bring about an inclusive Government in Iraq is to urge the stepping down of Prime Minister Malaki at the earliest possible moment.
Mr Hague
It is not for us—the Government of another nation—to try to pick and choose who will be the Prime Minister in Iraq. After all, we have all said for so long how much we believe in democracy in Iraq, and that choice has to be the product of its own democracy. None the less, we can give it the advice, coming loudly and clearly from this House today, that it needs political unity in Government, in support of the existence of its state and the functions of government, between Sunni and Shi’a groups, with the inclusion of Sunni leaders, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) mentioned. We want Iran to encourage that as well. Indeed, one of the points I made to Foreign Minister Zarif of Iran was that it is in Iran’s interest to press for that Sunni inclusion inside Iraq.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
Sadly, it is inevitable that there will be a heavy loss of life and bloodshed in the region, but it is imperative that ISIL is defeated. Although that must fall to the Governments in the region, primarily Iraq in the first place, where they have identified military capability gaps, we must be sympathetic and help them. The last thing we want to do is to send a message in advance that we have ruled anything out, which could only be of help and comfort to the terrorists.
Mr Hague
ISIL must be defeated, as my right hon. Friend says. I agree with him—I think it is the mood across the whole House—that the prime responsibility rests with Governments in the region, including the Iraqi Government, who have very substantial security forces at their disposal. As I said in my statement, we can provide assistance of various kinds, and other nations are considering other forms of assistance. The United States has said publicly that it is looking at all options. It has the assets and capabilities of the type, scale and location to deliver such assistance if it believes it can do so productively, so we will concentrate on helping in the way that I have set out.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
Given that the Sunni-Shi’a divide is now a fault line in the region and that an almost primeval form of jihadism is driving that on the Sunni side, does the Foreign Secretary agree that it is imperative that ownership of solving this conflict has to be in the region, particularly in Iraq but also in neighbouring Iran, which, as he has implied, could help significantly? I agree with the previous comments that it is imperative that we lose no opportunity to engage Iran, even if it is not up in lights as some formal alliance, which is what has understandably been rejected this morning. It is a key to all of this, does he agree?
Mr Hague
I absolutely agree with the broad thrust of what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. The prime responsibility lies with all the states of the region; they all have a responsibility to improve the way in which they work together, because they are all at risk in various ways. There is no state that has an interest in this instability in Iraq, other than possibly the regime in Damascus. Every established state in the middle east has its interests confronted and threatened by these developments. It is important that they improve their own working together, and we must use our own diplomacy to encourage that. I stress again that that requires a change of policy by Iran as well as every effort on our part to engage Iran.
Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is a pity that we have had to run these two subjects together, because no one should underestimate the extraordinary work that my right hon. Friend has done in relation to raising the issue of preventing sexual violence in conflict to such a level. He fully deserves all the commendation he is getting.
In relation to the issues in the wider middle east, does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the problems is that we are dealing with non-state actors across boundaries with no accountability and a wicked ideology who are taking on individual states that are so consumed with their own internal problems that they cannot yet act together and recognise the scale of the threat? Does he have any sense that states recognise that, and that they will, at some stage, have to work together to kill off both the ideology and the people who are propounding it? In that struggle, we do have a role to play in order to combat a threat that will ultimately arrive on our doorstep.
Mr Hague
I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. We have a role to play, and yet the responsibility of the states in the region that he talks about is clear as well. What happened last week has been a huge shock in Baghdad. It is a clear demonstration to them, as I said earlier, that they need greater political unity. It is also a clear demonstration that unity is needed across the Arab world in order to deal with these threats, working with religious leaders as well as working between national Governments. We will certainly encourage that as well as providing direct assistance of the type that I have described, and providing strong protection for our own national security through our counter-terrorism vigilance and expertise.
Mr Speaker
Noting his fetching white jacket, which is sparkling indeed, I call Mr Mike Gapes.
Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)
The Foreign Secretary was a Minister in John Major’s Government, a Government who used military intervention to impose a no-fly zone to protect the Kurds. That policy was continued and enhanced under the Tony Blair Government. We would not have millions of Iraqi Kurds living in peace, prosperity and democracy without the intervention that took place to protect them from Saddam. If we had brought back Saddam or Uday, the Kurds would have suffered in the same way as the rest of the Iraqis are suffering today. Therefore, if the Kurdistan Regional Government request assistance, should we not give such a request sympathetic consideration?
Mr Hague
I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the importance of what we did, in this country, to protect the Kurds. Only a few weeks ago, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government was here. We hear all the time, as he will have heard, the continuing gratitude of the people of that region for what the United Kingdom did.
I am not arguing against all military interventions; I am saying that in this situation, now, in Iraq, we are not planning a military intervention. I am not saying that there will never be any circumstances in the world in which we may need to make a military intervention—far from it. We have had no such request from Kurdistan. Indeed, the forces of the Kurdistan Regional Government have acquitted themselves well in recent days, and they have been an important part of bringing about stability in the northern areas of Iraq. We have not received such a request, and we do not envisage such a request at the moment.
Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
I am sure that the Foreign Secretary can see the irony of the Iranians floating the idea of co-operation with the United States, albeit indirectly, having gone to such great lengths to get rid of it in 2011. Does he agree that this is the first time in decades that our interests coincide with those of the Iranians? My enemy’s enemy is my friend, so will he take every opportunity to build a rapport with the Iranians, which could have beneficial effects in other areas?
Mr Hague
I will do so, yes. We have overlapping interests, although I am not sure that it is the first time we have done so. We have always had common interests in some of the areas that I mentioned earlier, such as stability in Afghanistan. The current situation does highlight that, and as my right hon. Friend can gather from the conversation I had over the weekend with the Iranian Foreign Minister, we are making every effort to ensure that we discuss a whole range of issues with the Iranians. I say again that we are looking to them to change some of their approach in the wider region if they really want to be the agents of its stability, rather than its instability.
Angus Robertson (Moray) (SNP)
Tony Blair took the UK to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction that never existed. He was rewarded, remarkably, with the post of middle east peace envoy. Given his dangerous and ill-judged comments in the past few days, which were described by the Foreign Secretary’s colleague the Mayor of London as “unhinged”, does the Foreign Secretary agree that Tony Blair should not continue in post as a middle east peace envoy?
Mr Hague
No, I do not agree with that. Nor do I think that the recent events in Iraq should be turned into a proxy debate about Tony Blair and everything that he has ever said or done. The shadow Foreign Secretary is looking rather alarmed about the idea of a proxy debate about Tony Blair. In any case, we have set up an inquiry in this House into the Iraq war, and that inquiry will report in due course. [Hon. Members: “When?”] If the inquiry had been set up when I called for it, it would have reported a long time ago. Hon. Members will have to ask those who were in Government at the time, and who resisted such an inquiry for a long time, about the delay in its reporting.
We can all pass judgment in detail when that report is published, but the issue we must address now is how to deal with this situation. I do not think it would help this situation for Tony Blair to feel that he has to resign from other positions.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Many people in this country will be keen to understand how an estimated 400 British nationals came to be engaged in foreign terrorism in Iraq and Syria. What conversations is the Foreign Secretary having with his colleagues in government to ensure that those individuals will not have the option of returning to the UK—ever?
Mr Hague
We are having many conversations in government and, of course, with other Governments about how to prevent that. As my hon. Friend will understand, if a British national leaves via a third country and ultimately travels to Syria over the border of one of Syria’s neighbours, it is very difficult for us in the UK to know about that. We advise strongly against all travel to Syria and have made it very clear that the Home Secretary will not hesitate to use her powers to withdraw passports and cancel leave to remain in the United Kingdom and that our security forces will make arrests wherever there is the appropriate evidence. People can be absolutely sure that we will be extremely vigilant about this issue.
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)
In Iraq and Syria and throughout the Muslim world extremists live and dictators survive off the back of the fear and division between Shi’a and Sunni. Those efforts of persuasion that the Foreign Secretary talks about should be aimed not just at political leaders and Governments but at figures of influence on both those sides of Islam. How much effort and influence does he think there is and how much of a priority do the British Government give to trying to encourage reconciliation and co-operation from religious figures of influence, both Shi’a and Sunni?
Mr Hague
We give that a very high priority, but these events show that we cannot do too much and that we might need to do a lot more over the coming months and years. We give it a high priority and my right hon. and noble Friend Baroness Warsi has done a great deal of work on it as part of her work on freedom of religion, which is also about bringing different religious leaders together. Our embassies across the middle east do a great deal of work as well. The right hon. Gentleman is right that this is not just about political leaders; it is about religious leaders and other leading figures in society in many of the countries concerned. We have insisted all along that the Syrian national coalition must represent religious reconciliation and people of all faiths in Syria. I think the answer is that we do a great deal, but we must acknowledge that more will need to be done.
Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)
I congratulate the Front-Bench team and their counterparts in the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Justice on the work they have done over the past four years to promote women’s rights across the globe. I am saddened that, as momentum behind the issues has grown, some of the media have chosen to belittle the contribution of Angelina Jolie at the recent conference rather than focus on the issues that she cares about. In the light of that, what would my right hon. Friend’s advice be to Bono?
Mr Hague
I hesitate to give advice to Bono, but it is nevertheless important for us to ensure that this work reaches all parts of the world. It is vital work, as my hon. Friend describes. Governments cannot reach all opinion formers everywhere in the world and so the contribution of my co-host at the sexual violence summit, Angelina Jolie, is immense in getting the message across to countries that would never otherwise hear about the work or never necessarily take any interest in the summit that we held. I advise everyone to take full heed of that work and give it full support as that is the only way to tackle some of the worst crimes that we are seeing anywhere in the world.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
The recent advance of ISIS—the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham—might have been a shock, but the reality is that hundreds of people have been dying in terrorist attacks in Baghdad and other parts of Iraq for many months. That is a result of the breakdown of the situation and the civil war in Syria. The signal given last summer by this House, and by the United States and the international community, created the space into which ISIS has now pushed forward. What is going to change, and how is the international community going to turn this round?
Mr Hague
Clearly we have to do what I set out in my statement. The House of Commons cannot re-fight its earlier decisions. I disagreed with the decision made in the House last August, but we are democratic politicians and we respect the House’s decision on that occasion. If we had voted the other way, would it have sent a sharp message to the Assad regime? Yes it would, but we did not vote in that way. This House makes the decisions on those matters, and we work within the constraints of that. I have made it clear that we can provide assistance to the Iraqi Government—the United States might be able to provide a great deal of other assistance—while simultaneously stressing that Government’s own heavy responsibility to rise to the challenge in both the security and the political sense.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I was one of the 1 million who marched against the war in Iraq, although we were ignored by the Government of the time. I very much welcome the Foreign Secretary’s comment that he is not planning military intervention by the UK. I and many others will keep track of what happens in that regard. What steps will he take to ensure that Prime Minister Maliki does not use this crisis to try to extend his executive power in inappropriate ways?
Mr Hague
Inclusive politics and a more inclusive political leadership in Iraq would not involve the abuse of power by the Prime Minister of the day, and it would have to include some degree of people not only working together in government but genuinely sharing power. Otherwise, it would not work. It would be built into a broader political unity in Iraq that Sunnis and Kurds would be well consulted and have leadership positions in the political process, but it would be up to them to determine the details of that.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Does the Foreign Secretary accept that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent destruction of all the structures of civil society there have led to this implosion? Does he also accept that the current crisis is being exacerbated by the arms in the region? He has confirmed that there will be no military intervention by Britain or the USA, but what discussions has he had with Saudi Arabia about its influence, its arms supplies and its friendships within the region, and about its actual aims?
Mr Hague
We have had many discussions with states throughout the region, particularly in relation to Syria. We have said that any support, including the non-lethal support from the United Kingdom, should be given to moderate groupings and not to extremists. Indeed, these events underline the importance of that, and it is something that we will always restate to Saudi Arabia and to other states in the region. They are committed to not supporting extremist groups, because those groups ultimately present a threat to them as well as to Iraq and to many people in Syria. On the earlier part of the hon. Gentleman’s question, I think we will have to wait for the report from the inquiry into Iraq. People can argue the case either way in regard to the consequences of the 2003 invasion, but it is worth pointing out that if Iraq had developed a more inclusive politics over recent years and if the Assad regime had not opted to wage war against its own people, the scenario would now be very different, notwithstanding the 2003 invasion.
Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
May I take this opportunity to congratulate my right hon. Friend on the leadership that he showed during last week’s conference on preventing sexual violence in conflict? That is a major issue, but it is one that many people—dare I say it, many men—have avoided addressing. My right hon. Friend deserves congratulation on addressing it. Will he take this opportunity to challenge media commentators who have suggested over the past few days that it is a relatively minor issue compared with the issues of Iraq that we have just been discussing? Does he not agree that, in many ways, they are two sides of the same coin and that the fundamental belief that women are second-class citizens lies at the heart of the use of sexual violence in conflict and at the heart of the beliefs of most of the extreme terrorist organisations?
Mr Hague
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. There are reports from Iraq of sexual violence, and as I mentioned in my statement, in Nigeria extremist terrorist groups are some of the main perpetrators of appalling sexual violence against those in their captivity. This is not only a vital moral issue for the world—we have been right to break the taboo in many parts of the world about discussing it. It is also fundamentally connected to conflict prevention. When mass war-zone rape is committed by one community against another, it becomes dramatically more difficult to prevent conflict between them for decades into the future. I think that in some quarters there is a good deal of ignorance about those matters.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I join others in congratulating the Foreign Secretary on his role in initiating the conference. My concern is with Iraq and the huge number of people who will now be leaving or attempting to leave because of the current crisis. Many of those people will be at the hands of people traffickers who will exploit them, and they will end up on the borders of Greece and Turkey. What support can we give those countries, and what steps can we take to help authorities in Iraq to stop people leaving?
Mr Hague
As I set out in my statement, we are giving rapid assistance. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development authorised that quickly at the weekend, and is ready with further assistance if it becomes necessary. We are already generous donors to many other countries in the region that are dealing with huge refugee flows, particularly Lebanon and Jordan, and through UN agencies we are also assisting with refugee flows in Turkey and the area of the Kurdistan Regional Government. After the United States, Britain is the second most substantial national donor in the world to programmes for refugees in the region, and the right hon. Gentleman can be assured that we will maintain that strong record.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
Does the Foreign Secretary agree that whatever the historic failings of western policy, we cannot simply stand aside as the viability of the Iraqi state is called into question? Do we not have a responsibility to the Iraqi people to ensure that their country does not descend into all-out sectarian violence, which in any event would be completely against our national interests in the middle east?
Mr Hague
I am certainly not advocating standing aside, and I have set out what we are doing politically and in terms of humanitarian aid and assistance to the Iraqis. There is no question of our standing aside from such a crisis, but we should be clear—I think we have been clear across the House today—that there is prime responsibility on leaders in the region, including Iraq, to ensure a coherent security and political response. It is within their power to do so, and it is therefore their prime responsibility to do so, with our support where necessary.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
It was a privilege to meet some of the brave women who came to give evidence at the conference last week, particularly those from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was ironic, however, that at the same time as the conference was going on, women were being raped in Iraq. There is no doubt from UN reports about the behaviour of ISIS in Iraq, which is threatening sharia law and carrying out extreme sharia law. Will the Foreign Secretary make it clear that people who are found guilty of those crimes will face charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and that they will not get away with it?
Mr Hague
It is clear in the declaration on ending sexual violence in conflict, which I put forward and which 155 nations have now signed, that these crimes are to be considered grave breaches of the Geneva conventions. Much of what we are doing, as the right hon. Lady knows, is to make sure that the era of impunity for these things is over, and that prosecutions can take place and that evidence can be more easily gathered. If we do not do that, the problem will get worse in the world over the coming years. I very much agree with the thrust of her question; it is at the very top of the priorities of the preventing sexual violence initiative.
Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)
Would it not be wise for Tony Blair to be a bit more Trappist about this issue, at least until the Chilcot inquiry reports, rather than trying to re-write history by attempting to say that the shambles of an occupation that we saw is somehow not linked to the tragic events that we see today? Is it not the case that in 2003 al-Qaeda was not present in Iraq? A vacuum of governance was caused and that was filled. That is something that, sadly, the Iraqi Prime Minister has failed to meet.
Mr Hague
I will add Tony Blair, with Bono, to the list of people whom I will not advise on what to say during the course of our proceedings. There will be many important lessons that are best looked at when we have all the evidence of the inquiry. We are very clear on what is needed now in Iraq and in neighbouring states to respond to this situation, and for the moment we must focus on encouraging that correct response.
Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
Will the Foreign Secretary, with his emphasis on looking to responsibilities within the region, say a little more about the role of Saudi Arabia? Have not few countries done as much as Saudi Arabia to promote a sectarian and deeply conservative brand of Islam right around the world, including in the middle east? It and other conservative Gulf states stay high on the list of diplomatic friends of our Government. If we are to speak truth to power, why do we not challenge those who have helped foster the sectarianism that we now see?
Mr Hague
The position among regional states is a complex one. Saudi Arabia has often acted with us in the past to try to ensure that there is stability in the region, and it is important to bear that in mind. I stress again that I agree with the right hon. Gentleman and many across the House that there is a responsibility on all leading states in the region to improve relations and to try to ensure that religions can co-exist side by side. There is a huge responsibility on Iran in particular, as I mentioned earlier, but of course there is a responsibility on Gulf states and others as well, and we will make that very clear.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
In his reply to the shadow Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend talked about all those who support Iraq. With Maliki running a sectarian Government, with the Kurds taking the opportunity to seize Kirkuk, which will always be one of the very difficult post-conflict issues to solve, and with the Sunni population turning to this dreadful mediaeval force, is not the problem that, frankly, not many people support the concept of Iraq? Is it not about time that we started pushing for an international conference to bring all the actors together so that we can have a strategy that can lead to an agreed post-Iraq solution?
Mr Hague
I do not exclude at all the need for international conferences to try to bring together all the countries in the region, as well as key players in Iraq. My hon. Friend is right to point to the formidable difficulties facing those who need to work together in Iraq. However, underneath that there is tremendous support among the people of Iraq for the functioning of their country. They have turned out in very large numbers in elections. They have made every effort to participate in their democracy, and I believe that the mass of the people in Iraq want that democracy to succeed. Their leaders, as in any country, need to respond to that and harness that.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
May I ask the right hon. Gentleman about the second part of his statement? Does he share my alarm about the reports of increasing numbers of Tamil asylum refugees being refused asylum status despite entirely credible accounts of their being subjected to rape by the security services? Will he please give an undertaking to the House that the Foreign Office will look again at the country profiles on which the Home Office and the courts rely before making decisions in those cases, particularly highlighting the problems in relation to women being raped?
Mr Hague
There have been major problems of sexual violence in Sri Lanka. I spoke about this to the Sri Lankan media and with the many NGOs that I worked with when I was at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Sri Lanka in November. In this country we take our responsibilities to asylum seekers very seriously, as the hon. Lady knows, but in a strict and, we hope, fair system. Where there are serious and valid complaints, of course they will be looked at. As she knows, this matter is primarily the Home Secretary’s responsibility, not mine, so either I or a Home Office Minister will write to the hon. Lady about that point.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement. What steps—diplomatic action in particular—are being taken by the UK and other nations to improve the degree of engagement between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Iraqi Government?
Mr Hague
This is an important issue, as we noted earlier. Through all our diplomatic channels and through my conversations with the relevant leaders, we encourage that co-operation between the Iraqi authorities in Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government. I discussed this at length with the Prime Minister and other Ministers of the KRG a few weeks ago. I discussed it with the Iraqi Foreign Minister just yesterday, and we will continue in that vein.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Did not the vote of 29 August last year prove that the trust of many Members of this House in military action has been deeply undermined by the terrible decision that we took in 2003 to send 179 brave British soldiers to their deaths in Iraq on the basis of untruths and the hubris and vanity of a Prime Minister? Will not that trust be further undermined if the Chilcot report is expurgated—if it omits the full text of the letters from Tony Blair and George Bush—and will it not be seen as an establishment cover-up by politicians and civil servants to guard their reputations?
Mr Hague
I am sure there will be an occasion to debate that report when it is available. The hon. Gentleman and all of us will be able to give our views then. I think it is true that the vote in the House last August was influenced by a loss of trust in the aftermath of the war in Iraq, whatever side we took and whatever we think about that. It was influenced by that, yes, so we have to conduct ourselves in a way that rebuilds trust in Government decisions on these matters. That is what we are constantly seeking to do.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
It is said that the international community wants to engage Iran to help resolve the situation in Iraq, but some ask how that can possibly be the case when Iran is supporting terrorism in Lebanon by Hezbollah, supporting Hamas and supporting the horrific regime of President Assad, and when it backed Prime Minister Maliki to cause the mess in Iraq in the first place. Linked to that, what steps are we taking to address the problem that the advanced-level weapons given to the Iraqi army by the international community are ending up in the hands of the extremists?
Mr Hague
The point that my hon. Friend raises is exactly why I have stressed several times that although it is right to engage Iran, which we are doing, we need to see a change in Iranian policies if the Iranians are to promote stability rather than instability in the region. They do support sectarian or terrorist groups and have supported them elsewhere in the region. That is an important policy to change because it creates deep divisions across the middle east, and I again stress that we look to Iran to change those policies.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I welcome the fact that the Foreign Secretary has said on several occasions that the Government are not planning any military intervention. Can I be absolutely assured that there will be no military intervention by this Government, or support by this Government for others’ military intervention, without a vote of this House?
On the second part of the Foreign Secretary’s statement, with regard to sexual violence, will he look at reports that women who have come to this country seeking asylum from areas of conflict have been detained in Yarl’s Wool, where they have been subjected to sexual abuse?
Mr Hague
The hon. Gentleman’s second point is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, but I will of course draw it to her attention. We have a clear precedent established about coming to the House, when circumstances permit, in relation to the use of military force. We did that over Syria, even though we were then defeated. The hon. Gentleman is trying to extend that precedent to support for other states taking military action. This House does not govern actions taken by other states. The Government will of course always come to explain our diplomatic posture on all those things.
Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)
In the post-Iraq and post-Afghanistan conferences, and in the Syria peace conferences, Iran was consistently left off the guest list. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that what we are seeing in Iraq is the inevitable outcome of our picking and choosing our regional players and leaving Iran off the guest lists? In future we should learn the lesson and invite all sides to try to resolve these issues, especially those that live closest and suffer the greatest threat through such conflict.
Mr Hague
My hon. Friend must bear in mind that there is also a lesson for those not invited. In the case of the unsuccessful Geneva peace conference that we held earlier this year on Syria, we and others were entirely open to the inclusion of Iran. We only wanted to know that Iran would support the creation of a transitional Government in Syria as a solution to the problem, in the same way that Russia has done through its support for the Geneva 2012 declaration. That was quite a small requirement for adding it to the guest list, but Iran was unable to do that. The effort has to come from Iran as well as from the rest of us.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I congratulate the Foreign Secretary on his important conference last week. However, while I recognise that real progress is being made in conflict zones, it is a very different story when the same survivors of rape make it to UK shores. Will he add to the list of things to raise with the Home Secretary a more systemic concern about our asylum system, which often punishes and humiliates women a second time when they arrive? They are expected to talk to men, often on their own or in front of their children. It really is not a sensitive way forward.
Mr Hague
I will add that to the list, but I hope that the hon. Lady will also bear in mind that the Home Secretary said in her recent announcements on admitting Syrian refugees into the UK that we would give particular priority to people who are vulnerable and at risk of violence, including sexual violence, so it is clear that the Government are attempting to assist in such cases, but where there is criticism we will examine it and respond to it.
Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)
I take on board my right hon. Friend’s point, made in answer to previous questions, that in the here and now we can cajole through the diplomatic avenues. We can also make it clear to everybody involved that it is in their best interests. But does he agree that actually the real issue is good governance? We have a history in this country, through Northern Ireland—of course, that is a different political prism—of bringing an approach of consensual politics to such matters. This is very similar to corruption: we need to break the cycle. Do not do unto others as has been done unto me.
Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)
The EU Enlargement Commissioner is scheduled to hold talks with the Turkish President and Foreign Minister. No doubt the capture of Turkish diplomats in Mosul last week will be raised. What discussions has the Foreign Secretary had with the more secular yet Sunni Turkish Government about the security situation in Iraq?
Mr Hague
I regularly discuss the situation in Iraq with the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, most recently on Saturday, when I expressed our concern about the Turkish nationals who have now been taken hostage by ISIL. We of course hope for their safe return and are consulting closely with Turkey about the whole situation we have been discussing in the House today.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
My right hon. Friend says that he is keeping open the possibility of offering counter-terrorism expertise. Another area in which we have particular expertise is aerial reconnaissance, surveillance and intelligence gathering. Is he therefore keeping open the option of offering Royal Air Force ISTAR—intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance—assets?
Mr Hague
What my hon. Friend mentions would count as a military intervention, and we are not planning military intervention in Iraq in this situation, as I have made clear; while I have taken care not to rule out the things that could happen in a whole variety of situations in future, I think that I have made that very clear today.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
One of the many worrying aspects of recent events is that the Iraqi army and other security forces do not appear to have performed well. Of course, this is not just about military capability; it has much to do with the political decisions taken by the Iraqi Government. Looking ahead to the end of our operational commitment in Afghanistan at the end of this year, what is the Foreign Secretary doing to satisfy himself that the Afghan national security forces have the confidence and the capability needed to avoid a similar situation in Afghanistan?
Mr Hague
This is a very important question. Of course, every quarter we have an oral statement on Afghanistan, and this will be an important topic for the next one. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have taken every care to build up and train the Afghan national security forces. They have acquitted themselves very well in conflict in Afghanistan over the past year or two, having led all major operations in recent times themselves. I hope that the new President of Afghanistan, for whom elections took place this weekend, will sign the bilateral security agreement with the United States that will enable all of us to settle how we support the Afghan state in the future. There is further work to be done on this, but the Afghan national security forces are extremely strong and capable.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the removal of Saddam, which, as the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes) said, prevented the Kurdish nation from being exterminated, is not the sole cause of the current crisis? Is it not more the problems in Syria, and the weakness and inadequacy of the Iraqi President, that have led to Islamic jihadists launching a campaign from Syria? Does he not also agree that if the crisis gets worse, at some point NATO and the United States will have to intervene militarily to put a lid on the problem and protect the Kurdistan region?
Mr Hague
On the last point, the United States has said that it is examining all options. I think that the necessary support for the Iraqi security forces is much more likely to be given by the United States than by NATO as a whole. My hon. Friend is quite right about many of the other massive contributory factors. Whatever people think, with hindsight, of the merits or otherwise of the 2003 invasion, recent events in Syria and the failure in Iraq to develop a fully inclusive politics have certainly contributed to this situation.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Given that the Foreign Secretary now finds himself dealing with a major crisis in Iraq, does he share my regret that the Chilcot inquiry has not published its report? If it had, his foreign policy would benefit from a detailed analysis of events before, during and, critically, after the last Gulf war.
Mr Hague
Yes, in many ways, because I think it was 2006 when, as shadow Foreign Secretary, I first proposed an inquiry on Iraq. I imagine that the hon. Gentleman’s party supported that at the time; I am sure that it did. Perhaps it even called for an inquiry before then. Had the inquiry been established then, rather than being resisted by the then Government for a good two years, we would certainly have had the result by now.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Why does the speed and extent of the success so far of the caliphate forces seem to have taken everyone by surprise?
Mr Hague
I think that it has taken people by surprise, including in Baghdad, because of the failure of Iraqi security forces—large numbers of them—to hold the territory to which they were assigned. That, of course, is very disappointing and alarming, and it underlines the need for the Iraqi security forces to be well led, to work together well, and to be backed by political unity. I think that is the answer to my hon. Friend’s question.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
What discussions were held at the summit with regard to Sri Lanka? In the past 24 hours, a number of my Muslim constituents of Sri Lankan origin have got in touch because they are deeply fearful for the lives of many of their relatives in Sri Lanka, who are under threat from the sectarianism of the extremist Bodu Bala Sena group. What advice does the Foreign Secretary have for my constituents and what pressure can he put on the Sri Lankan Government?
Mr Hague
Of course, we regularly try to put pressure on the Sri Lankan Government. The hon. Gentleman gives me the opportunity to tell the House how much we look to them to prevent sectarian conflict and outrages within Sri Lanka, just as we look to any Government responsible for their own citizens to do the same. The hon. Gentleman will also know that the UK led the way, successfully, at the United Nations Human Rights Council in March to win the vote on setting up an international inquiry into the conflict in Sri Lanka. We are always leading the way on this and I join the hon. Gentleman in reiterating our strong message of concern about these events.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
The prize for patience goes to Mr John Woodcock.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Whatever the responsibility the UK holds for the current situation in Iraq, there is a clear need to prevent the country from falling into the hands of these extremists. Given the Foreign Secretary’s statement that military intervention may well prove necessary, why has he ruled out any UK participation or military support whatsoever?
Mr Hague
For the reasons I set out in my statement, the prime need is for the leadership in Iraq—in both a security and a political sense—to be able to respond. There is a case for outside support where necessary, but as I said, the assets and capabilities to deliver such military support are much more likely to be possessed by the United States of America. I have set out other areas in which we can help. That is the reasoning for this approach.
Madam Deputy Speaker
We appreciate that that statement took a very long time—longer than usual—but the House is grateful to the Foreign Secretary, as those were two very important issues on which many Members wished to asked questions.
Consumer Rights Bill
(10 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
17:42 - The House divided: - Ayes: 204 / Noes: 259 - Question accordingly negatived.
19:13 - The House divided: - Ayes: 205 / Noes: 272 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jenny Willott)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Government new clause 25—Letting agents to which the duty applies.
Government new clause 26—Fees to which the duty applies.
Government new clause 27—Letting agency work and property management work.
Government new clause 28—Enforcement of the duty.
Government new clause 29—Supplementary provisions.
New clause 30—Letting Agents: Report—
‘Within three months of Royal Assent of this Act, the Secretary of State shall prepare and publish a report, and lay a copy of the report before Parliament, on—
(a) the consumer detriment caused to tenants by letting agent fees and the impact this has on the ability of tenants to secure and maintain tenancies, and
(b) the steps that the government intends to take to prohibit fees that cause detriment to tenants.’
Government amendment 23.
Jenny Willott
We know that consumers in the private rented sector are especially concerned about the fees charged by letting agents, particularly when they are unexpected or unreasonably high. There are calls for a ban on letting agents charging fees to tenants, but I am concerned, as we discussed on the previous debate on Report, that an outright ban would simply increase the pressure on rents. Making agents publish their fees is a better approach, giving consumers the information they want and supporting good letting agents. Such transparency would deter double charging and enable tenants and landlords to shop around, which would encourage agents to offer competitive fees.
The vast majority of letting agents provide a good service to tenants and landlords, but we are determined to tackle the minority of rogue agents who offer a poor service. Although good agents already make information about their fees and charges readily available, the new clause will introduce, for the first time, a financial penalty when an agent fails to display their fees. We are introducing legislation that will require all letting agents and property managers to belong to an approved redress scheme. That will give tenants an effective way to address complaints about fees, as well as, more generally, when the tenant is not happy with the agent’s performance.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to see the debate on the Consumer Rights Bill come back to the House because many Members on both sides of the House are concerned about the impact of what the Minister calls unreasonably high fees. In relation to the Government’s proposal and our entirely reasonable new clause, the challenge for us all is to understand quite what damage such fees do to the private rented sector and how we can address those fees to give us a fair market in private rented accommodation.
I welcome the fact that the Government have now understood the case that the Opposition have been making, which is that we cannot ignore—try though the Government have in previous debates—the 9 million people in the private rented sector in this country. In particular, we must understand the impact of agency fees on people’s ability to keep a roof over their head, so it is worth thinking what kind of fees we are talking about. The Minister did not go into much detail, but it is worth reminding Members in the Chamber about the fees.
On average, tenants are forced to pay letting agents about £355 every single time they move. Indeed, some mystery shopping in my constituency has found average fees of £450, and Shelter has identified the eye-watering figure of £700 in total agency fees. Shelter has certainly found that one in seven of those using an agency is charged more than £500 a time, meaning that people have to find £500 every single time they move. That is a considerable sum, before we even consider the deposit and the rent. Such fees are putting huge pressure on people in the private rented sector, particularly in relation to their ability to make ends meet. Shelter’s research shows that 27% of those who have used a letting agency in the past three years have had to borrow or use a loan to pay the fees, and that 17% have had to cut down their spending on basic essentials, such as food or heating, to be able to cover them.
For the first day on Report, we tabled an amendment to recognise that there is a fundamental conflict of interest for an agent to take money from both the tenant and the landlord for the same transaction, and therefore to ban the laying of fees on tenants. In doing so, we were learning from the experience in Scotland. The Minister said, as she has again today, that banning fees will not make it cheaper for tenants, who will just end up paying higher rents through up-front fees.
In responding to our new clause 30, I hope that the Minister will use this opportunity to tell us what she takes from the research done in Scotland, where such a provision was made in 2012, because the research shows that the reverse is true—that there is no evidence that banning agency fees leads to an increase in rents. Indeed, fewer than one in five letting agencies interviewed in Shelter’s research said that it had increased fees to landlords. In fact, taking away the conflict of interest has had no impact on the market, but has done everything to help on the cost of housing.
I note the comments by the Deputy Prime Minister, who has admitted that there is a problem with fees and has said that there is an issue about the length of tenancies. The Opposition have been making those arguments for some time. In relation to the Government new clauses, what is it about our arguments and the evidence—that taking away fees does not increase rents, but makes renting a home more affordable for people—that explains why the Government have not as yet fully come over to our side of the argument.
The Government new clauses include some admirable claims about transparency. We certainly support the idea that it is important for tenants to be aware of the fees that they might be charged. However, I have several questions about how the new clauses are drafted, because it is not clear how they will work in practice. I am sure that the Minister would argue that all her proposed new clauses must work in practice, not just in principle.
One new clause mentions that the description of a fee must be understandable, but will the Minister clarify quite what that means? Will she require agents to break fees down and, for example, to say whether they will charge for a credit check and for an inventory fee, as often happens? In my constituency, I have seen tenants charged a pet fee, so will there be a description of all the fees that might possibly be applied?
What does the Minister mean by “likely to be seen”? We have seen examples of agencies putting a list of their fees in the toilets of their offices for tenants to read. Under the Bill, would that be considered a place where such a list is likely to be seen? What redress would a tenant have if they had not had cause to use the facilities of a letting agency and had therefore not seen the information?
Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
I came across a case recently in which a tenancy was repeated. All that happened was that a copy of the original agreement was reprinted and sent off to be signed. There was all of about 30 pages of printing, which, even at the most expensive local high street printing outfit, would not amount to anywhere near the couple of hundred pounds that the agency was charging for that simple job.
Stella Creasy
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the kind of repeat fees we are seeing, which any legislation must address. More importantly—this relates to the proposals that we have made—I would wager that the landlord was also charged in that transaction for the same amount of photocopying. Fees are clearly being charged when a contract is repeated and that needs to be addressed.
New clause 24 talks about how a fee can be calculated if the amount is not yet known. Will the Minister set out what protection will be available to consumers if they miscalculate the amount based on the information that is provided? How clear does the information of the letting agency have to be?
All the issues that I have raised relate to enforcement. New clause 28 provides the power to impose a £5,000 penalty. It would be very interesting to hear what kind of enforcement process the Minister envisages. We talked in Committee about the cuts to trading standards—the Cinderella service that does not even have enough buttons at the moment to address the many issues the Government expect it to address under the consumer rights legislation.
The Minister talked in passing about the letting agent redress scheme. I must pay tribute to my noble Friend Baroness Hayter, who argued passionately for the redress scheme because of her experience of these issues. It is not clear to the Opposition quite what will happen. Will the Minister therefore set out what she thinks will happen if an agent does not display their fees clearly and what kind of enforcement action will be taken? She talked about issuing civil penalties. Will those penalties go to the tenant who has had to pay £1,300 for the photocopying to be repeated, but who was not told about that when they signed up to the letting agency?
All those questions speak to the fundamental challenge that we are dealing with, which is that information, although welcome, is not enough to deal with the fundamental problem of the impact that excessively high agency fees have on a person’s ability to rent a property. As we said in the previous debate on Report, it is a bit like telling someone who is tied to the train tracks what the timetable is for the trains. The fundamental issue that we have to deal with is the consequence of agents being able to charge tenants such fees.
That is why we tabled new clause 30. I hope that the Minister will recognise that it is an entirely reasonable response to the Government new clauses. New clause 30 would do two things. First, it would require the Government to produce a report on
“the consumer detriment caused to tenants by letting agent fees and the impact this has on the ability of tenants to secure and maintain tenancies”.
I am sure that everybody in the House would welcome such a report, because it would at least give some depth to the conversations that we have all been having about this issue. Secondly, it would commit the Government to taking action to
“prohibit fees that cause detriment to tenants.”
Surely, if fees are pushing people out of their homes and distorting the market in private rented accommodation, it is in the interests of all consumers and, indeed, landlords that we act.
I hope that the Minister will accept new clause 30 and commit the Government to truly tackling the issues in the private rented sector, including the impact of agency fees. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) is not here because he, too, has argued that banning agency fees would somehow lead to higher rents. I look forward to the Minister responding to all those tenants in Scotland who have not found the banning of fees to be a negative experience. What does she think we can learn from that experience?
If the Minister does not yet accept the case for banning fees outright, does she accept that there are fees that can be detrimental and that it is appropriate for the Government to intervene? Alternatively, is she simply saying that if a letting agency wants to charge somebody £700 a time to renew their tenancy, it is fine, as long as they have told them about it? I am sure that is not her intention and that she recognises that people do not shop around for a letting agency: they shop around for a property to try to keep a roof above their family’s heads. Because such costs cause detriment to consumers, they are unacceptable. If the Minister does not accept that they cause detriment, I hope that she will at least accept our amendment that would provide that the Government should carry out research on this issue and commit to action if detriment is proved. Nine million people are waiting on the Minister’s every move to see whether they can keep a roof above their heads, not just in 2014 but in 2015 and beyond. Should we win the next election, we will take action if the Government will not do so now.
Jenny Willott
The irony of the hon. Lady’s last sentence is astounding, given that the Government are legislating to tackle this issue, but the previous Labour Government did not. The issue has not suddenly arisen in the last three years, and the Government have committed to tackling the minority of rogue landlords, something that her party did not do.
We are taking action to ensure that tenants have proper redress and a fair deal. We recognise that there are real issues with a minority of rogue landlords who do not treat tenants fairly, and that is why we are taking action. Today, we are ensuring transparency and openness on fees so that landlords and tenants can shop around. The hon. Lady mentioned the experience in Scotland and the recent Shelter report on the impact of banning fees. However, concerns have been raised that the Shelter report ignores the widespread non-compliance with the ban in Scotland. I have seen an estimate that some 25% of firms are still charging admin fees for tenants who move in, and a higher proportion are still charging other fees during the tenancy.
As the hon. Lady said, those agents that are complying have got around the fact that they cannot charge fees to tenants by, for example, raising landlords’ fees, but that has had an impact on rents in certain areas. Landlords are not absorbing the increase in fees, but passing it on to tenants through the rent. For example, in Edinburgh, rents went up by more than 5% and in Aberdeen by more than 6%—significantly higher increases than in England and Wales. The evidence is that the introduction of the ban north of the border has had a significant negative impact on tenants.
Stella Creasy
Can the Minister clarify that she disputes what Shelter has said—that any increase in rent is not related to the banning of agency fees—or that she has her own research? She is telling a very different story from the evidence of the research conducted by Shelter in Scotland, and the House may be confused by what she is saying as a result.
Jenny Willott
I have made it clear that we have concerns about the Shelter report because, for example, it ignores the widespread non-compliance that I mentioned. The evidence on rents is that they have risen faster in Scotland than they have in England and Wales.
The hon. Lady raised some questions about how fees would need to be broken down and what evidence would need to be provided. The regulations will make that clear. For example, a general administration fee would need to be broken down to show exactly what it covered. That information will therefore be available to tenants. The hon. Lady also asked whether repeat fees would be covered, and I can confirm that the fees associated with property management would also be covered, so they would need to be provided and published.
The hon. Lady asked how the provisions would operate. The Bill provides a power, and we will consult on and publish secondary legislation to ensure that the provision is as tight as it can be. We will ensure that information is available to tenants and landlords so that they can make a judgment on the most appropriate agent for their business. The legislation will be enforced by local authorities as they are involved in the licensing of landlords and also have the local knowledge about the agencies in their area. They are in the best place to enforce it and to ensure it is operating in the best interests of tenants.
Finally, we have said that we will review it after a year of operation to see how it is working and to ensure that it has made a difference to tenants. We do not want rents to go up, as that would cause widespread problems for, as the hon. Lady says, the large number of people who rent in the private sector. We want to protect those tenants. We do not want their rents to go up; we want them instead to get a fair deal from agencies and to be able to see what the charges are. We want openness and proper redress in place to ensure they receive a fair deal.
Question put and agreed to.
New clause 24 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 25
Letting agents to which the duty applies
‘(1) In sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) “letting agent” means a person who engages in letting agency work (whether or not that person engages in other work).
(2) A person is not a letting agent for the purposes of sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) if the person engages in letting agency work in the course of that person’s employment under a contract of employment.
(3) A person is not a letting agent for the purposes of sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) if—
(a) the person is of a description specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State;
(b) the person engages in work of a description specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State.”—(Jenny Willott.)
This new Clause provides that the duty applies to a person who engages in letting agency work. Employees are exempt from the duty. The Secretary of State may make regulations exempting other persons or types of work.
New Clause 26
Fees to which the duty applies
‘(1) In sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) “relevant fees”, in relation to a letting agent, means the fees, charges or penalties (however expressed) payable to the agent by a landlord or tenant—
(a) in respect of letting agency work carried on by the agent,
(b) in respect of property management work carried on by the agent, or
(c) otherwise in connection with—
(i) an assured tenancy of a dwelling-house in England, or
(ii) a dwelling-house in England that is, has been or is proposed to be let under an assured tenancy.
(2) Subsection (1) does not apply to—
(a) the rent payable to a landlord under a tenancy,
(b) any fees, charges or penalties which the letting agent receives from a landlord under a tenancy on behalf of another person,
(c) a tenancy deposit within the meaning of section 212(8) of the Housing Act 2004, or
(d) any fees, charges or penalties of a description specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State.” —(Jenny Willott.)
This new Clause provides that the duty applies to fees payable in respect of letting agency work, property management work and other work done in connection with assured tenancies. The clause provides that certain payments are not fees for the purposes of the duty. The Secretary of State may make regulations to exempt other payments.
New Clause 27
Letting agency work and property management work
‘(1) In sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) “letting agency work” means things done by a person in the course of a business in response to instructions received from—
(a) a person (“a prospective landlord”) seeking to find another person wishing to rent a dwelling-house in England under an assured tenancy and, having found such a person, to grant such a tenancy, or
(b) a person (“a prospective tenant”) seeking to find a dwelling-house in England to rent under an assured tenancy and, having found such a dwelling-house, to obtain such a tenancy of it.
(2) But “letting agency work” does not include any of the following things when done by a person who does nothing else within subsection (1)—
(a) publishing advertisements or disseminating information;
(b) providing a means by which a prospective landlord or a prospective tenant can, in response to an advertisement or dissemination of information, make direct contact with a prospective tenant or a prospective landlord;
(c) providing a means by which a prospective landlord and a prospective tenant can communicate directly with each other.
(3) “Letting agency work” also does not include things done by a local authority.
(4) In sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) “property management work”, in relation to a letting agent, means things done by the agent in the course of a business in response to instructions received from another person where—
(a) that person wishes the agent to arrange services, repairs, maintenance, improvements or insurance in respect of, or to deal with any other aspect of the management of, premises in England on the person’s behalf, and
(b) the premises consist of a dwelling-house let under an assured tenancy.”—(Jenny Willott.)
This new Clause defines letting agency work and property management work. It provides that letting agency work does not include publishing advertisements, enabling landlords and tenants to communicate directly with one another or things done by a local authority.
New Clause 28
Enforcement of the duty
‘(1) The Secretary of State may by regulations—
(a) impose functions on a local authority in connection with the enforcement of the duty in section (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees);
(b) make provision for civil penalties to be imposed in respect of a breach of that duty.
(2) Regulations under subsection (1)(b) may provide for the amount of a civil penalty to be determined by the person imposing it, subject to subsection (3).
(3) The amount of a civil penalty that a person may impose by virtue of regulations under subsection (1)(b) may not exceed £5,000 for each breach of the duty in section (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees).
(4) The Secretary of State may by regulations amend the figure for the time being specified in subsection (3).
(5) Regulations under subsection (1)(b) must make provision about the procedure for imposing a civil penalty and, in particular, must require a person imposing a penalty to give the person on whom it is imposed a written notice stating—
(a) the amount of the penalty,
(b) the reasons for imposing it, and
(c) the date by which and manner in which it is to be paid.
(6) Regulations under subsection (1)(b)—
(a) may give a person on whom a civil penalty is imposed a right to request a review of the decision to impose the penalty, and
(b) must give such a person a right to appeal against the decision to the First-tier Tribunal.
(7) Regulations under subsection (1)(b) must, in particular, specify the grounds on which a person may appeal against a decision to impose a civil penalty, which must include the grounds—
(a) that the decision was based on an error of fact,
(b) that the decision was wrong in law, and
(c) that the decision was unreasonable (including that the amount of the penalty is unreasonable).
(8) Regulations under subsection (1)(b) may, in particular—
(a) specify the time within which a person must request a review of, or appeal against, a decision to impose a civil penalty;
(b) require a person to request a review before appealing;
(c) specify the grounds on which a person may request a review;
(d) make provision about the procedure for a review;
(e) make further provision about reviews and appeals (including provision as to the powers available on a review or appeal).
(9) Regulations under subsection (1)(b) may make provision about the recovery of a civil penalty, including—
(a) provision for the person by whom it is imposed to recover the penalty as a civil debt;
(b) provision for the penalty to be recoverable, on the order of a court, as if payable under a court order.
(10) Sums received by a local authority under regulations under this section may be used by the authority for the purposes of any of its functions.
(11) A local authority on whom functions are conferred by regulations under this section must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State about—
(a) compliance by letting agents with the duty in section (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees);
(b) the exercise of those functions.” —(Jenny Willott.)
This new Clause enables the Secretary of State to make regulations about enforcement of the duty. The penalty for non-compliance will be a civil penalty of up to £5,000. The regulations must provide for a right of appeal against the penalty to the First-tier Tribunal.
New Clause 29
Supplementary provisions
‘(1) In sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions)—
“assured tenancy” means a tenancy which is an assured tenancy for the purposes of the Housing Act 1988 except where—
(a) the landlord is a private registered provider of social housing, or
(b) the tenancy is a long lease;
“dwelling-house” may be a house or part of a house;
“landlord” includes a person who proposes to be a landlord under a tenancy and a person who has ceased to be a landlord under a tenancy because the tenancy has come to an end;
“long lease” means a lease which—
(c) is a long lease for the purposes of Chapter 1 of Part 1 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, or
(d) in the case of a shared ownership lease (within the meaning given by section 7(7) of that Act), would be a lease within paragraph (a) of this definition if the tenant’s total share (within the meaning given by that section) were 100%;
“tenant” includes a person who proposes to be a tenant under a tenancy and a person who has ceased to be a tenant under a tenancy because the tenancy has come to an end.
(2) In sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) “local authority” means—
(a) a county council in England,
(b) a district council,
(c) a London borough council,
(d) the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as local authority, or
(e) the Council of the Isles of Scilly.
(3) References in sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) to a tenancy include a proposed tenancy and a tenancy that has come to an end.
(4) References in sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) to anything which is payable, or which a person is liable to pay, to a letting agent include anything that the letting agent claims a person is liable to pay, regardless of whether the person is in fact liable to pay it.
(5) Regulations under sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) are to be made by statutory instrument.
(6) A statutory instrument containing (whether alone or with other provision)—
(a) the first regulations to be made under section (Enforcement of the duty)(1)(b), or
(b) regulations under section (Enforcement of the duty)(4),
is not to be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.
(7) A statutory instrument containing regulations under sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) other than one to which subsection (6) applies is subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.
(8) Regulations under sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions)—
(a) may make different provision for different purposes;
(b) may make provision generally or in relation to specific cases.
(9) Regulations under sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) may include incidental, supplementary, consequential, transitional, transitory or saving provision.”—(Jenny Willott.)
This new Clause provides definitions of the terms used in the new clauses and sets out the procedures for making regulations.
Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
New Clause 30
Letting Agents: Report
Within three months of Royal Assent of this Act, the Secretary of State shall prepare and publish a report, and lay a copy of the report before Parliament, on—
(a) the consumer detriment caused to tenants by letting agent fees and the impact this has on the ability of tenants to secure and maintain tenancies, and
(b) the steps that the government intends to take to prohibit fees that cause detriment to tenants.”—(Stella Creasy.)
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Stella Creasy
I beg to move amendment 1, page 51, line 9, at end insert—
“1A A term which requires a consumer to pay a charge for, or be liable for, an element of a good or service that another party has also been charged for in the course of the same transaction.”
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 2, page 51, line 15, at end insert—
“2A A term which relies upon any bill of sale, as defined in section 3 (Construction of Act) of the Bills of Sale Act (1878) Amendment Act 1882, to reduce the level of consumer protection in relation to contracts concerning consumer credit.”
Amendment 3, page 51, line 18, at end insert—
“3A A term that directly causes financial detriment to the consumer such that it can reasonably be seen to alter the capacity of the consumer to pay the costs of the contract, where the contract is for a financial service.”
Amendment 4, page 53, line 2, at end insert—
“20A A term which either—
(a) requires or encourages a consumer to contract third party services without informing them of their right to seek independent advice; or
(b) seeks to limit a consumer’s access to independent advice regarding third party contracts where there is a potential conflict of interest for the third party involved.”
Amendment 19, page 53, line 2, at the end insert—
“20A A term which has the object or effect of permitting a trader to block, restrict or otherwise hinder the access of a consumer to any lawful electronic communications network or electronic communications service on the basis of an unreasonable or unusual definition of ‘internet access’, ‘data’, ‘webaccess’ or similar word or phrase. Nothing in this prohibition shall affect filters for the purpose of child protection. Electronic communications network or electronic communication service shall have the same meaning as in the Communications Act 2003.”
Amendment (a) to amendment 19, after “trader”, insert
“engaged in the provision of fixed broadband internet access or mobile internet services.”
Stella Creasy
I shall speak to all the amendments in the group, which are about unfair contract terms. Unfairness is such a central concept to British values, I will wager, that it provides an apt discussion point for this week alone. All the amendments deal with where a market is stacked against one party and, we would argue, both miss out as a result. When service providers exploit a lack of information or collude to distort behaviour, it is not just the public who are badly treated: competition is stifled, creativity and innovation are weakened and, above all, the consumer is ripped off. The amendments thus reflect some of the problems affecting markets that we see in Britain and deal with what more could be done to make a stronger consumer rights framework that would give the public the tools to be able to prevent rather than have to deal with the problems that come from these distorted behaviours. There are four different issues, but we consider them all to be part of the conflicts of interest that cause detriment to the consumer.
Amendment 1 refers to what we call “double charging”, and particularly the behaviour of estate agents. We all know that buying a house is one of the biggest costs any of us will face in our lifetime. An English man or woman’s home is their castle, but it is often a very expensive one. The cost of buying a house has gone up so substantially in my constituency that it is now 30% more than it was a year ago—a source of extreme concern for many. Indeed, we know that the average home is worth eight times the average wage and that it can take 20 years for a family to save for a deposit. A million homes were bought in the UK last year, and prices have risen across the country by 8%, even if they have not risen as much as in some of our London areas. That is why the Governor of the Bank of England has warned that the biggest risk to the economy stems from the fact that people are getting mortgages—sometimes four or more times their salaries—that they cannot sustain. Housing is indeed a bubble underpinning our economy and leaving it in an incredibly precarious position.
The Government’s housing Bill will provide 15,000 houses, but people in my constituency know that we need to double that and then some, which is why Labour are proposing to build 200,000 houses, getting us closer to where we need to get to in order to deal with the pressures that people are experiencing. This amendment speaks, too, to some of the other charges that people face when buying a property. We may disagree about how many houses need to be built, but I am sure we would all want the housing property market to be as fair and open as possible so that it does not involve more expenses that mean people needing an even higher mortgage or an even higher level of debt—particularly in the form of the personal loans that people are taking out to pay the sort of fees necessary when they start ownership of a new property.
The amendment would deal with what the property ombudsman has called an “emerging commercial practice”—one that means that people such as estate agents, who benefit from the increase in demand for housing by exploiting the pressure on the country’s housing supply, reap the benefits. The practice involves a contract that we believe is ripping off consumers—both buyers and sellers—and therefore needs addressing. It is called “double charging” if the estate agent applies a fee to both the buyer and the seller of a property on the same transaction.
Let me explain the problem for the benefit of Members who have not yet observed the practice in their constituencies. It often results from the process of “sale by informal tender”. House owners are asked to accept sealed bids for their properties. Increasingly, estate agents are then charging successful bidders a “finder’s fee”, which, in some cases, is between 2% and 2.5% of the property fee plus VAT. According to the Consumers Association, an estate agent’s commission should normally be between 1% and 2%. Moreover, sellers themselves are paying to market their properties. Buyers must find the cost of the additional fee in order to bid.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
Is not the ability to charge two parties to a potential transaction nothing less than a direct conflict of interests? It should not be possible to owe a duty to a buyer and a seller in equal measure. An agent has one client, and it must remain that way.
Stella Creasy
My hon. Friend is entirely right. Let me give an example of the way in which this conflict of interests operates in practice. The example was given to us by a young first-time buyer who, because of her restricted ability to buy a property in the area where she wanted to live, accepted that she would have to take part in a “sale by tender” arrangement, and that she would have to pay an introductory fee of 2.5% of the sale price of the property. She made an offer of £258,000 for a house that was well within the guide price, and therefore committed herself to paying about £6,000 in fees to the estate agent. Her offer was accepted as the highest offer in the sealed-bid process. She then contacted us to say that her offer had not been accepted by the seller, and the agent was putting pressure on her to up her offer to £262,000. If she did not do so, the property would be put back on the market for another “sale by tender” exercise, because the seller wanted more. That was despite the fact that she was the one who had committed herself to paying the fee that the estate agent wanted to charge.
Some Members may think that that is an indication of the overheated London housing market, and the fact that house prices in my constituency have risen by 30% reflects that overheating. However, we are hearing about examples of double charging throughout the country. In the north-west, for instance, a gentleman who tried to buy a house for £45,000 was told that, as well as finding the £45,000 and the fee for the conveyancing, he would have to find £2,880 in order to pay the introductory fee to the estate agent. In the south-west, an estate agent wanted an introductory fee of nearly £6,000 plus VAT from someone who wanted to buy a house for £296,000. I must stress that the sellers of the properties, who do not benefit from the additional £6,000, are also paying a fee for the service.
The Minister had admitted that double charging is a potentially worrying emerging trend which seems to be on the increase, but at every stage in the Bill when we have sought to outlaw this conflict of interests, the Government have voted against our attempts, although the property ombudsman has agreed that the new approach to selling properties
“can also potentially disadvantage the seller. He”—
or she—
“will no doubt have to agree to accept only prospective buyers that follow the agent’s agreement with those prospective buyers and if a prospective buyer declines to submit to paying the fee, he”—
or she—
“will be out of the picture and the seller will have lost an opportunity to sell his house.”
That is what the property ombudsman has told us about the practice.
Robert Flello
No doubt the Minister will say that this is an issue of the market, that other estate agents will not do this, and that it will all come out in the wash. The point is, however, that someone who goes out and looks for a house and then finds the one that he wants cannot choose the agent who is dealing with the property. That is why it is so crucial for us to sort this out now, rather than waiting until every single estate agent does the same, as though the market will somehow adjust itself.
Stella Creasy
My hon. Friend has raised an important point. I admit that I have been deeply concerned about campaigning on this issue and for our proposals, because I think that it is a bit like telling turkeys how to avoid Christmas. The more we make it clear to estate agents that the Government are currently letting them get away with this behaviour, the more they will engage in it. Indeed, I am sad to report that since February, when we began expressing concern about double charging, an increasing number of estate agent chains throughout the country have been using “sale by tender” processes involving the introductory fee. I must emphasise that we are objecting not to sale by tender per se, but to the fact that people are being charged a fee to be introduced to a property. That is what is causing such concern.
When I first observed that Douglas Allen in Walthamstow was engaging in the practice, I thought that perhaps we had just one rogue estate agent. I hoped that when Phil and Kirstie came to Walthamstow recently to film “Location, Location, Location”, they would take a dim view of it, but I am sorry to say that we are now hearing of cases at Your Move, Ellis and Co. and Reeds Rains. A number of estate agents are picking up the idea that applying such fees is acceptable behaviour, and the damage that that is doing to the interests of both sellers and buyers is growing.
There is a question for us here. We can see that the practice is distorting the housing market. If we want a free and fair market, these conflicts of interests must be resolved, so that sellers can be confident that buyers are always acting in their interests, and buyers can be confident that when they participate in a bid such as this, it is taken seriously. Should we act, or should we wait until the damage to consumers’ interests becomes worse? We tabled amendment 1 in order to make charging two parties a fee to the same transaction a term in a contract that can be challenged on the basis that it is unfair. We believe—as does the property ombudsman—that such charges are indeed unfair, and should be open to challenge.
This comes at a time when there is widespread concern about the estate agent industry, full stop. I accept that it may be another “British value” to complain about estate agents, just as people complain about traffic wardens and, indeed, politicians. We all recognise that we are not immune to that moment in the pub on a Friday night. However, we know that there are serious concerns because of the nature of the housing market. I have been contacted by people who have been told by estate agents that they cannot have access to the lists of housing for sale unless they commit themselves to taking out a mortgage through them, or using their financial advisers or lawyers. That is another clear conflict of interests for the seller.
We need a tough regulatory regime to ensure that we have a fair housing market in England and Wales. We continue to be concerned about the fact that the Government have delegated the monitoring of all estate agents in England and Wales to Powys county council’s trading standards body. A Welsh rural council has been charged with the task of examining the behaviour of nearly half a million estate agents. It should be taking account of the blatant and rampant exploitation of the demand for housing that these charges represent, but when people affected by them have contacted Powys, they have been met with indifference about whether it should be dealing with the issue. The council took over only in April—this may be a new moment—but it is clear that we need to take stronger action before the situation gets out of control.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is highlighting the way in which the Government have contracted out different aspects of trading standards to various local authorities. Has she looked into the number of houses that have been for sale in Powys, and considered how experience in Powys can possibly inform an intelligent approach to the London housing market, which is totally different?
Stella Creasy
I think that there is genuine concern about whether Powys county council is equipped for the task. This is not necessarily just about its trading standards: after all, this is a council that has gone through three cabinets in as many months, and has had problems with the setting of its budget. Some have suggested that it needs to put its own house in order before putting our house sales in order. Certainly, double charging is a great example of the sort of problem that we would expect an effective regulator to be able to deal with. There is a clear conflict of interests. The fees being charged are clearly causing detriment to consumers.
I welcome the fact that the Minister has met the property ombudsman since we raised this issue with her, but I note that as yet there is no evidence of any progress in resolving this matter. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) pointed out, the number of agents using double charging in contracts is escalating. Many of my constituents who have been hit by these contracts have asked whether their lawyers can challenge them. I ask the Minister to accept this amendment and give consumers the opportunity to challenge these sorts of contracts, and to give them the legal protection that enables them to say, “This is fundamentally unfair and it infringes my rights”, and, indeed, to give sellers the opportunity to challenge them. Under these contracts, buyers and sellers are told that they cannot communicate with each other; otherwise, the offer that has been made is void. A seller may therefore be unaware of an offer that somebody wishes to make for their property, and that has to be cut back because the buyer must also include the fee. I was surprised to hear from the estate agents in Walthamstow that they always achieve 102% of the asking price of their properties, and 2% was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the fee they were charging people to buy their houses. “Who would have thunk it”—who would have thought that there would be such a close correlation?
I hope the Minister will accept that there is a genuine issue here that needs to be dealt with, and the sooner, the better. We know the pressures on our housing market are not going to go away any time soon, but although we might argue about the numbers of houses that need to be built, we can surely all agree that this is a conflict of interests that needs to be addressed. If, again, the Minister will not accept this amendment and this course of action, I hope she will set out how she will take action on this issue herself, so house buyers across the country do not have to find the extra thousands of pounds just to pay the nice fat fee for the agent.
The other amendments we have tabled in this group also address challenges we believe are creating problems in our economy, in particular through these conflicts of interest. Amendments 2, 3 and 4 relate to conflicts of interest around services, in particular debt management and log book loans. The Minister will know of the Opposition’s concern about the personal debt bubble that underpins much of our economy, and in particular the number of people who are over-indebted. We know from the Money Advice Service that 9 million people in our country are already over-indebted, and half of these families live on incomes of under £20,000. This fragile situation has arisen despite our having had for more than five years the lowest interest rates in 300 years. It is likely that interest rates will start to rise, and personal debt may well rise at the same time—after all, wages are still not keeping pace with prices—so it is all the more important that people can access credit, debt advice and debt management services in an affordable fashion.
Amendment 2 deals with the problems caused by log book loans. Members who served on the Committee will be familiar with the Opposition’s determination to reform this outdated and outmoded form of credit. There are widespread problems: more than 1,000 consumers complained about these loans to the Office of Fair Trading, and they were complaining about losses of over £1.5 million. Many of them come from the fact that these loans are based on bill of sale agreements, a Victorian type of contract that does not include modern consumer protection. Again, the Government have repeatedly voted against our proposals to reform bill of sale agreements and therefore end this outdated and quirky practice that is causing so much detriment. The Minister stated that there may well be an argument for updating the legislation, but that this is not the Bill to do it in. Those of us who saw from the title of the Bill that it was about consumer rights and protecting consumer interests were, of course, rather concerned by that, but let me point her to the concerns of the Financial Conduct Authority and Citizens Advice, which also want to see bill of sale agreements reformed.
Christopher Woolard, director of policy, risk and research at the FCA, states:
“People who use logbook loans are often in difficult circumstances with few other borrowing options…Logbook lenders have borrowers over a barrel. People don’t realise their car can be seized if they fall behind in repayments, with lenders often forcing borrowers to pay large amounts to keep their vehicle when they can’t afford to.”
Gillian Guy, chief executive of Citizens Advice, argues:
“The logbook industry is still in the dark ages and has been getting away with lawless practices.”
Its own analysis of log book loan cases found that 14% had experienced harsh debt collection practices, almost a third were not treated fairly or appropriately by the lender, and nearly 20% had not understood the terms of the loan clearly.
It is inexcusable to leave this outmoded form of credit arrangement available for lenders to use, and for them to exploit people in this way, particularly as we know that increasing numbers of people are going to need consumer credit in the years ahead because of the debts they have. We cannot understand why the Minister will not make progress on this issue. I believe she does understand that log book loans need to be reformed and that the case we are making—that bill of sale agreements have no place in a modern consumer protection landscape—so why does she feel that that should not be part of this Bill? We urge her to look very closely at our amendment, which would simply bring bill of sale agreements under modern consumer protection laws and, again, give consumers the right to challenge any agreement that does not uphold those laws. Indeed, it would be a sad indictment of all the work she has done on the other parts of the Bill and all the consumer protection laws in them if she were to say there would be a get-out clause in other respects.
Andy McDonald
Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Ministry of Defence has approved a particular policy under the banner of PAX that prescribes a single point of reference for legal advice and does not give members of our armed forces freedom of choice in that respect? Is it not reprehensible that we are in that situation?
Stella Creasy
My hon. Friend has just illustrated why I believe him to be the expert on this issue. I hope that he will contribute to the debate to explain why this concern about independent advice is so important. He is right about upholding the need for independent advice.
I am conscious that other Members wish to speak in this debate, so let me say a little about net neutrality, and our amendment to amendment 19. I recognise that this is a new and evolving debate. Our discussions have ranged from the Victorian bill of sale to the contemporary net neutrality, both of which reflect this stress over conflicts of interest. For those Members of this House who have not yet had the chance to watch the viral videos about net neutrality, let me explain the concern. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers and Governments should treat all data on the internet equally. They should not discriminate or charge by user, content, site, platform, or application. In layman’s terms that means that, whether we are looking at iPlayer, Sky on the Go or Netflix, there would be equal access to services. There would be no speed differential in accessing them.
In America, some broadband and internet providers have been exploring the idea of charging companies different rates for providing their services. That means that they could offer access to some websites at a faster rate than others, and therefore change the way in which consumers access them. The fear is that that would create a two-tier internet, because it will limit the number of sites that consumers can access with ease, and the number of companies that can access and operate services equally. In particular, if large companies were to use their financial muscle, or their internet provision, to restrict access to their competitors or to new entrants to the market, it could limit creativity and innovation in the provision of services. An internet without net neutrality moves huge market power to those who are the gatekeepers to our online services. It is little wonder that 100 companies, including Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon, have expressed concern about this issue. Indeed, “father of the internet” Tim Berners-Lee, who was rather unfairly described as a web developer recently, has argued that there is a real concern. He says:
“Unless we have an open, neutral internet we can rely on without worrying about what’s happening at the back door, we can’t have open government, good democracy, good healthcare, connected communities and diversity of culture. It’s not naive to think we can have that, but it is naive to think we can just sit back and get it.”
We welcome the amendment that has been tabled by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), but we are concerned that the way in which it has been drafted may inadvertently imply that those sites that are providing pay-per-view services, such as Netflix, would be required also to provide access to some of their competitors, and I am sure that that was not what he intended. We have tabled a clarifying amendment to make it clear that we are talking about those services that provide access to the internet, rather than content.
It would be useful to hear from the Minister about what discussions she has had with her colleagues on the issue of net neutrality and about what action she is taking to ensure that consumers’ interests in the operation of net architecture are being upheld so that we do not have the concerns and challenges experienced by America. In particular, does she feel that existing protocols are strong enough to protect the interests of consumers and avoid competition issues between content providers, and has she done an assessment of the impact on consumers in the UK of a possible two-tier internet?
We have here some very different but interlinked issues around conflicts of interest, freedom of markets and consumer interest, and an effective piece of consumer rights legislation should provide consumers with the tools with which they can mount a challenge to any of them. We hope the Minister will accept our amendments in the spirit in which they are intended, which is about applying clarity in what is meant to the list of unfair contract terms that would give consumers the right to challenge issues in court. I therefore hope that the House will support them accordingly.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I seek to restrict myself to speaking to amendment 19, which I tabled. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) for what she said and for her general support for the thrust of my amendment. In the spirit of that cross-party co-operation, I should also make it clear that I am perfectly happy to support her amendment to my amendment. It is not my intention to press my amendment to a Division, but if the hon. Lady decides to press hers, I will of course support her, because her amendment does exactly what I intended my own to do. I hope that it will not come to that, because I hope that the Minister will make it clear that the Government accept there is an issue, understand it and say that they will do something to resolve it. If that is the case, I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw her amendment, but we should wait to hear what the Minister has to say before we make any decisions along those lines.
Over the past 30 years, competition in the telecommunications industry has gone from a monopoly, through a duopoly to what is widely regarded now as one of the greatest success stories of privatisation, with the UK having one of the most vibrant and competitive markets in the world.
Additionally, the internet has become an essential part of our national infrastructure, transforming the way we work, play, gather information, communicate and trade. The internet provides the underlying infrastructure for many thousands of businesses and has slashed the cost of global communication.
In 2010, the Government, through the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), said that they were supportive of open internet, which I hope is still the case. The reality is that some major fixed-line internet service providers and mobile network operators have not participated with the major industry-level agreement towards meeting that objective.
The success of the internet is based on global interoperability—the ability for anyone to interact with any legal internet site anywhere in the world. That has created new opportunities, businesses and jobs, while also reducing costs for consumers. I hope that both sides of the House will agree that an open internet is vital for the future economic, social and political health of our nation. New services are coming online at an incredible rate, and it is important that this vibrant sector is able to develop as society becomes more mobile and people’s habits change.
It is vital that organisations controlling access to the internet do not abuse their position by discriminating against legal services, data, traffic and content for commercial or political purposes, and from a protectionist perspective. Although telecommunications providers should be allowed to use certain traffic management techniques to manage the integrity of their network, it should not be at the detriment of rival services purely for anti-competitive reasons.
Over the past year, I have been made aware of increasing evidence that certain internet service providers are undertaking various marketing and operational practices that are distorting a competitive market, creating consumer harm, hurting a number of specific internet industries and stifling innovation. The activity includes blocking internet services that compete with their own on purely commercial grounds; not communicating to customers clearly at the point of sale that they offer only restricted access to the internet; and refusing to participate in the Government-supported pan-industry code of practice, which seeks to uphold open internet principles and which has been signed by some of the largest players, including BT, O2, Sky and 3. I believe that that verges on mis-selling. The lack of transparency and clarity that has persisted in the market has allowed consumers to be deceived by the practice of selling internet access when in fact significant parts of the internet cannot be accessed under the terms and conditions of some price plans.
It seems like the voluntary ways of ensuring greater transparency in providing internet and telephony services have failed. There have been clear examples where certain operators, particularly in the mobile sectors, have misled their consumers by claiming to offer internet access, or UK internet, when some legal internet services are not available within the package that has been provided. In other cases, the small print—when I say small print I mean it, as one would need binoculars to see some of the terms and conditions—outlines extra costs that the consumer would face if they dared to use the internet they have paid for to access services that compete with their provider’s own.
The fact that any operator is able to offer a product advertised with “internet access” and only have to clarify this policy in the small print is unacceptable. Unknowing customers who use popular services such as Skype, WhatsApps or Viber could see their service suspended but continue to be held responsible for paying their bills. That lack of transparency and clarity on these issues is totally unfair to these unknowing customers, and it continues, as consumers are in many cases unable to leverage competitive pressure because it is difficult to understand whether or not certain traffic types are allowed, blocked or just charged additionally. Ofcom’s consumer guide on internet traffic management from 2013 outlined the fact that consumers were not aware about traffic management practices undertaken by internet service providers and whether such practices would affect specific internet services that they used. How can consumers make an effective and informed choice if they are not fully aware of the practices of their internet service provider or mobile provider, and the potential of those practices to inhibit certain services?
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
The record will show that the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) and I do not agree on many issues, but on this one I agree with him completely and utterly. He and I are supporters of the Internet Telephony Service Providers Association, which has had many concerns about abuses in this area. Does he agree that we are talking not just about transparency, but about setting a fundamental rule that such bias simply cannot be allowed? Does he agree that we should support net neutrality throughout and not simply tell people when it is being broken?
Philip Davies
It is a red-letter day for me when the hon. Members for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and for Walthamstow agree with me. I could not have envisaged such cross-party support, and if the Minister is able to withstand that I will be disappointed. We have a political consensus, of which I am usually very suspicious. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the principle of net neutrality is the most important point. It is not simply a question of transparency; transparency is the minimum that people can expect. With my amendment, I am trying to ensure that we have net neutrality and truly open access to the internet, and to put an end to protectionist and restrictive practices that are against consumers’ interests.
I am referring to services including voice over IP, which is similar to Skype. Voice over IP allows consumers significantly to reduce their phone bills by using voice over the internet, instead of their mobile provider’s phone minutes and messaging services that use mobile data rather than text. It is especially important for consumers that that market works efficiently given Ofcom’s research finding that a quarter of the UK’s poorest households are mobile-only and are wholly beholden to mobile operators’ tariffs to enable them to access crucial services.
It seems perfectly reasonable to me that if a consumer signs a mobile phone contract that offers internet access, he or she should be entitled to use any legal internet service that they deem fit, not just the parts of the internet that suit their mobile phone company. I hope that hon. Members understand that customers who buy a mobile phone package rarely have the time or inclination to read through all the minutiae in the small print, even if they have the foresight to imagine all the services that they might want to use over the two-year life of their contract. Surely, customers have the right to expect that an internet service will do what it says on the tin. Consumers should, therefore, be able to rely on statutory consumer protection regulations to protect them from such abusive practices.
Given the rapid evolution of the internet, I do not think that it would be wise for Parliament to attempt to define everything that the internet is and does for the future, but I am convinced that the current unfettered ability of telecommunications providers, whether they be internet service providers or mobile operators, to decide what customers can and cannot access is harmful to consumers and to the wider economy. As I have outlined, those practices not only create significant consumer harm but stifle competition—for example, in the market for non-geographic and international calls—which leads to exorbitant prices and discourages new entrants to the market.
There is also concern surrounding future innovation and economic growth. If innovators have no certainty that networks will carry their services, particularly if they rival products offered by the networks, companies will be less likely to invest in new services because the return on investment will be unpredictable. How can a provider who wants to build a mobile app have any certainty that the mobile network operator will not block his rival service and/or make it extremely opaque at the point of sale whether consumers can actually access those services? Such things should be of great concern to us, because they will stifle growth in a sector that is incredibly important to the future prosperity of the country.
When I asked representatives from Ofcom about the matter during a Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport hearing last summer, there was an acceptance that some undesirable blocking was being undertaken by certain mobile operators around specific internet services, and that more needed to be done to ensure that telecommunications providers were transparent and up front with their customers. Ed Richards, the Ofcom chief executive, outlined the industry voluntary code on the transparency of information given to consumers about traffic management practices. I have grave concerns about whether the information that providers are supplying to their customers is helping in any way, shape or form. Ofcom’s research in September 2013 demonstrated that consumers were not aware about traffic management practices when making their purchasing decisions.
Together with the internet code around transparency, the industry has created a voluntary self-regulatory code on maintaining the open internet. I believe that the code is a good one, and it will be an effective tool for protecting consumers and businesses. The significant problem is that some major providers are yet to sign up, nearly two years after the launch of the initiative. Given that there is no obligation on UK telecommunication providers in that area, those providers that are transparent and allow access to services could easily change their minds tomorrow and not be subject to any action.
Therefore, I think it is time that the House recognised that unless more action is taken, certain industry players will continue to use clever marketing tactics and rely on the lack of consumer understanding to mislead their customers, distort the market and damage new and innovative internet services that threaten their own products. That is why I have proposed amendment 19, which would protect consumers from the practices that I have described. The amendment would ensure that anyone selling internet access, or using any similar term, will not be able to rely on any unreasonable or unusual definition of that term to restrict their customers’ access to legal parts of the internet.
I have made it clear, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Walthamstow for doing the same, that I do not seek in any way to limit the ability of internet service providers to block access to sites for the purposes of child protection. Nor would my amendment prevent internet service providers from offering age-related content blocks where customers request them. I certainly would not want to do anything to change that. That is why I would be happy to support the hon. Lady’s amendment if she seeks to divide the House.
Amendment 19 would give customers confidence that when they sign a two-year contract that offers internet access, they will get full internet access and will not be left with a contract that they cannot get out of that does not do what they thought it would when they signed up to it. It is essential to preserve and protect consumer access to the legal internet. We cannot allow internet service providers to decide for themselves, based on their own commercial interests, what customers can and cannot access while still marketing their service as internet access.
The protection offered by amendment 19 would benefit all consumers, but it would also spur innovation, growth and job creation in a sector that is vital for the future prosperity of the country. Therefore, I urge hon. Members to support my amendment or the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow. I hope that we will not have to press the matter to a Division, because I hope that the Minister will understand the strength of the case that we have made and reaffirm that the Government will deliver on open internet access. If she is not prepared to do that, I hope that the hon. Member for Walthamstow will press her amendment to a vote, which I would support.
Helen Goodman
I would like to congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your recent damehood. I know that a knighthood is a real thing, but I am not sure whether a damehood is a thing. However, it is a very well deserved recognition of your excellent service to the House over many years, and I am sure that all hon. Members were delighted to hear the news.
This is a marvellous occasion for another reason. It is wonderful to be in the Chamber in agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and the hon. Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Cambridge (Dr Huppert). That is a fantastic coalition, and it shows what a beacon of free speech the House of Commons is, because that principle has motivated everybody to get involved in the debate. I believe that the principle of net neutrality is the principle of free speech in the modern world. My hon. Friend set out a clear and cogent case for amendment (a) to amendment 19, and the hon. Member for Shipley proposed amendment 19 comprehensively. I shadow the Minister with responsibility for communications and creative industries, the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), and I hope that the Minister at the Dispatch Box, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, has had some conversations with him since, in many ways, this issue falls into his bailiwick.
Let me elaborate a tiny bit on what my hon. Friend said. Net neutrality is absolutely central to the operation of the internet. The principle that there should be no discrimination between services when providing internet access is fundamental to an open net. At the moment in this country we have no legislation, but we have a voluntary industry code of practice for internet and mobile service providers. However, the problem is that as it is voluntary the companies do not have to abide by it. European Commissioner Neelie Kroes has been working on proposals for net neutrality across the European Union as part of the single telecoms package. I was disappointed that the hon. Member for Shipley did not highlight that excellent proposal from the European Union, but we do not need to wait for the European Union to have this debate or to ask the Government what they are doing, because the issue is a central one.
The possibility of amending the Bill was brought to my attention by ITSPA, the Internet Telephony Services Providers Association, which is concerned that some internet providers have an interest in refusing to carry voice-over IP services because they have a competing product. Having discussed the question with Ofcom, I am not clear whether that is happening. If it is, it should not be, and if it is not, there is a risk that it might happen, and we in this House need to address that.
The point made by the hon. Gentleman about the lack of transparency and consumer awareness is extremely concerning. There is a problem when people buy a piece of kit or take out a contract with one ISP or mobile phone provider if, in doing so, they restrict their access to some material and if there is no description or warning of that. That is clearly a limitation of their access to information on a free net.
Ofcom is working to improve the effectiveness of the code of practice on traffic management transparency. My view is that transparency is not enough and that we need rules of the game that go beyond it. I am not convinced that even if the information was on a strapline across the packaging when people bought a piece of kit or signed a mobile contract they would fully realise what it meant. This is too important to leave simply to transparency, which is why I have put my name to amendment 19 and why I support these changes.
The Minister needs to tell the House what the Government are doing proactively to preserve net neutrality. It is not enough to take a reactive stance, as the Government are on many communications issues. The Communications Act 2003 is a very good Act, but it is getting out of date and this is one example of that. That is why we were particularly concerned to have this debate in the House today so that we could find out what Ministers are doing.
It is essential that we preserve free speech on the internet and net neutrality is part of that. There is a small exception in amendment 19 to enable us to continue with child protection—again, we have cross-party agreement on the importance of child protection—but we are all agreed that we want net neutrality, with that single exception, to be the modern form of free speech.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
I add my congratulations to those of my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and those that I am sure you have received from Members across the House, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I want to concentrate on amendments 2 and 3. I think that there is cross-party agreement that logbook loans are an anachronism. If the Government do not remedy that anachronism, it will be a missed opportunity. To leave the Law Commission time to go through the outdated legislation would take too long for the vulnerable consumers who are affected. I know that because I have been a member of the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills and in 2010 we repealed something to do with the dissolution of the monasteries.
We cannot wait that long for the bill of sale provision to come off the statute book. It was never intended to apply to loans on vehicles such as cars and it should be abolished now. If it is not abolished, consumers need to be able to challenge it in court. I am sure that they will be supported in that by the advice agencies that brought the attention of the House and the country to the anachronism that is the bill of sale legislation.
The Financial Conduct Authority said only two weeks ago that such loans are high risk. It is considering the issue already, but while it is doing so people are taking out the loans either because they are not aware of the pitfalls or because they are their last or only resort. They put their only asset, their vehicle, on the line, pay the companies, end up owing money and still have no vehicle. They are in a worse position than if they had not taken out the loan in the first place.
I also want to mention those whom we might call the innocent consumers—those who buy a vehicle that is subject to a bill of sale. It does not show up on the HPI register, as hire purchase does, and the first they know about it is when somebody comes round to repossess the car because they are not its legal owners. They can never be its legal owners while there is a bill of sale on it and they are left with no vehicle and no money. It is about time that we considered the bill of sale legislation. A law that was passed in the 1870s should not apply to today’s consumer market and should be allowed to be challenged in the courts if not repealed immediately.
I have long campaigned on debt management companies. It has always seemed particularly perverse to me that people in debt should pay to get out of it. There are usually two reasons given by the companies for why people turn to them. The first is the lack of knowledge about the availability of free advice. Frankly, I am not surprised. I regularly get texts telling me that there is new Government legislation, that my debts can be written off and that I am entitled to payment protection insurance compensation and various other things, and debt management companies are one of the worst offenders. The Information Commissioner needs more powers to stop that misleading advertising.
There is also a lack of provision for advice. I thank the Minister for her reply to my question on that point, which said that the Money Advice Service sets its own budget. Yes, it does, but as the Government rejected new clause 6, which would have meant the increased levy automatically going towards increasing the amount of debt advice, I hope that MAS will listen to the strength of feeling on both sides of the House and increase its budget to ensure that the introduction of payday lenders into the levy will increase the total amount raised and that it will not simply keep it at the same level with the other people paying less.
There needs to be more funding for free debt advice. As we know, some 2.5 million people are in fee-charging debt management plans. That is 2.5 million people who, if those plans were not available, would need free debt advice. There is obviously a need for that funding. If the interest rate were to rise by only 0.5%, which is quite likely, an extra half a million people would be pushed over the edge from just about coping. It is essential that the Money Advice Service looks at the trends and asks for an increased budget.
There is also a risk that those companies may go out of business and while doing so will not pay their creditors. A company in Manchester in my area of the north-west went out of business two weeks ago. About 2,500 people who had a plan with it were left with no money. People had been paying into that company, assuming that it was going to creditors, but the company has gone bankrupt. It is time that we challenge these debt management companies. They push people further into debt and can charge 50% of what somebody owes. Therefore, if someone owes £18,000, that is another £9,000 on the debt for something that an organisation such as StepChange or a citizens advice bureau can do just as competently for free. Indeed, in many ways they will do it better because such organisations have links with other companies and, for example, will know all the remedies for insolvency. They will put forward the remedy that is best for the consumer, not best for the company. To allow debt management companies to continue without being challenged on pushing people further into debt should not be allowable, and I fervently support the amendment to clause 3.
Jenny Willott
May I add my congratulations to you, Madam Deputy Speaker? You will get bored with it soon, but at the moment I am sure it is probably still quite a novel surprise.
I share the concerns of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) about the practice of double charging by estate agents. That issue has been raised in the House a number of times and in Committee. Under existing legislation—in particular consumer protection regulations and the unfair contract terms law—as well as their own industry codes, estate agents must already make fees and charges clear for consumers. I believe that there are risks in rushing into further legislative measures and applying them prematurely, which is why a better way of addressing the issue is through estate agent redress schemes.
As the hon. Member for Walthamstow mentioned, on 7 May I met the property ombudsman and ombudsman services: property, to draw their attention to my concerns on this issue, and those raised by hon. Members in Committee and the House. Both redress schemes have agreed to monitor any complaints they receive, and more is being done. The property ombudsman has committed to producing new guidance that will put in place strict controls on the practice of charging the buyer a fee, or charges being placed on both buyer and seller, and the potential for conflicts of interest. That guidance will ensure that agents recognise their obligations under the ombudsman’s code of practice for transparency, disclosure and avoidance of conflicts of interest. If the guidance is not complied with, agents will be in breach of that code.
Estate agents must belong to an ombudsman service, and ombudsmen have strong powers to tackle bad behaviour by estate agents. For example, they can give a financial award to the complainant or enforce obligations on the estate agent. As a last resort, estate agents can be struck off a redress scheme. Because it is a requirement on estate agents to belong to a redress scheme, if they have been struck off, they are effectively out of business and cannot continue to operate. If they continue to operate under those circumstances, it is a criminal offence.
Andy McDonald
Does the Minister accept that instead of codes of practice and all that paraphernalia going round the houses, it is fundamentally a breach of the fiduciary duty that an estate agent owes to one client if they are in discussions with another and charging a fee for the same transaction? The interests are not united; they are completely and utterly divergent. Would it not be better to say simply, “You cannot charge two contracting parties a fee for the same service”?
Jenny Willott
As I said, I met both ombudsmen in May and discussed the best way forward. As a result, they are looking at the conflict of interest, which I think is key to this issue, and at how guidance can be tightened so that the responsibility estate agents have to the buyer and seller is made clear.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Can the Minister tell the House the size of some of those awards and how often they are handed out?
Jenny Willott
No I cannot, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman to give him more information on that.
The ombudsman has committed to calling an early meeting of all interested parties to discuss the need for stricter controls, and I assure hon. Members that new guidance is being worked up for the industry as a matter of priority. The hon. Member for Walthamstow raised concerns about estate agents discriminating against buyers who will not take services from them—for example, mortgages and so on. Discriminating against buyers for refusing services from an estate agent is already banned and covered by the regulations.
A number of hon. Members mentioned logbook lenders. We have discussed that issue a number of times and it is clearly a matter that concerns people across the House. Responsibility for consumer credit regulation, including logbook lenders, transferred from the Office of Fair Trading to the Financial Conduct Authority on 1 April.
Yvonne Fovargue
Will the Minister tell the House how many licences to logbook lenders have been revoked by the FCA? What has happened to the bills of sale for those who have borrowed from a company whose licence has been revoked, if indeed there are any?
Jenny Willott
That responsibility has only just been transferred to the FCA, and it is working with credit companies that must register with it. I believe that those companies start registering on 1 October, which gives them time to ensure that they comply with the regulations. From that date, therefore, the FCA will start to process licence applications. At the moment it is a little premature to answer the hon. Lady’s question, but the issue will be raised later in the year and I am sure she will ask Ministers at that point.
There are concerns about the way logbook loans operate and their impact on consumers. Consumers will be far better protected under the FCA regime than under the old system. Logbook loan providers are now required to meet the standards that the FCA expects of lenders, including making thorough affordability checks and providing adequate pre-contractual explanations to consumers. They are also subject to the FCA’s high-level principles, which include the overarching requirement to “treat customers fairly”.
Stella Creasy
I know the Minister has logbook loans companies in her constituency. Given what she is saying, why will she not support our amendment, which simply states that all borrowers should be treated equally and be able to have modern consumer contracts—the sorts of things she mentioned with the FCA? Why leave a loophole for bill of sale agreements?
Jenny Willott
If the hon. Lady gives me a chance I will come to that point.
As the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) highlighted, logbook loans have been defined by the FCA as “higher risk activities”. As such, they will be in the first phase to require the full authorisation I mentioned, and they will face closer supervision and higher regulatory costs as a result. The Government have also ensured that the FCA has a wide enforcement toolkit to take action wherever its binding rules are breached. For example, there is no limit on the fines it can levy, and—crucially—it can force firms to provide redress to customers. It also has flexible rule-making powers, so if it finds further problems, it will not hesitate to take action. Indeed, the FCA has said that it is
“putting logbook lenders on notice”
because it is concerned about that issue. Furthermore, the FCA’s new rules give it
“the power to tackle any firm found not putting customers’ interests first”.
Treasury Ministers have asked the Law Commission to look at how best to reform the Bills of Sale Act 1878. As the hon. Members for Walthamstow and for Makerfield mentioned, the legislation underpinning logbook loans is extremely old, lengthy and complex, and the Government believe that the Law Commission is best placed to undertake a thorough assessment of how to bring it up to date. The hon. Member for Makerfield raised concerns about how long the process might take and suggested that it had been kicked into the long grass. I would like to reassure her that the Law Commission has responded favourably to the Treasury’s request for the review, and will confirm its work programme in the near future .
Stella Creasy
I add my congratulations, Madam Deputy Speaker, to those of other hon. Members. Indeed, there is nothing like a dame. [Interruption.] Come on, somebody had to say it.
I do not know where to start with what the Minister has just set out. Loophole after loophole seems to be being built into this legislation, with the proviso that someone else will pick up the pieces. The Minister hopes that it will be various other regulators, but it is clearly the consumer who will be ripped off instead. I can see from the face of the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) that he too was disappointed, and I fear that it is time rather than intent that will mean we cannot make much progress today. I urge the Minister to watch the John Oliver video that is going round the interweb, if only to understand the real concern about net neutrality. I certainly hope that our colleagues in the other place will make some progress on this. The idea that at point of sale we can defend such a fundamental principle as free speech does not cut the mustard.
On debt management companies and log book loans, the Minister refers to the Financial Conduct Authority, leaving it to pick up the pieces from legislation that is antiquated and outdated, which at some unspecified time the Law Commission may look into. It is not good enough. We know that millions of people are in debt to such legal loan sharks. We know that the debt management industry is profiting as debt in this country goes up, not down. The right thing to do would be to get the consumer credit landscape to work for that problem, rather than to ask somebody else to deal with it, whether that is the Financial Conduct Authority or the Law Commission.
Again, this is the Consumer Rights Bill. A bill of sale is a consumer contract. There is no justification in the modern world for leaving them in place. The Minister is fond of saying that the Labour Government had 13 years to do something about it. That Government were on the verge of outlawing bill of sale agreements. I hope the Minister will change her mind.
The amendment that we must press to a vote is amendment 1 for those Members who were not here earlier to hear about estate agents charging both the buyer and the seller a fee. The Minister accepts that there is a concern. We are talking about fees of thousands of pounds for our constituents to buy a property—a fee that distorts the price that a seller will get. Yet again, the Minister calls for a loophole to be written in and calls for the property ombudsman to monitor the situation, when it is clearly a conflict of interest for an estate agent to act for both the buyer and the seller at the same time.
Our constituents will rightly ask us what we are doing when we see these clear breaches of contract law taking place. Simply saying, as the Minister does, “Well, we’re going to monitor the number of complaints” is a green light for estate agents to undertake such practices. That is compounded by the fact that all estate agents in most of our constituencies are monitored from a rural Welsh constituency by Powys county council. It cannot understand how these half a million people are behaving, or how we reached the stage when a fee of thousands of pounds could be applied. There is complacency about a clear rip-off that our constituents are facing. [Interruption.]
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) says, “Get on with it.” There are people in my constituency paying £6,000 or £7,000 as a fee. The Minister says we had 13 years. The present Government have had four years. We have given an example of how they could do something about it. The Government are failing to make progress, yet again, and all our constituents miss out. I fear for the Minister when one of his constituents comes to him with one of those contracts, under which they are paying £6,000 or £7,000 to an estate agent as a fee to buy a property under sale of tender, and he justifies doing nothing about it.
This Bill is an opportunity to make progress. We on the Opposition Benches—[Interruption.] The Minister comments that I was in diapers when he became an MP, but I am old enough to recognise when there is a rip-off to be dealt with—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Will the hon. Lady sit down, please. Minister, I hope you did not say that. You have just entered the Chamber and you have been shouting since you sat down. It is not in order to speak to any hon. Member at the Dispatch Box. Members need to calm down a bit, please.
Stella Creasy
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was about to wind up.
I know that house buying arouses a lot of passion, but it arouses even more passion when people get ripped off by an estate agent. It is clear that the Government do not support an amendment that would make progress in tackling the problem, which occurs across the country. They are all noise and no action. The Opposition want to see action on estate agents who are ripping people off. I hope Members on the Government Benches who have seen it in their constituency and who fear the impact that it is having on the price of houses will join us in the Lobby in voting for amendment 1.
“A local weights and measures authority in Great Britain or the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment in Northern Ireland | Section 35ZA of the Registered Designs Act 1949”. |
“A local weights and measures authority in England or a district council in England | Sections (Duty of letting agents to publicise fees), (Letting agents to which the duty applies), (Fees to which the duty applies), (Letting agency work and property management work), (Enforcement of the duty) and (Supplementary provisions) of this Act”. |
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. At 10.50 this morning a reporter from The Sun, Tom Newton Dunn, tweeted:
“ISIS will be made a banned terrorist organisation in the UK by the Home Secretary today.”
That was before the Order had been laid before Parliament and before the shadow Home Secretary and the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee had been notified of the Government’s intention, which is the normal procedure. As these matters involve national security, and obviously the whole House takes them very seriously, I wonder whether you feel that that chain of events was in order.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me notice of her intention to raise a point of order. Strictly speaking, it is not a point of order for today’s debate. However, I reiterate that Mr Speaker has made it clear to the House a number of times that any business that is to be dealt with in this House should be notified to Members of Parliament first. I see that the Government Chief Whip is in his place and am sure that he will ensure that no discourtesy to the House was intended and that he will reaffirm, and ensure that Ministers stick to, Mr Speaker’s clear preference, which is that this House should always be told first.
Third Reading
Jenny Willott
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am sorry that so many hon. Members are leaving the Chamber at this exciting point in this evening’s proceedings. Let me first convey my thanks to everyone in the House, including those currently leaving, and everyone outside who gave their time and expertise and shared their experience to help strengthen and improve this important Bill. We are most grateful. In particular, I would like to thank the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and its Chair, the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey), for conducting such invaluable pre-legislative scrutiny of the draft Bill. The Government accepted a great many of its recommendations. I firmly believe that our reforms are stronger and that the Bill is better as a consequence of that scrutiny.
I would also like to thank those individuals who gave oral evidence to the Public Bill Committee and the individuals and organisations who provided written evidence and suggested recommendations. I extend particular thanks to members of the Public Bill Committee, on which the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) led for the Opposition, for their detailed examination and thorough scrutiny of the Bill’s provisions and for their extensive discussions about items of clothing, curtains, cushions and any number of soft furnishings.
We have spent almost two days on Report examining a wide range of issues that affect consumers. I sincerely thank Opposition Members and hon. Friends for providing the House with the opportunity to debate such a broad range of consumer issues. I am grateful for hon. Members’ incisive inquiries on these significant matters; they have helped to ensure that our important discussions, and the action that the Government are taking, will properly tackle harmful behaviour swiftly and head-on.
The Government’s reforms in the Bill amount to the most fundamental change to UK consumer rights in more than a generation. We want confident consumers who are willing to try new products and services, and to shop around. Consumers who understand their rights can play a crucial role in driving growth, because they encourage businesses to innovate and to be more responsive and efficient. That is why we are removing complexity and ensuring that the law keeps up with technological developments. The reforms proposed in the Bill make the rights and responsibilities of consumers and businesses clear and easily understood, and they take account of the way that modern consumers shop. There are an estimated 350,000 retail businesses in the UK, and goods are a critical part of the UK economy. That is why business and consumer groups agree that it is vital that we remove the complexity that makes compliance burdensome for business and confusing for consumers.
The market for digital content is growing more rapidly than ever, and has an estimated annual turnover of around £200 billion. The new category of digital content proposed in the Bill, with its own set of tailored quality rights, will make consumers more confident about trying something new. That not only benefits consumers but helps the most responsive businesses—especially new market entrants that are not well-known brands with established track records—to attract custom.
The services sector is worth more than 75% of the UK’s gross domestic product. That underlines just how important it is that the Bill gives consumers clearer, more accessible statutory rights, and introduces statutory remedies for the first time. As the Confederation of British Industry told the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee
“the time is right to make sure that consumer law keeps in step with how those areas of the economy have evolved”.
The law on unfair terms in consumer contracts is particularly complicated. We asked the Law Commission to look at unfair terms law in detail. It recommended three additions to the grey list, which we accept. It considered and rejected other additions—conclusions with which we also agree.
Creating the National Trading Standards Board was a key step towards better equipping enforcers to tackle complex criminal activity. We are building on that in the Bill by making it easier for trading standards bodies to work more effectively across boundaries. Those reforms together will help tackle the estimated £4.8 billion-worth of consumer detriment arising from rogue trading activities.
Setting out consumer law enforcers’ investigatory powers in the Bill will make them more transparent, which benefits both regulator and business. Clearly, we want enforcers to pursue rogue traders, but it is important that we do not disproportionately burden businesses that are already compliant. On the requirement to give businesses 48 hours’ notice of a routine inspection, the British Retail Consortium has said in evidence sessions:
“The safeguards in the statute are absolutely perfect”,
and:
“If you have notice…it does not waste our time, and it does not waste the regulator’s time.”––[Official Report, Consumer Rights Public Bill Committee, 11 February 2014; c. 32, Q68.]
The Bill will also give public enforcers greater flexibility to seek new and innovative ways of dealing with businesses that have broken consumer law. More consumers will get their money back, and they will be better informed about those businesses that choose to flout the law. Consumers will be able to take the past performance of businesses that choose to ignore consumer rights into account when deciding whether to buy from them. The flexibility to get better outcomes for consumers is seen as a welcome addition to the enforcement toolkit by both Which? and Citizens Advice.
The UK has a world-class competition framework that benefits both business and consumers. However, evidence from the Office of Fair Trading highlights that the private actions regime is the least effective aspect of the UK’s competition regime. Anti-competitive behaviour harms consumers by lowering output, increasing prices and reducing quality, but the costs of going to court make it very hard for consumers to obtain redress. As Which? highlighted in its evidence during pre-legislative scrutiny:
“The whole Bill is aimed at empowering consumers. Part of an empowered consumer is that they are confident that when things go wrong they will be put right.”
Finally and importantly, we are determined to tackle the minority of rogue letting agents who offer a poor service. We are introducing legislation to require all letting agents and property managers to belong to an approved redress scheme, giving tenants an effective way of pursuing complaints. We are making agents publish their fees; that will give consumers the information that they want and support good letting agents. Such transparency deters double-charging and enables tenants and landlords to shop around, which encourages more competitive fees.
The Bill contains important new protections for consumers and measures to lower regulatory burdens for business, so that markets work better and consumers are well protected. Overall, the suite of consumer law reforms is set to benefit businesses and consumers by more than £4 billion over 10 years. The Bill is therefore good for consumers, good for business, and good for growth, and I commend it to the House.
Stella Creasy
It is fascinating finally to come to the end of consideration of the Bill in this Chamber.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I stand to be corrected, but I thought that those who wanted to speak on Third Reading did so before the shadow spokesperson. Am I wrong?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
You are wrong, yes. The Minister opens Third Reading, and the Opposition Front Bencher responds; we then hear from other participants. If we have enough time, and it is relevant to do so, we then hear the wind-ups. Do not worry—I will not forget you.
Stella Creasy
I am on tenterhooks to hear what the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has to say. Thanks to our consideration of the Bill, I am aware of my right to a return and a repeat performance if I do not think the skill and service is satisfactory; he should be aware of that.
Whereas poppadoms are not to be shared, I have feedback—the breakfast of champions, as it was once called—to share on the Bill and whether it works. Does it pass the Ronseal test—does it do what it says on the tin? The Bill says that it is there to
“Amend the law relating to the rights of consumers and protection of their interests”.
Certainly, as I hope I have just displayed, during our consideration of the Bill we learned what our rights will be: we will have the right to have legislation written with reasonable care and skill, and provided at a reasonable time and price to us all. The rights of our consumers—our constituents—to remedy and redress when they feel that we are not providing that are somewhat limited. That is why they rely on us as Opposition Members to hold the Government to account. However, our role is not simply to intervene, or identify injustice as it affects our constituents, but to act on it. That is what we have tried to do in proceedings on the Bill.
At the heart of this is the question of rights. Does the Bill give consumers the rights that they need if they are to act for themselves? That has been our central concern. In that, we were influenced by the words of the Mayor of London—who knows what else he will be in future?—who once said:
“The dreadful truth is that when people come to see their MP, they have run out of better ideas.”
If the Bill had been well written, it would have given people rights that would have meant that they did not have to come to us, their MPs, with such regularity with all the stories of consumer detriment that we heard about during proceedings on the Bill. A really robust Consumer Rights Bill would empower the British public, giving them the rights and the confidence that they need to be able to choose the goods and services that they desire. Under that test, the public could demand a refund on the Bill, for as we saw only today, loophole after loophole remains, and it is consumers who will have to pay the price.
The Minister talks of a consumer toolkit, but that toolkit has a blunt Stanley knife and a broken hammer in it. Time and again, throughout consideration of the Bill, the Government have failed to grasp how giving the public access to the information, advocacy and redress that they need to shape services to meet desired outcomes would be a better idea, in terms of dealing with markets and services when the odds are stacked against them. Indeed, one of the things we have not done so far is set out what a market that is not working looks like or what the problems are.
In setting out our concerns on Third Reading, let me be clear about where our amendments came from. We need to recognise that a market is not working when information is not flowing freely between actors, whether they be consumers or businesses, such that they are not able to make informed choices. A market is not working when companies use their advantage to crowd out new competitors, collude on prices or, indeed, create a monopoly. Such a market may also result in unintended consequences because of the behaviour of others. The result is always the same: consumers miss out when markets do not work.
We have attempted to amend the Bill in this House and I am sure my colleagues in the other place will continue to do so in order to address some of those problems. Many markets in the UK do not meet the metrics of success whereby information flows freely and there is competition on creativity and innovation—not exploitation of captured consumers who have little option but to pay over the odds—and where the reasonable care and skill test can truly be applied.
At every stage of this Bill, colleagues throughout the House have raised issues that reflect those concerns about markets, including ticket touting, rip-off estate agent fees, copycat websites, logbook loans, product recall and even net neutrality. Every example involved scams and sharp practices, yet this Bill will not make progress in protecting the interests of consumers. As we have consistently been told by the Minister, that is outside the scope of the Bill and a matter for the mysterious implementation group, whose inner workings are still a secret to many of us.
At every single turn, the Minister has claimed that someone or something else can act. She has said that so often that we think it would be worth renaming the Bill the “computer says no” Bill. That may be an effective phrase for coalition government, but it is also a recipe to rip off consumers.
Despite the Minister’s best efforts to tell us, “There’s nothing to see here,” it has become clear during the course of our work that this Bill reaches far beyond how easy it is for any of us to return a jumper with a hole in it. We know there is much more to consider with regard to how the Bill will impact on the public sector. The Minister has still not clarified which services are covered, preferring to tell us only that most NHS care, state-funded education and law enforcement services are not covered. Of course, given that tuition fees, personal care payments and child care vouchers are covered, it would seem that this Bill is less a case of, “computer says no,” and more one of, “Yeah, but no, but yeah.” It has certainly felt like we have been asking questions of the sphinx at times, because we have had to find the right question in order to get the right answer for our constituents. The risk is that the Bill will devour all those who fail to solve its riddle.
In fear of yet again being cast into the pit of despair, may I again ask the Minister to clarify, with a yes or no answer, whether the following contracts are covered? Is the BBC licence fee covered? Given the recent comments of the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, surely that is an apposite and important point to clarify. Before the Bill goes to the other place, it would be incredibly helpful if the Minister could clarify whether it also covers parking permits and prescriptions.
Understanding this minefield and the impact it will have on consumers of public services now falls to our colleagues in the Lords. Given the evidence that we are a nation of silent sufferers—in particular, many elderly users of care services fear that they cannot complain—the fact the Minister is devolving getting this right to the Cabinet Office, as she declared on the first day on Report, simply will not stand. We put her on notice that we will not let public service users experience a two-tier system because she could not define what clause 2 does.
The Minister may sigh again and point to the long gestation of this Bill, including the Labour Government’s original 2009 White Paper on a new deal for consumers. We generally agree that there is a need to update the fundamental principles enshrined in the Sale of Goods Act 1979. That was published shortly after I was born—which, as the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning), who is no longer in his place, would say, was, “A long time ago.”
It is certainly time for an update, which is why we will not oppose this Bill’s Third Reading, but it is also time for clarity, which the Bill does not yet deliver. I hope the Minister will not think it churlish of me to say that we welcome the fact that some of our proposals have been considered and, indeed, adopted. When the issue of speedier refunds was first raised, there seemed little hope of progress, but having had our call for a time limit of 30 days batted away, we were delighted with the Government’s amendment making 14 days the cut-off for consumers to get their money back. There have also been announcements on copycat websites and letting agent fees as the Bill has progressed. Those things have been encouraging and we wait with bated breath to see on what else the Minister will come full circle.
Like the Minister, I want to put on record my gratitude to the members of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee and the members of the Bill Committee for playing their part. Having received during the course of our deliberations a marriage proposal, hair-dressing advice, loft-conversion concerns and a lecture in socialist ideology, as well as the opportunity to hear passionate debates on issues such as electrical safety, public service reform and data protection, I believe we have given much for our colleagues in the other place to ruminate. I also want to put on record my personal thanks to the Clerks of the Public Bill Office, who have been kind and generous with their time in drafting amendments and new clauses. However mean the Minister may wish to be about those amendments and new clauses, we certainly think they have made a difference.
As the Bill goes to the other place, let me say again what a missed opportunity it has been. Major consumer reforms come along very rarely—as the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead, would point out, I am now of a certain age. I fear there is little hope of a return, a refund or a repeat performance for our constituents if we get this wrong. They will not want to wait another 35 years. I have every confidence that the noble Lords will continue our work on issues such as letting agent fees, debt management, access to data, advocacy, trading standards and redress, and that they will also finally pin down the magicians of the implementation group and the mysterious work of ombudsman services.
Britain can do better. We will not oppose the Bill, but instead send it to the other place and ask it to continue our efforts to improve this Bill so that it can live up to the bold sales pitch of protecting consumer interests. If that does not happen, I for one will encourage the British public to exercise their right to a return at the ballot box in 2015 and finally cast out a Government who are clearly not fit for purpose.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I am very pleased to see this important Bill complete its passage through this House. Economic development depends on those receiving goods and services knowing that they can depend on robust legal protection and clear redress. Knowledge of the reality of the protection that this Bill promotes and provides will enable people and businesses to get on with the important job of producing and accessing goods and services, in which context our economy can continue to grow.
The principle of fairness underpins this Bill. As the Minister has said, it is vital that the law keeps up with technological developments. It is vital, therefore, that in developing new medical technologies, such as mitochondrial transfer, we do not rush into them, especially when significant consumer protection concerns are in play. That is only right and fair. Just yesterday, the fertility expert Professor Robert Winston stated:
“I don’t believe there has been enough work done to make sure mitochondrial replacement is truly safe.”
For that reason, I regret that there was no time to debate my new clause 31, even though it was selected.
The situation also demonstrates the importance of not bringing to Parliament any proposed legislation permitting such procedures until all the necessary pre-clinical tests have been concluded, some of which have been described recently by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority as “critical”. Only then should parliamentarians be asked to assess the evidence and vote on such measures. Only then will we demonstrate to our constituents that we are not rushing to adopt new medical techniques without treating safety concerns with the utmost seriousness.
I am very concerned we have not had the opportunity to debate new clause 31, because it needs parliamentary time. I very much hope that the concerns it addresses will be thoroughly debated in the other place at another time.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who is passionate about the subject she has just addressed. I hope the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), will not be disappointed with my contribution. I want to put on record some important issues.
The Minister has outlined very well the issues that the Bill tries to address, but I and other Members still have concerns. I am particularly concerned about the issue of debt advice. There are many debt organisations in my constituency. Citizens Advice, Debt Advice NI and Christians Against Poverty are just three groups that give advice—they do not lend money—on the problems people face when they borrow money and build up debts that they are unable to pay.
The Consumer Rights Bill should be just that—legislation that protects consumers. Does the Bill do so entirely? Some of us feel that it might have done more, and we would be much more relaxed about it if it had done more.
The regulation of loan companies, which Members have referred to, is a very complex matter. We are all aware of the story about a lady who borrowed a couple of thousand pounds from a loan company, which developed into a six-figure sum over a number of transactions. She found herself in a very difficult position, and she then had her house repossessed. That may be an extreme example, but it illustrates our concerns.
I very much welcome the Government’s commitment on the territorial extent and application of the Bill. I want to comment on part 3, which does not extend the Sunday Trading Act 1994 to Scotland and Northern Ireland, for example. The decision in relation to that will clearly lie with the Northern Ireland Assembly. I must say that that is good news for the people of Northern Ireland who attend church, but have to work on Sundays or might potentially have to do so. Any decision will lie with the Assembly, which is good news.
I wholeheartedly concur with the concerns expressed by the hon. Member for Congleton about the controversial technological changes referred to in new clause 31 in relation to three-parent children. I am concerned that there was no opportunity to debate that on the Floor of the House, because I certainly wanted to speak about it, as did other hon. Members. I suggest that it seems very dangerous to go ahead with such a change, as has been indicated, without any consensus of support or a majority in its favour. I must put on the record that I am very concerned about the numbers of ladies who have such worries. Some 558 people responded by saying that they did not want the change. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to make that comment, Madam Deputy Speaker.
The Bill has addressed many of the issues about which we have concerns, such as the right to the repair or replacement of goods. I commend the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) on the good work that he has done on the Bill. He fought very valiantly and got the changes that he had hoped for in relation to electrical goods. I am tremendously pleased to see in the Bill what he and many other hon. Members wanted it to include.
If the Minister cannot respond on this point tonight, perhaps she will come back to me at some time, but I do not yet see powers for people who take out holiday insurance and need consumer protection—for example, those who, having booked a flight, find that they have to cancel it, whether for health or whatever reason—but cannot get a reimbursement. I had hoped that the Bill might give those people more protection, but I am not sure that it yet does so.
I welcome many of the things in the Bill, as well as some of the things in it about which we are not entirely happy. None the less, I congratulate all hon. Members on their contributions to the Bill, and on their ability to bring to the Floor of the House provisions that can make a change.
Jenny Willott
With the leave of the House, I will respond to some of the points made. The Bill has benefited from thorough and considered debate in this House. We have now had lengthy discussions on many subjects covered by the Bill, and possibly even more on those not covered by it.
The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) raised the issue of mitochondrial donation or transfer. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority set up an expert panel, which has conducted three reviews on the safety and efficacy of the proposed treatment. I want to reassure her that any proposed regulations on this matter would be subject to debates in both Houses of Parliament under the affirmative procedure, so were measures to be taken forward, there would be a full debate.
Fiona Bruce
Will the Minister reassure me that regulations permitting such a treatment will not be laid before the House until clinical procedures that have been described by the HFEA as critical are concluded and reviewed?
Jenny Willott
I suggest that the hon. Lady take up that issue with Health Ministers, as this policy area sits firmly under their portfolio. She is asking a very technical question about the background to the regulations, and it might be more proper for one of them to respond.
I was a little disappointed by the response of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). She is very dismissive of the Bill, which she has described as full of loopholes. Consumer and business organisations all agree that the Government are doing the right thing and that the Bill will make a real difference, as we repeatedly heard in evidence to the Public Bill Committee and to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee during its pre-legislative scrutiny.
It cannot be denied that the Bill is the most dramatic overhaul of consumer protection for a generation. The UK already has very high levels of consumer confidence and knowledge—higher than almost any other country in the European Union—but I believe that we can raise them higher. It drives huge change both in business and across society to have consumers who are well informed and confident of their rights, and who know what they can do when something goes wrong. Consumer protection drives innovation across businesses, growth in the economy and confidence among our consumers. I believe that this Bill is the way to achieve that, and I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Education
(10 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
I beg to move,
That the draft Special Educational Needs (Personal Budgets) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 9 April, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.
The regulations are the first to be laid under section 49 and—it gives me great pleasure to say—under part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014. As I think we can all agree across the House, the 2014 Act has the potential to make a massive improvement to the lives of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities.
The regulations will introduce the option of a personal budget for education, health and care plan holders from September 2014. The SEN pathfinders have shown that personal budgets can make a real difference to children and young people; indeed, according to some parents on the pathfinder programme, they can be life-changing. However, the introduction of personal budgets is complex, and hon. Members may want some reassurances about their introduction in September, especially in relation to the testing of direct payments for SEN provision.
If personal budgets are to work, parents must be given clear, up-front information about their availability, as well as advice and support on requesting, taking up and managing a personal budget, including on direct payments. Personal budgets must be embedded in the education, health and care planning process, rather than seen simply as an addition to the system. Their introduction from September, as part of the wider reforms, means that councils are developing personal budgets as a coherent element of the system, rather than just a mere bolt-on. I must stress that, building on the experience of the pathfinders, our approach to implementation will be one of evolution, rather than the proverbial revolution.
The draft code of practice, which was laid before Parliament on 11 June and is subject to debate in its own right, is abundantly clear on that important underlying principle of successful implementation. Subject to the will of Parliament, the code of practice will, along with regulations covering the local offer and EHC plans, set out a flexible framework for implementation, while providing a clear expectation of what councils must have in place in September 2014 and of how it should evolve over time as joint commissioning arrangements and local offers mature.
To turn to the substance of the regulations, they contain many of the provisions that we have previously debated as part of the pilot scheme for direct payments for SEN provision. They give parents and young people the right to ask for a personal budget when an EHC plan is being prepared, or during a statutory review of an existing plan. Parents must be given up-front information about personal budgets, including the information that will be required in, and consulted on as part of the local offer.
We have maintained the considerations in relation to value for money and the impact on other service users—an issue that has been of concern in debates in this House and the other place. We have repeated the requirement for the permission of a school or college and added early-years settings where a direct payment is being used on their premises. I understand that there are concerns that that could be a get-out clause and a barrier to inclusion, especially in further education. However, we have seen no such evidence from the pathfinders. It is only right that institutions have the final say on who can work on their premises. I can, however, reassure hon. Members that we will keep a careful eye on that aspect of our reforms.
Finally, I want to return to my earlier theme of the complexity of implementation. I draw the House’s attention to the comprehensive package of support that is in place to help councils meet this important challenge. An ever-increasing array of materials, including practical advice, case studies, checklists and frameworks for implementation, is available on the SEN pathfinder website. All those materials have been developed with expert support from local authorities, their partners, and voluntary and community sector groups that work in the area, including those that represent parents.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Last year, the Minister kindly met me and representatives of CLIC Sargent to consider the position of children who suffer from cancer. Will he assure Members that there will be the necessary flexibility—this is the key issue—to deal with children with varying abilities and concerns?
Mr Timpson
I can reassure the hon. Gentleman absolutely on that point. The meeting that we had last year informed not only the legislation, but the underlying code of practice, which is now in draft form. The whole point of personal budgets is to embed flexibility and personalisation in the support that is available to parents, and to put them much more in control of the choices to ensure that they and their children get the relevant support when they need it. I hope that he will take time to look at the code of practice. I know that CLIC Sargent, which works closely with the Department, has done so. I am grateful for the work that he and that charity have done.
Our SEN advisers are visiting councils the length and breadth of the country to establish what more local areas may need and, when necessary, are making referrals to our pathfinder champion support team and the newly appointed national champions for personal budgets.
That package will be complemented by a thematic evaluation of personal budgets and integrated resourcing, which will be undertaken by SQW, the evaluator of the pathfinder programme, and will be published this summer. The research will re-examine the progress that has been made by pathfinder and non-pathfinder areas to identify good practice and lessons learned to inform the development of less advanced areas.
To conclude, with the framework for implementation set out in the regulations, the code of practice and the support that we are providing with our partners, I am confident that we have an approach that will, in the coming years, make a huge difference to the lives of children and young people. I hope that hon. Members will give it their support.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The Opposition support the principle of personal budgets and direct payments, so we will not oppose the regulations. However, I have a number of questions about safeguards and how the proposals will work in practice.
The draft code of practice, to which the Minister referred, states in paragraph 3.39 that, as an “integral part” of the process of planning personal budgets,
“partners should ensure children, young people and families are involved in the decision-making processes at both an individual and a strategic level”.
How will the Minister monitor that and ensure that those fine words are translated into deeds? In the same paragraph, the code indicates that
“the new joint commissioning strategies will support greater choice and control year-on-year, as the market is developed and funding streams are freed from existing contractual arrangements”.
What steps will he take to ensure that he does not preside over a postcode lottery, with innovation and greater choice in some parts of the country, and reactionary, conservative obstacles in others?
The Minister may be aware of the suspicion directed at his Government that what he describes, understandably, as “choice” could be used by some as a device to save money. As he will know, a number of organisations in the field of special needs education are reporting cuts to the provision for young people, particularly in areas such as speech and language therapy, and are consequently expressing doubts about how the Minister’s brave new world will fare in an environment where severe cuts in local authority services and welfare changes mean that families with disabled children and young people are already facing extremely difficult times.
Will the Minister cite some good examples from the pilots of the kind of joint commissioning models he wants to see, which could be regarded as exemplars that others might follow? It is worth noting that last year, in a survey by the National Deaf Children’s Society, only 12% of parents were aware of the detail of the Government’s plans and only 17% of parents in the pathfinder areas were aware of them. I understand that only six of the 31 pathfinders have piloted personal budgets and that, across the country, only about 500 personal budgets are in existence. Is the Minister confident, therefore, that he has sufficient evidence to support the regulations?
One issue that was raised during the pathfinders was the need to comply with the requirements of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs when families end up acting as employers because they are contracting their child’s support. Is the Minister happy that the guidance on that is sufficiently clear? He will know that those who have experience of personal budgets and direct payments have complained that large parts of the budget can be consumed on administration and paying for insurance and payroll services.
Whose responsibility will it be to ensure that the work force and cultural changes that are necessary for a person-centred approach, for which the Minister has called, actually happen? If that falls to the existing service-level development managers, is there not a risk that they will have an incentive to protect their own roles by tying up organisations such as parent participation groups in bureaucratic service-level agreements, thus weakening their capacity to assist parents, children and young people? What practical steps will he take to guard against that?
There seem to be two potential risks in this approach. There will be authorities that see it as a classic opportunity to minimise the direct provision of services, and which therefore overstate the benefits of personal budgets. There will be other authorities that want to use regulation 6(1)(c) to argue that, however valid the individual request, to accede to it would mean disaggregating funding that supports the provision of services for a number of children and young people. There are obviously legitimate concerns that it will be harder to engage in the planning and co-ordination of services in an environment where much of the funding is in the hands of individual parents and families.
The experience in Essex was that providers were concerned about the impact that spot purchasing would have on their security because of the unpredictability that it brought to the amount of money they would receive over a set period. That is likely to have planning implications. Similarly, Essex county council claimed that the back-office implications included increased invoicing overheads as a result of moving from a large block to individual family contracting. Does the Minister recognise those dilemmas? How does he plan to be kept informed and to intervene to address those problems, if it is necessary? Will the first-tier tribunal be given any guidance on how it should consider such arguments? Indeed, should not regulation 7 specify the exact grounds on which a local authority may refuse? In the circumstances in which a person moves to a new authority, which opts to conduct a new needs assessment, what is to stop it drastically redrawing the terms of the personal budget? That is a common problem with the direct payment provisions for elderly people that already exist. What safeguards will the Minister put in place to prevent this further possibility in postcode lottery funding?
Who will be charged with identifying and encouraging agencies and organisations in each area to be in a position to be nominated to receive direct payments? Will it be necessary for such organisations to be added to an approved list? How will that work and how will a body—especially a new one offering a new type of service—gain access? Conversely, what safeguards are in place to ensure that money is not spent on programmes of dubious or unproven effectiveness?
The Minister helpfully told us that he was looking at the concerns about further education and direct payments, but how will he ensure that colleges do not simply see the money as an opportunity to offer more of the same, rather than personalisation? It is interesting that the disabled students allowance, which I believe the Government plan to scrap, is a personalised, portable payment for the individual rather than a direct payment to the university.
I support the principle of personal budgets, as I have said, but the Opposition would not be doing our job if we did not speak up for the many parents, children and young people on whom the Government plan to unleash this system.
Mr Timpson
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) for his comments and questions on the regulations, as well as his support for the principle of personal budgets and direct payments. I recall that when we last debated this issue in a Committee Room upstairs he had a host of relevant and pertinent questions, so I would have been disappointed if he had not had a further raft of questions to pose on this important issue in his usual manner. I shall try to answer as many of his questions as I can, and if I fail to cover any of them in detail I will write to him with a further and better answer, as I did after the last debate.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the evaluation of the implementation of these reforms and specifically about how children will be involved in the decision-making about personal budgets and more generally. Throughout the whole process, we have been at pains to involve children in the formulation of the new legislation, both through the EPiC group—Equality, Participation, Influence, Change—which works within the Department, and more widely through the Council for Disabled Children, which is a strategic partner. That relationship will continue. We are also ensuring that Ofsted is involved in looking carefully at how the reforms are bedding in. It will provide us with an evaluation that will form a good evidence base to determine whether the reforms are having the impact that we all want to see.
In relation to the financial implications and the burdens on local authorities imposed by the reforms—of personal budgets in particular—we have done an assessment, as we always do. That is why a £70 million reform grant has been made in this financial year, and I announced last week a subsequent £43 million for implementation in the first year. It is also worth noting that there is not necessarily a direct correlation between personal budgets and additional costs. In fact, the evaluation of personal health budgets in the pilot that was undertaken found them to be more cost-effective in delivering services. I am confident that the reforms will not only help to deliver better services, but will alleviate some of the financial pressures on local authorities.
The hon. Gentleman asked about joint commissioning and whether I could point to any exemplary work that showed that it was starting to make a difference to families. I encourage him to look at what is happening in Wigan, which has made excellent progress. It has demonstrated substantial change to its arrangements, and joint commissioning is at the heart of the work it is doing. It has subsequently seen an improvement in the services available to parents and children.
The hon. Gentleman asked about how parents will be made aware of the availability of personal budgets, and that is an important point. It is why I wrote to parents through the various networks available to give them as much information as possible about what will happen in September. We are also working closely with schools, which are often the first port of call and the daily contact that parents have with the special educational needs system, so that they are informing parents now about what they can expect to happen in September and the role that personal budgets can play.
The hon. Gentleman asked how we can ensure that we have a person-centred approach and what practical support we are providing to make sure that that is the case. Above all, I would direct him to the £30 million that we are providing to recruit and train some 1,800 independent supporters. They will not be from the local authority or health providers, and are the one aspect that parents have consistently told us are the most helpful addition to the support they receive as they enter the SEN system, both at the point of assessment and in the further work required to ensure that children achieve the desired outcomes.
The hon. Gentleman also asked how organisations that are not currently involved in the delivery of services can make themselves known to potential users of personal budgets. That is, of course, the whole basis of the local offer that will be brought into being through consultation with parents and children, and should be a showcase of what is available in special educational needs services in a local area. I would expect that to include all those organisations that have the capacity to help to deliver some of the services that personal budgets and direct payments are designed to obtain.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the experience in Essex. I recall that when we last debated this issue he mentioned the experience in Solihull. I hope the fact that he has now moved on to Essex suggests that I have satisfied him that Solihull is ready for these changes. In fact, we have done a readiness survey of all 152 local authorities to satisfy ourselves that they are ready to go come September, not only on personal budgets but more widely across the reforms that we are bringing in. Some 90% of local authorities have said that they are confident that they are ready, but I am seeing some personally to satisfy myself that they have managed to deal with some of the issues that remain so that they are up to speed come 1 September.
I said at the start that this is a complex issue, and I think that point was behind some of the hon. Gentleman’s questions. It will create dilemmas for some of the funding streams and the disaggregation of finances. We are aware of those possibilities and we will keep a close eye on how they develop, not only through Ofsted but with the CDC and the evaluation that we have done, up to now, with SQW. I am confident that we are in a good position to ensure that personal budgets play a key role in delivering much better services for children and young people with special educational needs. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support in principle for the steps that we are taking, and I will keep a keen eye on how these important changes are delivered on 1 September for many young people. I am sure that they will benefit from the Government’s work.
Question put and agreed to.
Business without Debate
Removal of Trees from Thirsk Market Place
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Would it be in order to congratulate you on the preferment that was shown to you in the Queen’s honours, Madam Deputy Speaker? [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
It is a pleasure and a privilege to present a petition on the removal of trees from Thirsk Market Place on behalf of residents of Thirsk and Malton. The petition is in the name of Mike I’Anson, the chair of Thirsk Community Woodlands Group, Lesley Rolfe, a resident, and 1,011 other petitioners, which underlines its importance. I add that trees are the logo of the Conservative party and people do love their trees in local areas.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of Thirsk and Malton,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that Hambleton District Council has not explained in detail how it came to its decision to remove five healthy birch trees from Thirsk Market Place; further that the trees were located in a conservation area; and further that the Petitioners believe that no public consultation was undertaken in relation to the removal of these trees.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to encourage Hambleton District Council to replace the five trees which were removed and further requests that the House urges the Government to call Hambleton District Council to account for its actions.
And the Petitioners remain, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
[P001358]
Work Capability Assessments
(10 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)
I am very grateful to have secured this debate. I have been pursuing work capability assessments for those on employment and support allowance since I was elected to this House. Indeed, I think I mentioned in my maiden speech that I would take up this issue. This is my sixth debate on specific aspects of the WCA.
I want to develop an issue I first raised on 6 September 2013: the support that people receive while they challenge a decision on their entitlement to benefit. This will generally involve somebody who has been found fit for work, but who believes that the decision is wrong and that they are entitled to ESA. It could, in some circumstances, also apply to someone placed in the work-related activity group, as opposed to the support group.
In the past, a claimant could immediately lodge a formal written appeal with a judge from Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service. A Department for Work and Pensions official, known as the decision maker, would look at the original decision again, and either change it in the claimant’s favour or uphold it and pass the appeal on to a judge. That initial stage was, and still is, referred to as a reconsideration. What has changed is that since October 2013 claimants have to apply for reconsideration formally and separately before they can lodge an appeal. This two-stage process was introduced following the passage of the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and its subsequent regulations.
I emphasise, as I have done before, that I do not object to the introduction of even a mandatory reconsideration process. It can be quicker, less stressful for claimants, a lot cheaper for taxpayers, and, as I think the Minister himself said last week, it may be contributing to a reduction in the number of formal appeals. There are, however, serious practical consequences to mandatory reconsideration: the gap in payment to claimants prior to the formal appeal process, long delays in receiving a decision on reconsideration, and the lack of statistics on outcomes.
Claimants, although they may not be aware of it, have never formally been entitled to employment and support allowance during the reconsideration process. However, prior to October last year the benefit was usually paid at the assessment rate because reconsiderations —we could, perhaps, call them informal reconsiderations —took place under the auspices of having lodged an appeal, and when claimants lodge an appeal, they are entitled to receive assessment-rate employment and support allowance. Now that claimants have to apply for reconsideration and then appeal at a subsequent date, there is a gap in payment. Official advice suggests that during this period claimants can apply for jobseeker’s allowance, rather than employment and support allowance, while their reconsideration request is being considered. They can then go back to claiming ESA at the assessment rate if their original decision is upheld and they submit an appeal.
As I noted last year, however, JSA comes with a high level of conditionality. Claimants have to be available for work, actively seeking work, attending work-focused interviews, searching for jobs and making a minimum number of applications every week. In itself, that can prove tiring and stressful, and can exacerbate existing physical or mental conditions. Even more important is the fact that those who apply and fail to meet these conditions can be sanctioned or refused benefit altogether. In my previous debate, I predicted that this would lead to people having no support from the state, with people being too fit for ESA and too sick or disabled for JSA. I have encountered many such examples in my constituency. Citizens Advice Scotland, which has given me a great deal of support for this debate, has today published a report on this issue. It describes some of the situations in which people find themselves. These are real cases that have come to their bureaux. I suggest that the Minister look at the report.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I am glad that my hon. Friend has secured this debate. She mentions the Citizens Advice Scotland report, which I too have seen. Does she agree that the Minister should look at its recommendations? Like her, I deal with many of these problems in my constituency casework. The Government cannot just leave the situation as it is.
Sheila Gilmore
Indeed. The report’s recommendations are very sound. One fundamental recommendation is to reinstate the payment of ESA for practical reasons, and I will come on to that.
Of those cases, most who applied for JSA while their reconsiderations were ongoing were either refused outright or failed to attend necessary appointments, owing to their mental health condition, perhaps, or, in some cases, their learning disability. Others did not apply because they could not face another benefit application, or simply because they did not know that they could. In one case where a claimant applied and was paid JSA, he emphasised that this was only as a result of support he received from his Jobcentre Plus adviser. For those who did not receive JSA, few had savings or other income to fall back on and had to rely on already overstretched food banks. Others took out high interest loans, amassing debts they will struggle to repay even if they subsequently receive backdated payments at a later date. One constituent sold off his few remaining possessions to survive.
When I first raised these concerns last September, the then Minister, the hon. Member for Fareham (Mr Hoban), assured me, as he did in subsequent correspondence, that claimants with an outstanding reconsideration request could ask for what was described as “flexible conditionality” when they met their Jobcentre Plus adviser. Last week, however, the Benefits Director at the DWP acknowledged to the Work and Pensions Committee that
“not all advisors had been aware of this”
and that new guidance to jobcentres had been circulated at the end of April this year—several months after the introduction of mandatory reconsideration. That is welcome, but it is hard to have confidence in the Department, given that previous assurances were clearly unfounded.
In addition, we were told at the same meeting that people should never be refused JSA outright without the opportunity to have a meaningful conversation about conditionality with a jobcentre adviser. However, the DWP’s own guidance specifically states that
“a claimant will not be able to remain on JSA if their period of sickness exceeds 14 days”.
Citizens Advice Scotland has suggested that this is a particular problem for those claiming JSA during an ESA reconsideration. I would be grateful for the Minister’s comments on that.
More broadly, however, I question the whole rationale for preventing claimants from receiving ESA at the assessment rate during this period. Last week the Minister tried to hide behind legal semantics, arguing that claimants are deemed to be fit for work during this period and must apply for benefits accordingly. However, that ignores the fact that claimants are also deemed fit for work during a formal appeal, yet because of the way in which regulations are framed, they are entitled to ESA at the assessment rate during that process. If the problem is how the regulations were set out following the Welfare Reform Act 2012, they can be changed. There is no real reason why people should be treated differently during the reconsideration period and the appeal period.
There is also an administration cost involved in a claimant receiving the assessment rate of ESA, ceasing to receive it, claiming JSA and then potentially claiming the assessment rate of ESA again. These are significant costs when multiplied by the number of people involved. In addition, if everybody claimed JSA successfully, they would receive benefit at exactly the same rate as they would have been getting on ESA, so if there are any savings to be anticipated, is it because Ministers thought that people would, in fact, struggle to claim JSA during the reconsideration process, given that administration costs are likely to outweigh anything else? I am sure that cannot be the case.
The other issue that has come up as mandatory reconsideration was rolled out since the end of last year is the length of time that people are waiting for decisions. We were initially told that reconsideration should take around two weeks, but in many of the cases I have seen, as well as in those seen by Citizens Advice and many of my colleagues, the time taken has varied between seven and 10 weeks. Those delays have exacerbated people’s health conditions and the financial and other issues they face as a result of receiving no benefit at all. The Minister acknowledged in evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee last Wednesday that there was a backlog. My staff have been told by our local office that there is indeed a backlog—that is how it was referred to. I would like the Minister to confirm today how long claimants are being told they will have to wait, and when he will publish statistics on average times and the total number of claimants who are waiting for a decision.
Mark Lazarowicz
My constituents are served by the same office as my hon. Friend’s and we have had the same experience. Would it not also be useful for the Minister to tell us whether the backlog is increasing or declining? If measures are not taken to deal with the problem, the danger is that it will get worse, not better.
Sheila Gilmore
I agree. One of the problems with many of the backlogs we are experiencing is that they are increasing.
Last week the Minister also defended the decision not to set a statutory time limit on how long reconsideration decisions take. This issue was raised with Ministers when the legislation was going through the House and in subsequent sittings of the Work and Pensions Committee, for example. In April 2012, the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council warned that the absence of a time limit could have the effect of
“delaying indefinitely the exercise of the right of appeal to an independent tribunal”.
Just last month, Judge Robert Martin expressed concern that judges could no longer intervene if they felt the reconsideration process was taking too long, because cases do not reach them until after reconsideration is completed. Setting a time limit will be one option before the Government at this stage, but a much simpler option might be not to have to do so, and instead simply to reinstate assessment rate ESA during that period. Indeed, that might be an incentive for the Government to speed up the process in any event.
Finally, I return to another issue I have raised previously. In a debate on 9 April this year, I argued that, given that reconsideration is now mandatory and that, as a result, we might expect many more decisions to be overturned in that way, the DWP should now publish statistics on the number of successful reconsiderations—something that is currently done only for successful appeals. Successful reconsiderations are lumped in with original decisions, so it is impossible to tell exactly what has happened. If we do not have separate overturn figures for reconsiderations, that might make the performance of whichever contractor is involved—including a new contractor in future—more difficult to monitor and track.
The Minister’s response at that time was that doing so would be premature, because mandatory reconsideration had only started in October 2013 and would need some time to take effect. However, it would appear that informal reconsideration has been taking place for some considerable time, even before the mandatory process was introduced. A previous Minister—I think it was the previous Minister but one—told the Work and Pensions Committee in March 2012 that the Department was
“effectively putting every case that is going to appeal, or where a person is not happy with it, through a reconsideration where we look for additional evidence”.
It would therefore appear that, as long ago as March 2012, reconsiderations were taking place in virtually every case that went to appeal. By this stage, therefore, we must have a considerable amount of management information—at least two years of reconsideration decisions—which could be published as official statistics in due course and which would give us an impression of what was happening.
Although I have to go on what the Minister said on that occasion, that might or might not have been an entirely accurate reflection, given that in the same evidence session the same Minister told us that although there had been a slight backlog at that time because of the implementation of some of the Harrington recommendations, everything was back on track and by the summer—the summer of 2012—there would be no backlog of ESA assessments. Two years later, however, there are now apparently 700,000 people awaiting an assessment as new claimants.
However, there is other evidence to suggest that the statistics are there to be captured and reported on. There appears to have been a reduction in the number of appeals. The most recent statistics on appeals—which were published just last week, on Thursday 12 June—appear to show a reduction in the rate of cases going to appeal, from around 42% to 43% up to mid-2011 to around 35% for claims begun in November 2012, with possibly a further reduction, to perhaps even as low as 25%, for cases started in March 2013. I say “possibly” because some of the March 2013 cases may well be still in the reconsideration process—indeed, they might even have barely got out of the assessment process, because of the backlogs.
However, there appears to have been some change in the number of cases going all the way to appeal. That is not necessarily a bad thing, because we have all criticised the cost of appeals, the stress of appeals and the time taken. That is happening, and even though this may be in everyone’s best interests, we really need to know what is happening. The publication of statistics at the earliest possible opportunity, based on at least the last two years of experience, if not more, would enable us to judge the performance of the contractor far better. Given that we are going to have a new contractor for these assessments very soon, it would be good to have this in place well before that starts.
In conclusion, will the Minister confirm when he expects statistics on successful reconsideration to be published, and will he reconsider his position on the statutory time limits? More than anything, I want to emphasise to him that many claimants who claim JSA in this situation are, in effect, being denied it. They are told that they are too fit for one benefit and too sick or disabled for another. Let me ask the Minister again: why not amend the law, so that ESA claimants can continue to receive the benefit at the assessment rate during the reconsideration process? The only way that could be more expensive for the Government would be if Ministers expected sick and disabled people to go without any benefit—and I am sure that that cannot be the case.
Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)
As the previous debate wound up earlier than expected, I have the chance to say a few words on this subject.
I do not think anyone is saying that a reconsideration process in deciding whether someone should receive a benefit is a bad thing. I do not think anyone would complain if it cut the number of appeals, caused less stress on the claimant, could be done very quickly—in less than a month—and benefits were secure during the process, but that is not what is happening. People are having to face very long delays before they get a decision the other side of the mandatory reconsideration and that is probably causing the most anxiety.
On top of that, people are never very sure to which benefit they are entitled. Will the Minister confirm that we are talking not only about people who were on incapacity benefit and have been found to be fit enough for work and should therefore be on jobseeker’s allowance, and it is to that that the appeal applies, but about those who in the original assessment were awarded employment and support allowance in the work-related activity group and are appealing because they think that they should have been in the support group? In other words, someone has been found eligible for ESA, appeals to go into the support group but still has to go through the mandatory reconsideration, at which stage their benefit stops and they are expected to apply for JSA. I have heard anecdotal evidence from a number of different people that those who have gone through the mandatory reconsideration find themselves in the support group, so no longer need to visit a personal adviser in Jobcentre Plus. During the period of the mandatory reconsideration, however, they were expected to be signing on for JSA, but were so ill in the meantime—that is why they ended up in the support group—that they could not make the weekly signings, as a result of which they and their benefits have been sanctioned. I would like the Minister to clarify that position.
The other problem is the interrelationship between the benefit someone receives and other benefits. Sometimes, a person undergoing the mandatory reconsideration who is not yet in payment of JSA might find that their housing benefit or council tax rebate has been stopped because the council has been told that they are no longer eligible for ESA, which they are not, but because of some of the problems highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) they have not yet put in an active claim for JSA. As a result, their housing benefit might be disrupted, even though they are entitled to it on the basis of their overall household income. There should not have been a break in the claim, but that is not how the system works.
If the changes could be made smoothly and very quickly, with the person being very clear about the benefits to which they are entitled and being able to remain on them without a break in the claim, the reconsideration might be acceptable. So far, however, that is so far from the reality of what is happening that it is no wonder that people are so anxious.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend share my concern about other anecdotal evidence that crops up all the time—about people who during this period of reconsideration and upheaval, end up taking their own lives, dying or making themselves much more ill? Financial worries are not the only ones at stake, because people’s health and lives can be put at risk, too.
Dame Anne Begg
We know that people can get incredibly anxious about any kind of health assessment that they are put through. We know, too, that people are not only anxious at the time of the mandatory reconsideration; they will have been anxious much earlier, perhaps when they first received an ESA50 form through the door to fill in. That may be followed by the worry of the work capability assessment, after which they might be found fit for work when they do not think they are fit for work; and they may be put in the WRAG when they think that they are ill enough to be in the support group. There is a whole range of pinch points at which people feel extremely anxious.
Let me give an anecdotal example. Two community psychiatric nurses came to see me in my surgery a few months ago. They were very concerned about their clients, whom they had fostered and helped, and who were almost reaching a stage at which they could start thinking about work and how they might return to the workplace. At that very point, however, the ESA50s dropped through the door, and their health suffered a setback.
The nurses were particularly concerned about a very vulnerable group of people who found the whole process—which was not helped by all the publicity surrounding it—terrifying and worrying. The extra burden imposed by the mandatory reconsideration is yet another reason for the deterioration in people’s health as they go through that process. It is not a zero-sum game. A whole range of external forces can worsen the condition of people who are in ill health, who may have mental health problems, and whose condition may fluctuate. People can be made to feel very ill, and we know of cases in which the process of applying for ESA has been cited as the reason for suicides. That is a tragedy. I am not suggesting that mandatory reconsideration is entirely responsible for it, but it constitutes yet another pressure on people who are already vulnerable, already quite ill, and already finding it difficult to cope with illness or disability.
I hope that the Minister will examine the process, and how it is working in practice. I cannot believe that it is working in the way he would like it to work. I am pretty sure that long delays, failures to reach a determination, and the fact that people may not know to which benefit they are entitled and may end up with nothing as a result—perhaps with huge rent arrears because of problems with housing benefit claims—are not part of the Minister’s plan, and I hope that, if they are not, he will be able to give us some idea of how he will improve the process.
The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Mike Penning)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) on getting here this evening. I know that she was delayed on the train. I think it very important for a debate that is on the Order Paper following a Member’s success in the ballot to be heard: that is only right and proper. Actually, this is a bit like groundhog day. According to my file, this is the hon. Lady’s fifth debate on the subject. She said that it was the sixth; perhaps we missed one.
I thank the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee, the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), for being present this evening. I am slightly concerned, because I said many of the things that I am about to say to her Committee only a few days ago. I hope that its members will pay attention to what I say, because during the speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh East I feared that the report might have already been written. I said openly and honestly that I wanted to do exactly what the Chair of the Committee said should be done—to make the process fairer, better and quicker, which I think is what we all want.
Mike Penning
I should like to make some progress first, not least because I want to congratulate the hon. Lady a little more. We have plenty of time, after all—with your permission, Mr Deputy Speaker.
Sheila Gilmore
May I just say, for the purpose of clarification, that any comments that I made about the Select Committee related to evidence that had been given in public? I was not in any sense referring to what the Committee would or would not recommend in due course, because we have not yet reached that stage.
Mike Penning
I was questioned extensively by the Committee about mandatory reconsideration delays, which are the subject of this evening’s debate. As you will probably have noticed, Mr Deputy Speaker, I rarely speak from notes, but I shall try to stick to what I said during the Committee’s evidence sessions.
There are two or three points I can make, but in some respects we will have to wait for the statistical analysis. I would love the data to be published now, but it is not ready. As soon as it is ready, I will publish it. As I said to the Select Committee recently, the statistics are being analysed and they will be published as soon as they become available.
Mandatory reconsideration is being done in order to get decisions right—to give decision makers the opportunity to look at things and make sure we have got the decision right. If there is any new evidence, it can be brought forward at that stage. That, among other things, is clearly having an effect on the number of appeals going to the tribunals—although we do not know to what extent, as the statistical analysis has not yet been released—and I think that is a good thing. As I said to the Select Committee, if this means that fewer judges are employed handling tribunals, that is a good thing. I am not certain the judges feel that way, and some of the comments from some judges more recently may indicate that. However, it is important that tribunals are gone to as a last resort in order to make the judgment as to whether DWP officials and decision makers have made that final decision correctly to the best of their ability.
If we can have fewer people going to appeal, that will be better. Appeals are dropping across the benefits handled by the Department, and especially those in respect of WCA. That is not solely due to mandatory reconsideration. There are about 80% fewer appeals, like for like.
Have delays been caused as we brought in the process? I have been open and honest about that before, and the answer is yes, but I would rather have slightly more delays than have decisions incorrectly taken and then turned over at tribunal. The decision on the mandatory reconsideration was prompted in part because I had sat in on a tribunal hearing and so much evidence was being brought in on the day of the tribunal. Everybody has the right to do that, and judges certainly have the rights and powers to look at that evidence, but my decision makers and officials had had no opportunity to look at that evidence. It is very important that we get this right.
At this stage in the process, the decision has been made that the person concerned is not going to get ESA. That is why we refer them across to JSA while the process is continuing.
The hon. Lady quoted from the DWP guidance specifically on the 14-day question. She pointed this out:
“The 14 day Temporary Periods of Sickness rule in JSA is in place to protect people from losing their entitlement when they have a short period of sickness. It was never intended to protect people with long term conditions.”
The following bullet point is very important, however:
“Claimants with longer term conditions can have their availability”—
for work in this case—
“restricted because of a physical or mental condition as long as the advisor thinks it is reasonable to do so”
based on the information before them.
Sheila Gilmore
The guidance the Minister quotes is one thing, but there is clear evidence—not just from Citizens Advice Scotland and my advice surgeries and those of my colleagues, but from up and down the country—that people in this position are not being allowed to claim JSA. They are being told that, because of their unfitness for work and in order to keep to the conditions, they cannot receive that benefit and they are turned away. Can the Minister assure us that he will make sure that will not happen?
Mike Penning
I will do everything I can, but I think it would have been right and proper for the hon. Lady to have gone on to say that there is specific guidance for people with long-term illness, as it is important to put that on the record. On the point she makes, I want all the staff in the DWP who have face-to-face contact with claimants and members of the public to have as much information as possible to make sure they can make the right decision. That is exactly why the guidance was changed in April. It was a decision that I made, and I asked my officials to make the change. I am not in any way saying that mistakes do not take place. We have a very large benefit with huge amounts of face-to-face contact across the board, whether it is in Jobcentre Plus or with officials in my own Department, and we make mistakes; no one could say otherwise. It would not make any difference who the Government were or who was standing here as Minister. I hope that they would all say, “We never get it perfect all of the time.” However, we should get as much of it right as we can and as often as we can, which is why mandatory reconsideration is vital to ensuring that the system works. As the hon. Lady and the Chair of the Select Committee said, when we are re-looking at a case and find that a person is entitled to benefit, we should ensure that their housing benefit and council tax benefit are not affected. All that must join up together.
Without a shadow of a doubt, we will work very hard to put in place the right training and guidance to ensure that the decision makers get things right. It is a big job, and I have only been here a short time, but we are getting there. As a Minister in the DWP, I am absolutely determined that we will ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent wisely; that it goes to the people who need it; that we put in place training for the right people; that any delays that are taking place—and they are taking place—are brought to a minimum; that we get out statistics; and that we are open and honest with the public, which I will be if there is a debate again next week or the week after, and that will remain the case for as long as I am a Minister in the DWP.
Question put and agreed to.
Female Genital Mutilation
Written Statements
Insolvency Regime
(10 years ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jenny Willott)
Everyone who is affected by insolvency should be able to have confidence that insolvency procedures are used fairly and that insolvency practitioners deliver the best possible outcome in what are often difficult and challenging circumstances. I am today announcing measures that will deal with abuse and misconduct and improve confidence in the insolvency regime and profession.
These measures include the publication of the report the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills commissioned from Teresa Graham into pre-pack administration (“the Graham review”), together with associated research, as well as the Government’s response to the consultation, “Strengthening the regulatory regime and fee structure for insolvency practitioners”.
Pre-pack sales are when arrangements are made to sell the viable parts of a failing business before it is announced that it has become insolvent, to make sure the best price is obtained.
I am grateful for Ms Graham’s diligent work on the review and her well thought-out report and recommendations. The review finds that pre-pack administrations have an important place in the UK insolvency landscape, but that reforms should be brought forward to increase transparency, boost the survival rates of the purchaser business and reform practices that are correlated with lower distributions to creditors. The report proposes a package of reforms that I think will improve business confidence in the pre-pack process and improve returns to creditors.
I welcome the report and I agree with all of the Graham review’s recommendations. It will now be the responsibility of industry and business to adopt the various voluntary measures proposed. The report also makes recommendations for how regulatory guidance might be strengthened and the Joint Insolvency Committee, which has responsibility for current guidance, will be looking at these recommendations.
The report recommends, in addition, that the Government should take a backstop power to legislate if necessary. I very much hope that the voluntary package, together with strengthened guidance, will work effectively to address the concerns raised. However, I agree that it would be sensible to provide the recommended power and the Government plans to do so. Such a power would only be used if the voluntary reforms are not successfully implemented, as I hope they will be, by the market.
I will be placing copies of the report and research in the Libraries of both Houses. Alternatively this can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/ graham-review-into-pre-pack-administration.
I am also pleased to announce that following consultation, the Government will bring forward measures to strengthen the regulatory regime for insolvency practitioners by introducing regulatory objectives for the industry and appropriate powers for the Insolvency Service, as oversight regulator, to deal with poor performance or misconduct.
That consultation also covered proposals relating to insolvency practitioner fees. A number of responses on the proposals to restrict the use of time and rate charging have been received, which we will be discussing further with interested parties before finalising the way forward. Our aim remains to ensure that insolvency practitioners receive fair remuneration for work properly carried out but also that creditors are getting the greatest return possible in the circumstances.
A copy of the responses to the consultation can be found at:
www.qov.uk/qovernment/consultations/insolvencv-practitioner-requlation-and-fee-structure.
Regional Growth Fund
The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)
I would like to take this opportunity to update the House on the progress of round 5 of the Regional Growth Fund (RGF). Following my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement on 10 April 2014, Ministers have concluded that an additional two projects and one additional programme will receive conditional offers as part of RGF round 5. This will mean round 5 of the RGF will invest £306 million to support 53 projects and programmes helping to create or safeguard 37,000 jobs and leverage £1.9 billion of private sector investment.
The additional projects and programme for round 5 of the RGF are:
South West
Actavis UK Ltd
Purico Paper Company Ltd
Nationwide
University of Lincoln (UoL) & UK Business Incubation Ltd (UKBI)
Student Support in England
The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)
In November 2013, I announced to the House of Commons that we suspected a number of Bulgarian and Romanian students studying at alternative providers may have been claiming maintenance support without meeting the requirement that they have been resident in the UK for at least three years.
We then introduced more stringent evidence checks for all EU students studying in the UK applying for maintenance support and asked all EU students to supply additional information to support their applications, before any further public funding was made available to them or to their institutions. This means these students must have evidence, such as bank statements, utility bills, council tax records, payslips, and P60s, to support their residency claims.
The results of this exercise are now available. Of the 11,191 students who we asked for additional residency evidence, 1,333 (12%) received a payment but were either unable to or chose not to demonstrate that they had been in the UK for the three years prior to the start of their study.
Around £65 million was due to have been paid out to these individuals. As a result of our prompt action only £8 million was actually paid. We have taken immediate action to recover these sums and already have recovered around £2.5 million. Work continues to recover the rest including using debt collection agencies, court action, and if we find evidence of fraud, we may prosecute those involved.
If any higher education provider is found to have been complicit in this, we will take the action against them directly.
The decision to take this action and suspend payments to a large number of students is not one that we took lightly. I believe the results of the exercise fully vindicate our decision to take action. We have sought to limit the impact on genuine applicants. Where evidence has been provided to support a claim, payments have been reinstated.
We have put in place a range of measures to ensure this does not happen again.
More stringent residency evidence checks will remain in place for all new applications from EU students alongside checks for UK students. These require students to provide documentary evidence to support their claim to be resident in the UK.
Any student who has failed to provide the required evidence will not be able to receive student support in future years, until such time as they do provide that evidence.
We have asked other EU Governments to assist us in tracking down any of these students that have returned to their home countries without paying their outstanding debt. We are exploring how best to identify whether these students have returned to the UK.
In alignment with the Cabinet Office Fraud, Error and Debt Taskforce appointed by the Prime Minister, we will carry out a fraud and debt review which will look at: the resilience of the entire student finance system; how we respond to fraud; and the powers of the Department of Business Innovation and Skills, Student Loans Company and partners have to tackle fraud.
Some other EU countries require other nationals to be resident in their country for five years before they are eligible for the full package of student support. We will consult on whether student support in England should be made available on the same basis so as to ensure that scarce public funds go only to those who have a genuine attachment to the UK.
We have commissioned a sampling exercise to investigate whether similar issues exist at publicly funded higher education providers.
A full copy of the results of this exercise will be placed in the Libraries of the House.
Brownfield Land
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
The coalition Government are determined to make the very best use of derelict land and former industrial sites to help provide the homes this country desperately needs, in a way that protects our valued countryside. Further to the Mansion House speech by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on Thursday 12 June and my written ministerial statement of 10 June 2014, Official Report, column 33WS, I would like to set out for hon. Members more information on the Government’s plans to increase house building on brownfield land.
Councils will play a critical role in bringing forward suitable unused and previously developed land. They will consult on and put in place local development orders, which are a flexible, proactive way to provide outline planning permission for the scale and type of housing that can be built on sites. This will provide greater certainty for both builders and local residents, helping developers to work up suitable schemes and ultimately speeding up the building of new homes. Our aim is to see permissions in place on more than 90% of suitable brownfield sites by 2020—which could provide up to 200,000 new homes.
We are providing a £5 million fund, to be launched before the summer, to support the first wave of new local development orders; we will also be providing a set of local development order “templates” for smaller brownfield sites, and will consult on other measures to underpin this programme later in the year. The Mayor of London will be given new powers to drive forward local development orders in the capital. But this drive for planning permissions will retain key safeguards—as with any planning application, councils will need to take account of the views of local people when preparing an order, as well as environmental issues like minimising flood risk.
In addition, 20 new housing zones on this brownfield land in London will benefit from £400 million funding from the Government and the Greater London Authority. A further 10 zones outside London will be supported by an additional £200 million of Government funding for remediation and infrastructure to deliver new housing development. The Government funding will be in the form of recoverable investment. The London bidding prospectus was published on Friday 13 June by the Mayor and the Government will publish a prospectus inviting bids for housing zones in the rest of England shortly.
As well as making the best use of brownfield land, we also want to ensure that existing housing estates in need of large-scale regeneration get the attention they deserve. In addition to improving the quality of properties, it also has the potential to deliver additional new homes on existing land. On Friday, I published a prospectus outlining how developers can bid for a share of a £150 million loan fund to invest in kick-starting and accelerating the regeneration of some of the country’s most deprived social housing estates.
These measures, taken together with our existing policies and initiatives, will remove obstacles to developing suitable brownfield sites, ensuring that we focus on building the new homes we need while protecting the green spaces we all value.
UK National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security 2014-17
(10 years ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I wish to inform the House that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, together with the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence, published on 12 June 2014 our “National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, 2014-17”.
The national action plan is a tool to enable us to articulate our priorities on women, peace and security and co-ordinate implementation of our work at national level. It serves as a guiding national policy document that is able to capture the diverse set of initiatives on this agenda taking place within the UK Government across our security, foreign policy and development work. It outlines the results that we expect these initiatives to bring. It serves to provide direction and vision for our staff and partners to ensure that women and girls are at the centre of all our efforts to prevent, resolve and respond to conflict.
The UK has a strong global reputation on women, peace and security, which I am committed to maintaining. We play a lead role at the United Nations Security Council on women, peace and security, including on debates and ensuring the role of women features in the mandates of peacekeeping and peacebuilding missions. The landmark UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security has been built on by six new resolutions, and calls on UN member states to adopt and deliver national action plans. The UK was one of the first countries to publish a national action plan in 2006. It was revised in 2010 for a further three years.
The aim of this latest three-year national action plan is to put women and girls at the centre of all UK efforts to prevent and resolve conflict, to promote peace and stability, and to prevent and respond to violence against women and girls. It sets out our intent to strengthen our ability to reduce the impact of conflict on women and girls and to promote their inclusion in conflict resolution. As well as bringing together all of the UK Government’s activities on this area, it shows the depth and breadth of our work on the women, peace and security agenda. It builds on the momentum generated from the range of women, peace and security-related initiatives including the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative, DFID’s strategic vision for girls and women, including broader work on violence against women and girls, and the call to action on protecting women in emergencies.
This national action plan focuses specifically on tackling the challenge to advance women and girl’s participation, to prevent violence against women and girls and protect them from it, to provide targeted relief and recovery, and to build UK national capacity to deliver all of this. It signals the UK Government’s continuing commitment to the agenda in our focus countries, which include: Afghanistan, Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Libya, Somalia and Syria—as well as work at home. In identifying these countries, we have considered whether it is a priority country for the work of all three Departments and of the National Security Council and that through our local consultations in-country, we have determined there is local appetite for change.
Government staff working in UK embassies and DFID offices in conflict-affected states have been consulted, as have women who have been or who are affected by conflict. This plan reaffirms this Government’s ambition to work as one to pursue visible change for women and girls affected by conflict, including in partnership with NGOs, Parliament and our international partners.
We will develop and publish an implementation plan, including indicators and baseline data on this national action plan by the end of 2014. For the first time, this baseline data will be used as a benchmark to assess UK efforts on women, peace and security throughout the life of this national action plan and will further articulate the key actions to be undertaken together by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence. This national action plan will be reported on annually from autumn 2015. The annual reports will be deposited in Parliament and shared with the Associate Parliamentary Group on Women, Peace and Security.
I am placing a copy of the national action plan in the Library of the House.
“Fuller Working Lives: A Framework for Action”
(10 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Steve Webb)
On Friday 13 June, the Government published “Fuller Working Lives—A Framework for Action”. This follows a commitment set out in the Government response to the House of Lords Select Committee on Public Service and Demographic Change report of Session 2012-13: “Ready for Ageing?”
Around 2.9 million people aged between 50 and state pension age are currently out of work and the effects of early labour market exit can be catastrophic for an individual, particularly in terms of their ultimate retirement income. In addition to the sudden drop in income and possibly finding themselves reliant on working age benefits, individuals also lose the benefits of workplace pension provision. There can also be negative effects for health and wider well-being when an individual leaves the labour market in an unplanned way.
The framework for action sets out the business case for retaining and recruiting older workers at the individual, business and societal-level. It also draws together the important steps that the Government are already taking which will promote fuller working lives.
In addition, we announced:
that DWP is working with local enterprise partnerships to encourage them to focus on the issue of fuller working lives in their local area;
that DWP, alongside Department of Health and Government Equalities Office, are launching a two-year pilot on what works to support carers to remain in employment;
a pilot with Jobcentre Plus on employment support for carers;
that we will develop a new guidance toolkit for employers which will build on the existing Age Positive employer guidance; and
we will also shortly be confirming the appointment of an older workers business champion.
We know that once out of work, older people are more likely to become long-term unemployed or inactive and it is for that reason that Government are particularly focused on what we can do to help older workers retain their jobs in the first place. In particular, carers, disabled people, those with health conditions and those made redundant are at risk of permanently leaving the labour market.
Over the decade to 2022, population projections suggest there will be 700,000 fewer people in the UK aged 16-49, but 3.7 million more aged 50 to state pension age. By 2020 over 50s will comprise almost one third of the working-age population and we simply cannot afford to ignore older workers. We also know that GDP could have been £18 billion higher in 2013 if the employment gap between people in their 40s and those aged 50 to state pension age was halved.
A fuller working life is about giving individuals the chance to increase their financial security in later life. Sometimes this might mean a change of job or a different working pattern that is more suitable to their lifestyle needs, or support to manage a health condition or disability. To help people to continue working the Government have abolished the default retirement age meaning most people can now retire when the time is right for them. Enabling older people who can work to stay in work is not only critical to the economy and pensions sustainability, but also to the financial, health and social well-being of individuals.
The “Fuller Working Lives—Framework for Action” can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/fuller-working-lives-a-framework-for-action.
The supporting “Background Evidence” document which sets out the analysis that has informed the development of the framework for action can be found at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/fuller- working-lives-background-evidence.
I have placed a copy of “Fuller Working Lives—A Framework for Action” and “Fuller Working Lives—Background Evidence” in the House Libraries.
Grand Committee
Special Educational Needs (Personal Budgets) Regulations 2014
(10 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
These regulations are the first to be laid under Part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014—an Act which, following very careful and considerate scrutiny by your Lordships’ House, has the potential to make a massive difference to the lives of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. These regulations, made under Section 49 of the Act, will introduce the option of a personal budget for education, health and care plan holders from September 2014. Personal budgets can make a real difference to children and young people; indeed, life changing, according to some of our parents on the pathfinder programme.
However, we know that the introduction of personal budgets is complex and needs very careful consideration. Noble Lords may have some concerns about the introduction in September, especially in relation to the depth of testing of direct payments for SEN provision under the pilot scheme. The pathfinder experience has shown that if they are to work, parents must be given clear upfront information about their availability and advice and support on requesting, taking up and managing a personal budget. Pathfinders have also demonstrated that they have the most impact when they are a coherent element of personalisation within the new education, health and care planning process rather than an end in themselves. The introduction from September 2014, as part of the wider introduction of the reforms, means that local authorities will develop personal budgets as a coherent element of the new system rather than as a bolt-on at a later date.
I want to stress that our approach to implementation will be one of evolution rather than revolution, building on the experience of the pathfinders. The draft code of practice, laid before Parliament on 11 June and to be subject to a debate in this House in its own right, is clear on this issue. Subject to the will of Parliament it will, along with regulations covering the local offer and EHC plans, set out a flexible framework for implementation while providing a clear expectation of what local authorities must have in place by September of this year and how this should evolve over time as joint commissioning arrangements and local offers mature.
I turn now to the detail of the regulations we are considering today. They contain many of the provisions we have previously debated as part of the pilot scheme for direct payments for SEN provision. They give parents and young people the right to ask for a personal budget when an EHC plan is being prepared or during a statutory review of the plan. Parents must be given upfront information in relation to personal budgets, including information that we will require to be included in and consulted on as part of the local offer. We have maintained considerations in relation to value for money and impact on other service users, considerations that were included in the very first pilot scheme following discussions between the then Minister for Children and Families and the noble Lord, Lord Rix, and that have continued to be of concern in debates both in this House and in the other place. We have also repeated a requirement for the permission of a school or college, and have added early years settings where a direct payment is being used on their premises. I understand the concern that this is a get-out clause and could be a barrier to inclusion, especially in further education. However, we have not seen any evidence of this from the pathfinders and we think it is only right that institutions should have the final say on who can work on their premises. I can, however, reassure noble Lords that we will keep a careful eye on this issue.
Before I close I want to return to the subject of implementation. I would like to make noble Lords aware of the comprehensive package of support we have in place for local authorities to help them meet the complexities of implementation. This package includes an ever increasing portfolio of materials, including practical advice, case studies, checklists, programmes for workforce development and frameworks for implementation available on the SEN pathfinder website, all developed with expert support from local authorities, their partners and VCS groups working in this area including those representing parents.
On the latter point, we have some excellent examples of information for parents on personal budgets. These have been developed in partnership with parents and include exemplary work from our SE7 pathfinder and the Redcar and Cleveland-Middlesbrough SEN collaborative.
Our SEN advisers are visiting local authorities the length and breadth of the country to establish the level of individual support local areas need and, where necessary, making referrals to our pathfinder champion support team and the newly appointed national champions for personal development.
I know that noble Lords have been interested in the ongoing evaluation of personal budgets. As I stated when we discussed Section 49 of the Act in Committee, SQW, the evaluators of the pathfinder programme, are undertaking a thematic evaluation of personal budgets and integrated resources. The research will re-examine the progress that has been made by both pathfinder and non-pathfinder areas to identify good practice and lessons learnt, and inform the development of less advanced areas. It will be published later this summer.
With this support, and the framework for implementation set out in regulations and the code of practice, I am confident that we have an approach that will in coming years make a significant difference to the lives of children and young people. As such, I hope all noble Lords will give it their support.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch (UKIP)
My Lords I am very grateful to the Government and the noble Lord for bringing forward these regulations. I think that the Minister knows I have a long history, as the father of a Down’s syndrome daughter, of asking for this sort of thing. I particularly welcome, therefore, the inclusion of parents and families in these regulations, giving them a status which they have lacked for many years.
I trust the noble Lord will forgive me if my question is superfluous. I am not sure whether I heard him say anything about the portability of these arrangements. If a young person or a child moves from one local authority to another, is there machinery in place to ensure that what has been agreed with one local authority will be transferred to another?
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, for once when I find myself talking about the noble Lord, Lord Nash, I am basically saying “Well done”, because the approach to bring parents more into the process and to bring the expertise and support together is very positive. Particularly in the case of certain types of needs or a certain child, the parent is usually the expert, at least initially, and to bring that expertise in is often required.
It is also the case that if one gets an individual need or even indeed something more commonly occurring, it is not uncommon to find a parent who has the time and energy to focus on their child to become more informed about that one child than the professional educators. So this has the potential to be a very good thing.
The devil, of course, will be in the detail and how it is seen through, but at least we have a willingness here to accept that it will need to change and develop, and it will not be one size fits all. This is probably a very good thing. I am sure that politicians and local authorities have the capacity to mess it up themselves, and not all parents will be that well informed and intentioned, but as a basic approach, I think there is much more good than harm in this.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, I will say at the outset that we very much welcome, as I think all Members in Committee on the Bill did, the principle of personal budgets and direct payments for children and young people with special education needs and learning difficulties and their families. It is fair to say that we all saw it as a tremendous possibility for empowering those young people and their families and parents. If it works, it will stimulate the provision of more and better services, and hold local authorities and providers to account, using the leverage of the personal budget. However, although we welcome the provision and the regulations, I would like to raise four points with the Minister, which potentially jeopardise this outcome of the empowerment of young people.
The first is the lack of evidence from the pathfinder programme that the Minister referred to. The most recent evaluation we have was published three months ago, in March. At that time, only six of the 31 pathfinder areas had started to implement personal budgets and only four of them had actually managed to develop the necessary resource allocation system which underpins the whole thing. Therefore, as yet, there is no substantial evidence to support what the regulations should be doing in this area—there is not much experience to speak of. It also suggests that many local authorities will have difficulties, as the pathfinders clearly have, setting up personal budgets and will need considerable support and guidance. Although I hear what the Minister says—that this is a kind of iterative, developmental and evolutionary process—there really is at the moment, in this area anyway, very little foundation in terms of knowledge and experience from the pathfinders on which to build. Can the Minister be confident that local authorities generally will be able to implement personal budgets effectively and, more to the point in terms of our discussion today, in the light of that lack of evidence, that these regulations are adequate to ensure that families can really access the personal budgets if they wish?
My second point relates to Regulation 7, which refers to the decisions by local authorities not to make a direct payment. The regulations themselves do not specify the grounds on which a request for a personal budget can be refused by a local authority but simply say that the local authority must give the reasons, in writing, for that refusal. The code of practice that was published in the last couple of days, at paragraph 9.107, refers readers to later paragraphs—paragraphs 9.119 to 9.124—for the reasons why a request may be refused. However, I have to say to the Minister that those paragraphs in the code of practice are about as clear as mud to the average family and, indeed, to me. They refer specifically to other pieces of existing legislation, which you then have to go and trawl through in order to understand what the grounds for refusal might be. Could the Minister say clearly today, and put on record, what are the grounds on which a local authority can refuse a request, over and above those basic conditions outlined in Regulation 8? In respect of direct payments, which are, if you like, a subset of personal budgets, will the Minister look at rewriting the code of practice so that paragraphs 9.119 to 9.124 are clearly understandable by families and professionals who will be looking to the code of practice for guidance?
My third concern is around Regulations 6(c) and 6(d), which the Minister referred to. It seems that these potentially constrain the provision of personal budgets by placing conditions—some would call them a get-out, as the Minister said, although he was referring to something else at that point—because they will enable local authorities to refuse personal budgets if the local authority feels that the provision of those budgets would have an adverse impact on other services or have an impact on the efficient use of local authority resources. I served a long time in local government before coming to this place, and that could mean anything in any local authority. If you are providing a whole range of services directly as a local authority, and somebody wants to take a chunk of your money and have a personal budget, any local authority can argue that that will have an adverse affect on its services and will not be an efficient use of its resources. Therefore, I am very concerned about the wide scope that those two sub-paragraphs give to local authorities to refuse, or at least not promote, personal budgets.
Lord Nash
I am grateful to noble Lords for their comments and questions on the regulations. I turn first to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, about portability. When a family moves to another area, the new local authority may review the plan and conduct an assessment but should keep the provision in the plan in place, including the provision supported by a personal budget.
I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for his kind remarks and support for what we are doing. I turn to the four points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes. I accept that the current evidence is not as extensive as we would all like. However, more than 500 personal budgets were in place at the last count in April, and in May 90% of local authorities said that they were ready to implement the reforms. Local authorities have expertise available to them in relation to the champions for personal budgets. SEN advisers are working with local authorities on this.
When someone’s experience is that something in the code of practice is, as the noble Baroness said, as clear as mud, it gives me cause for concern, but we will be debating this in full in the next few weeks. We feel that the guidance is appropriate but I look forward to those discussions.
I turn to the noble Baroness’s points about Regulations 6(c) and (d). We must consult about the personal budgets with parents and families as part of the process. I have to say that we have had no evidence that local authorities will use these regulations as a kind of devious reason for making the provisions available. Surprisingly, in my visits to a number of pathfinders, I found strong evidence that personal budgets resulted in a more efficient use of resources, as parents understood that this did not amount to a blank cheque, and the co-operation between parents and local authorities resulted in more efficiency.
Lastly, to deal with the point about post-16 provision, the regulations and advice that we give in the code of practice are clear that personal budgets should support provision that is appropriate to the young person as an individual. The wider provisions of the Children and Families Act contain a presumption of mainstream education for those with EHC plans, including those with personal budgets. If that is not an adequate answer for the noble Baroness I would be very happy to discuss it with her further and write to her.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I know that the Minister said we are going to debate the code of practice but what are the grounds upon which a local authority can refuse a payment? Why are those grounds not clearly listed in the regulations?
Lord Nash
It looks like I am going to have to get back to the noble Baroness on this. I do apologise.
Perhaps I can close with a quote from a parent on our pathfinder programme, who said:
“The flexibility is essential and means we can reflect changing circumstances’ needs. Compared to this time last year our son is a happier, less anxious, more settled and communicative child and as a consequence we as a family are able to function better and look forward more optimistically”.
I can think of no better way in which to conclude our discussions and, on that note, I hope that all noble Lords will give the regulations their support.
Crime and Courts Act 2013 (County Court and Family Court: Consequential Provision) Order 2014
(10 years ago)
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Lord Faulks
That the Grand Committee do consider the Crime and Courts Act 2013 (County Court and Family Court: Consequential Provision) Order 2014.
Relevant document: 26th Report, Session 2013–14, from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
My Lords, as noble Lords may be aware, this statutory instrument is required as a consequence of the creation of the new family court and single county court. Section 17 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013—the 2013 Act—establishes a new family court and a single county court for England and Wales, both of which came into being on 22 April 2014. Since the creation of the single family court, the county court and magistrates’ courts no longer have family jurisdiction.
The 2013 Act made amendments to a large number of Acts in consequence of the creation of the family court, and further consequential amendments to primary legislation were made in an order made and laid on 12 March 2014. That order included amendments to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2013 which enabled the provision of legal aid for advocacy in the family court. However, amendments were not made to the Access to Justice Act 1999 to include similar references to the family court; it was thought that it did not need amending as it had been repealed. This was an oversight as amendments are required to that Act. Although it was repealed by LASPO, it was saved for certain purposes and still applies to some pending cases. These amendments are required to enable the provision of legal aid for advocacy in the family court.
At the debate in Your Lordships’ House on 3 March on the order making consequential amendments to legislation to create the family court, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who I see in his place, brought to our attention a possible gap in the legislative provision concerning interest payable on debts resulting from orders made in the family court. The order we are debating here today makes amendments to legislation to fill that gap to allow for interest to be automatically carried on certain orders made by the family court in the same way as it would have been carried when such orders were made by a county court.
Noble Lords may recall that the independent Family Justice Review recommended the setting up of a single family court as the three-tier structure was complicated, inflexible and difficult for families and other court users to navigate. The creation of the new family court was complex. It required amendments to a large number of Acts and required an extensive package of secondary legislation. It was also part of the largest family justice reforms for a generation, with provisions contained in the Children and Families Act 2014 coming into force at the same time which firmly put children at the heart of the system.
Section 59 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 enables the Lord Chancellor to make by order such amendments to enactments as he considers appropriate as a consequence of that Act. The amendments made in Article 3 of this order are required to enable the provision of legal aid for advocacy in the family court, in circumstances set out in secondary legislation, and to remove references to matters which will no longer be dealt with in the magistrates’ courts. The equivalent amendment to LASPO has already been made. Once this instrument has been made, we will bring forward the necessary amendments to the secondary legislation under the Access to Justice Act 1999, which will complete the process of amending legal aid legislation in consequence of the creation of the family court.
The amendments made in the rest of this order concern interest payable on judgments or orders made in the family court. I must repeat my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for raising this issue in a previous debate. On that occasion, I promised to write to the noble Lord, which I did after the debate. As I set out in my letter, the Government acknowledge that there is a gap in the legislation for the family court, which provisions in this order seek to close.
The current situation is that if the new family court makes an order for lump sum provision under the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, Section 23(6) of that Act means that the court can at the same time order that the sum should carry interest. Therefore, there is some provision for interest to be made payable in the family court, but this is not automatic. To allow for interest automatically to be carried on certain orders made by the family court, in the same way as it would have been carried when such orders were made in the past by a county court, amendments are required to Section 74 of the County Courts Act 1984 and to the County Court (Interest on Judgment Debts) Order 1991.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I am glad that in just under four years’ membership of the House, I have at last been able to persuade the Government to do something. I hope that this is the start of a trend for the last 12 months of the Government’s life. I would not dissent from the Minister’s proposal in these amendments, but I feel it is necessary to reflect a little on what is happening in the family court system because some worrying factors are emerging.
I cannot now recall whether the Minister was in his place in the Chamber during that part of the debate on the Queen’s Speech in which I spoke. I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, will be replying in due course to some of the points I made, but some of them were around the business of the family court and, in particular, how the court is now operating. I am not speaking so much about the geographical location aspect—although that is a factor of some concern because now we have designated courts hearing these matters as opposed to just the local magistrates’ court which previously would have dealt with matters—but more particularly of the impact of the legal aid changes.
The Minister rightly referred to the fact that there is some legal aid available but, as noble Lords might recall, there was an extensive argument about the fact that a significant number of cases would fall outside the scope of legal aid, and it would appear that that is beginning to have a significant impact in turn, as was predicted, on the number of litigants in person in family court matters. I think the figure nationally has now risen to 52%. In the north-east, 61% of people in the family court are now unrepresented. That is apparently already causing significant delays to develop. Given the particularly sensitive area in which these cases are brought—disputes in the family are necessarily sensitive—that is an extremely unwelcome development. Of course, I cannot ask the Minister today to give any assurances about that matter, but I hope that he can say that the Government will be looking at the impact in terms of delay and the administration of justice in this sensitive area and will assess the position. It seems to me that that need not wait much longer because the legal aid impact has now been perceptible for some time, as these figures demonstrate. I hope the Government will take a look at the number of cases and the length of delays that are occurring and at whether any action can be taken to put that right because without that the reorganisation of the court structure will not achieve its objectives, which were to simplify the system and to make it more accessible and more efficient. That cannot be the case if unrepresented parties are clogging the courts, requiring adjournments and requiring the court effectively to intervene to run the case, as it were, when previously the parties would have had representatives who were capable of doing that and perhaps even of negotiating properly before the matter reached the court.
Having said that, we do not object to the order as laid but hope that the matters I have referred to today, which others have raised elsewhere, can be looked at and a response ultimately given.
Lord Faulks
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who modestly did not acknowledge his own part in one part of the changes that we are proposing by this statutory instrument. As to litigants in person and the problems that they could cause in family justice, as the noble Lord would expect, I cannot comment on particular local difficulties. I understood him to be saying that his quarrel was not so much with the structure as with the practical difficulties that could be encountered by unrepresented litigants, with possible delays that might flow from that.
The Government want to help people to reach their own agreements outside court, when that is appropriate or safe. It is the case, and always has been, that people have to attend court on occasions, and the Government are taking a number of steps to assist litigants in person. We have provided funding to, among others, the Royal Courts of Justice and the Citizens Advice Bureau to develop and expand what is known as CourtNav—an application that helps selected users to complete applications to the courts in an effective way—and to Advicenow, to update a number of its guides, as well as to the Personal Support Unit, to provide free independent assistance to people facing proceedings without legal representation in civil and family courts. The Courts Service and the Ministry of Justice have also provided easy-to-understand practical information about family mediation, making an application to court and attending hearings. This has included updating leaflets available to court users and a number of videos have been made available online. I am sure that the noble Lord would like to have a look at those videos to assess their quality.
Judicial training is being delivered to support the implementation of the new private law programme—and this is an important feature. A key focus of the training is to ensure that judges, magistrates and legal advisers are better equipped to support litigants in person through the court process. I do not pretend that judges would not on the whole prefer litigants to be competently and well represented by lawyers, but as noble Lords are aware we are operating on a restricted budget and cuts have had to be made.
As to the number of litigants in person in family proceedings, I cannot give precise figures, but there have always been litigants in person in the family justice system. It is true that Her Majesty’s Courts & Tribunals Service data show a reduction in private law children disposals where both parties were represented in October to December of 2013, compared with the same period the previous year. Although the number of litigants in person has increased since LASPO came into effect, available data show that the time that cases are taking has remained steady. In private law, the average number of weeks to disposals remains steady at 16 to 18 weeks, but the Government are monitoring the situation and continue to do so very closely. The noble Lord is right to raise the issue—it is a source of anxiety—but I reassure him and other noble Lords that the Government are well aware of potential problems and will keep a close eye on the matter.
To sum up the statutory instrument, the order provides the vires by which legal aid may be provided for advocacy in a family court. It allows the Legal Aid Agency to provide legal aid for advocacy in the small number of cases that may still be before the family court under the old Access to Justice Act 1999, and it also allows interest to be automatically carried on certain orders made by the family court in the same way as it would have been carried when such orders were made by county courts. I commend the order to the Committee.
Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2014
(10 years ago)
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Lord Faulks
That the Grand Committee do consider the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 (Exceptions) Order 1975 (Amendment) (England and Wales) Order 2014.
Relevant document: 27th Report, Session 2013–14, from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
This order is part of the Government’s ongoing commitment to keep safeguarding measures in step with developments elsewhere. The amendments contained within this order seek to maintain the balance between the rehabilitation of offenders and the need to protect the public.
As noble Lords will be aware, the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 seeks to aid the reintegration into society of offenders who have put their criminal past behind them. It does this by declaring certain convictions, after a specified time, as spent. Once a conviction has become spent an ex-offender is not required to declare it when, for example, entering employment, or applying for insurance. Research has consistently shown that obtaining employment reduces the risk of offending. Noble Lords will recall that in March this year, the Government implemented the provisions in Section 139 of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 which mean that more convictions can become spent and, in most cases, sooner. This means that even more ex-offenders can benefit from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act, which should help them reintegrate into society.
However, there must be a balance, of course, to ensure that members of the public are adequately protected. To this end, the exceptions order to the Act allows certain employers, bodies and proceedings to be excluded from the application of the Act. When, for example, a person applies for a job listed in the exceptions order, the employer is entitled to ask about certain spent cautions and convictions, as well as those which are unspent. The exceptions listed relate to activities where the individual is presented with a particular opportunity to cause harm to the public or has regular contact with particularly vulnerable groups such as children. In these circumstances, we consider that the need to protect the public outweighs the need to protect the ex-offender from disclosure of their criminal record.
It is, therefore, the exceptions order which sets out the exceptions to the general protections under the 1974 Act. The Police Act 1997 is the related legislation which sets out the process for the issue of criminal record certificates and enhanced criminal record certificates, otherwise known as standard and enhanced disclosure. Standard disclosure contains details of a person’s unprotected spent cautions and convictions. Enhanced disclosure includes, in addition, any information which the chief officer of police considers is relevant to the particular application. These disclosure certificates are issued by the Disclosure and Barring Service.
In this exceptions order, we introduce four amendments aimed at maintaining the balance between the rehabilitation of offenders and public protection. There is also an amendment to update the description of a probation officer.
Following changes made to the Childcare Act 2006 by the Children and Families Act 2014, a person wishing to provide childcare on domestic premises will be able to register with a childminder agency instead of registering with the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills—Ofsted. This is so that childminder agencies can support the training and development of childminders, thus improving the quality of childcare provision. In addition, anyone wishing to operate a childminder agency will be required to register with Ofsted.
The amendments to the exceptions order will permit Ofsted to ask a person seeking to register as a childminder agency about their spent convictions and cautions. The amendments will also permit childminder agencies to ask those it proposes to employ about their spent convictions and cautions.
Special guardians are appointed by a court under powers in the Children Act 1989. They share the parental responsibility of the child with their birth parent but can exercise that responsibility to the exclusion of the child’s birth parents or anyone else with parental responsibility. The child resides with the special guardian but the legal relationship with the parents is not severed, as is the case in adoption.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I commend the Government’s stressing the importance of offender rehabilitation and their sensible way of dealing with spent convictions. I certainly support the order before us. However, it is confined to cases in which children are involved.
By sheer coincidence, last week the Government tabled a number of amendments to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which will reach your Lordships’ House in about three weeks’ time, creating a series of offences concerning the ill treatment or wilful neglect of a range of people—not just children but other vulnerable people as well. That raises a question in my mind as to whether the order goes wide enough in terms of covering other people who are subject to care in the same way that the children referred to in it will be subject to care or reports. A wide range of people may be in such a position—for example, people suffering from mental health disorders or learning disabilities and those in elder care.
An area about which I have some general concerns is that of the Court of Protection and the appointment of deputies for people subject to powers of attorney. It seems to me that the same principles that the noble Lord rightly outlined in moving the order apply to those cases. I confess that I have not been able to check whether regulations already exist placing those involved in care in exactly the same position as those involved with children under this order, thereby enabling a check to be made on what would otherwise be spent convictions affecting this group. If that is the case, it is entirely satisfactory. If it is not yet the case, perhaps the Government will look at that.
I wish to raise a further point about the Chartered Institute of Legal Executives. The order refers to defined duties, as it were, and regulated work. A number of areas are defined. Probate and conveyancing are very sensibly added to the list as in those areas temptation could well be placed in the way of those with a record of dishonesty. However, in my submission, the same would apply to those engaged in guardianship work. I have in mind particularly powers of attorney, the Court of Protection and the role of deputies. The whole purpose of that court is to vest in the hands of a deputy power over the assets of a person who has become a patient within the meaning of the legislation. If that has not yet been embraced by previous regulations or is not implicitly included in this order, I suggest that the Government take a look at it because it seems to me a field which is certainly analogous to those which are clearly prescribed for CILEx in the order.
With those questions rather than reservations I am happy to support the order as it stands. If further regulations are required to deal with some of the points I have raised, perhaps the Government will look at those. They can be assured of our support if they decide that it is necessary to bring forward further regulations to cover the areas to which I have referred.
Lord Faulks
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, for the various points that he made pertaining to these provisions. I cannot give a comprehensive answer to all the questions that he raised. However, I can say that the exceptions order covers all those who are engaged in regulated activity, which includes all those working unsupervised with vulnerable people—that is, those in care and, I would imagine, subject to confirmation, those vulnerable for one reason or another such as those he exemplified in his remarks. I would be surprised if they did not have this protection, but I undertake to write to him to confirm that that is the case.
The question of whether someone should be employed if they have any form of conviction and the degree of disclosure is difficult because, for example, as part of the community rehabilitation process recently begun as part of the transforming rehabilitation process, some of those who may be recruited by the CRCs may in fact be offenders themselves who will be provided as mentors to former offenders, so that one does not to have a hard-and-fast rule about these matters. Of course, safeguards need to be very much in place to ensure that the correct people are selected as mentors. It is always a difficult balance to achieve. The Government think that they have achieved it with these necessary changes which will, of course, arise from time to time with the development of particular bodies or services, as in the case of CILEx. This instrument is focused on maintaining the correct balance towards public protection, and the amendments, although limited in scope, clarify which people working with children are covered and keep up to date the legal services sector. They respond to the continuing need for public protection but at the same time maintain the balance towards rehabilitation acknowledged by the noble Lord as something we should be striving for in so far as is possible without jeopardising public safety.
Transfer of Tribunal Functions (Mobile Homes Act 2013 and Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2014
(10 years ago)
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Lord Faulks
That the Grand Committee do consider the Transfer of Tribunal Functions (Mobile Homes Act 2013 and Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2014.
Relevant document: 1st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
My Lords, the purpose of this order is to transfer the appellate jurisdiction in the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 and the Mobile Homes Act 2013 from residential property tribunals to the Property Chamber of the First-tier Tribunal and to make other changes in the law in connection with that transfer. It also makes changes to certain forms required to be used under the Housing Act 1988 with reference to the relevant tribunal. The order applies to England only.
Residential property tribunals had jurisdiction to settle disputes between owners of park homes and their site owners and to hear appeals on contractual matters arising under the Mobile Homes Act 1983. This dispute resolution was transferred to the First-tier Tribunal when it was launched on 1 July 2013. In the mean time, the Mobile Homes Act 2013 received Royal Assent on 26 March 2013. This hugely important Act started as a Private Member’s Bill in the other place and was navigated through your Lordships’ House with great skill by the noble Lord, Lord Best. The Government were pleased to support it.
The Act reflects the Government’s commitment to ensure that park home owners’ rights are respected and their health and safety protected. It introduced a reformed local authority licensing regime, modernising the scheme in the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960. This came into force on 1 April 2014 and for the first time gives local authorities real teeth in ensuring that park home sites are properly maintained and managed. Local authorities can now require works to be carried out to ensure that licence conditions are complied with and, in the case of an emergency, can enter the site and do the works themselves, recovering their costs from the site owner.
We want, of course, to ensure that local authorities act proportionately and site owners are not required to carry out works that do not come within the terms of the site licence or that are excessive, which is why the Act provided for appeals against local authority decisions to be heard by residential property tribunals. As I have already indicated, those tribunals were already dealing with disputes under the Mobile Homes Act 1983, and were therefore familiar with the issues in this very small niche part of the housing market.
Secondly, residential property tribunals already dealt with appeals on housing conditions and licensing in the private rented sector. It was therefore logical that those tribunals be given the appellate jurisdiction in the new licensing regime in the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 and take over existing licensing functions in that Act from magistrates’ courts. It is now necessary to transfer the functions conferred on the defunct residential property tribunals under the 1960 Act and the Mobile Homes Act 2013 to the Property Chamber so that appeals against licensing decisions can be determined by the First-tier Tribunal, which is what this order sets out to achieve. The transfer order also amends the 2013 fees order to allow fees to be charged for applications regarding mobile homes site rules and under the Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960.
I accordingly commend the draft order to the Committee.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I declare that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a former council leader. Therefore, I have a keen interest in all aspects of local government matters.
I would like to ask about the level of fees to be charged rather than the transfer of jurisdiction, which is what the order is mainly about. My query relates to paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which states:
“The normal policy is that fees should be set at a level to recover no more than the full cost of providing the service”
I agree with that; that is the correct policy. However, will the Minister clarify whether the definition of full cost actually is full cost in this instance? It is a fee level of £155. Has that fee level been set to include a contribution to a council’s overheads rather than just being the recovery of the immediate direct cost?
I raise this because I think that it is an issue of principle. When I was a council leader, I discovered that in many instances, particularly in the regulatory and licensing areas, fees and charges were not, in fact, related to the total cost that a council incurred. That total cost includes its overheads for its premises, heating, lighting and so on. Too often fees were set to cover the cost of undertaking the immediate work involved. I seek assurance from the Minister that the total cost to a local authority has been included in paragraph 7.2 in setting the fee at £155.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I must follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in declaring an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a former leader of the same council for, if I may say so, quite a bit longer than the noble Lord. I have a certain sympathy with his view on this order to the extent that we are talking essentially about commercial organisations bearing the cost. The implication behind the noble Lord’s question is clear enough: is this a sufficient amount? If it were to fall on the occupier of a mobile home, I would be somewhat concerned about that. If the intention is that it should fall on the owner of the site as a commercial proposition, I think he makes a significant point. I am glad that he has made it because my only reservation about this order would have been to point to the split infinitive in the Explanatory Note.
Lord Faulks
I am grateful for the learned contribution from the north-east and for the grammatical point made so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham. On the question of costs, as the Explanatory Note states, the position is that the fee of £155 is for making an application to the Property Chamber relating to a dispute over a mobile home. It is set at the same level as the fee applied to applications which follow similar tribunal processes for other applications. There are circumstances in which fee remissions can be obtained, but they are available only to individuals. On 7 October last the Government introduced reforms to the scheme of fee remissions in the courts and tribunals, and the purpose was to reduce the cost of the scheme to the taxpayer while ensuring that fee remissions were better targeted at those who cannot afford to pay the fee. They introduced a single fee remission scheme across the HM Courts and Tribunals Service, which is a simplified means test based on a gross monthly income and disposable capital test.
The question arises as to whether the costs payable in these cases should act as a deterrent to elderly residents. I think that, perhaps contrary to the sense of the debate so far, those concerned with these disputes are often people who would not normally venture into a court of any sort. This is to provide a relatively cost-neutral risk for those who want to resolve what can be quite highly charged disputes about their homes without great expense and involving the paraphernalia of lawyers. In fact, in answer to the question put by noble friend Lord Shipley, the fees reflect only the costs of the tribunal, not of the local authority. I accept his point that that means that there are a number of costs which are not reflected in that overall fee. What lies behind it is the provision of the sort of service I have endeavoured to describe.
So as further to assist those who might feel that they are receiving somewhat oppressive treatment from the site owners, and sadly there are some instances of that, the procedural rules contain provisions for cost awards if the tribunal considers that a party has acted unreasonably, although of course that is a judicial decision based on the particular facts of the case. Generally, however, costs are not awarded in the Property Chamber and parties meet their own expenses in bringing a case. These hearings are conducted by tribunal members who are experienced in the area and help unrepresented parties to frame questions where necessary, so clearly it is a cheap and, I hope, effective way of resolving disputes. However, I accept entirely what lies behind the question put by my noble friend Lord Shipley, which is that there is a cost involved which is borne by the local authority.
I hope that that deals with the points made by noble Lords. However unsatisfactory this might be to local authorities from the financial point of view, they are at least in the position of knowing that a useful service is being provided to those who are often in a vulnerable position in society. That is because those who acquire park homes, as they are known, often have little by way of rights and do not have clear contracts. Despite the fact that quite a lot of money is involved in these homes, there is nothing like the same security that someone would have if they were acquiring a house by the normal conveyancing route. This tribunal is providing an extremely useful and important source of remedy to help often vulnerable people.
To summarise, this order will make the changes necessary to transfer the functions conferred on the defunct residential property tribunals to the Property Chamber, so appeals against licensing decisions can be determined by the First-tier Tribunal. I commend this draft order to the Committee.
Representation of the People (Supply of Information) Regulations 2014
(10 years ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the Grand Committee do consider the Representation of the People (Supply of Information) Regulations 2014.
Relevant document: 1st Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, this is another of a long series of statutory instruments as we move from household electoral registration to individual registration. I emphasise that throughout this process our overriding aim is to make sure that as many people as possible are included on the register by as many different groups as possible.
I am happy to tell noble Lords that the implementation of individual electoral registration started successfully on 10 June in England and Wales and will start as planned in Scotland in September. For the first time ever, people can apply online to register to vote; and all 348 English and Welsh local authorities are connected to the IER digital service. Work continues and we are on track to connect Scottish authorities for the September start in Scotland. I am told that in the first five days, by last Friday, some 10,000 had registered online to vote. For the first week, that seems to be a good start. I am sure that the Committee will be pleased that this draft instrument is before it today.
During discussions with political parties to outline plans for the implementation of IER, political parties asked that at the end of the 2014 canvass they be given a specific new list of those electors on the register who have been carried forward and those who are not yet confirmed or registered under IER. I again remind noble Lords that we hope to reach some 70% to 75% confirmation through data sharing. We are now at between 80% and 85%—80% with national data sharing and 85% with local data sharing—so we are doing better than we initially thought, although we of course want to make sure that as many as we humanly can reach are included in the new list.
The full electoral register, which is available to certain people and organisations, such as political parties, will remain as it is now. It will not indicate whether an entry is as a result of a person making a new IER application, having been confirmed or being carried forward—hence the need for these regulations. They will allow registered political parties, or a person nominated by them, to request IER-related information about which entries on the electoral register are IER entries and therefore by implication which ones are not. Such applications can be made once, from 1 January to 27 February 2015 in England and Wales, and from 2 March to 10 April 2015 in Scotland. Electors who have an anonymous entry, a declaration of local connection, a service declaration or an overseas elector’s declaration will not be included in this information, as generally they do not live where they are registered. Anonymous electors are also excluded, for security reasons.
Lord Maxton (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister would be surprised if I did not make some comment, but I shall be very brief. All of this would be totally unnecessary if the Government had not got rid of identity cards—what would now be called smart cards—at the beginning of this Parliament. If they had not done that, none of this would be necessary. We would have moved to compulsory ID cards and compulsory registration. All registration would have been based on the ID cards and that would have solved an awful lot of problems.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, I apologise to my noble friend as I missed the first few sentences of his introduction. I am moved to make a contribution only by the remarks of the noble Lord opposite. I wish to congratulate the Government on what I think has been an extraordinarily successful exercise. They have made huge progress. Many of us who have attended debates in this very Room over the past seven or eight years on this issue have been filled with foreboding that such an important but nevertheless rather dramatic change to our electoral registration system might have some major problems. It would seem that, on the whole, those problems have been dealt with most effectively. I think that it is only right that your Lordships’ House should express its appreciation and congratulations to the team within the department, which has worked so hard to make this a success, together with those in other parts of the administrative system, notably the Electoral Commission.
I have just one question for my noble friend. He made brief reference to paragraph 8.10 of the draft Explanatory Memorandum, which includes the question of whether the transition period might be extended. I think that I understood him to say just now that that decision can be taken only after the general election by whatever new Administration come to power. I would be grateful if he could just clarify that because, if there is any change in the transition programme, it is important that we know in good time, well in advance, that any such change might take place. However, I think that I understood him to say just now that that could take place only after the general election in May 2015.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I have only a very few comments to make on these regulations. As they stand, we support them because they will allow political parties to assist in promoting IER. One general point that I make every time that I stand at the Dispatch Box in the main Chamber is my concern about the people who are not registered to vote—at least 6 million people. Nothing I see coming from the Government ever deals with that. The Minister gave a figure of 85%, up from 75%. Is that 85% of the people who are presently registered, so that even more than 6 million people will not be registered? I want to hear more from the Government about what they will do about those people, because I do not see much for them at all.
I do not share the optimism expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, about how it is all going so well. The situation has certainly improved but I am also very well aware that there were some serious problems at the start. I know that from my membership of the Electoral Commission and elsewhere, so things have improved. Whatever Government are in power after next year will have to think very carefully about how to introduce this. If it is not perfectly right, we will have to extend the period to allow people to come on to the register, because it is really important that we allow our citizens to get registered properly. If there is a risk of more people being left out, it is not good practice.
Could the Minister also tell us a little more about the thinking of the Electoral Commission on how we are getting on with this process? I am very pleased that the Government have involved political parties, as they are crucial to getting this right, but I would like to know a bit more about the attitude of the Electoral Commission to the role of political parties.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his comments, but I am not sure that I can say with confidence what the attitude of the Electoral Commission is to political parties. They play a very obvious and important part in all of this. I am informed that a minor political party is something like the rate payers’ association in a local authority, the south Somerset independents, or whatever. Anything else that is nationwide is a national political party. Political parties have a very important role to play in democracy. One thing that I deeply regret about the current state of British democracy is that the membership of all major political parties has fallen. That worries all of us, and we all wish to turn it back.
We recognise that there are a number of people who are not on the register, and the Electoral Commission’s research demonstrates that the strongest reason for that is that people want nothing to do with politics and not much to do with the state if they can avoid it—apart from receiving benefits in a number of instances. We have a severe problem of political alienation. When I saw the latest audit of political engagement produced by the Hansard Society, which has only 24% of citizens between the ages of 18 and 25 thinking that politics has any useful connection with their own lives, that is a real problem for all of us. It suggests that we have to work particularly hard at getting young people to re-engage with politics.
Lord Maxton
Is not one of the reasons—I emphasise only one of the reasons—is that young people in particular see politics as somehow divorced from the trends and the movement of technology in our country? That is why they have switched off from it.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
That is one of the reasons why we hope that online voting will make it more attractive to them. I also think there is a case for encouraging more activity by all parties and by all Members of both Houses of Parliament, on a cross-party basis, to make sure that as we approach the next election young people are re-energised to take part in politics because they are, on the whole, switched off. We have a very large problem here, but there are a number of things that we can do about it. I have no doubt that the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, will be going out to many schools across his patch to energise them. I am told that the pick-up among 16 year-olds in schools in Scotland has been good and that registration is much higher than expected. That is partly because something is coming up which immediately involves them.
On ID cards, I look forward to many continuing conversations with the noble Lord, Lord Maxton. We had a Question this afternoon on digital information, digital sharing and digital privacy. The Government intend to publish a White Paper before the end of this year with clauses for a draft Bill on data sharing and data privacy. There are some very large issues here which all of us who remember the ID cards debate are scarred by. The intention of the White Paper will be precisely to try to float a more informed debate about the trade-offs between privacy and data sharing and how we address that. We have to change the legislation in this area because different departments have different legal frameworks for the collection, use and sharing of information. That is therefore a question to which we will return.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, the transition timetable does allow for the decision on whether to carry on or to delay has to be taken by the incoming Government and Parliament. These are all failsafes to make sure that we have the maximum amount of confidence by all concerned in the transition to individual electoral registration. I hope I have managed to answer all the questions.
I have become more and more committed to a successful transition. It was something that the previous Government set out on. We recognise that there are bound to be a number of problems, but so far the transition has gone much better than some of us were initially confident about, but nevertheless we have some way to go. I again flag the problems of making sure that attainers—the rising 18 year-olds—are fully on the register. We will be returning with further instruments as we go forward just to make sure that we utilise every single possibility to maximise registration.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
We seem to be raising the same points again and again. One day I would like the Minister to say from the Dispatch Box that the Government are determined to have fewer people not registered under IER than were not registered before so we are going to bring in the AEA and council leaders and work with them to make sure that it happens because with all the investment and changes, if we end up with 7 million or 8 million people not registered to vote, that would be terrible. We must get to a situation where we have fewer people not registered to vote. While some people may not want to be registered, I do not believe for a moment that all of those 6 million people out there are saying that they do not want to be on the register. I think it is about how we engage with people at local authority level, at the government level and at all levels, and that includes the political parties. I hope that when the Minister brings the instruments to us over the next few weeks and months, he will be able to give us some good news on the lines that I have outlined.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I had hoped that I was bringing good news. Of course political parties have a significant contribution to make to this. We know who the vulnerable groups are. They are young people, people who move regularly, people in private rented accommodation and people who are out of a job. They are the groups who are least likely to be registered. People like me who have been living in the same house for a long time are almost always on the register. We have to concentrate on the vulnerable groups as well as we can. I am happy to say that evidence from the National Citizen Service courses—something which our Conservative colleagues in government are enormously enthusiastically about, but I must admit I was a little sceptical at the outset—appears to show that the 80,000 15, 16 and 17 year-olds who have taken part in NCS courses are much more enthused because they think they know how to participate in local communities and therefore also how to register to vote. It is a range of activities of that sort that we all have to be engaged in. I stress again that the Government cannot do it all and that civil society has to help. The Government have already provided some £4.2 million to various civil society groups for this effort. We all need to work together. I very much hope—as I know the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, does—that that the outcome is that some of those 6 million people who we are missing will register in the transition and that we will gain rather than lose as we make that transition.
Scotland: Independence
(10 years ago)
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Lord Purvis of Tweed
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have for further reform and decentralisation of the United Kingdom in the event of Scotland voting “no” in the independence referendum in September.
Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have chosen to take part in this debate and to noble Lords across all parties who are taking an interest in what future path the United Kingdom takes in the event of a no vote in the Scottish referendum. It would be a dereliction of duty for me not to refer to the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, who chairs with me an all-party group on UK reform and further decentralisation. When the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I both served in the Scottish Parliament, we would occasionally spar against each other across the Floor of the Chamber, but on this issue we purr with agreement on the need for a lively debate on what shape the United Kingdom takes in future.
This debate is taking place on an important day in Scottish political history. It is uncommon that political parties from very different backgrounds and philosophies and with competing interests come together on a shared platform. This afternoon, Willie Rennie MSP, Johann Lamont MSP and Ruth Davidson MSP have led their respective parties to a common statement committing them all to delivering powers to strengthen the way the Scottish Parliament operates and to allow the people appropriately to hold MSPs to account for the decisions that they make. Such a commitment is highly significant and guarantees the strengthening of the Scottish Parliament should Scots vote no.
Exactly a decade ago, in June 2004, I published a pamphlet outlining a new model for financing the Scottish Parliament within the UK. In the introduction of a paper on fiscal federalism which I wrote while serving as a member of the Scottish Parliament’s Finance Committee I said that “the concept of fiscal federalism is well suited to a modern, sophisticated and pluralist society like Scotland. It will provide the necessary underpinning to support the move towards an increasingly federal system of governance in the United Kingdom”. A decade on, I continue to hold that view. It is worth noting for noble Lords’ interest that when I published that paper my party was serving in government in Scotland and the SNP had the previous year suffered a major reverse in the Scottish Parliament elections. It was most assuredly not a proposal designed to respond to the calls for independence by a strong SNP.
I have never believed that the question of the powers of the Scottish Parliament is one of tactics or about responding to nationalist arguments. Rather, I have always believed that the question of powers is one of ensuring the right balance of accountability and responsibilities within our union. With the right balance, we ensure that the appropriate sphere of government is best motivated to deliver good and efficient services and is appropriately held to account for the decisions it makes. Without the appropriate balance, it is easy for decisions to be avoided and an accountability gap to be created. I saw this start to develop while I was an MSP, and I see it today. I deliberately cite spheres of government; no longer should we in the United Kingdom be talking about levels of government. Many citizens across our union live with two Parliaments, or a Parliament and an Assembly, and two Governments. It is therefore the sphere of those government relations, and the relationship between them, not the hierarchical level, which is the most appropriate area to define.
The Scottish parties of the current coalition government partners have published proposals that match closely those I put forward in 2004. Coming from different perspectives, they have reached the same conclusions to address this growing imbalance. The post-referendum debate, however, is one that does not affect solely Scotland. For England, Wales and Northern Ireland the existential questioning of the union by many Scots requires us to consider the wider union, and the governance of England, too. This debate is best shaped if we set the terms for what the extent of devolution is, or what I have called the natural destination of devolution. This is the permanent balance of power and responsibility between the nations, beyond which the union does not function.
My party for many years has argued a federalist case, and others are coming to the same conclusions about the need to reach a clear understanding on what this destination of devolution is. The issue for post-referendum Britain, therefore, is how we bring coherence to this in order that the union is not merely a more asymmetrical entity than it is at the moment, without a clear defining of place for the Westminster and Whitehall institutions and the relationship between the nations and within England.
First, there can most definitely be a union that has varying powers in the nations. After all, they entered into the union for different reasons and under differing circumstances, so their continuing presence in it need not be identical. Secondly, the governance of Scotland on domestic—or, as some call them, home rule—affairs, need not be identical to the governance of equivalent areas within England, Wales or Northern Ireland. Indeed, in many respects, there can be a healthy difference in the way in which policy is approached. It is unhealthy if there is difference of accountability and balance of finance.
It is therefore the issue of the coherence of what holds the entity of the union together that is important. For me, it is the rational and well considered decentralisation of power from Westminster and Whitehall, the extent that we reach the right balance of accountability and that it is robust enough to be permanent and stable.
The UK should become a more federal-type kingdom after the referendum, even if it prefers not to describe itself as such. While it will not be a purely federal country— perhaps it will never be, as I have outlined in relation to the way in which the union was formed—it will increasingly have characteristics of how federal countries operate. For example, the permanence of the Scottish Parliament should be enshrined in the constitutional architecture of the whole union. The Scottish Parliament should not be a devolved Parliament of this Parliament, it should be a permanent body in its own right, able to be abolished only should it so desire, or have its powers altered only if it approves. The Scottish Government, elected from its Parliament’s Members, should not have their financial relationship with the Treasury set unilaterally by the Treasury. The relationship between the UK Treasury and Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will look much more like that of a federal finance ministry rather than a centralised UK Treasury that can unilaterally alter the state of funding policy across all four nations.
While Scotland is further down a path of reform than Wales—and Northern Ireland, which has its own considerations——the question of the governance of England must continue. There is the need therefore to establish a framework of principles under which UK-wide bodies operate, under which UK Ministers carry out their UK-wide functions, as opposed to their English functions, and under which the institutional arrangements between the Governments of the nations, often called the concordats, are framed. Such a framework of principles would apply also to the many bodies and agencies that currently have a UK-wide remit and touch on areas that are the competence of the nations but which are answerable only to this Parliament.
What does this mean for the users of these services, our former constituents in many respects? Sometimes we think that our esoteric arguments about constitutional theory will be grabbing their attention every single day. I think they would see a greater level of transparency and hold the relevant politicians to account. A Scottish Parliament with spending powers and no taxation powers is a rather artificially benign political institution. Power resides with the people, not the institutions, and we must make it straightforward for them to exercise such power.
Therefore the question today is what path the UK Government and this Parliament take after 18 September and what position the new Administration from 2015 takes, whatever party or parties form it. The Secretary of State for Scotland, my right honourable friend Alistair Carmichael, has announced that he will convene a conference on the new Scotland within 30 days of the referendum in the event of a no vote. This represents an opportunity for the parties who have published their proposals and for those such as the Scottish Trades Union Congress, the Devo Plus group, the IPPR and others who have published their proposals to come together in good time before the UK general election.
On a wider aspect relating to the whole of the union, some have spoken, including my noble friend Lord Maclennan of Rogart about the way the Scottish Constitutional Convention brought political parties and civic Scotland together in the 1980s and 1990s. This is a model worthy of consideration for the whole of the kingdom. There is merit in this. I believe, however, that given where we are today, 15 years on from the establishment of the Parliaments and Assemblies in our nations, we need a mechanism that can allow for open but focused discussion on how Westminster and Whitehall reforms take place.
I therefore propose to the Minister for his consideration the convening of a conference on the new union. Such a conference on the new union should be convened after the UK general election in 2015. It should last no longer than six months, and its objective should be to discuss and agree the principles upon which the UK and its institutions would be reformed in a coherent way for the positive distribution of power, a process already taking place within Scotland.
In conclusion, I leave the Minister with just these thoughts. It should have as its remit the endorsement of the reforms to the Scottish Parliament, that will be being legislated for, and to the National Assembly for Wales. It should also deliver agreement on how the financial relationship between the nations and the UK Government is made more transparent with the protections afforded the nations. The conference on the new union should also agree the parameters of reform to this Parliament’s procedures for the legislation that covers England. It should also put in place the necessary measures to enshrine permanently the existence of our national Parliament and the Assemblies of the nations.
Our union is a remarkable one, but it is being tested. The test is major. There will be a considerable number of people voting in fewer than 100 days to leave this union. I hope they will be in the minority in Scotland. If they are, we must respond. The response must be in a considered, sincere and careful way, but that does not mean it should not be radical. The opportunity for further decentralisation and modernisation of the UK presents itself most clearly. We should see the opportunity presented to us, and we should take it.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, first, on tabling the QSD on this subject and, secondly, even more impressively, on getting a debate quite so quickly on it. He must have the kind of influence on the usual channels that I can only dream of. He has also established a sort of, albeit temporary, unique Lib-Lab coalition on this debate, which I must say I am encouraged by.
I refer back to Margo MacDonald’s memorial service. I was struck by the message that Jim Sillars brought to us from Margo MacDonald on her deathbed, which was the hope that, whatever the outcome of the referendum, we should all work together for the good of Scotland. Maybe it is my wishful thinking, but I thought when he uttered that, he was looking particularly at Alex Salmond. I assume that he was talking to both sides on behalf of Margo. As Margo said—and I think I can say this as one of the no campaigners—I hope that when we win, as I think we will on 18 September, when 19 September comes there will be no recrimination whatever, no score-settling and no tone of triumphalism, but a tone of inclusivity, ensuring that not only is Scotland fit for purpose but the whole United Kingdom becomes increasingly fit for purpose.
We have had the devolution process. I was party to that as chair of the Labour campaign for a Scottish Assembly and then for a Scottish Parliament. I must say that I get upset when the SNP says that it was the instigator, as the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said. We did it because we believed in it, and it was a Labour Government who produced the Scottish Parliament. But unfortunately, of necessity, the devolution process has been piecemeal. We have gone our own way in Scotland, Wales has not gone quite so far and in a different way, while Northern Ireland has its own set-up. London has not just one centre of government but two, on the riverside—the Mayor of London and the GLA. This piecemeal devolution has left us with what Tam Dalyell called the West Lothian question but what I would rather call the English anomaly—the English democratic deficit. If I was still living in England, that is what I would be annoyed about. I am surprised that the English are so reasonable and sensible about it, apart from towards Italy because of recent events. The wrong way to deal with the English dimension is what the Tory side of this Government are suggesting—I do not know about the Minister at the Dispatch Box—which is that Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs should not vote on what supposedly can be defined as England-only measures in the House of Commons. This needs to be done in a more fundamental, sensible, coherent and cogent way than that, which is why the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and I have set up an all-party group to look at further decentralisation and devolution and to consider ways in which England can be excluded. My own thought is that we should have an English Parliament and the devolution of administration to the regions or city regions within England, but that is not for me to decide. What we need to do is provide a framework so that we can all look at it and all decide.
Incidentally, a similar proposal is coming for another source of concern, which we will discuss next Thursday. It relates to the urgent need for a review of the constitution of this House, the second Chamber of Parliament. It should be looked at by a constitutional commission. I think that the outcome of the all-party group will be to suggest a constitutional commission, just as the working group of the Labour Party has suggested in relation to reform of the Upper House. If the second Chamber could be representative of the nations of the United Kingdom and the regions of England, it would fulfil a very useful purpose. Perhaps I may also echo what the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said about the cynicism of the nationalists in saying that they cannot trust the unionist party leaders to come up with an alternative. That is cynicism of the worst order, which is so typical of the nationalists. If we had a constitutional commission, in order to reassure people who might think that we are kicking the issue into the long grass, it should have a clearly defined timetable to enable legislation to be introduced in the next Parliament. If there was a timetable of two years, the commission could certainly do that.
The idea that has been suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is one way of doing this. I like the concept of a conference of the new union and I like the way that he suggested that the Government should do that. However, I say to my noble friend Lord Kennedy that I am campaigning to make sure that this commitment is set out in the Labour Party manifesto so that we can be really sure that what we expect to be the next Government of the United Kingdom will carry it through at the earliest opportunity. I know that my noble friend Lady Adams and other noble friends will join me in that campaign.
Baroness Adams of Craigielea (Lab)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, on securing this debate. I seem to have spent my whole political life talking about devolution. In fact, those of us who are young enough to remember will know that in every Scottish political programme of the 1970s, 10 minutes would be set aside for someone to ask, “And what about devolution?”. We spent the next 10 years, into the late 1980s, with the word “devolution”, until eventually we set up the Scottish Constitutional Convention, when we brought civic Scotland, political Scotland, religious Scotland and trade unionists together round a table to see what shape we thought this should take. Would this be the answer to nationalism? Could we bring Scotland together without going down the road of separation? That process also took 10 years. This is a long process; it is not something that can be done in a knee-jerk reaction. By taking each issue piecemeal, we have ended up in the situation that we are now in.
When Donald Dewar said, at the start of the Scottish Parliament, that devolution was not an event but a process, the nationalists took that to mean that the process should lead to separation. I do not think that was ever the intention in Donald Dewar’s head. I think that he was looking for continuous devolution—that power going down should continue to go down. What has been missed in all this is local government. In fact, the Scottish Parliament did not devolve more power to local government; it sucked up power from local government. We wondered then why people were not engaging. People will engage only at local level. The biggest issue is not the starting point; it might be for teenagers when they are thinking about nuclear weapons or identity cards but, once they get into their twenties and the price of bread and of houses means something, they want to be involved at local level. We have not looked closely enough at what is happening in that regard.
When we had the Scottish Parliament after 20 years of discussion, we might have thought that we would have a huge turnout at elections. In fact, that was not the case. I think that at the last Scottish Parliament elections less than 50% of the electors voted. So we now have a nationalist Government who were elected by about one-quarter of Scotland’s electors. That cannot be good for democracy. If devolution is about anything, it should be about securing democracy and engaging as many people as we can in the process from the lowest base.
Alex Salmond continually asks us what more powers the Scottish Parliament will have if there is a no vote. That reminds me of when I used to take my children to the fairground when they were small and they wanted to pull out a duck from a fairground stall—and it said above the stall that everybody would win a prize. I do not think that Alex Salmond is looking at all for an answer to the yes/no question; he wants to know what the next prize in the list will be. He is now looking for independence with the union jack or independence without it. You cannot have your cake and eat it.
If the union is to be sustained, the West Lothian question has to be answered. The West Lothian question has always been a matter for the people of England. That became totally confused. The people of England have to decide what shape their democracy takes. We cannot impose that on them from above; they have to decide whether they want an English Parliament, whether they want their home affairs to be discussed in the national Parliament or whether they want an English Parliament with regions within that Parliament. They should not just be told constantly that Scotland is getting more powers, Northern Ireland is getting more powers and Wales is getting more powers. Where do the people of England end up in all this? Like my noble friend Lord Foulkes, I think that if I was a resident of England I would be very annoyed at all of that. I would feel completely excluded and as if I did not matter. I would wonder why England, as the biggest part of the union, did not matter, and why what I wanted did not matter.
We wonder why people are not engaging. I, too, think that we need a constitutional convention for the whole UK to look at democracy in the context of both Houses in this Parliament. Should we have a bicameral system or a single Chamber with an Executive? Should we have devolved assemblies within national Parliaments? Where does local government come into all this? This is a long process, but what we have to do in that process is reach out to everyone, not just to people in certain parts of the UK.
Lord Maclennan of Rogart (LD)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Adams, whose views I broadly agree with. I am also grateful to my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed for initiating this debate. I believe it is very timely to do so.
Today, in its first leader, the Financial Times speaks of the possibility of a federal Britain being the best solution for the future of our constitution. I rather agree. It is well argued. However, we cannot arrive at that position as a result of a snap decision taken by one political party. As the noble Baroness, Lady Adams, said, it is clear that this needs to be deliberative. It needs to involve more than single political parties or single Governments, even if they happen to be coalition Governments. We are looking for a consensus about how best Britain should be governed.
Having served in the Convention on the Future of Europe for nearly two years, I can report that that system brought about broad consensus. There were some exceptions, but there was broad consensus and the result, despite the referenda in France and the Netherlands, was that most of the recommendations were incorporated in the Lisbon treaty and have, to my mind, been broadly accepted by the member countries. That does not mean that we have reached the end of the debate about the future of Europe. We have to go ahead with that.
What we are faced with at this time as a result of the referendum in Scotland is the possibility of the break-up of Britain. It seems to be me that that would be a catastrophe for the whole country and for Europe. That view is taken by many people in other countries. The Scots may be surprised that this issue has been noticed. The Foreign Secretary of Sweden, President Obama and, most recently, the Pope have indicated that the break-up of countries is highly undesirable. I hope those utterances by objective people who stand back will be recognised and noticed in Scotland.
I take the view that we need to improve our constitutional set-up so that the public can feel not disaffected by politics but involved to the extent that they can be effective. That requires greater decentralisation of government and attention to local government, which has not been given in Scotland. In fact, it has been reversed to some extent.
When we consider the future constitution of this country, we should be thinking about the equitable treatment of all parts of the country and considering how the English—85% of the population of Great Britain—should be favoured and how they should be enabled to reach decisions that are satisfactory to them. There is a fairly general sense of distrust of politicians across the United Kingdom at this time, so how we go about this should not be decided by a political party, and certainly not on the eve of a general election. The possibility of announcing before a referendum that a convention will be established would be highly desirable because it would give the Scots, particularly those who are undecided, some confidence that there will be a national debate about how best to govern a country that has been together for over 300 years. The Scottish convention did offer many good examples of the involvement of the public. As the noble Baroness said, it involved religious and civic groups, trade unions and the CBI. They all could take part.
The report of the Conservative commission chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, seems to tend in that direction. He has spoken about localities being represented in such a convention. I have talked to him subsequently and he said that evidence should be provided by all kinds of interest groups. That is what I would hope would happen. The leaders of the three political parties that are representative of the United Kingdom at this time do not have a common view about how devolution should be managed. They should get together and announce that such a convention will be set up. It will not come to its conclusions before the general election, but it will be a matter of priority to be decided by the people of this country.
Lord Soley (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, on securing this debate. I am sure he already knows this, but I would point out to him that he comes from a very long line of politicians who have been strongly in favour of devolution but have not been able to deliver it. In fact, the Library note makes the point clearly on a number of occasions that almost all Governments have been in favour of decentralising Britain and devolving power, but that nearly all of them have run into difficulties in doing that. I must confess to my share in that because, back in 1980, when Bryan Gould, the MP for Dagenham at the time, was the shadow Minister for planning and I was a shadow Minister, we tried to work out what a regional structure for the UK would look like. It is actually very difficult to do, particularly when you have local councils worrying about losing their powers in a regional structure. They promptly start to reject what they previously said they were in favour of.
I have always been struck by the fact that in 1707, what became the United Kingdom after the joining up of Scotland made us Great Britain was actually a federal structure even before federalism was recognised. Why was that? It was because Scotland had its own legal system, and England and Scotland had separate arrangements for the church, which was a very important part of the constitutional structure at the time. In a way we partly invented federalism but did not quite know what to do thereafter.
Perhaps the most important point that I want to make today is that while I am a bit hesitant, I am broadly in favour of a constitutional commission, but the great difficulty with it is that it is an incredibly complex area that will take a long time to do. I would quite like to find a way of addressing the issue in more discrete parts.
I will give an example of what I mean. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and I have often discussed this, and he made the point well that the English are a bit odd because they do not know quite what they want. Part of the problem, of course, is that a lot of English people think of themselves as British and not as English, whereas most Scottish people think of themselves as Scottish and British. The English are, in a way, a bit more ambivalent about it, although the rise of Englishness has certainly happened fairly dramatically in recent years. I do not regard myself as English and never have done so; I am a typical mixture of all parts of these islands, and that is one of its strengths.
However, it is not just the size of England in relation to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland that is the problem; it is also the problem within England. If you take the area bounded by Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Oxford and Southampton, you are talking about more than 22 million people. That is more than one-third of the population of the whole United Kingdom and approaching half that of England. Many years ago, Bryan Gould and I were looking at regional structures, and he said, “Supposing we take out London and just have the rest of the south-east”—the “mint with the hole” approach. That of course made no sense. However, if you tried to divide up the vast region of the south-east into regions, you would struggle again to make sense of it. That problem puts some of the other problems about regions into perspective, such as the problem of whether Manchester or Liverpool should be the capital of a north-west region, without provoking a revised version of the War of the Roses. So we struggled with that. However, the south-east is the problem.
One great advantage of the debates in Scotland that led to devolution, which I strongly supported and has worked well, was that it was much more focused. You could focus on what could be done within Scotland to get that structure working. Another good thing that has come out of that—and this is an underlying fact that we should never forget—was that you need to be very clear about the powers that are devolved. Then you have a situation whereby everything that is not devolved is with the central authority. That is a very important principle because it means that you can build up to devolution without having a big argument about whether defence or foreign policy is under the control of a particular area. I use the extreme example.
I have always been in favour of devolution. I do not like the centralisation of the UK. I recall, as most of us will, that the great driving house of the industrial revolution, which emerged as both parts of the union got very much richer after 1707, was in part due to the fact that the great cities themselves were an economic driving force. Scottish nationalists would do well to remember that. Birmingham is one of the classic examples. It would be nice if we could get back to something like that, whereby the regions, and the towns and cities in the regions, became the driving force.
I am in favour of a constitutional commission and we have to be very focused on it. Time is not on our side. If you start that process and it goes on for years on end, you will end up in many years to come with the same structure that we have now.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, we should all be grateful to my noble friend Lord Purvis for initiating this debate, and to him and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for the work they are doing with the all-party group, which is very timely. I notice that all noble Lords speaking today either have strong connections with devolved areas of the country or cannot really speak for England—and, indeed, Cornwall—beyond London, expect of course the Minister himself.
I should put on the record that, as long ago as 1968, I was the co-author of a booklet entitled Power to the Provinces, in which we argued the case for subsidiarity before the term was invented: that decisions should be taken as close as possible to the people they are going to affect. We are getting there, but it has taken a long time, as other Members have already said. The forthcoming Scottish referendum clearly brings a new cross-party and UK-wide focus to the need for a review of the situation. Today’s joint statement from the three Scottish leaders is obviously in that spirit.
The word “devolution” is usually used in terms of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, while “decentralisation” is what people talk about in terms of England. There is a rather false distinction between the two, and I would argue that we need to try to bring them together. This Government have made huge strides in decentralising power within England using the City Deals. There has been a real difference there, but there is a degree of democratic deficit. These agreements between central and local government only go so far: they are, to some extent, about decentralisation of delivery but they do not empower local government in the same way that we have with devolution elsewhere.
I very much agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who I am sorry is not able to be here today, when he said in the debate on the gracious Speech last week:
“We clearly recognise in Scotland and Wales the distance and resentment towards Westminster-dominated decisions. We need to recognise that the same instincts apply in Newcastle, Norwich, Cumberland and Cornwall”.—[Official Report, 11/6/14; col. 460.]
Hear, hear to that. The Secretary of State for Scotland, my right honourable friend Alistair Carmichael, recognised this too in his radio interview yesterday.
We have proposed a Bill to enable English devolution to fill this huge gap in our devolution ambitions for the United Kingdom. Credit should be given to Peter Facey, formerly of Unlock Democracy, who wrote about such a model in 2011. The principle is simply that parts of England may well want to take up powers akin to those already devolved to the Welsh Assembly, and that they should be able to do so provided they meet certain criteria. This would be true devolution within the United Kingdom, but it need not all happen at once in every part of England.
Dr Andrew Blick, in a very useful publication last week, proposed some similar ideas. He envisages devolution, first, of administrative power, then later of some legislative power—as happened respectively in 1998 and 2006 for Wales—and, in due course, of financial power to local authorities or groups of them. That is already happening—the City Deals are bringing together groups of local authorities in England in a very positive way. The menu of powers that he sets out is much as in the Government of Wales Act: everything is available, from agriculture to education and health services.
However, like the Spanish autonomous communities, different places could take up more, or less, responsibility according to local demand and the strength of local political identity. Having just spent the weekend in my old North Cornwall constituency, I can assure friends across the House that the demand there would be for a full assembly, like that of Wales and with the same powers. In other places, there may be a different timetable and a different objective. Dr Blick said,
“an English Parliament would not address the issue of over-centralisation in a meaningful way”,
and that it would be “a destabilising force”. Finally, he said:
“The history of federal experiments in other parts of the world suggests that when one component of the federation is so much greater than any other, the arrangement is difficult to sustain”.
I suggest that there is a trap in creating an unbalancing, centralising English Parliament without addressing further devolution within England.
For these reasons, I really think that the English question does not have an all-English answer. It is really not good enough. Real devolution within England through an enabling Act of the kind I have been able to only briefly describe—first to those areas which demand it and later to those areas that envy it—could advance the cause of really radical decentralisation in the whole of the United Kingdom, including its largest constituent part. This is a very timely debate and I am sure it will not be the last time that we will address this issue, as many noble Lords have already indicated, over the coming months. I welcome that.
Lord Martin of Springburn (CB)
My Lords, I have only one minute and therefore will obviously be brief. I thoroughly welcome the comments that have been made about local government. Recently, it has been neglected. It is an excellent employer, and the officials and elected members bring services to every section of our community—young, old and those who are disabled. They have risen to the occasion when the Government have called upon employers to find apprentices. They have embarked on apprenticeship schemes. Looking around this Room, it is the case that many of us—I include myself—found that serving on a local authority was a training ground for politics. It was a good apprenticeship, and I am glad that they are not being overlooked in this debate.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in putting on the record my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, for securing this debate today. It is a timely opportunity to explore what plans the Government have for further devolution in the UK following a no vote in the Scottish referendum on 18 September, fewer than 100 days away. I should say at the outset that I am a supporter of the Better Together campaign and very much hope that Scotland votes no. It is a decision for the people of Scotland and we will respect that decision, but for me it is unthinkable that Scotland would not be part of the union of nations that has been so successful in these islands, a union into which I was born and where nations stand together as equals.
It is also a matter of regret that because no one has been appointed to this House from the Scottish National Party—I am well aware that that is a decision of that party—we fail to have its arguments put up for debate. I would say to the Government that there are individuals who are not members of the SNP who would put the nationalist viewpoint and be excellent Members of this House. I am thinking in particular of the second presiding officer of the Scottish Parliament, the right honourable Sir George Reid, who I had the privilege of serving with on the Electoral Commission for four years. He would be a welcome addition to your Lordships’ House.
In the five minutes I have to speak in this debate, it is impossible to touch on all the implications for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the English regions, as well as London, but I shall make some brief remarks that I hope are helpful. I agree with my noble friend Lord Foulkes of Cumnock that the debate and the period after the referendum should be conducted with respect for other people’s views. It is unfortunate to see that that is often not the case for so-called cybernats. They often rain abuse down on people and that is totally unacceptable.
Devolution in the nations outside England has been a great success. The institutions are accepted, are growing in strength and are gaining new powers as they mature, which I very much welcome. I agree with the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, about the framework of principles and a conference for a new union. The report by a commission of Scottish Conservatives, headed by the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, is an important document. It highlights for me that the Conservative Party has embraced and accepted the Scottish Parliament and devolution, which is not something that it was always known for. The case for a further transfer of power is unstoppable whether you call it devo-max, devo-plus or something else.
Although I have lived and worked in many parts of the UK, London is where I was born, and it is my home. My noble friend Lady Adams rightly said that the West Lothian question has to be answered by people living in England. The noble Lord, Lord Maclennan of Rogart, was right when he talked about the need to improve our constitution and the equitable treatment of our people. I was recently elected as a Labour councillor in London. Although the structure has changed since I was last a councillor 20 years ago, in terms of the powers exercised by a London borough there has been no dramatic change. That is the position in the rest of England as well. It is a real problem that whichever Government come to power after next May will have to address.
In its report, Raising the Capital, the independent London Finance Commission recommended a modest devolution of five property taxes to London government to allow it to invest in the infrastructure needed to underpin the capital’s future growth. This would give London control of approximately £12 billion per year, an increase of only £5 billion per year on what it presently controls. London government and the Core Cities Group also came together to call for this important devolution for all of England’s great cities. This is something I very much support.
In replying to this debate will the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, set out what plans the Government have to make it clear to people living in Scotland that quickly and without question there will be further devolution of powers to the Scottish Parliament? Will he also comment on how the Government could underpin the Scottish Parliament to make it impossible for there not to be a Scottish Parliament, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed? Will he tell us how the Government are going to address the deficit of devolved powers that people living in England presently have to live with? Does he see the devolution of power to England only through local government, as it is at present? What is his position on unitary local government for England, as called for by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, in his report on searching for growth, as opposed to the patchwork local government we have in England at present? Does he think the case for regional government or regional assemblies in England is dead or could it be brought into the debate on governance and devolution in England?
I am sorry that I do not have time to make further points, but this has been an excellent debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, and I thank him for it. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has many things to reply to.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I metaphorically tore up my speech before I started. Time is short. This has been a helpful debate and has raised the sort of questions that we will all have to consider over the next 90 days—and well beyond.
We need to remember just how far we have moved. I say that as someone who first joined the Liberal Party machinery of government panel. I was a graduate student in 1965 and we were talking about devolution and regional government. I remember that in 1974 my wife and I, as academics, were invited into the Treasury Constitution Unit that had just been established. Several of the senior officials there could not understand how you could manage a national economy if you allowed any autonomy whatever in financial terms. My wife and I tried to say, “Yes, but in Germany they do it this way, as they do in the United States and Canada”. The officials still could not understand. We have moved a long way already. Think how far we have gone since the Maclennan-Cook discussions of 1996 and 1997; it is some considerable distance.
We are, however, left with the tremendous problem of the democratic deficit in England and its highly centralised pattern of government. We should all recognise that part of that problem is the dominance of London, economically as well as politically. We must all take that economic dominance into account in considering the future of the United Kingdom because London continues to generate an enormous amount of wealth, which needs equitably to be shared around the regions and nations. My noble friend Lord Purvis talks about fiscal federalism, which is about hard bargaining or “finance ausgleich”—who gets what share and how much shall be distributed. That is at the core of Finanzausgleich, which is much better organised than the disorganised US federalism. Incidentally, in established federal systems—as the noble Lord suggested—you can never say that we have reached the end of the journey. Federal politics is about a constant battle between state rights and federal powers. A pull and push in each direction is normal politics—just as in the European Union we have had a constant and continuing battle between those who say that we have to do things at the European level and those who say, “No, we don’t; we have to have it at the nation-state level”. That is what international, domestic and local politics necessarily provide.
The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, quoted Margo MacDonald, who said that we should all work together for the good of Scotland. I suggest that we should work for the good of the UK, not just Scotland. That is post the Scottish referendum; if, as we all hope, the result is no, we need to address this question. Between now and then, no one could cook up a proposal for a conference for a new union, or constitutional convention that could be agreed or accepted at least half-heartedly by the Mail and the Telegraph. We can raise the question—I encourage all noble Lords to do so: where do we go after September? It raises fundamental questions about the future of the kingdom, including, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said, the role of the second Chamber of what in some ways then becomes the federal Parliament.
It may well be that at that stage we move towards some sort of constitutional convention. We have to recognise that, against the cynicism of much of the national media and the disengagement of much of our national public, it will be quite a job for all of us as politicians to carry the public with us when we say that a more fundamental look at the balance of our political life nationally, regionally, locally and internationally is needed. After all, the future of the United Kingdom in the European Union is part of the picture. The arguments made by English nationalists for leaving the European Union are not entirely dissimilar from the arguments that Scottish nationalists make for leaving the United Kingdom. Therefore part of what those of us who care about good governance have to do is to link all these different levels together.
As somebody who accepted a job at Manchester University rather than Edinburgh University when I was 26, and therefore have spent my adult life in the north of England rather than in Scotland, I am concerned about the marginalisation of the north of England. I am told that a number of senior officials in local authorities in England have been saying to their Scottish counterparts: “Don’t leave us; we need you. We need you to help us to counterbalance the dominance of London and the south-east.” That is a very important part of this. As one of the relatively small number of people in this Chamber who represent, in a sense, the north of England, I am constantly struck by the assumption that when something happens in London it is important, when something happens in Edinburgh or Cardiff, well we notice it a bit, and when it happens in Bradford, Leeds or Newcastle we are not quite sure what it was, but besides we certainly did not report it, even in what used to be called the Manchester Guardian.
Birmingham is a local authority with a population larger than that of Northern Ireland and roughly comparable to that of Wales. This morning I heard on the “Today” programme a former Minister say that one could not trust Birmingham to run its own schools. There is a mindset inside the Westminster bubble which has accepted that perhaps one can now allow the Scots, the Welsh and the Northern Irish—to a certain extent—to run their own affairs, but one certainly could not allow Manchester or Leeds to do so.
The City Deals are at long last beginning to push power back to what might become the English regions. Part of the conversation we all need to have after September is what we mean by the English regions and whether they will be city regions or something different, and how far one can allow Cornwall to split off from the south-west because we all know that all good Cornishmen hate Bristol. What do we do about the south-east as a whole, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, remarked, is so dominant a part in population and wealth terms of our United Kingdom? How do we ensure that the south-east continues to share its wealth with the rest of the country? The whole of the country, including Scotland, would benefit from the sharing of that wealth; it has to be done. Where do we move on that? We move perhaps towards the discussion of a constitutional convention. All parties need to consider to what extent they put that in their manifestos. They will then have to define what they mean by it. Then, of course, we cannot move towards a constitutional convention unless there is some consensus on it. It has to be cross-party and beyond party if it is to be successful.
Over the centuries the British constitution has been built in a series of fits of absence of mind and occasional crises. We are discussing now something which might be a little more rational and a little more long-sighted—it is very un-English in this respect—but we should go for it. The Government have no policy on this and intend to have no policy between now and the election. However, it is precisely the sort of thing that others ought to be floating if it is felt that we need to think in the round about how the substantial changes in the structure of government in the United Kingdom over the past 20 years have taken us to a point where we need to reconsider some of these fundamentals.
I would add—I say this personally, not as a Minister—that the role of the House of Commons, as such, is also a very important part of this. I have found in 18 years in the House of Lords that the House of Commons leaves more and more legislative scrutiny to the second Chamber, while the first Chamber does, in many ways, less and less.
Therefore, there are very some large issues which we have to consider. We have to attack the public scepticism about democratic politics as a whole. That is also part of this. We have to revive a degree of respect in regional government, regional autonomy and local government. I had not realised how sharp a problem that is in Scotland as well as in England. Then we need to work together across the parties and beyond in order to reshape something.
I have learnt over the past three years that there are many, particularly on the Opposition Benches in the House, who regard compromise and consensus as almost dirty words that are linked to “coalition”. Having been in coalition for four years, I would defend the concept of compromise and consensus in coalition if we are to address these fundamental issues, something the British have been pretty bad at doing most of the time. We are going to have to build a broad coalition of interested parties from all the regions of England, from the other three nations of the United Kingdom and from civil society as well as all parties, in order to promote the good governance that we all want.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock
The Minister has not been supported by any civil servants in the debate and yet he has done a brilliant job. However, I am a bit suspicious when Whitehall does not turn up. That is because my experience over the past few months is that Whitehall seems to be ignoring this issue. Perhaps I may ask the Minister how he is going to feed the ideas that have been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, and the questions raised by my noble friend Lord Kennedy, into the Whitehall machine. It is important not only that we have the sympathy of the Minister but that we have the Whitehall machine behind him as well.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I thank the noble Lord for that barbed compliment. Of course it is purely accidental that I have made a good speech without officials being present. I can assure him that I meet the officials fairly regularly and that I meet my Conservative colleagues fairly regularly. I also talk to Labour colleagues fairly regularly. This is one of those areas where we all share an interest in raising various broad matters. It means that people like the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and others should be writing to the newspapers and appearing on radio and television programmes to discuss them. We have at last reached the point where people understand that there is going to be a Scottish referendum, and that is progress. Three months ago you hardly saw any mention of it in the London press. We can now begin to talk about what is to happen after September, and that takes us further.
Those of us who are interested in successful decentralisation within England, which is part of what the coalition Government are now trying to do with the City Deals, want to take them further and link them into the devolution-plus which follows in Scotland, the implementation of the report of the Silk commission for Wales and similar developments in Northern Ireland. That is a very large agenda, and it is not something that the British have been good at handling. The sad history of attempting to discuss House of Lords reform over the past 25 years and more shows how bad we are at considering constitutional reform in a calm way. Let us approach this in a different manner. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, that as far as I am concerned, I along with many of my Conservative colleagues recognise that after Scottish devolution we will have to move. That is what the three parties in Scotland have just committed themselves to, and that is how we will go forward. I note the point about entrenchment; it is not something that the British constitution has done before. I note the point about a changed role for the Treasury and I note the argument that we need a bigger overview in some form of the structure of the British constitution.
This is a debate that will continue and I trust that all noble Lords will be active participants in it, but this is the point at which, without my officials, I should stop and thank everyone for a very constructive debate.
Death of a Member: Lord Macaulay of Bragar
The Lord Speaker (Baroness D’Souza)
My Lords, I regret to inform the House of the death of the noble Lord, Lord Macaulay of Bragar, on 12 June. On behalf of the House, I extend our condolences to the noble Lord’s family and friends.
Palestine
(10 years ago)
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Baroness Tonge
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to recognise the state of Palestine.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)
My Lords, we continue to judge that a negotiated, two-state agreement remains the only way to resolve the conflict once and for all. That is why we are focused on supporting the parties in finding a way to resume serious dialogue. As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has said, we reserve the right to recognise a Palestinian state at a moment of our choosing and when it helps best to bring about peace.
Baroness Tonge (Ind LD)
I thank the Minister for her reply, but does she recall that in the Queen’s Speech, we were promised foreign policy,
“based on respect for national sovereignty, territorial integrity and international law”?
Should we therefore recognise the state of Palestine immediately to make up for time lost, encourage our European partners to do so too, and suspend the EU-Israel association agreement if Israel does not withdraw from the territories that it has occupied illegally since 1967?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, as we said during the Palestinian upgrade at the UN General Assembly in 2012, ultimately we would like to see a Palestinian state represented through all organs of the United Nations and recognised as a Palestinian state. However, we feel that the best way to reach a solution to these matters is through a negotiated process, and we still believe that Secretary Kerry’s proposal presents an opportunity to engage and to talk.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that progress towards a peace settlement would be enhanced if Hamas were able to secure the release of the three Israeli teenagers who were kidnapped in the West Bank last weekend? Will the Government do all they can to seek to secure that objective?
Baroness Warsi
The Government have strongly condemned the abduction of the three Israeli youths in the West Bank. We are deeply concerned about the escalation of violence on the ground, and for the sake of both Israelis and Palestinians I hope that further escalation can be avoided. We are still trying to find details of what is happening on the ground, but of course it has led to escalation, including, tragically, the death of a Palestinian child.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, given the instability, conflict and violence in the countries that surround Israel, is it not understandable that the Israeli Government are deeply concerned about a Government who might be led by Hamas and who are committed to the destruction of Israel?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, we welcome the new technocratic Government, who are made up mainly of people who are not affiliated to political organisations. We are heartened by the fact that the quartet principles have been endorsed by the new technocratic Government.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend recall that over the last two years she has stood at the Dispatch Box and told the House on many occasions—I think mainly during 2013—that this year was the last chance saloon for achieving a peace process in the Middle East? Given where we find ourselves, what is the United Kingdom Government’s position on achieving a peace process now that the Americans have more or less said that there is nowhere further to go? Will the Government consider replacing the current system of the Middle East quartet envoy and so on with a fresh impetus and a completely new look at whether a two-state solution is indeed the right answer?
Baroness Warsi
My noble friend is right: I have stood at this Dispatch Box over the last 12 months, if not more, talking about the concern over the changing situation on the ground. We are running out of time to achieve a two-state solution because the situation on the ground continues to deteriorate. That is why we were so supportive of the discussions that Secretary Kerry was leading. My noble friend is also right that we have to start looking at other options that are available to us, because what we want in the end is a two-state solution. That requires a safe and secure Israel, but it also requires a viable Palestinian state. As to the role of the quartet, my noble friend will be aware that it is not just for the United Kingdom to impose who leads it. I would be interested to hear from the Benches opposite whether they feel a change in personnel is needed.
Lord Wright of Richmond (CB)
My Lords, does the noble Baroness accept that there is virtual unanimity, and not only in this House, on the urgent need for a two-state solution to the Palestinian problem? Does she accept that the recent reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas offers the Israelis a unique opportunity to work genuinely towards a two-state solution? On the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, if this story is true it is horrendous, but is the Minister aware that similar outrages are being committed daily by the Israeli Defence Forces and by the settlers themselves? This is the time to recognise Palestine as a state.
Baroness Warsi
Of course, ultimately peace will be achieved only if there is a unified authority in the Palestinian territories to which we can speak—a unified organisation that represents both Gaza and the West Bank—as long as it abides by the quartet principles. I can stand at this Dispatch Box and give a list of things that the Israelis are alleged to have done and a list of things that the Palestinians are alleged to have done, but I am not sure whether that blame game is going to take us any further. What I am clear about is that a Palestinian life and an Israeli life are equally important. It is therefore right that what we do respects the sanctity of life, and the basic human rights that people require whether they are Israeli or Palestinian.
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, is it Her Majesty’s Government’s intention to work with the new Palestinian unity Government? Presuming that it is, could the House be told what specific steps our Government are taking in that regard?
Baroness Warsi
As I said earlier, we have recognised the technocratic Government; we feel that they provide an opportunity to take matters further. We give great credit to President Abbas, who has made sure that the technocratic Government have been set up in a way that is acceptable to the international community and are an organisation of government that we can work with. With regard to the UK’s approach, the noble Lord will of course be aware that we have been one of the biggest supporters of ensuring that a future Palestinian state is viable, not only through the work that we have been doing in establishing and supporting institutions but in relation to the humanitarian work on the ground with both financial support and expertise. We will continue to do that, because we are firmly committed to ensuring that there is a viable Palestinian state when that moment arises.
Lord Dykes (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the biggest tragedy of all would be if these two countries did not come together and shake hands, similar to South Africa? Once that happens, they can work together to create a Near East common market, and peace will prevail for everyone.
Baroness Warsi
I agree with my noble friend as a Foreign Office Minister but also on a personal level. As someone who has lived through this dispute for most of her life—it has formed so much of my own identity as I have grown up—there is nothing I would like more than to be in a Government who finally managed to resolve this matter.
National Health Service: Nursing Staff
(10 years ago)
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Baroness Kennedy of Cradley
To ask Her Majesty’s Government why there has been a reduction in the number of senior nurses in the National Health Service since 2010.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, local NHS organisations are best placed to determine the skill mix of their workforce and must have the freedom to deploy staff in ways appropriate for their locality. Some organisations have reviewed their nursing staff structures to ensure that they are delivering quality of care for patients. This has resulted in a decrease of some senior posts. However, there has been an overall increase in nursing numbers, with over 3,300 more nurses, midwives and health visitors since 2010.
Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that reply, but since 2010 there has been a decrease of 4,000 senior nursing posts—modern matrons, ward sisters and specialist nurses, which we all recognise, as indeed do the Government, as being universally critical to patient care. Are the Government not worried about the fact that, on the one hand, trusts are saving money by decreasing these senior nursing posts yet, on the other hand, they are spending money by increasing the pay of executive directors by 6%? What are they going to do about reversing this worrying trend, and how are they going to tackle this dangerous loss of experience and skill in our NHS?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the figure that I have is in fact a decrease of just over 3,000 nurses in senior positions at bands 7 and 8, but that is more than made up for by the increase of over 7,500 nurses at bands 5 and 6 on the front line. On the noble Baroness’s second point, the figures that I saw emanating from the Royal College of Nursing should be looked at with some caution; the RCN has included exit packages for executive directors but not for nurses. In fact, the latest independent evidence shows that for the third year running there was no increase in median executive board pay. It is important to compare like with like there, and the figure of 6.1% as a rise for executive directors is not one that we recognise.
Baroness Cumberlege (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the most encouraging aspects of the nursing profession is the number of senior nurses who have gone on to be chief executives and board members in the NHS, bringing all the skills of nursing to the leadership of hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups?
Earl Howe
I agree with my noble friend. To ensure that nurses have the leadership skills, styles and behaviours that our healthcare system needs, the NHS Leadership Academy has launched the largest and most comprehensive approach to leadership development ever undertaken. More than £46 million has been invested in core programmes that will map to foundation-level, mid-level and executive-level leadership development, with two programmes specifically for nurses and midwives that started in March last year.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, given the answer that the Minister has just given to his noble friend, surely it is ironic that throughout the NHS the number of senior posts is actually being squeezed. Would he not agree that that runs counter to what Francis said post-Mid Staffordshire about the need for highly effective quality supervisory nurses? Is the reason why this is happening not that the NHS cannot afford to increase its nurse staffing levels with the amount of money that it has been given by the Government? Something has gone, and unfortunately it is these crucial posts that seem to be having to give way.
Earl Howe
My Lords, I do not agree with that because nursing numbers are now at a record high, which cannot indicate that hospitals are being starved of resources for their nurses. I do not see it as ironic that some senior posts have been reduced, bearing in mind the effect of Robert Francis’s report which has caused hospitals to increase the number of nurses on the wards. By and large, nurses at grades 7, 8 and 9 are in managerial positions and not in front-line posts.
Baroness Manzoor (LD)
My Lords, can the Minister say if an impact assessment has been undertaken on losing senior nurses from the NHS and the impact it has on service standards? The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has already made the connection with the Francis report. Can the Minister also say whether an exit strategy has been undertaken to see why senior nurses are leaving?
Earl Howe
My general answer to my noble friend is that it is not for the Government to decide how many nurses hospitals should employ. We have not done an impact assessment. That is a matter for local hospitals to judge. They are in the best position to do that, based on the needs of their patients and local communities. What the Government should do, and are doing, is to ensure that staffing levels are available for public scrutiny and comparison on a patient safety website. That work is currently in train. It will now be much more evident to patients and the public what their local hospital is doing in terms of safe staffing ratios.
Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)
My Lords, before seven-day working comes in, are the Government ensuring that senior nurses are also taking part in the seven-day rota to ensure that their expertise is available both in hospitals and in the community to support other nurses at more junior grades?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the work going on on seven-day working certainly includes the nursing workforce. However, I repeat that it is not for the Government to mandate what each and every hospital should be doing in terms of deploying their senior nursing staff. It is a judgment for the board of that hospital.
Lord Warner (Lab)
My Lords, the Minister is very proud of the increase in the number of nurses on the front line. Can he confirm that all these nurses are actually in hospitals? What is the comparable figure for nurses working in the community? I believe the Government’s policy is supposed to be to have more care in the community.
Earl Howe
The noble Lord is right. The Government recognise the very important contribution that community nurses make in providing high-quality care to people within community settings. I think we have seen a reaction, as I have said, to the Francis report. Lots of hospitals say that they are going to employ more nurses on the wards. We now need to ensure that staffing levels are safe across the NHS and the community, and the Chief Nursing Officer has set up a working group which is looking specifically at what we can do to increase the number of community nurses, which we certainly need to do.
Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that specialist nurses are not being replaced when they retire and that there is great concern about this as they do such valuable work for many specialties?
Earl Howe
I acknowledge the valuable role played by specialist nurses in a number of disciplines but, once again, it is up to employers to exercise their responsibility to manage turnover, retention, recruitment and skill mix to ensure that they have sufficient workforce supply to meet the levels of staffing that the hospital or organisation needs. Here again, patient safety is paramount.
Digital Bill of Rights
(10 years ago)
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Lord Mitchell
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they consider that there is a case for a digital bill of rights to protect personal privacy and promote a free and open internet.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
My Lords, the Government are acutely conscious of the need for the protection of individuals’ privacy both online and offline. We believe that the protection of these rights should go in tandem with, and not be at the expense of, an open, innovative and secure internet that promotes economic growth and freedom of expression. We believe that sufficient safeguards already exist to protect individuals’ privacy through the Data Protection Act 1998, together with other legal remedies.
Lord Mitchell (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. We are all under digital surveillance, not only by the security services but also by retailers, hospitals, online suppliers and network operators. They are able to collate massive amounts of data about who we are, where we go, what we buy, who we speak to and even the state of our health. Next year is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. To celebrate this in a modern setting, should we not introduce a digital Magna Carta, designed to guarantee our online rights and privacy?
Lord Faulks
The noble Lord is of course right to remind us of Magna Carta and its impending anniversary. The Government are not, at the moment, minded to introduce a Bill or any legislation of the sort that the noble Lord refers to. Of course we must be nimble to protect those rights which are expressed digitally. However, there are, as I said in my Answer to his Question, a number of remedies available. The Information Commissioner’s Office performs its task well and, for the moment, any legislation brought in by the Government or the party opposite should emphasise not only rights but responsibilities.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)
Does the Minister think that the new draft data protection regulation now in process in Brussels will provide more or less adequate protection of personal privacy in the event that it is passed without further amendment?
Lord Faulks
I think that the noble Baroness is referring to the so-called “right to be forgotten”. The Government have some reservations about this. Anxiety has been expressed in the light of this proposed amendment to the directive and the recent decision of the ECJ. The progress of this directive is still a matter of active consideration and negotiation by the Government.
Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve
My Lords, I was referring to the draft data protection regulation—which is not a directive—not to the right to be forgotten.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Mitchell, rightly raised this privacy issue in the Queen’s Speech debate. Most of us are, I suspect, blissfully unaware that the so-called location services on our mobiles act as an insidious spy in the pocket, constantly recording our every movement wherever we go. Should we not at least start by obliging smartphone and network providers to tell us clearly what personal information they collect and how, and how we, as consumers, can turn it off?
Lord Faulks
The noble Lord is right that this is a source of anxiety and a matter which continues to alarm all sorts of people and organisations. The consumer has a role to insist on this information being provided. That, rather than legislation, is probably the answer for the moment.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
Is the Minister aware of the vile, personal internet abuse heaped on supporters of the union in Scotland, including the author JK Rowling—in her case merely for giving £1 million to Better Together? Will he condemn this and indicate whether a Bill as proposed by my noble friend, or some other legislation, could be introduced to protect all of us who suffer such attacks?
Lord Faulks
I am happy to agree with the noble Lord that this is an appalling practice, and I deplore what has been said about those with a particular viewpoint. The internet being used in this way is the enemy of democracy. We should nevertheless be hesitant before we prevent access to the internet. Russia, China and some of the Arab states prevent access to the internet. Once you start doing so, you prevent some of the advantages, economic and otherwise, of this extraordinary phenomenon, now 25 years old.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, given the centrality of the internet and digital technologies to the lives of young people, can the Minister tell me what the Government are doing to make certain that young people can explore the creative potential of the online world knowledgably, fearlessly and with an understanding of the privacy issues?
Lord Faulks
The Government are certainly trying to protect children from access to parts of the internet to which it would be most ill advised for them to have access. We are trying to promote by a number of means responsible use of the internet but, once again, my answer is that, for the moment, we ought to hesitate before using legislation to do this. However, I entirely accept what the noble Baroness says about the importance of responsible access.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
The Minister talks about the importance of protecting children, but do not all consumers need protection on the internet? While it may not be appropriate to legislate, would it not be appropriate for the Government to put their weight behind requiring that there is a robust system of identity assurance so that you know who you are dealing with on the internet and a robust system of age assurance so that only people of an appropriate age can access material that is appropriate for that particular age group? The Government’s weight would surely be helpful in making sure that that was delivered by contractors.
Lord Faulks
The noble Lord is right in that the Government should, and indeed do, work with internet industries to improve—or in some cases to limit—access. An example of that is what they have been doing with children’s access online. The Government have a strong track record of working with the internet industries to drive progress, to allow parents to have network-level domestic filtering, parental internet controls and the like, and to ensure the availability of family-friendly public wi-fi in places children are likely to be. Of course, it must be remembered that all individuals have their normal legal rights, wherever the information is contained.
Health: Rheumatoid Arthritis
(10 years ago)
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Baroness Brinton
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that general practitioners are trained to recognise potential rheumatoid arthritis symptoms, and refer such patients immediately to rheumatologists.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, the Government’s mandate to Health Education England includes a commitment that it will ensure that general practitioner training produces GPs with the required competencies to practice in the NHS. The content and standard of medical training is the responsibility of the General Medical Council. The current GP curriculum requires trainees to successfully complete training on care of people with musculoskeletal problems, which includes rheumatoid arthritis.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his helpful Answer. However, the reality is that too many GPs do not recognise the symptoms. A new report published today by the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society shows that a shocking 25% of patients have to stop work within the first year of diagnosis, and with the delays their clinical outcomes are poorer and it costs the NHS much more. What will the Government do to raise awareness of symptoms, particularly among GPs?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I pay tribute to the National Rheumatoid Arthritis Society, which is organising Rheumatoid Arthritis Awareness Week this week, between 16 and 22 June. I am aware that Public Health England has run early diagnosis campaigns, which up to now have focused largely on cancer. However, I understand that a broader focus on earlier diagnosis is currently being considered. What might be done to tackle other conditions or symptoms has yet to be decided, but I will keep the noble Baroness informed of developments.
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, one of the problems is that there are still far too many single-handed general practices, which have great difficulty providing a full range of services. Are the Government doing anything to try to bring them into bigger groupings?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we are encouraging single-handed practices not to disband but to federate themselves—if that is a good word—with other practices in the area, and certainly to seek the support of their clinical commissioning group. That would ensure that the range of professional training available is utilised and that there is peer support where appropriate. Therefore, while many single-handed practices do a very fine job, there is scope for them to collaborate with their colleagues in the local area.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I am sure that the noble Earl will tell me that it is the responsibility of either NHS England or the local health commissions, but is he not alarmed by the number of GP practices being suggested for closure at the moment, and by the long waiting times that patients have to endure in many areas? In some country areas you cannot see your GP for four weeks. Should the Government not have at least some concerns on that?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we are concerned by reports of patients having difficulty accessing their GPs. That is why a whole range of work is currently going on in NHS England to look at the issue, to see how general practices can be helped and to enable them to see more patients. However, more generally, we in the Government have amended the GP contract to free up GPs’ working time. We have abolished well over a third of the QOF indicators precisely to do that. The Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund—£50 million-worth of funding—enables GPs to open up different ways of working; for example, consulting patients on Skype and working hours other than nine to five.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, although it is very important for GPs and even patients to be aware of early symptoms, does the Minister acknowledge that the real answer as to how to deal with this condition will be in research? Can he tell us whether the Government are supporting such research?
Earl Howe
I am grateful to my noble friend. Expenditure on musculoskeletal disease research by the National Institute for Health Research has increased from £15.5 million in 2009-10 to £23.1 million in 2012-13. The NIHR is investing over £21 million over five years in three biomedical research units in musculoskeletal disease. They are all carrying out vital research on rheumatoid arthritis. The NIHR is currently investing £2 million in a programme of research on treatment intensities and targets in rheumatoid arthritis therapy.
Baroness Wheeler (Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister tell the House what impact the very worrying reported shortage in take-up of family doctor training places is likely to have on the ability of GPs to support patients with potential rheumatoid arthritis symptoms? A recent survey by Pulse found that only 7% of the funding for medical schools goes into teaching general practice. Does this not augur badly for the future of primary care?
Earl Howe
My Lords, we of course recognise the very hard work that GPs do. Despite a decrease in headcount, there has in fact been a 1.2% increase in full-time GPs since 2012 and the number of practice nurses and practice staff has also grown. However, we also recognise that the workforce needs to grow to meet rising demand. That is why our mandate to Health Education England requires it to ensure that 50% of trainee doctors enter GP training programmes by 2016. Generally, we will work with NHS England to consider how to improve recruitment, retention and return to practice in primary and community care.
Lord Warner (Lab)
My Lords, is not the current model of general practice in this country bust? Is it not time that the Government started to think about setting out the requirements that all GPs who offer services to NHS patients ought to make available? If that means them working in bigger practices then so be it, because that is in the interest of patients.
Earl Howe
My Lords, the noble Lord is right that there is scope to examine different ways of working in primary care. I would have to think about whether I would go quite as far as he has, but the point of principle he makes is a very sound one. That is why the Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund is encouraging GPs to think out of the box in the way they make themselves accessible to patients.
European Union (Withdrawal) Bill [HL]
Serious Crime Bill [HL]
(10 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)
My Lords, under this Government crime is down by more than 10%, but there is much more to do. Serious and organised crime remains a pernicious threat to our national well-being, our economy and our security, costing the country at least £24 billion a year. Later in the Session, your Lordships will have the opportunity to consider a Bill that deals with the evils of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. But serious and organised crime takes many other forms, including drug trafficking, high-value fraud, counterfeiting, organised cybercrime and child exploitation. This Bill is aimed at tackling all such manifestations of serious and organised crime.
Alongside the establishment of the National Crime Agency last October, we published a comprehensive Serious and Organised Crime Strategy. The aim of the NCA and of the strategy is nothing less than to deliver a substantial reduction in the level of serious and organised crime. The National Crime Agency assesses that there are around 36,600 individuals operating in 5,300 organised crime groups in this country. I am sure most people are taken aback by these figures.
A key strand of our strategy is to prosecute those individuals and otherwise disrupt their activities to make it increasingly hard for them to operate. Ensuring that the NCA, the police and prosecutors have the powers they need relentlessly to pursue organised criminals lies at the heart of the Bill. One means of disrupting serious and organised crime is to deny criminals the use of their assets and to confiscate their ill gotten gains. Under this Government, more assets have been confiscated from criminals than ever before. Since 2010, we have seized more than £746 million and have frozen assets worth some £2.5 billion.
The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 continues to provide a basically sound framework for ensuring that criminals are not able to enjoy the profits of their crimes. But it hardly comes as a surprise that criminals will use every tactic they can to frustrate and slow the process, exploiting any weakness or loophole in the legislation. Part 1 of the Bill seeks to close such loopholes and tighten up the operation of the Proceeds of Crime Act. The key changes we are making to POCA will enable restraint orders, which freeze a defendant’s assets, to be obtained more easily and earlier in an investigation; reduce the time allowed to pay confiscation orders; enable the court to determine a defendant’s interest in property, to ensure that criminal assets cannot be hidden with spouses or with other third parties; require the courts to consider imposing an overseas travel ban for the purpose of ensuring that a restraint or confiscation order is effective; and extend the existing investigative powers so that they can be used to trace assets once a confiscation order is made.
These changes will help to ensure that confiscation orders are satisfied in full. This is already the case with many lower-value orders. With higher-value orders, criminals have greater capacity to hide away their assets, including overseas beyond the effective reach of UK law enforcement agencies. To further incentivise payment of these high-end confiscation orders, Part 1 of the Bill also significantly increases default sentences for non-payments.
The maximum default sentences for orders between £500,000 and £1 million will increase from five to seven years’ imprisonment, while for orders over £1 million the maximum sentence will increase from 10 to 14 years. We are also ending automatic early release at the halfway point for orders over £10 million. In such cases, offenders could now find themselves spending up to 14 years in prison, rather than just five years as is currently the case. We will keep these changes under close review and, if more needs to be done to incentivise payment, the Bill includes powers to make further changes to the default sentencing framework.
Cybercrime poses a major threat to our national security. Although now almost a quarter of a century old, the offences in the Computer Misuse Act 1990— among other things, criminalising hacking and denial of service attacks—have stood the test of time. However, given the potential far-reaching consequences of a cyberattack on critical national infrastructure, the 1990 Act currently provides for woefully inadequate penalties.
The current Section 3 offence, which criminalises unauthorised acts with intent to impair the operation of a computer, has a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment. Given that cyberattacks could lead to loss of life or significant damage to the economy or the environment, this punishment simply does not fit the crime. The new offence, provided for in Part 2, carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in cases involving loss of life, serious illness or injury, or serious damage to national security, and a maximum sentence of 14 years’ imprisonment for damage to the environment or the economy.
Part 3 of the Bill provides for a new offence of participation in an organised crime group. The offence of conspiracy has served and continues to serve us well, but with conspiracy the prosecution needs to be able to prove, to the criminal standard, that there was an intentional agreement between two or more parties to commit a criminal act. Not all members of an organised crime group will be direct parties to such an agreement. Organised crime groups use a range of associates to help them in their criminal enterprises. There will be members of a group who facilitate the commission of offences, perhaps by delivering packages, renting a warehouse or writing a contract, but without asking incriminating questions that would make it possible to pin on them a charge of conspiracy. The new participation offence will address that gap in the criminal law, affording prosecutors an additional charging option in such cases. The new offence will attract a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment.
Part 3 also improves the operation of serious crime prevention orders and gang injunctions. This reflects the strand of the serious and organised crime strategy aimed at preventing people becoming or remaining engaged in serious and organised crime. These civil orders have proved an effective means of achieving this by placing prohibitions and requirements on the subject of an order or injunction, breach of which is a criminal offence or contempt of court. With the benefit of a number of years’ experience of their operation, we have identified a series of enhancements that can usefully be made to these civil orders.
The Scottish Government, too, have recognised the value of serious crime prevention orders, and so the Bill extends their application to Scotland—another example of the value of the union in securing the collective security of the four nations of the United Kingdom.
In relation to gang injunctions, Part 3 recognises the increasing interrelationship between urban gangs and organised crime. This is particularly evident in the case of the illegal drugs trade. We are therefore extending the circumstances in which a gang injunction may be obtained to include involvement in gang-related drug-dealing activities.
Part 4 deals with another aspect of the illegal drugs trade.
Lord Richard (Lab)
Before the noble Lord leaves Part 3, I wonder whether he can help me on one issue that slightly bothers me—that is, why we have to move beyond the existing law of conspiracy into this new offence. As I understand it, he is saying that if someone did something unconnected with the actual offence, such as delivering a package—if it were connected, you could charge conspiracy—then you would be able to bring him within the scope of the criminal law and charge him with this offence. Would you not still have to prove some kind of criminal intent? If the man is delivering a package and does not know that a crime is going to be committed, he has not committed the new crime any more than he is part of a conspiracy. On the other hand, if he knows that it is in pursuance of some crime, I would have thought the existing law of conspiracy would probably be enough.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, it is our view that it is not enough. I thank the noble Lord for raising the question. We will obviously have the chance to debate this at length in Committee but, in essence, the conspiracy charge requires a direct relationship between the organised crime activity and the individual involved in the conspiracy. The noble Lord is wise enough to know that, in the real world, there are individuals who have managed so far to distance themselves sufficiently from the conspiracy but have, none the less, been aiding serious criminal activity through their deeds.
I am sure we will have good debates on this. It is not about people who unwittingly find themselves on the wrong side of the law in this regard. It is about those who are either knowingly Nelsonian in their view of what is going on or who deliberately choose to aid a client or some other person in this way. I hope the noble Lord will understand why this is in the Bill and why it is an important extension of the conspiracy provision which will, of course, continue to exist.
I come to Part 4, which deals with another aspect of the illegal drugs trade. Illegal drugs, especially cocaine, will be adulterated with other chemical substances to increase their volume and, therefore, the profits of drug dealers. Many drug-cutting agents—that is what they are called—including the most common, such as benzocaine, are far from harmless. Part 4 confers bespoke powers on the National Crime Agency, the Border Force and the police to seize and detain suspected cutting agents. They will then be able to make an application to the court for the seized substances to be forfeited and destroyed. By tackling the supply of drug-cutting agents we can reduce the availability of illegal drugs on our streets, which will, in turn, drive up the street price and help to reduce drug use as part of the Government’s wider drug strategy.
Part 5 takes us into the different, but no less important, territory of child protection. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, who is not in her place today, has been among those who have argued that the offence of child cruelty lacks the necessary clarity when it comes to tackling psychological harm to children. I would be the first to admit that a law which, in its current form, was drafted more than 80 years ago uses rather archaic language in places. None the less—this view is shared by the Crown Prosecution Service—the offence in Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 remains fit for purpose. However, we accept that it would benefit from making explicit that the offence deals with both physical and psychological harm, and Clause 62 amends Section 1 of the 1933 Act to this end.
This part also makes it an offence to possess an item providing advice or guidance about abusing children sexually. It beggars belief that such so-called paedophile manuals are circulating on the internet. However, sadly and worryingly, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Command of the National Crime Agency—CEOP—has uncovered a number of such documents. The new possession offence provided for in Clause 63 will carry a maximum penalty of three years’ imprisonment.
The third child protection issue dealt with in Part 5 is a strengthening of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and its Scottish equivalent. I know that this is an issue in which a number of noble Lords take an interest. Clearly, the challenges presented by the widespread practice of FGM cannot be dealt with by legislation alone. After all, FGM has already been an offence in this country for nearly 30 years. However, it is important that we change the law where necessary. The CPS has identified cases that it was unable to pursue because the extraterritorial jurisdiction provided for under the 2003 Act was limited to UK nationals and non-UK nationals permanently resident in this country. Clause 64 extends this to cover habitual residents. We are looking at other changes in the law in this area, which we hope will help to secure more prosecutions, including whether the victims of FGM should be afforded the protection of anonymity during the criminal process in the same way as rape victims.
Clause 65 deals with another aspect of extraterritorial jurisdiction, in this case in respect of certain offences under the Terrorism Act 2006. My noble friend Lord Marlesford, who I am delighted is in his place, is among those who have rightly highlighted the threat posed to the United Kingdom by “foreign fighters” returning from the conflict in Syria. The amendments made to the Terrorism Act 2006 will enable persons who, while overseas, have undertaken preparations for terrorist acts or who have trained for terrorism more generally, to be prosecuted on their return to the UK. While our priority remains to dissuade people from travelling to Syria or other areas of conflict in the first place, we must ensure that the legislation we have in place to tackle individuals engaging in terrorism overseas is as robust as it can be.
We all share the anguish over the humanitarian disaster that has befallen Syria but there are perhaps better ways to help the people there than by travelling to the region; for example, by donating to registered aid charities. Even those travelling for well intentioned humanitarian reasons are exposing themselves to serious risks, including being targeted by terrorist groups. Those who engage in terrorism or acts preparatory to terrorism while abroad should be in no doubt about the action we are prepared to take to protect the public, should they return to this jurisdiction.
Finally, Clause 66 ensures that two draft EU Council decisions relating to serious crime are subject to proper parliamentary scrutiny and approval before UK Ministers can vote for them in Brussels. The first of these draft decisions relates to the continuation of a funding programme to protect the euro from counterfeiting. The second draft decision will repeal a now-expired programme to fund measures to protect critical infrastructure against terrorist attacks.
Under this Government we have, by establishing the National Crime Agency and revitalising the regional organised crime units, put in place the necessary capacity and capabilities to tackle serious and organised crime. However, as those who engage in organised crime evolve and adapt to the countermeasures we take, we in turn must adapt and respond. The Bill will ensure that the NCA and other law enforcement agencies have the powers they need to continue effectively and relentlessly to pursue and disrupt those who engage in serious and organised crime. I commend the Bill to the House and I beg to move.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his explanation of the Bill. There is always a sense of déjà vu about Home Office legislation. I have been in your Lordships’ House now for just four years. This is the ninth Bill and the fifth that I have spoken on from the Front Bench in that short time. That is a lot of legislation. But it is legislation that is concerned with some of the most serious and important issues facing society and a priority of any government—the safety and security of citizens and the ability of government to play a part in reducing crime and taking action against criminals including, with specific reference to this Bill, those criminals engaged in serious and organised crime.
Any approach to the criminal law has of course to deal with four aspects: the offence and the detail of exactly what that offence is; the appropriate penalties for breaking the law; any defence or mitigation; and, perhaps most crucially, the enforcement and resources available to prosecute—nothing brings the law into disrepute more quickly than erratic enforcement or non-enforcement. I use as an example the sensible law of not using a hand-held mobile phone while driving. We all know that that is dangerous but, as we watch somebody negotiating a roundabout with the steering wheel in one hand and a mobile phone in the other, we know—and, worse, they know—the probability of them being prosecuted is very low. More serious are the current problems with enforcement of legislation on asset recovery and the proceeds of crime. We welcome measures to address current failures, but improvement in legislation cannot make up for the lack of enforcement. There must be a determined commitment to effective policing and enforcement, without which any laws are meaningless.
The issues raised in this Bill are important and we have called for action to better protect children, to tackle cybercrime and to ensure that criminal gangs are not allowed to stash their ill-gotten gains to pick them up later. We will scrutinise these proposals for their workability and for effective enforcement and there is cross-party support on many of these issues. We want to ensure that legislation is as robust as possible.
On Part 1, on proceeds of crime, it is clear that confiscation orders are not working, given that criminals currently get to keep £99.74 in every £100. In 2012-13, there were 6,392 confiscation orders seeking the return of £380 million from a total criminal pot of £1.6 billion, but eventually only £133 million was recovered. The cost of recovering those ill-gotten gains is extremely high. The estimate from the National Audit Office is that investigation, prosecution and enforcement costs 76p in every £1 collected. The value to the Government from that initial £1.6 billion is just £31 million, and only 2% of offenders paid in full. The National Audit Office has identified that the amount collected and the number of confiscation and restraint orders have fallen in recent years. That is a seriously worrying trend. Restraint orders freeze assets so that they cannot be hidden abroad. They have fallen by 27% under this Government. There are a number of reasons why that is the case and I hope that the Government will be willing to engage with us to address the practical and legal reasons to improve implementation.
Noble Lords will be aware that we have called for the ending of early release from sentences for those who have failed to pay back amounts specified in confiscation orders. Currently, automatic release is available at the halfway point. I am pleased to see that ended in the Bill, but that is proposed only for orders involving amounts over £10 million. The Minister in his comments said that there are order-making powers that would enable that level to be lowered, so perhaps we can revisit in Committee whether that is the appropriate level at which to end these early releases. We have also called for the law to make it easier for prosecutors to freeze suspects’ assets quickly and close loopholes that allow criminals to hide stolen assets, sometimes with family members. We welcome the Government's response to that and again we will examine the detail in Committee.
I know that the Minister shares my concerns that some previous measures introduced in the Crime and Courts Act on the proceeds of crime and the National Crime Agency still do not apply to Northern Ireland because the Government failed to get a legislative consent Motion. Obviously, the measures applying to Scotland and Northern Ireland in this Bill relating to criminal assets also require an LCM, without which there would be a massive loophole. I urge that past mistakes are not repeated and every effort is taken to ensure that no part of the UK can become a haven for those hiding their criminal gains from justice. Finally on this issue, we think that it would be appropriate if the additional revenue that is raised is ploughed back into the communities on issues such as neighbourhood policing and criminal justice and we would welcome a commitment from the Minister that the Government would also support this.
Part 2 deals with computer misuse. The phenomenal technical changes we have seen in recent years bring new threats to individuals, businesses and national security. When we debated the Government’s flawed policy of opting out of all EU police and criminal justice measures, cybercrime was an issue we highlighted where international and European-wide co-operation is absolutely essential. The extension of extraterritorial jurisdiction is welcome because, as the Minister knows and as we know, such crimes know no boundaries. We have some questions about the practical application and how decisions will be taken between UK-based prosecutions and extradition, but the measures proposed have our broad support.
Part 3 deals with organised, serious and gang-related crime. Clause 41 seeks to reach all those who actively support or benefit from criminal activity, including those whose specific role appears to be legitimate. Many criminal gangs include corrupt and complicit professionals who use their expertise and skills to seek to evade the law. Obviously, we want to ensure that those who are genuinely innocently caught up in illegal activity are protected. For example, would housing associations, local authorities or private landlords who, despite their best efforts, find their property being used by a drug gang be liable for prosecution? Perhaps this could be seen as the “Al Capone” clause. In a sleazy, corrupt criminal prohibition era, Al Capone and his crime empire were responsible not just for bootlegging, but for prostitution, smuggling, murder and dirty politics, where voters and politicians were threatened or bought and feared for their lives. Some noble Lords will recall the television series with Robert Stack—I am far too young. Despite the best efforts of Eliot Ness and his “Untouchables”, Al Capone was never brought to justice for his worst crimes but for tax evasion, for which he went to prison and his empire was dismantled. If only he had had a better accountant.
The activities of serious and organised crime gangs today are more modern but equally evil and exploit the weak, poor and vulnerable: drug trafficking, people trafficking for slavery and prostitution, organised illegal immigration, extreme and violent pornography. The human misery caused by such gangs is almost limitless and defies imagination. If we are serious about really tackling such evil, we agree that the law should be able to reach all those involved in and benefiting from such activity. Obviously, anyone, including qualified professionals, who knowingly profit from criminal activities should be held legally accountable for their actions. We want to ensure that it is effective in practice. It would be interesting and very useful to have information from the Serious Fraud Office and the police as to how many and what kind of cases they feel they have been unable to pursue because the law is inadequate.
Part 4 concerns the seizure and forfeiture of drug-cutting agents. We do not oppose these clauses, but I question whether they are adequate. We are all aware of the human misery and suffering caused by drugs and the criminal industry behind their sale. In the information provided, I was struck by the number and amount of seizures of chemicals used as cutting agents by drug sellers. Adulterating a hard drug, such as cocaine, with a significantly cheaper compound increases profit and, of course, the dangers for the drug user. However, the seizures to date seem to be minimal. Only 75 seizures, of around 2 tonnes in total, is clearly a fraction of the amount being used. Therefore, although obviously worthwhile, is this the right target and approach, or should it be extended? The Minister said in his introduction it would lead to higher prices and therefore decrease consumption. I am not clear that higher drug prices necessarily reduce consumption by an equivalent amount, so it would be useful to have the evidence for that. I was surprised not to see some measures in the Bill to tackle so-called legal highs. So many young people are being conned into believing something is safe, as the law has not caught up with that particular compound, and a number have already paid with their lives.
Part 5 deals with the protection of children. There is a unity of purpose in your Lordships’ House to do whatever we can to protect children and young people from harm of any kind. We welcome the fact that the Bill seeks to make it explicit that, under the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, emotional cruelty likely to cause psychological harm is an offence. Noble Lords will be aware that there remains some concern from charities and organisations representing children’s interests that, because cruelty to a child must be wilful to be considered an offence, this can be misunderstood. It would be helpful to explore this point further in Committee to ensure that the law is as effective as it possibly can be.
I listened to what the noble Lord said about manuals on child sexual abuse and paedophilia. Like other noble Lords, I am horrified to know that such things exist. Obviously, they should be banned. It serves to highlight the inadequacy of current legislation in protecting children online and from what I understand is called the dark web. It is alarming that online abuse is increasing while the number of arrests is falling. Over the past three years we have seen a 60% decline in the number of arrests made by CEOP although referrals rose by 14% in the last year. The Minister may recall that, in our debates on the Crime and Courts Bill, we raised concerns about CEOP being part of the National Crime Agency rather than remaining a separate specialist and dedicated body. We welcomed the concessions that the Government made and would welcome further information about the operation of CEOP within the NCA. As I stated earlier, having the right structures and resources for enforcement is as important as any legislation.
In the anti-social behaviour Bill earlier this year, the Government accepted our arguments on new amendments to provide some extra tools to the police and local authorities to tackle child grooming, and introduced a new measure on Report. Obviously, there is still more to be done and I hope that the noble Lord will be willing, in the same spirit of co-operation, to consider this matter further; for example, the strengthening of child abduction warning orders may be an issue that we could examine in Committee. There may indeed be other areas we can look at.
The Government have made clear their commitment to opposing female genital mutilation at home and abroad. Like the noble Lord, we regret the lack of prosecutions to date. FGM is a barbaric evil and we support these new measures to tackle it. Noble Lords will be as shocked as I am that in London alone nearly 4,000 girls and women have been treated for FGM since 2009. Again, I reinforce the need for proactive and determined enforcement and prevention, including sex and relationship education in all schools.
On the final part of the Bill, we support measures to tackle terrorism at home and abroad and we will examine the detail on this. I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation and we look forward to our further deliberations on this Bill in Committee.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I confess that I am at a loss. For once, I am not struggling to ask apparently innocent questions as a painful way of masking criticism. My scepticism has also been confounded because so often legislation is added to the statute book when the offences have already been defined and measures have been put in place. I am not a fan of using legislation to promote a message, but the Bill does seem to be about filling lacunae, and I congratulate the Minister and the Home Office on that.
That does, however, make it rather difficult to find a thread running through it on which to base my remarks today. No doubt a theme common to all the issues covered will be—as has already been said—that legislation cannot do everything and that good practice is fundamental. I know that the House will do what it does so well, which is to focus on workability. I am very glad that the Bill has started at this end and I thank the Minister for his introduction.
My noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford talked quite a lot about tracking down and recovering the proceeds of crime in the context of legal aid. He kept saying, “Just find the money”. The Bill cannot assist investigative skills and I am aware from another part of the legal forest—matrimonial work—of the resourcefulness that some people use to conceal their assets. HMRC is pretty good at ferreting out where assets have been hidden.
I am a bit uneasy about using taxation as a sanction—perhaps this is the “Al Capone” clause. I am not entirely sure that I understand the tax provisions. Is there to be a tax assessment when the source of the income cannot be identified but comes under the spotlight as perhaps coming from criminal assets—my civil liberties antennae are twitching slightly—or are we levying a percentage at the marginal rate on income rather than on the whole of the income-producing asset? We will ask questions in Committee. While my antennae are still active, I note from the material I read from the Home Office that the Crown Court must determine whether the defendant has a “criminal lifestyle” and is to apply the balance of probabilities in assessing whether there is “general criminal conduct”. I can see some questions arising from this.
I welcome the priority given to the victim surcharge and compensation, and the use of the assets. I was reminded by a case study in the material provided by the Home Office—for which I and other noble Lords will be grateful—that we are not dealing with the proceeds of crime in a vacuum: it is the crime itself which we seek to reduce or eradicate. That case study could also be a case study from material for the Modern Slavery Bill. It is the underlying crime that makes these provisions so important. But that will not stop us examining, for instance, the Secretary of State’s powers to amend provisions regarding default sentences; and Clause 14, which allows the Secretary of State to amend primary legislation. I was guilty of the perhaps unworthy thought that parliamentary counsel had simply not had enough time to produce the substantive provisions which the Government have in mind. If not, do the Government intend to produce a draft order so that we can understand what they have in mind here?
As for organised crime groups, the current money-laundering rules are a burden on professionals, and Part 1 might add to that. I am aware that another policy aim of the Government, of course, is deregulation. We have had briefings, from the Law Society and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in particular, about Clause 41 and organised crime groups. Prejudice is often expressed against fat cat lawyers. There may be some, although many are very lean, and there may be some lawyers and accountants who are not straight, and I do not defend them. However, there seems to be a lot of justified concern about how this clause will work. We are told that there has been no prior consultation, so the most important question for now is what plans the Home Office has to engage in discussion with the professional bodies. Everyone has an interest in this provision working well.
Before I received the briefings, I was concerned about things such as the burden of proof, serious crime prevention orders as prevention without a conviction, and the definitions. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, I thought that the meaning of the term “helping” in the context of criminal activities could be taken to absurd extremes. Perhaps the question about gangs is how successful the gang injunctions have been so far and their relationship with joint enterprise. A criminal group seems to be three-plus, so more are needed for joint enterprise. Only 25 of the 33 local authorities who are in the Ending Gang and Youth Violence programme responded to the data request. Is this an indication that they are under enormous pressure and are underresourced, because this is described as a “potentially beneficial tool”? Intriguingly, we are told that gangs can disappear from the radar in one area and reappear in another. Do the Government intend to produce guidance on what enables those people to be identified as being the same gang? We will deal with what constitutes harm to children. This made me wonder whether gang-related violence included psychological harm. I am thinking of vulnerable youngsters—particularly how girls may be used by gangs, becoming part of them but being victims of them at the same time.
I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is taking part in this debate, because she always has such sensible things to say about drugs policy and drugs legislation. I accept the need to deal with cutting agents; their use is pernicious in several different ways. The responses to the Government’s consultation on this mentioned legal clarity, but I can see evidential issues raising their heads as well. I wondered about the equipment used for cutting agents. Do they—I am sorry, I cannot now avoid the pun—warrant attention as well as the agents themselves?
As regards children, the House sometimes has a tendency to divide into sort of a Bill half full/Bill half empty approach. It is very likely that the part of the Bill on the protection of children will attract proposed additions, as it gives an opportunity for colleagues to pursue their often very justified concerns. My noble friend Lady Walmsley, who has been unable to change her arrangements for this afternoon to be here, already has an amendment, agreed by the Public Bill Office to be in scope, that would make it a duty for people who work in regulated activities with children or vulnerable adults and who suspect abuse to report it to the local authority.
The change to the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 to spell out that harm includes psychological harm is the result of sustained work by many NGOs and the Private Member’s Bill from my honourable friend the Member for Ceredigion. It is blindingly obvious to us in the year 2014, but the same issue of what is meant by harm arises in other legislation. It has been addressed recently in the context of domestic violence but outside statute. In that and other contexts, I confess that I am concerned that psychological and emotional damage may be regarded as excluded by implication, since it is to be explicitly included in this case.
Noble Lords will have received briefings from children’s organisations on other possible changes to the 1933 Act. I find quite persuasive the argument that the term “wilful” to describe actions is very narrow. Again, I wonder about guidance and the CPS’s view. It is important that the language that is used carries its natural meaning, so that it is easily used by practitioners.
There is also the issue of the age bracket for victims, possibly taking it up to 18. I doubt that anyone who has had more than fleeting contact with teenagers could argue that they are more resilient than younger children, as has been said. I, too, was horrified by what I read in our briefing about the paedophile manual. I was surprised that it needs specific provision, but for the moment I will just ask whether internet service providers have been consulted on Schedule 3.
All the legislation in the world will not deal with the deeper-rooted cultural issues surrounding female genital mutilation. The Government, I know, are very well aware of that and have been very determined in their approach. I count the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green as a real friend and a long-standing colleague as well as an honourable friend, and I can vouch for the activity that she, among many others, has undertaken.
I end with a positive story. I was at a meeting on Thursday, in the margins of the Global Summit on Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict, with a number of Members of other parliaments. A representative from Portugal recounted a tale of the boyfriend of a potential victim protesting and campaigning against the abuse. In a gloomy subject, I thought that was a cheering report.
There may be a common thread to this: that practice is important and that being alert to what technical changes are indeed necessary to implement existing policy is something on which we can profitably use our time.
Lord Hope of Craighead (CB)
My Lords, this is not an easy Bill to read, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was indicating at the beginning of her speech, as so much of it is concerned with updating existing legislation in those fields with which it deals. Updating is really the thread that runs right through the Bill, from start to finish. In itself, I suggest that is to be welcomed. In each of those fields, experience has shown us that there are gaps that need to be filled. We know that where there are gaps in legislation of this kind, they will be exploited. Where there is room for evasion, it will be exploited, too. All the areas of law with which the Bill is concerned are vulnerable to being undermined in this way or are lacking in the power that comes with the increased sentences to which the Minister referred.
Serious and organised criminals—those who deal in illegal drugs, attack our computer systems or are engaged in paedophilia or terrorism—are not going to go away. Their presence in our community is a constant threat. We need to keep our lines of attack and defences up to date, so it is not surprising that the statutes with which this Bill deals are in need of amendment, although some were enacted not all that long ago, and that new measures are required in support of those we already have. Speaking broadly, the Bill deserves our warm support.
I am especially grateful to the Minister for the information pack that we were given the other day to help us through these provisions. It contains fact sheets and Keeling schedules, which are of course extremely useful, but they do not tell one everything. I was troubled by the fact that on my first reading, it seemed that the provisions in Clause 3(3)(b) and Clause 24(3), amending Sections 33 and 183 of POCA, which deal with appeals against the making of confiscation orders, provided appellants with an unqualified right of appeal to the Supreme Court. Everyone else has to go through a permission process before an appeal can be heard there and, as a result, appeals in the Supreme Court are available only if a point of general importance is involved and the decision appealed against raises a point that ought to be considered by the Supreme Court. On my first reading of this part of the Bill, I asked myself: why should the appeals in this field be any different?
The answer was provided by two of the Supreme Court’s judicial assistants but they did not find it in the Keeling schedules because it is to be found in delegated legislation set out in two orders made by the Secretary of State in 2003, details of which I need not give. However, the result is that the appeals referred to in these clauses are subject to the ordinary rule, although that is not apparent on first reading. I am greatly relieved that that is so and I hope that my researchers have provided me with the correct answer.
Some of the provisions, although at first sight well meaning, may require careful scrutiny. One of them is Clause 41 in Part 3, to which the noble Baroness referred and the noble Lord, Lord Richard, drew our attention. In response to what the noble Lord said, it seems to me that the way in which the issue of organised crime is being approached in Clause 41 is, in principle, the right one. He mentioned the alternative of using the law of conspiracy to deal with matters of this kind. When I was serving as a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary I was involved in a case where a conspiracy charge was used in connection with money-laundering. In the days when it was used, the rules for the framing of counts in indictment were subject to what is called the duplicity rule. It was very complicated and I shall not trouble to explain it but the point was that conspiracy was used to get around the difficulty. When the appeal reached us, we had to quash the conviction because the evidence necessary to prove conspiracy was not there.
It is quite a complicated area of law. Although, as a Scots lawyer, I hesitate to make suggestions for the English, I think conspiracy should be avoided if it is possible to do so. The great advantage of Clause 41 is that it goes straight to the heart of what it is seeking to attack and describes it in simple language. To that extent, I welcome Clause 41 and hope that the noble Lord feels able to defend it. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, indicated, there is concern that some well meaning, law-abiding professionals might be brought within the reach of the clause when what they are doing is providing advice and intelligence to the authorities. They might feel deterred from doing this—from getting too close to the people that Clause 41 is talking about—in case they become drawn into some kind of criminal prosecution. It is all about how the offence is defined in Clause 41(2) and the way the defence in Clause 41(8) is worded. It is not necessary to say more about this, but it is a clause that will require detailed examination in Committee.
I welcome the opportunity that the provision in Clause 62—particularly Clause 62(2), which deals with the meaning of “unnecessary suffering”—gives us to debate the issue. I say that against the background of a case of domestic violence, Yemshaw, in which my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood and I were involved some years ago. In that case, the House was asked to consider whether the phrase “domestic violence” in the Housing Act 1996 to describe circumstances in which it would not be reasonable to expect a person to live with someone else in the same accommodation, required there to be, and be limited to, some form of physical contact. There had been two Court of Appeal decisions which said precisely that. Although the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, hesitated somewhat, we were persuaded in Yemshaw that, because of the way in which people look at these matters, it would be unreasonable to confine domestic violence to physical contact. So many cases of that kind are the product of intimidation and psychological abuse, which is equally untenable and makes it equally difficult for someone to live with someone else. Psychological harm was, therefore, said to be included within “domestic violence”.
The concern is that, if the issue of unnecessary suffering, as defined in Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, were to come to court against the background of Yemshaw, the court might feel that it should extend it to psychological as well as physical damage. There will be differing views in the House as to whether this would be desirable. My only point is to welcome the opportunity that we shall have to debate it. I mention Yemshaw because it indicates that this is an area of law that others are working on, as well as us. It is eminently desirable that Parliament should clear this up, rather than have the matter debated, with perhaps less range of discussion, in the courts. That is to be welcomed, whatever the end result may be.
There are one or two other matters that I should like to mention, particularly in relation to Scotland. This is the result of studying the Bill with the Scottish jurisdiction in mind. I have given the Minister notice and I hope he will at least be able to give me some indication in his reply as to what the answer would be. The first relates to Clause 63, which deals with the paedophile manual. The curious feature of that provision is that, according to the wording of the clause, it extends only to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and not to Scotland. That is confirmed by Clause 69(2)(c), which deals with the extent of the Bill and makes it absolutely plain that it does not extend to Scotland. I take it that it is no accident that it is drafted in this way.
That seems at first sight to give rise to a very strange situation. We all live on the same island, as we keep hearing in the debates about the referendum. You could imagine that if someone who lived in Carlisle or Berwick-upon-Tweed wished to get access to one of these manuals, he would have to drive only a short distance to Gretna Green or Eyemouth and find someone who was in possession of one. He could consult it and then go back to Carlisle or Berwick-upon-Tweed and do whatever the manual had taught him to do. It is very puzzling that this does not extend to Scotland. So far as my researches go, there is no equivalent provision, at least in these terms; I discussed this question this morning with a criminal law practitioner and he said that to me. It is true that a recent measure in Scotland, the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009, covers a lot of ground and it may be that the Scottish Government are reluctant to expand on it at this stage, but some explanation is required as to why this measure, which seems eminently desirable, is confined to south of the border and why it appears to be assumed that people in Scotland will not be engaging in the same malpractice.
The second point is rather more technical. It relates to the provision in Paragraph 23 of Schedule 1, which provides that the civil standard of proof will apply to any proceedings in the High Court of Justiciary or a sheriff court relating to serious crime prevention orders. I suggest that the clause may be too widely drawn. It is mirrored to an extent by the provisions relating to England and Wales about the standard of proof, but the point that emerges from a detailed reading of these provisions is that the civil standard applies to proceedings in the High Court, which in England is mainly a civil court and deals with the making or amendment of these orders, whereas the criminal standard applies to proceedings brought in the Crown Court, which is the equivalent of the High Court of Justiciary or the sheriff exercising his criminal jurisdiction. It is not immediately clear to me why the civil standard should be expressed so broadly in relation to criminal jurisdiction in Scotland when it is carefully separated out in the equivalent English provision.
The names of the courts are bit confusing but I am sure that the draftsmen understand that the High Court of Justiciary is entirely criminal—that is its jurisdiction exclusively—and that it is therefore right to be very careful about altering the standard of proof there. The point is that there could be proceedings under these orders that relate to serious crimes—an attempt to pervert the course of justice in relation to these orders, for example—which one surely would have thought could be prosecuted according to the criminal standard. Again, this matter requires some explanation. It may be that those north of the border have some guidance to give us as to what the answer should be.
My final point is a quibble about drafting. I am reminded that there used to be a practice when I first came into this House in the middle of the 1990s; from the Cross Benches you would see Lord Simon of Glaisdale and one or two others sitting looking at Bills to find bits of grammar or drafting that they could draw to the House’s attention. Usually this was a bit tongue in cheek, but sometimes there were bits that really were worth mentioning.
There is one minor complaint that I should like to voice about what one finds in Clauses 57(1) and 58(3). Clause 57(1) deals with the jurisdiction in the magistrates’ court, but magistrates’ courts do not sit in Scotland. In Clause 58(3) we find that appeals, apparently from a magistrates’ court, may be taken in Scotland to the sheriff principal, who sits only in Scotland. Again, if one delves around in the Bill, the answer is to be found later on: in Clause 61(4) we find that a reference to the magistrates’ court is to be read as a reference to the sheriff. However, it is rather untidy to have to go there to interpret magistrates’ courts, when in Clause 58 it is all set out in full for you so that you have the proper English court and this court in the same clause. It would have been better either to group all the Scottish bits in Clauses 57 and 58, or to leave Clause 58 as one that apparently dealt only with England, and then clear it all up as is apparently done in Clause 61. That is the kind of point that Lord Simon would have raised. He would never have dreamt of putting down an amendment to deal with it but would have thought it proper to draw the House’s attention to it, and I should like to do that.
The Lord Bishop of Derby
My Lords, I very much welcome this Bill and think it is timely and appropriate. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and his colleagues at the Home Office on pointing us in this direction. Noble Lords will have seen in the briefing that it is based on a strategy described as the four Ps: Pursue, Prevent, Protect and Prepare. For somebody like me, such laboured alliteration might indicate an overambitious sermon and I want to check the level of the ambition and what might be appropriate.
This Bill, timely and appropriate as it is, is really about Pursue—the pursuit of justice and criminals, and I fully support the proposals. I am especially pleased to see proposals that were endorsed by the Joint Committee on the draft Modern Slavery Bill—on which I had the privilege to serve—about longer sentences for those who default on confiscation orders and lowering the standard of proof for restraint orders freezing defendants’ assets. These measures will not just attack criminals but help victims, which is a crucial part of this legislation. Of course, I support the tougher pursuit of those who inflict FGM and child cruelty, targeting of manuals for grooming and abusing children, and measures against cybercrime and gangs. However, the question is how we are going to deliver that kind of agenda in a realistic way, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said.
This Bill is a first step but we have to remember that organised crime is a huge and expanding industry and flourishes by targeting the most vulnerable people. We are dealing not just with highly sophisticated corrupt systems, but with the brutal abuse of vulnerable people. I have experienced that in my work with modern slavery and drug addicts. As we pursue the crime and the criminal we have to ask how we are going to have an effective response when this criminality is an expanding industry. What does that say about the world we live in and the world we are trying to legislate for? It is very topical at the moment to talk about values and the buzzwords, I understand, are freedom, tolerance and democracy. In 1861, the Bishop of Oxford, who sat on these Benches, gave a famous speech in Salisbury where he recognised the welcome advance of values such as freedom, tolerance and democracy but said there would be a danger that such freedom and spaciousness would give more room for what he called “sin and selfishness” and what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, called “evil”.
This modern crime is not just about technical ingenuity; it is about people choosing the freedom to abuse others and society. We are already aware of cynicism about politics but I think what we are looking at here is an energetic alternative set of values being pursued vigorously in our midst with alternative ways of valuing people and society and doing economics. The alternatives are all based on putting the self first and abusing vulnerable people. That is a very dangerous state of affairs for a nation. The Government have a key role, not just to pursue criminals but to challenge this abusive, expanding lifestyle that reaps such rewards for so many people across all sectors of society. St Paul called it living according to the flesh—that is, according to the most immediate desires and not having a wider hinterland about other people and their needs and especially the vulnerable. This industry is expanding at a time when many of us are preparing to commemorate the First World War. As we collect stories and witness to that war I am struck by the heroic self-sacrifice for others that was involved—something people recognise and value and want to appreciate today.
We have these two streams in our society. The Government have a role not just in pursuing the crime but in looking at the culture and, therefore, at how we can manage pursuing the crime and supporting the victims. I therefore invite the Minister to say something not just about the pursuit but about Prevent, Protect and Prepare; we may come up with different alliteration by the end of the debate. The Home Secretary makes a strong and proper appeal for what she calls “strong partnerships” to deal with this complex culture and this deep challenge. Can the Minister say something about the partnerships that he sees needing to be developed, by working not just through the Home Office but with the Department for Education, the Department for Communities and Local Government and the faith and voluntary sector? Unless we work at that part of the agenda too, we can make all the laws we like but the detection, pursuit and support of victims will still depend on so many other factors. We need to take those into account to make our lawmaking as effective as possible.
Lord Henley (Con)
My Lords, I start by offering my thanks to my noble friend Lord Taylor for his useful introduction to the Bill and for the amount of information with which he has provided us in the run-up to this Second Reading; the meetings he has held with all parts of the House on a party basis and an all-party basis; and the various documents he has provided, including the Explanatory Notes and Explanatory Memorandum—even, dare I say it, the impact assessments, although I found them fairly obscure. I am trying to work out which of the five or six impact assessments relates to which part of the Bill, but that is somewhat difficult. No doubt my noble friend will assist us in that at some later stage.
Some years ago, when I sat where the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, is sitting now, dealing with both justice and home affairs in opposition, I criticised the Home Office and other departments on a number of occasions for this vast legislative steamroller that seemed to churn out Bill after Bill. The noble Baroness said that she had seen nine Bills come from the Home Office in the four years that she had been in this House. I simply cannot remember how many we had claimed we had seen between 1997 and 2010: certainly our figure never quite agreed with the figure of the Government of the day. However, we all had our own views that there were too many.
I then ended up in the Home Office and had to rather change my tune. However, it is important with any Bill—particularly as there is a great deal of all-party support for this Bill, as the noble Baroness made clear—that we look carefully at how much of this legislation is genuinely necessary and how much might just be what one might call legislation for legislation’s sake: making it look as though you are doing something even though there are perfectly adequate laws already in place dealing with this or that matter. This was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Richard; I will get to that when I come to that part of the Bill.
It is important that we in this House go through the Bill very carefully in Committee, to make sure that we know exactly what is there and why, and make sure that that degree of cross-party support does not prevent us from giving the Bill a genuinely critical look.
In my few opening remarks, I also thank my noble friend for providing us with a Keeling schedule. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, made clear, it is not an easy Bill to read, as it makes a whole series of amendments to other bits of legislation. I was therefore certainly grateful for that Keeling schedule, and am sure that other noble Lords will be as well.
I want to touch on Parts 1, 2 and 3 of the Bill: “Proceeds of Crime”, “Computer Misuse” and “Organised, Serious and Gang-related Crime”. I will touch upon them in light of the few opening remarks I made about the importance of scrutinising the Bill to ensure that it is not that legislative steamroller that churns out legislation merely for the sake of legislation.
We start with the amendments to POCA in Part 1. It is now 12 years since the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 was brought in by the previous Government. Despite the figures given by the noble Baroness, it has had some successes in recovering the proceeds of crime from criminals, albeit at some expense. It has continued to have further successes since 2010 under the Conservative coalition Government. My noble friend was quite right to say that, broadly speaking, it is the right framework within which to work. However, some improvements, which my noble friend set out, need to be made to it. Further powers also need to be taken to make sure that we can pursue criminals and that they cannot hide their money—for example with spouses, or abroad—and to make it harder for them to use it. I think we would like to know what estimates my noble friend and his colleagues in the Home Office have made so far about just what the improvements will do: how much more is it likely to bring in, what further sums are we likely to see, and have any estimates been made of what sort of success it will have?
Secondly, I will say a word or two about Part 2, on “Computer Misuse”, which covers Sections 37 to—I forget where it goes to. Starting with Section 37, how much of that is new legislation? How much of the various offences that are enunciated in new Section 3ZA are already covered by existing legislation? I would have thought that many of them would be, but again, I would welcome assurances from my noble friend that those could be covered; some of them, for example, could be covered quite simply by the Theft Act. I would welcome comments from my noble friend on that section. Having said that, I am grateful that in Section 39 he seeks to extend the territoriality of the Bill to make sure that we can get people who are abroad. That is a good measure, and I am sure that the House will welcome it.
The third section I will touch on is Part 3: “Organised, Serious and Gang-related Crime”. Again, I listened very carefully to what the noble Lord, Lord Richard, said about using existing laws relating to conspiracy. My noble friend responded to that and explained exactly why that was needed. That was questioned by the noble Lord, Lord Richard, but was then defended by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead—and I very much welcome what he said. However, the noble and learned Lord went on to suggest that it could bring in some innocent professionals. I agree with him that we need to look very carefully at that matter in Committee, and we will need some carefully drafted probing amendments on it to allow my noble friend to respond when we get to that stage.
As I implied, I was going to be very brief in my response and wanted to deal only with those three sections. The rest of the Bill is equally important, and I am sure that the House will give proper and adequate coverage to it. I am very grateful for the assurances I was given in private on that, but again, I would be grateful if my noble friend could repeat them when he comes to wind up. I am grateful that he thought that we would need at least four days in Committee to deal with the Bill. It is a big Bill that needs proper scrutiny, and the mere fact that we have a degree of cross-party support should not prevent us giving it that cross-party support. Having said that, I offer my support to my noble friend, but I hope that he will allow us to be constructively critical on some occasions.
Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests. I advise Lockheed Martin and UK Broadband, which have interests in the policing sector. I chair the National Trading Standards Board and I co-chair the All-Party Group on Policing.
Following on from the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, while we have to look at this Bill, there is a danger—the noble Lord, Lord Henley, called it “legislation for legislation’s sake”—that some of the content of the Bills we receive in this Session is being rather oversold. The Bills are no doubt worthy, but they do not necessarily address the major issues that they purport to address.
I suppose that is symptomatic of this stage of a fixed-term Parliament, with an ill-matched coalition whose members loathe each other and can barely mask their disagreements—that is just the Lib Dems. On the Conservative side of the coalition of course, we know there is perfect harmony. Indeed, not a scintilla of difference can be detected between the Home Secretary and the Secretary of State for Education. Indeed, they are so united that they did not have to go through the charade, like Nick Clegg and Vince Cable, of having a pint together, which incidentally sets a very poor example for hard-working families of drinking during the working day. Mrs May and Mr Gove have none the less to go through a series of rituals: a ritual exchange of written apologies, the ritual firing of a special adviser or two—not that firing a special adviser does anything to solve the problems. One has only to look at the front page of today’s Times to realise that. Now all is sweetness and light between the two departments. The briefing campaign is apparently over. Or is it? I detect a guerrilla war going on between the advisers of the different government departments concerned. We have all seen the Home Office briefing on the Bill. It tells us that the purpose of the Bill is,
“to ensure we can continue to effectively and relentlessly pursue”.
Take that, Mr Gove: see how we have split the infinitive to show how pointless is your crusade for back-to-basics education. This is the level to which infighting in the Government has gone.
The Bill is the usual ragbag of Home Office measures: it must not contain anything that is too frightening for the Lib Dem portion of the coalition, but none the less everything within it has to be built up as more significant than perhaps it is. As usual, some of it sounds as though it has not been thought out as well as it might be. I was much taken by the briefing that we have no doubt all received from the Institute of Chartered Accountants, which says that the part targeting crooked lawyers and accountants will not make prosecutions easier because it sets a higher standard of proof than Labour’s Proceeds of Crime Act. What is worse, it will have a series of unintended consequences and potentially choke off valuable intelligence to help the police target serious crime. These are no doubt important issues that we will need to look at in your Lordships’ House.
The Bill is designed to make it easier to recover criminal assets. That is welcome, although there seems to be an element of catch-up on Labour’s proposals to do the same. However, we need to be satisfied that the Bill will have the effect of closing the loopholes that allow criminals to hide their assets with family members or overseas. Is that going to be achieved by the changes before us?
There is another problem here. I refer to the extent to which the agencies involved feel it is appropriate to invest the sometimes quite substantial resources required to pursue POCA proceedings. For many of those agencies, too high a proportion of what is seized, often after quite a protracted legal process, is retained by the Treasury rather than being available for the agency concerned to reinvest in crime-fighting. Will the Bill do anything to remedy that? I certainly hope that it is something that the Home Office will look at, perhaps with Treasury colleagues, to see whether more of those resources can be ploughed back to improve the quality of the work that is done in fighting serious and organised crime.
In that context, one of the groups that the National Trading Standards Board funds is the illegal money lending team for England, based in Birmingham. It works hard to recover POCA money from the loan sharks who prey on the vulnerable. It uses the receipts it obtains, after the Treasury has had its take, to plough back into local communities on programmes of education about money management and how to avoid loan sharks. That is a very useful and positive thing that can be done. A trading standards department in North Yorkshire puts great emphasis on working right the way through the prosecution process. It starts with obtaining material and evidence that can be used in Proceeds of Crime Act proceedings at a later stage and works right the way through the investigation. That enables it to plough some of the money it recovers back into further investigations of those who scam the public. I hope that the Minister will tell us what more is being done to try to ensure that more of the resources obtained from criminals can be invested in crime-fighting.
Part 5 of the Bill deals with the protection of children and strengthens and clarifies the law on psychological suffering and abuse. I am pleased to see those measures. It follows the lead of my late right honourable friend Paul Goggins, who campaigned on this issue. The Bill also creates a new offence of possession of material on advice on grooming children. That is all well and good, but is that the most fundamental issue in terms of protecting children and young people on the internet? The noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, who is not in her place, has been doggedly pressing ahead with her Private Member’s Bill in successive Sessions of Parliament on precisely this issue and I find it surprising that the Government have not been more positive about its provisions.
Noble Lords who were present at Question Time today will know that I referred to the benefits of the Government doing more to sponsor proper identity assurance on the internet with robust age verification. That would not only protect children but would also do much to combat crime and fraud. Individuals would have the certainty of knowing who they were dealing with, young people would be prevented from accessing unsuitable material and older people would be prevented from accessing sites that were intended to be the exclusive domain of children.
Much of the Bill is about improving the effectiveness of the National Crime Agency, an organisation which is barely half a year old. It is interesting that perhaps some of these issues were not addressed when we first had the legislation which created the National Crime Agency. Some matters are still not being resolved. We still do not know how the work of the National Crime Agency can be extended to Northern Ireland. The issue of whether the National Crime Agency should take on board counterterrorism remains unresolved. My view is that that would be an unwise move to make, particularly given that the National Crime Agency is still so new. Why leave this hanging open? Would it not be better to put that to bed one way or the other, sooner rather than later?
There is also the question of the proper governance and accountability of the National Crime Agency. We have had the Home Secretary giving her instruction that the National Crime Agency, almost before it had started work, should investigate historic child abuse in north Wales. Where in the Bill are questions of accountability of the National Crime Agency being addressed?
Last week, the Daily Telegraph told us that a quarter of criminals tracked by the National Crime Agency and the Security Service have gone off the radar since the Snowden revelations and that hundreds of drug lords have gone to ground after being alerted to methods of surveillance. The noble Lord will recall that two years ago the Home Office warned of the need to address changes in communications data management by telecoms providers, but nothing has been done in the intervening period. This Bill could have provided an opportunity to address that very real problem. Communications data are vital for all sorts of investigations. They are used by trading standards in carrying out the consumer protection enforcement that I talked about, they were critical in the investigation of the Soham murders and they are often critical in many kidnap cases.
I accept that issues around the privacy of communications and metadata are not easy—they need a proper public debate. I have also been one of the first to acknowledge that the previous Government mishandled the public debate when the opportunity for it arose a few years ago. However, what we have had in the past four years has been a total absence of debate and a total absence of leadership from the Government in trying to resolve these issues. The consequence is that there is now a real danger that our ability to fight organised crime is being seriously corroded.
I started my speech by talking about coalition dysfunctionality, but the willy-waving of the Education Secretary and the Home Secretary—I acknowledge that the term may be inappropriate for your Lordships’ House and certainly inappropriate in applying it to Mrs May—is a side-show compared with the failure of the two halves of the coalition over the five years of this Parliament to address the diminishing capacity of our police forces, including the NCA, to access the communications data that they need to fight crime effectively and to protect the public. Therefore, while the Bill contains many worthy elements, it frankly does not address some of the most serious problems that exist in dealing with organised crime.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, in dealing with the Second Reading of yet another miscellaneous provisions criminal Bill, there is a sneaking temptation to have a tour d’horizon of the contents of the Bill and, indeed, to repeat a point that I have sought to make probably half a dozen times over the past eight or nine years—that is, that the legislative fecundity of the Home Office for such Bills should in some way or another be curbed. It may be that the only humane way of doing that is to have a written constitution with a Bill of Rights and to see to it that the Home Office is limited to no more than one Bill of that nature per annum.
On this occasion, however, I want to take a totally different course and concentrate completely on one single matter in the Bill: Clause 62. As the House knows—it has already been referred to by noble and learned Lords and by the noble Baroness—that clause deals with two amendments to Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. The effects are limited. One is to see to it that that which may well have been implicit in the original wording of the measure is now made explicit—namely, that it should refer not only to physical but to non-physical consequences. The situation was somewhat complicated in 1981 when this House dealt with the matter of Sheppard. In relation to the situation of children, it held that Section 1 of the 1933 Act should not in any way deal with spiritual, educational, moral or emotional matters but only with physical ones. That decision, arrived at by this House, was a heavy gloss, which has now been undone by including psychological harm with physical harm. We will, no doubt, discuss whether the term “psychological harm” is wide enough to incorporate all the other, non-physical, matters at a later stage.
The other part of the amendment deals with the exclusion of Victorian verbiage which describes certain situations that are illustrative of child cruelty, and it is entirely proper to take that attitude. However, although these two amendments are entirely meritorious and proper, they fall very far short of what the aims of a progressive society should be, on the issue of child neglect, in the 21st century. As the House well knows, and as many people better qualified than me can testify, it is one of the most massive problems of the present day. Neglect leading to cruelty is often at least as serious as physical or sexual abuse of a child. In many ways, it may be more sinister as it is more difficult to identify and reveal. It is very broad in its possibilities and may range from failure to give a child the food and clothing it requires to the other extreme of failure to show a child the love and affection that one would wish every child to receive.
Many people are extremely well versed and have campaigned in this field. In particular, I note the contribution of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, in this matter. Many come to the conclusion that as many as 10% of our children suffer some form of substantial neglect. We should look at this provision against that template. We are not ungrateful to the Government for their initiative, but it falls far short of what is necessary in the circumstances. I appreciate that this is Second Reading but, since I am challenging the Government’s fundamental approach, it is right to argue at this stage that a totally fresh approach should be taken. Why is this? The 1933 Act is 80 years old but its provisions are much older as they were taken, word for word, from Section 37 of the Poor Law Amendment Act 1868.
That Act was passed in very special circumstances, to deal with a sect called the Peculiar People. They were very genuine people who were very firm in their religious beliefs, to the effect that if a person—particularly a child—was ill, one should not for a moment think of a cure or of approaching a doctor, or giving medicine. Instead, one should resort to prayer. If the child died, so be it: it was the act of God. To go contrary to this was seen as utterly blasphemous. As a result, many persons charged with manslaughter on the death of a child were found not guilty because of their innate—but utterly unreasonable—genuineness. It was for that purpose that that particular provision in Section 37 of the 1868 Act was passed. Much of that verbiage is still in Section 1(1) and (2) of the 1933 Act.
I am not arguing that just because there is Victorian verbiage one should get rid of it. I have lived as a lawyer for many years with the Offences against the Person Act 1861. I suspect that many generations of lawyers still to come will do exactly the same. It is a splendid Act and most of its provisions work really well. In this case, however, we are dealing with the cobwebs of a Victorian attitude which is utterly irrelevant and inappropriate for the problems that we seek to beat in relation to this matter. For example, even if the amendment is carried—and I have no doubt that it will be—the whole concept of child neglect and cruelty will turn on the question of whether the person who is perpetrating such conduct is doing it wilfully. To many lay people, magistrates, police officers and jurors, “wilful” means something that a person does deliberately. Conceptually, however, “neglect” is essentially a matter of omission. Lawyers understand the difference, but intelligent lay people do not find it so easy to make the distinction.
In addition, there are five ways in which the offence can be committed. First, we have a wide range of offences of assault, including common assault and sexual assault. Nothing needs to be said about that. Secondly, we have “ill treatment”, but apparently nowhere is it defined in the law, in statute or elsewhere, comprehensively. Thirdly, we have neglect, but that begs the whole question of the difficulties that we are talking about. Fourthly, there is abandonment. I suggest that that part of the law has fallen into desuetude: the last prosecution was in 1957. Fifthly, there is exposure. That has fallen into even greater desuetude: the last prosecution was in 1910.
These matters have to be tackled. I salute the efforts of Action for Children and other similar progressive bodies in this regard. A Bill has been drafted which concentrates essentially on defining the offence as maltreatment—which is an excellent expression—but it also refers to maltreatment that either causes or raises the danger of causing significant harm. What is the beauty of that? Significant harm is the essential core and kernel of harming a child under the Children Act 1989. Therefore the suggestion made by progressive societies, and the measure introduced in the House of Commons a year ago by Mr Mark Williams, the MP for Ceredigion, who is also my MP, would mean that for the first time the civil law and the criminal law would look at child cruelty in exactly the same way and according to the same definitions. Social workers and police officers would read from the same brief.
There is much more that one could deliberate on, but this is not the time to do it; we will have a full opportunity for that in the coming months. Knowing that the Minister is resilient to such appeals, I urge him to consider carefully that this is a glorious opportunity to erase completely a great deal of cobwebbed complication and that we can start afresh. Let us define this all-important aspect of the criminal law in such a way that it best serves the needs of our children. I give the Minister notice that we shall plumb the illimitable depths of his good will in this matter, and I very much trust that we shall not find him wanting.
Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)
My Lords, as has already been said, we have had a succession of Acts of Parliament tackling crime, terrorism and policing over many years. This Bill, which I welcome, is the latest. But there is a good reason for all this legislation. The challenges that we face are continually changing. Organised crime is becoming ever more sophisticated in the way that the criminals operate, the methods that they use, the way that they organise themselves and the way that they hide their ill-gotten gains. It is a constant battle. In the case of cybercrime, we are in a never ending technological race to keep up with the cybercriminals as they use ever more skilful and devious hardware and software and the dark side of the internet. We have to keep up with them, especially as we realise just how extensive these threats are to our commerce, industry, infrastructure, financial security, people’s personal lives, the environment and, most important of all, our national security.
We know that white-collar crime can be an ally, sometimes unwittingly, of organised crime, and organised criminals can and do use professional advisers to facilitate their criminal activity. On the separate subject of protecting children, the Bill at last updates the law, long overdue, by recognising that the harm done to children can be not only physical but psychological and, as has been said by several noble Lords, we are in debt to those doughty campaigners both in Parliament and outside who have campaigned hard on this issue. The Bill is also necessary because of developments in the Middle East and the threats posed by British citizens who go overseas to engage in terrorism, particularly to Syria, then return to the UK radicalised still further and dangerous.
All these developments have propelled this Bill before Parliament. I suspect that in an ever changing world with new developments and new threats, there will before long be a need for yet further legislation, although I cannot see the face of my noble friend the Minister when I say that. As all of us in this House know, it is fine passing a Bill but we always have to ask whether the authorities have the resources, capability and expertise to implement its provisions. We will want to look at this very carefully as the Bill is scrutinised in Committee. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, referred in her speech to the importance of enforcement.
On practicality, a number of specific points concern me and I will briefly single out two. In seeking to prosecute alleged rogue professionals—accountants and lawyers, for example—for acting as accomplices to organised crime, the Bill would require the prosecution only to show that the accused had reasonable grounds for believing that they were helping a criminal group. How would that work in practice? It might well—and certainly should—encourage professionals to delve more deeply into the affairs of some of their more suspect clients, but it may have quite the opposite effect of “best not to know”. How would that work in court? With whom would the burden of proof lie; the prosecution or defence?
A second area concerns the extension of the Terrorism Act 2006. I confess to being no expert in this area but, when we come to examine Clause 65 in Committee, I at least will find it helpful to know whether it is realistic to believe that sufficient evidence can be brought to court to demonstrate that an accused has been preparing or training overseas for engaging in terrorism. Having said that, I assure the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, who is not in his place, that I certainly believe the Bill’s objective here is good and important, but it would be helpful to know how realistic it is.
Overall, I welcome the Bill and believe that it will, in all its different aspects, help create a safer society for our fellow citizens.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, despite the glowing reference that the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, gave the coalition Government, as the Minister has already said, crime is significantly down since this Government came to power. Indeed, in many crime categories it is at the lowest levels ever recorded. However, as the Minister also said, serious and organised crime remains a very serious problem, not least because it is an area of crime that many members of the public are less concerned about—certainly less concerned than they are about personal crime such as burglary, robbery and anti-social behaviour—so there is the potential that police and crime commissioners, perhaps focusing on being re-elected, may be disinclined to champion it.
I would like to speak—it says here “briefly”, but I do not want to raise expectations beyond what I can deliver—on two aspects of the Bill. From my experience as an operational police officer, I very much welcome the enhancements to the Proceeds of Crime Act. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, rightly pointed out the very small proportion of proceeds of crime that are confiscated, which to me merely demonstrates how difficult it is and how necessary are the changes. It is a sad fact that those involved in serious and organised crime can amass great wealth from their criminal activity. It is also a sad fact that they can therefore afford to employ the best lawyers to help them move their assets beyond reach. Establishing third-party claims at an earlier stage in the process, as the Bill proposes, should help prevent spurious third-party claims further down the line and increase the success in confiscating such assets.
While some criminals in the past have felt that spending additional time in prison is better than giving up their criminal assets, the increase in default sentences—including having to serve the full term of up to a maximum of 14 years in the case of default on a confiscation order over £10 million—will provide a real incentive for them to pay up. It is important that criminals know that the confiscation order remains in force, even if the default sentence is served—as does any compliance order, such as a ban on overseas travel to prevent assets being disposed of.
Of particular benefit are the powers in Part 5 of the Proceeds of Crime Act by which criminal assets can be recovered where no criminal conviction has been possible, either because the criminal has remained remote from the commission of the crime from which they have benefited or because they have fled overseas. In my experience, this is particularly the case with drug dealers who run distribution networks between importation and street dealers. They are very often careful to ensure that they never handle the drugs themselves. It is difficult, however, for these people to demonstrate how they acquired such wealth through legitimate means. Applications for seizure in these cases are made to the High Court.
As has already been mentioned, Clause 41 will also assist in creating a new offence of helping an organised crime group carry out criminal activities: for example, putting in place infrastructure to assist in the commission of crime.
I also welcome the change to Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, in particular the clarification that cruelty likely to cause psychological suffering or harm is covered by Section 1, despite the fact that the Government believe that the other limbs of the offence, in particular ill-treatment, can relate to non-physical cruelty. This follows the work done by—and the Private Member’s Bill of—Mark Williams MP in the other place.
Having said that, women’s groups I have been working with are concerned about two aspects of this change. The first is that it could result in the criminalisation of non-abusing parents who are themselves the victims of coercion, control and psychological abuse. I will unpack that a bit. There have been cases where women, mainly, have been convicted of physical child neglect because they did not prevent the abuse carried out by an abusive partner, even though the partner was exercising coercive control over them as well as abusing the child. In these cases the woman could be said to be almost powerless to protect the child because of the control her partner had over her. With the extension of cruelty to cover non-physical cruelty, there is the potential for such injustices to increase unless there is also movement in recognising psychological abuse and coercive control in domestic violence against partners.
That brings me to the second point, which is that the Government have not taken the opportunity in this Bill to address what many women’s groups believe to be a legislative gap in domestic violence law to deal with psychological abuse and coercive control. Indeed, psychological abuse and coercive control, not individual incidents of physical violence, are the essence of domestic violence.
My noble friend the Minister will recall a recent debate in the House in which he reassured us that legislation to criminalise psychological abuse and coercive control was not necessary because it was already covered by existing legislation. The Government seem to be saying the same thing in this Bill—that non-physical cruelty directed at children is already covered by existing legislation—but none the less they are prepared to make this explicit by changes to Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act. Can the Minister explain why the Government are prepared to make the change in the case of child abuse but are not prepared to make a similar change in relation to domestic violence against partners, particularly now that they are prepared to set a similar precedent in relation to child abuse?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Paddick and to reassure the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, of the coalition’s unity of purpose on the Serious Crime Bill.
The point has already been made, not least by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, that we always seem to be getting Home Office measures. It is true that, like taxes and motorway cones, Home Office bills are always with us. That said, I am very much in agreement with my noble friend Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury in thinking that this measure is more than justified. Because of changing circumstances we have to keep ahead of many of the challenges of the age: computer misuse and drug-cutting present fresh challenges, while female genital mutilation and training for terrorism are issues that have come up on a regular basis in your Lordships’ House. Therefore, a response to them is needed.
As has been said, the cost of serious and organised crime is massive. The economic cost alone is £24 billion per year. More serious are the social consequences, and there are of course also issues of national and international security, which this measure tackles.
On the specific provisions of the Bill, it is right to look at ways of ensuring that the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 is tightened. As has been rightly said, there have been issues with collecting the proceeds of crime when money is sheltered outside the jurisdiction or is allegedly in the hands of third parties. This legislation will tackle some of those issues. Clearly we need to look seriously at this in Committee, but it is a measure that is to be welcomed because we need to revisit the working of the 2002 Act.
Secondly, there are the provisions on computer misuse. As I said, the fresh circumstances of using computers to commit large-scale cybercrime demand fresh legislation. Lengthening sentences to 14 years if the damage is economic or environmental, and the maximum to a life sentence if the damage is to life, limb or national security, seems right. It is necessary to prove intention—mens rea is either intent or recklessness—and that is entirely right. Again, this will no doubt be scrutinised as we go through Committee.
Much has been said about the participation in crime element and introducing a new crime to sit alongside conspiracy. The noble Lord, Lord Richard, raised this initially to ask why it was necessary. I listened carefully to what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, said, but there are differences. This approaches it in a different way, in terms of not just the conduct that will be caught but also the standard of proof, which is lower in relation to this participation. The person must have reasonable cause to suspect and only reasonable cause to suspect. There is also a difference in the maximum sentence, which is five years, while conspiracy carries, I think, potentially a life sentence.
So there are material differences here and this is again necessary because of changed circumstances. It is largely, though not exclusively, directed at professional assistance for crime. It is not limited to lawyers or accountants, but certainly they would be caught within the ambit of what is to be looked at. I am sure that alongside other noble Lords I will be scrutinising this carefully in Committee, but it seems that there is a case to be made for looking at this differently from the classic conspiracy of people, perhaps around a table, discussing a crime. This is a different type of conduct that is to be caught.
The Bill also widens the categories of serious crime prevention orders that can be made. They will, of course, be made by the judiciary, so there is a limitation and a safeguard here, which is to be welcomed. A pre-emptive strike to prevent a crime is surely a sensible way of proceeding.
I mentioned that the part of the Bill concerning drug-cutting agents is required because of changes in conduct. We have to react to it and try to stay ahead of the game to ensure that we can tackle criminality in this way. Using substances that are not themselves illegal, but which are used to bulk out illegal drugs, ensures that criminals maximise their profit. To seize these substances, the authorities will have to get a warrant to enter the premises legally and they will need another warrant to destroy the substances. Given the dangers of drugs to individuals, which are well rehearsed, and the massive profits that are being made at the expense of, usually, young people, this is more than justified.
I accept that this is a bit of a hotchpotch of a Bill, but that should not detract from our looking at each part and saying, “Is it to be welcomed? Does it tackle criminality and is it necessary?”. I welcome the clarification about child neglect. I listened carefully to the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, and there are serious issues that we will need to look at in Committee. However, we should welcome clarification to tackle psychological as well as physical harm. I do not think that anybody could argue against making it illegal to possess paedophile manuals, or against extending the extraterritorial reach of prosecutions in relation to female genital mutilation, something that has been raised repeatedly in your Lordships’ House. I also very much welcome measures to tackle the overseas element of training for terrorism—again, a fresh challenge and therefore necessitating fresh legislation.
Obviously, we will be reviewing and scrutinising the legislation line by line as it goes through your Lordships’ House, but the broad sweep of the Bill is something that we should welcome very much indeed.
Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)
My Lords, I confess to having had some doubts as to whether I was justified in speaking on this Bill, given that I am so clear as to its essential merit and, indeed, so bereft of any constructive and useful criticisms. But given, too, how critical I suspect that I, and no doubt many others, am going to have to be when we shortly debate the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which we understand will be leaving the other House tomorrow, I thought it perhaps appropriate to express my support for the Government in what they are doing at least in the present Bill. My doubts arose afresh when I saw that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, was down to speak before me. Indeed, I passed him a note saying, “Will you leave me anything to say?”. It may be that your Lordships shortly come to doubt the correctness of his response.
In all events, I confine myself to brief comments on just four aspects of the Bill. The first is the proceeds of crime provisions, which of course are at the very heart of the Bill and indeed form the largest part of it. These provisions I certainly applaud. Indeed, anything that strengthens our legislation, designed to strip criminals of their ill gotten gains, is greatly to be welcomed, and Part 1 of the Bill should undoubtedly plug a number of gaps that have been found in the present confiscatory scheme. I particularly welcome Clause 11, which will enable restraint orders—that is to say, orders freezing assets and preventing their dissipation pending any eventual confiscation—in future to be made as soon as there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the person is guilty of an offence, rather than, which is presently the position, only when there is reasonable cause to believe. Of course, belief is the higher test. The future test is the lower test: reasonable grounds to suspect that a person has benefited from his criminal conduct. I add only that, for my part, the essential value of all this confiscatory scheme is impoverishing and therefore deterring the criminal rather than enriching the state, so I am perhaps less worried than the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, as to the comparatively high cost of enforcement.
Secondly, I also welcome Clause 41, the clause to which the noble Lord, Lord Richard, spoke at a very early stage during the Minister’s opening of this debate. Clause 41 creates an offence of participating in the criminal activities of an organised crime group, and thereby gives wider effect than the United Kingdom has hitherto given to Article 5 of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime. Up to now, as has been explained, we have relied largely on the law of conspiracy in order to target those involved in some shape or form in organised crime groups, but this of course requires proof of the person’s agreement to carry out the criminal scheme.
This new offence is designed to target those who merely support organised crime—in other words, those who provide, in one way or other, services that facilitate criminal capability and activity but without those assisters being directly, so to speak, involved in the criminal plan itself. Henceforth, such people are going to be guilty of an offence if they turn a blind eye when, in the language of Clause 41(2), they know or have reasonable grounds to suspect—again, the lower test and not, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, suggested a moment ago, the higher test of belief—that they are in fact helping,
“an organised crime group to carry on criminal activities”.
This is designed not least to discourage corrupt and complicit professionals who provide services to organised crime groups. I do not for a moment suggest that more than a very tiny minority of professionals lend themselves to this, and it is therefore perhaps unsurprising that the representative bodies for both solicitors and accountants, to which I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred, have expressed certain concerns about this new provision. For my part, however, these concerns are misplaced. Rather, it seems to me that this new provision may be expected to reinforce the integrity of these professionals.
Thirdly, I want to say a word about Clause 62, about which many others have spoken. It amends Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, which criminalises cruelty to those under 16. The amendment expressly provides that is an offence to cause suffering or injury to health whether that,
“is of a physical or a psychological nature”.
Personally, and I think in common with the Minister, I doubt whether it is strictly necessary. Even under the existing wording, it seems to me reasonably clear that causing a child unnecessary psychological suffering would constitute an offence, but plainly it makes sense to update this now rather archaic language and to spell out in terms that causing psychological harm is also explicitly criminalised. Indeed, it has come to be recognised that, as the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, made plain, these sorts of cases can indeed be some of the very worst cases of child cruelty.
As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, has already observed, this proposed amendment is entirely consonant with a decision that we came to in the Supreme Court in a case called Yemshaw some three years ago, in which we held that the term “domestic violence” is indeed apt to include not merely physical and intimidatory behaviour but other forms of abuse, including, above all, psychological abuse that gives rise to the risk of harm. One wonders perhaps whether the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, might have overlooked that case in what he said as to how domestic violence is not currently apt to include it. It is true that in that particular statutory context—the urgent need to be rehoused as homeless—I doubted the correctness of the view of the majority, although I did not in the event dissent from it. In the context of outlawing child cruelty, however, it seems to me unarguably the right approach.
The final clause that I would mention, again with total approval, is Clause 64, which widens our extraterritorial jurisdiction under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. Someone who, even outside the United Kingdom, mutilates a girl’s genitalia or aids, abets, counsels or procures a girl to do so herself commits an offence that is triable here, but under the present law only if they are UK nationals or permanent UK residents. The proposed amendment will extend such extraterritorial jurisdiction to those who are habitually resident here—in other words, even those who are not permanently resident here. Parenthetically, in Section 2, there is an offence of aiding and abetting the girl or woman to mutilate herself. I believe this is the only offence, apart from that of assisting suicide, which we shall no doubt discuss later, where the act of assisting and not the substantive act itself is criminalised.
I add my voice to those of the large number of noble Lords who have already spoken to express how appalling the continuing operation of this vile practice is among certain communities and how astonishing the failure of effective law enforcement procedures to stamp it out. Eight years ago, sitting with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, in the Appellate Committee of this House in a case called Fornah v Secretary of State for the Home Department, we granted asylum to a 15 year-old girl from Sierra Leone because of her fear that, if returned, she would be subject to FGM. There are plainly still communities here who, as in Sierra Leone, regard FGM as an acceptable, and indeed desirable, initiation rite into adulthood. How dreadful that is. If a victim were to arrive at, say, a school or hospital with gunshot wounds, the police would be speedily alerted. So it should be with those who on examination can be seen to have been the victims of this abhorrent practice.
I wish to make a final comment on the Bill as a whole. So plain does it seem that the provisions of this Bill are essentially well directed that I find it difficult to understand why no fewer than four days have been allotted to it in Committee. As other noble Lords have already made clear, certain provisions are going to need careful, detailed consideration, but if this Bill needs four days, goodness knows how many days the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill is going to need when it comes. That, however, is for the future. As far as this Bill is concerned, so far, so good.
Lord Wasserman (Con)
My Lords, I welcome this Bill. It is the latest instalment of an ambitious programme of work which my right honourable friend the Home Secretary set herself in the summer of 2010, shortly after taking office. Her goal was clear and unequivocal—to make this country a safer place in which to work, bring up children, grow old, study and visit. Much of that programme has already been delivered. Local policing is no longer the responsibility of the so-called tripartite cabal of ACPO, the Home Office and the Association of Police Authorities. In its place there are now directly elected local police and crime commissioners, who oversee the local police force as part of their wider responsibilities for community safety. The College of Policing has brought together the Police Federation, the Police Superintendents’ Association and ACPO into a single body, under an independent chairman of integrity, to professionalise policing across the whole of England and Wales. The inspectorate has been strengthened and modernised, so that its work is seen to be serving the public rather than Home Office Ministers and officials.
The Bill is largely the product of another of my right honourable friend’s innovations, the National Crime Agency. The significance of the NCA as a crime-fighting organisation, headed by a professional crime fighter and reporting directly to the Home Secretary, is not often appreciated by the general public. Indeed, most home affairs commentators in the media do not appreciate the fact that before this Government the police department of the Home Office, in which I am proud to have served for many years, devoted most of its efforts to dealing with local crime and anti-social behaviour, although we did not use that term in those days. Serious and organised crime was something that Home Office Ministers were happy to leave to individual chief constables to tackle, working independently or through ACPO. For a short period between April 2006 and October last year, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency also played an important role in this field, but it reported to a board that was largely independent of government and headed by the chairman without any professional policing experience. As my right honourable friend said recently in an important speech delivered to the Royal United Services Institute,
“when I became Home Secretary four years ago the lack of a response”,
to the threat of serious and organised crime,
“both in policy terms and operational terms—was glaring. While the centre was bossy, clumsy and interfering when it came to local policing, it was weak, timid and sometimes entirely absent when it came to serious and organised crime”.
How different things are now. A few weeks ago, on 28 May, I attended a reception at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office at which the heads of the national law enforcement agencies of the UK, the USA, New Zealand, Canada and Australia—known collectively as the “Five Eyes” law enforcement group—were guests of the NCA. Keith Bristow, the NCA director, chairs this group of top crime fighters. I used the opportunity to chat to the director of the FBI and the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Both these top law enforcement officials were fulsome in their praise for the work that the NCA was doing internationally, particularly the way that it was bringing law enforcement partners together to help to pursue serious and organised criminals and frustrate their activities around the globe.
The Bill gives the NCA and other UK law enforcement agencies some of the tools that they need to meet their objectives of keeping us safe. Most of its provisions, as many noble Lords have already mentioned, are entirely uncontroversial, and I very much hope that your Lordships will welcome them, as I do. Many provisions are years overdue, some by decades. For example, take the provisions concerning the misuse of computers. The Act that we are being asked to amend in Part 2 of the Bill received Royal Assent in 1990, which is equivalent in IT years to the Dark Ages. The owners of many of the largest and most profitable IT businesses in the world were still in nappies in the 1990s; a fair proportion had probably not yet been conceived. Similarly overdue are the provisions to update the definition of a gang, to deal with the cutting agents that are used to increase the profitability of the illicit drug trade, or to amend the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 to recognise that child abuse may be psychological as well as physical. All these provisions should have been on our statute book years ago, and I very much hope that your Lordships will ensure that they get there urgently.
While I warmly welcome those provisions that are in the Bill, I want to mention two matters that are not included but have already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey. The first relates to the data retention directive of the European Union. On 8 April this year, a few months ago, at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg there was a decision that will have very damaging consequences for our fight against serious and organised crime. The court struck down the data retention directive of the European Union.
As your Lordships will know, the UK’s domestic data retention regulations are based on the EU directive and are the legal basis for the obligations we place on communications service providers to retain communications data for 12 months. Without these regulations, providers have no reason to retain the data and, given the current concern post-Snowden, do not very much want to retain it unless they are compelled to do so. I am aware that the Government are trying hard to find a way forward on this issue but I urge them to act boldly and courageously in tackling it. Communications data are now used in more than 90% of serious and organised crime investigations and are vital in bringing serious criminals to justice and protecting the most vulnerable among us.
There is one other matter relating to serious and organised crime that does not need legislation but which I hope will be tackled as a result of our interest in this subject. It is the question of the responsibility for counterterrorism. In that speech by the Home Secretary to which I referred earlier, she said,
“in 2010, I made sure serious and organised crime was included in the National Security Strategy … I am aware that it is a relatively new way of thinking to consider organised crime a national security threat, and I know that some people … may argue that individually none of these crimes represents a national security threat. But when you consider their collective effect, when you add up the total cost to society, when you realise the huge numbers of victims who suffer from organised crime, there is no doubt in my mind that it is a very real threat to our national security”.
It is obvious from many of the provisions in this Bill, particularly in Part 2 dealing with computer misuse, that when we talk about the threat of serious and organised crime we are talking about a threat that extends to serious damage to critical national infrastructure and therefore to our national security.
Given that the Home Secretary herself recognises that serious and organised crime encompasses terrorism and national security, is it not time to bring together in one organisation responsibility for both counterterrorism and serious and organised crime? In particular, responsibility for counterterrorism should be brought more directly under the Home Secretary rather than leaving it as it is today under the Metropolitan Police, which is accountable to the Mayor of London, and ACPO, which is accountable to itself. Given that the NCA has made a great start in the few months in which it has been fully operational and the respect it is accorded by the FBI, the RCMP and other leading law enforcement agencies around the world, I urge the Government to act on this matter and to transfer responsibility from the Mayor of London to the NCA—in effect to the Home Secretary—before the end of this Parliament so that the new arrangements are in place before the next mayoral elections in May 2016. It seems to me that the last thing we want is for the security of this nation to become a party-political issue in a local election. With this plea I commend this Bill to the House.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, when I picked up my copy of the Times on Thursday I saw a story headed “Criminal gangs are running swathes of Britain, says May”. The story went on to say that,
“the home secretary is believed to be referring to parts of … cities in which drugs gangs run protection rackets”.
The situation is bad and the Home Secretary does well to acknowledge it. This Bill, which takes new powers to strengthen the capacity of the National Crime Agency and other agencies to deal with a range of serious and organised crime, is conspicuously focused on drugs crime, and it is on that that I should like to focus my remarks.
The Bill is an iteration of the Government’s strategy of prohibition: the criminalisation of production, supply, distribution, possession and consumption of classified substances. Its thrust is logical as an extension of prohibition, which has been the global orthodoxy since the first of the UN conventions in 1961, and which is most significantly expressed in our domestic law in the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. The Bill represents a new offensive in the war on drugs, which was declared on behalf of us all by President Richard Nixon in the 1970s, and our Ministers still march under the flag of that great leader. The Bill is “one more big push”, as the generals in the First World War used to say. The casualties were terrible then; the casualties are terrible now.
If the Bill proceeds to the statute book it will strengthen the arsenal of our law enforcement agencies, with new powers of investigation, the seizure of criminal assets, tougher prison sentences, “enhancements”—as the Minister called them—of serious crime prevention orders and gang injunctions, a new offence of knowingly participating in an organised crime group and new provisions for the seizure of cutting agents used to bulk out illicit drugs.
In our enthusiasm to bring wicked people to justice and to put them behind bars, I hope that we shall, as we scrutinise this Bill, pay very careful attention to the Bill’s potential implications for civil liberties. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon have all drawn attention to Clause 41, which would create a new offence of participating in an organised crime group. We will need to be sure that the definitions that are legislated are appropriate and that the due diligence that will be required to enable lawyers, accountants and other professional people to demonstrate that they did not have reasonable cause to suspect that their client was seeking to manipulate ill-gotten gains is proportionate and manageable.
Gang injunctions presume criminality at a civil standard of proof, and we shall have to look carefully at that. As my noble friend on the Front Bench emphasised, we shall certainly need to make inquiries about the resources that the Government will make available to enable these measures to be effective. There is a crisis in our jails. A general election is coming along. Ministers in the Home Office are always particularly keen to be seen to be tough on crime in the run-up to a general election. We shall need to scrutinise to see which parts of the Bill are electoral puffery, which are reasonable and, above all, which might actually be effective. Will these measures help us at long last to turn the tide in the war on drugs? Will they even succeed in slowing the growth of the drugs economy?
In our era of prohibition, consumption of illicit substances in this country has soared. In the 1970s, one in 10 young people had taken cannabis. Now a quarter of 50 to 60 year-olds have used illicit drugs, as have a third of people in their 40s and more than half of people in their 20s and 30s. Ecstasy is enjoyed by 500,000 people a week. Cocaine, of poor quality, is available in towns and villages the length and breadth of the land. A new psychoactive substance arrives in this country at the rate of one a week. Britons are perhaps the biggest consumers of illicit drugs in Europe.
It would be helpful if, before we come to Committee, the Minister were able to let us have the Home Office’s own latest estimates of the scale of the consumption of mind-altering substances in this country, both legal and illegal. How many addicts are there in our society? What is now the size of the drugs economy? What are the costs to society, to the criminal justice system and to public expenditure overall? Some time ago I saw figures from the Home Office which estimated that the social and economic costs of illegal drugs in England and Wales amounted to £10.7 billion a year. Whatever the figure is, it is vast, and it is clear that we have not won the war against drugs.
Part 1 of the Bill, which provides new powers of confiscation and recovery of the proceeds of crime, certainly addresses an enormous problem. Money-laundering is big business in this country. The most notorious instance in recent years was that of HSBC. I believe that the members of the board of HSBC had no idea what their subsidiaries were doing in laundering money between Mexico and New York. Bankers in many institutions in the City of London, unburdened by civic responsibility or by any effective enforcement of regulation, came to the view that laundering drugs money was good business. They needed liquidity; they were addicted to bonuses; they risked, at the worst, fines which were a flea-bite. The Government have made the problem more difficult for themselves by encouraging wealthy people to come to live in this country as non-doms, but without interrogating them as they should about the sources of their wealth. The Chancellor is now enthusiastic about making the City of London a major offshore centre for dealing in the Chinese renminbi, notwithstanding that most new psychoactive substances are imported into this country from China. Let us hope that our new City regulators are less palsied than their predecessors.
We are talking not only of the City of London but of lawyers, accountants and estate agents throughout the country, who find it convenient not to ask the questions that the law already requires them to ask about the sources of their clients’ wealth and are too easily tempted by the high life which the processing of drugs money allows them to have. Less posh businesses on the high street—such as pubs, cafes, nail bars, taxi firms, even childcare organisations—are among the businesses that routinely transfer money out of the illicit economy into the licit one. Drugs would not be as ubiquitous as they are in this country if that were not the case.
How on earth is all this to be policed? Where will the resources come from, and what is the Home Secretary telling the police about their priorities? Of course the police achieve successes, and they should be congratulated and thanked for that. However, their task is impossible. They have to deal with 5,000 drugs cases a week on reduced budgets.
Clause 47, which enhances the injunctions to prevent gang-related violence and drug-dealing activity, is one that we shall want to look at. The Explanatory Notes tell us that the existing definition of a gang,
“is now considered by front line professionals to be unduly restrictive”.
I can well believe that. However, are these the same front-line professionals who have told us that it is their practice from time to time to go out to pick up small user-dealers as low-hanging fruit in order to meet their targets, and who have now been under instruction not even to do that after lunch because of the overtime costs of the bureaucracy, which extends so far into the evening?
The Home Secretary has done very well to challenge the police on practices that have meant that six times as many black people as white people have been stopped and searched on suspicion of carrying drugs. However, should we be worried that the new injunctions will similarly discriminate against young, black, poor men? Where are the Government’s policies to address the pathologies that generate the drugs culture—inequality, lack of mental health services, and a welfare state that fails to help people to turn their lives around?
The perversity of prohibition, which the Bill intensifies, is that it has proved to be an engine of crime. It has driven innovation in the drugs economy. You interdict the supply of a particular drug in one place, and the price of it rises. However, as my noble friend Lady Smith noted, demand does not consequentially fall. Demand for drugs, fed by addiction and peer pressure, is inelastic, so the drug dealers bring the drugs in by new routes, or, increasingly, they bring in new drugs.
The drugs economy and practice in drugs-taking constantly mutate. A drop in quality and availability was the prelude for the introduction of mephedrone into Britain. For a while mephedrone was cheap and legal. It was then banned, but even after it was banned its consumption rose by 20%. Its production was banned in China, but production shifted to India. The energies of the drugs gangs and the people who help them technically are for ever directed towards creating substitute drugs, many of them more dangerous than the drugs that have been proscribed and launched upon a market of ignorant consumers who know nothing about their composition, their toxicology and the dangers associated with them.
Over the past 50 years, prohibition has created and gifted to criminals across the world a vast, lucrative, destructive drugs economy. Governments and law enforcement agencies can try harder and run harder, but they catch very few of the criminals. The resources available to the criminals are often far greater than the resources available to the people enforcing the law and the criminals are utterly determined and ruthless. Globalisation has increased the scale of the problem vastly. Recently I stood on a cliff above the port of Salerno. Before me I could see containers piled high, stretching as far as the eye can see. Not more than some 2% of containers in world trade are inspected by the authorities.
The internet has transformed the marketing and supply of illicit drugs. The street corner is giving way to mail order. Mobile phones and social networking have facilitated communications between members of drugs gangs and between drug dealers and their clients. The European monitoring centre in Lisbon is currently monitoring 280 new psychoactive substances that are circulating in European markets. Moderately competent biochemists can with ease manipulate the molecular structure of one drug to create a new one. The dark web, encryption and bitcoins—which we shall come to at Clause 14(3)—have all made it easier to trade in drugs and harder to detect the trade.
Against that background, I was disappointed when the Home Secretary, in a response to the Home Affairs Select Committee, said that this Government do not think that,
“there is a case for fundamentally re-thinking the UK’s approach to drugs”.
I think it was Einstein who said that insanity consists in doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. I do not believe that it is a sensible strategy to overlay an anachronistic system of drug control that never worked, in a heavier version, on the new digital drugs economy. We need a different strategy. As the President of Guatemala has suggested, we should rid ourselves of this “global self-deceit”.
I challenge the premise on which this Bill is constructed, at least as far as its provisions about drugs are concerned. I do not advocate drug use. I believe that narco-criminals are evil and cause untold misery. Cannabis is certainly damaging to the mental development of young people. I sympathise entirely with parents in their fear of what may happen if their children get into drugs. However, I believe that we should base our policy on evidence. I believe that we should seek to minimise harms. There is no ideal solution available to us, but it will be possible for us to think again and instead adopt a policy, gradually and cautiously, of legalising and regulating the production and supply of selected drugs. At the same time we should give proper attention to education in our schools and to information to ensure that young people are properly informed and risk aware. I believe that it would be possible, using this entirely different strategy, to create a world that is much less bad in this regard than the world we have at the moment.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I applaud some aspects of the Serious Crime Bill and raise some questions in relation to others. It gives me great pleasure to follow the powerful and challenging contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Howarth.
First, the positives. As I said in my short contribution to the Queen’s Speech debate, I welcome Part 5 of the Bill, particularly, along with other noble Lords, the explicit reference in Clause 62 to amendments to the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 to define cruelty to children as including both physical and psychological injury. As my noble and learned friend Lord Brown mentioned, there have already been indications of that, but I think it is important and overdue that it is absolutely clear. Anyone who has worked closely with child abuse knows that emotional cruelty by either parent, and sometimes tragically by both, can cause long-term damage to the child at least as great as any physical abuse. Having said that, an already severely traumatised child will be damaged further by the process of criminal proceedings against either parent, particularly in view of the inordinate time that such proceedings very often take. A criminal charge against either parent must surely be a very last resort. That is the essence of what I am trying to say, and I am sure that the Minister is well aware of this point.
I hope that clear recognition in law of the offence of emotional cruelty to a child will focus more attention on that possibility and ensure that appropriate interventions are put in place to rescue the situation. I have certainly been aware of cases where all the focus is on any possible physical abuse, ignoring the far greater issue of psychological abuse that is staring people in the face. That is why I strongly support what the Government are trying to do, despite the real risks of criminalising parents.
Very often, emotional abuse may result from a parent’s mental health and addiction problems. A criminal sanction in such circumstances is clearly wrong. I would never condone such a response. The parent or parents need skilled and appropriate addiction or mental health treatment and perhaps also support in developing parenting skills following a diagnosis of the problem. I hope that we can discuss with the Minister what steps the Government are taking to ensure that the right interventions are provided to avoid the need for costly and damaging criminal proceedings wherever possible, and certainly whenever a parent is unwell.
Another issue is the 16 year-old cut-off point in defining children in this context. As any parent knows, 16 and 17 year-olds can be very vulnerable, particularly when abuse is likely to have occurred over a long period, albeit that it may have come to light only when the child reaches maybe 16 or 17. It seems wrong for protection to be denied to young people at that age. The consequences of emotional neglect are likely to come out just then in the form of depression, self-harm or suicide. What are we doing by giving that cut-off point?
A final point on Clause 62, which I am sure we will raise in Committee, is whether, as the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, highlighted, the term “wilful neglect” is correct or too narrow. This point was raised by the Children’s Society and I support it, at least as a matter for debate.
On Clause 64, at this stage I only want to welcome the broadening of the scope of the Bill from permanent UK residents to include those who are living in this country but who may not have permanent resident status. Others have spoken at greater length on that point.
I now turn to Clause 47 concerning injunctions to prevent gang-related violence and drug-dealing activities. The principle of preventing activities can only, of course, be a good thing. However, I have serious reservations about the approach set out in the clause. The NGO release makes the point that injunctions as envisaged may not satisfy the basic requirement of reasonableness. This is particularly the case if they were to be applied to problem drug users.
Under Clause 47, a court may grant an injunction against a child of only 14 years, or just over that, if for example it is satisfied on the balance of probabilities that the child has been engaged in or has assisted gang-related drug-dealing activity. A gang, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, mentioned, can comprise just three people. Let us suppose that a 14 year-old has become a problem drug user, and in order to afford the drugs he needs to feed his dependency he and a couple of friends, also drug dependants, agree to sell some cannabis to their school mates on behalf of a thoroughly undesirable gang in the neighbourhood. Clearly the situation needs to be dealt with firmly—I do not doubt that—but an injunction will simply not work unless it is backed up by a treatment programme.
What do the Government plan to do to ensure that an injunction is not issued unless the child or young person is at the same time referred for appropriate treatment? I think that at this point the Minister would expect me to refer to the Portuguese model, and I shall not disappoint him. The Portuguese have had a system in place for 13 years that deals firmly but sensibly with problem drug users and which has produced some good results: far higher numbers of people—young people, in particular—are receiving treatment; drug users are representing a very much smaller percentage of the prison population; and most important of all, in a way, the number of teenage problem drug users has fallen under that regime. Social use may not have fallen—it is roughly in line with that in neighbouring countries—but surely the important thing is problem drug users: we do not want them in our country.
These are the sorts of results that I think that our country would celebrate if only we could achieve them, so a constructive way forward would be to link injunctions to an aspect of the Portuguese model. Would it not be wise for a young person suspected of gang-related drug-dealing activity, as it is referred to in the Bill, to be referred to a drugs commission? Again, if we followed the Portuguese model, the commission would comprise three people—a psychiatrist, a social worker and a lawyer—to determine whether the young person was a problem drug user and, if so, to refer that person for treatment.
The system in Portugal is not a soft one. If a person does not comply with the treatment and is simply a problem drug user, they will receive an administrative penalty, but if they are dealing they will at that point find themselves drawn into the criminal justice system. The important point here is that treatment comes first, and I hope for some assurance from the Minister that that will also apply in this country. The Clause 47 injunctions could be applied to anyone suspected of gang-related or other drug-dealing activity who is deemed by the commission not to be a problem drug user. In other words, if they are playing around with drugs and find themselves drawn into a gang, then indeed a clear injunction might be very helpful.
I shall refer only briefly to Part 4. I simply want to ask the Minister how the Government will prevent the new powers to seize, detain and destroy drug-cutting agents from impacting on genuine businesses that use the same substances for medical products for human or veterinary use. No doubt we will return to this in much more detail in Committee, but that is all I want to say today.
In conclusion, the Bill has valuable sections, but we could radically improve it through our discussions with Ministers and through amendments in the coming weeks, as various noble Lords—and, I hope, I—have indicated.
Earl Attlee (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his explanation of the Bill. There is not much meat left on the bones and I do not have that much to say but I do not subscribe to the recent analysis of the gracious Speech—far less the view of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, on the health of the coalition Government.
The Bill may not be a flagship Bill; nevertheless, it is a very useful one, without any election puffery, and I shall be honoured to take part in its Committee and later stages. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, referred to the number of Home Office Bills in your Lordships’ House. I cannot recall a Session since 1992 when there has not been a Home Office Bill and perhaps an education Bill for good measure.
The good news for this Bill is that it seems to be welcomed by many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. However, many noble Lords have received the commendably short and evidently effective briefing from the ICAEW concerning Clause 41, which relates to participation in organised crime. I am not absolutely convinced that the ICAEW fully understands how the clause works. The Minister is very good at holding meetings with your Lordships and with outside organisations, and perhaps if he were to have a meeting on that, it might alleviate some of the concerns.
I welcome the tidying-up of the FGM legislation in Clause 64. I am clearly not an expert on this issue and others are. The whole House will recognise that it is exceptionally difficult to deal with but we seem to be making pitifully slow progress. There have been no prosecutions so far, although I understand that one is in hand. This morning, I looked at the aggravating factors for the offences of causing grievous bodily harm and child cruelty. By comparison, FGM appears to be off the scale of horror, yet it attracts a maximum of only 14 years in prison. At one point, I understand that the maximum sentence was only five years. Given the extreme difficulties of mounting a prosecution, I am not convinced that we are sending the right signals. On the other hand, the Minister was right when he indicated that we cannot solve this problem with legislation alone. He tempted us with the prospect of some further legislation on anonymity. It will be interesting to see how this will work, since the parents are usually involved. I am slightly pacified by the compliments paid to the Government by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, but we should leave no stone unturned to eradicate this problem in the UK and overseas.
The House seems to be giving the Bill a reasonably warm welcome. That does not mean we should not scrutinise it very thoroughly indeed and I look forward to doing so with the rest of your Lordships.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF UK.
I shall focus on Clauses 62, 63 and 64, which many other noble Lords have also mentioned. In his opening speech, my noble friend said that the current legislation on emotional and psychological abuse was fit for purpose but its wording just needed to be updated for the 21st century. However, as we discovered in the passage of the Children and Families Act 2014, there is evidence that police and social workers were often concerned that the term “mental derangement” was so specific that it was not used as much as it should have been when judging how severely a child had been affected by emotional abuse. Some years ago, I talked to a social worker about some casework from my division in Cambridgeshire, where it was absolutely clear that emotional abuse was taking place. However the child was not “mentally deranged”, just very distressed with low self-esteem and in danger of harming herself. The social worker said that it would be so much clearer cut if only the person doing the abuse had provided some visible injuries as well, because they could not get the police or the Crown Prosecution Service to take it seriously.
The longer-term abuse referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, is also important. There are parallels here with bullying research, which shows that the impact on life consequences for children with severe self-esteem problems following abuse is enormous—whether that abuse is from contemporaries, parents, or other people in a position of influence such as teachers—especially if it is not tackled early. I therefore welcome Clause 62, which will make the crime of psychological and emotional abuse fit for practice as well as fit for purpose.
However, further steps are needed to provide absolute clarity for professionals working with abused children. There has been some discussion about whether the word “wilful” in legislation is sufficient. This is another thing that is often misunderstood by professionals, including social services and police. I also support the proposal from the Children’s Society that “wilful” should be changed to “intentional and reckless”, which would enable more effective identification and response to the event. This also picks up the point made by my noble friend Lady Hamwee on behalf of my noble friend Lady Walmsley, who cannot be in her place today. We need to make sure that this offence is defined as serious because failure to report will allow a child to continue to be abused and the perpetrator to continue finding more victims. It is good news that the Public Bill Office has confirmed this as a serious offence to my noble friend Lady Walmsley, which will mean that it is statutorily reportable. I look forward to seeing the amendment in Committee.
We also need to provide support for children and their families before neglect and abuse begin. The Children’s Society research in 2010 into adolescent neglect shows that professionals perceive teenagers as more resilient and better able to cope with maltreatment than younger children. These perceptions affect how cases of older children are assessed and whether protection is offered to them. However, an absence of emotional warmth and support is likely to be detrimental to psychological well-being and potentially to mental health. Studies of neglectful parenting indicate that young people may be more likely to internalise problems and become depressed. Young people also say that neglect can lead to difficulties with sleeping and to self-harm, and can even, as we have heard, be linked to suicide or suicide attempts. That goes back to my earlier point about the negative, very long-term effects on a young person who is faced with emotional abuse. The effects may not just be those of risky or anti-social behaviour but could turn a young person off learning and academic achievement, which could affect their working lives.
In these austere times, local government and the child and adolescent mental health services are under considerable pressure. Sadly, there is limited scope for preventive work. In fact, we keep hearing about more and more projects having their funding curtailed. This research shows that funding is vital and will save money later. A clinically depressed adolescent who cannot get help is much more likely to have problems later in life. The second group of children and young people who need help are those who have been emotionally abused.
The Bill is about crime, and we often talk about justice for victims. As I mentioned in last week’s response to the gracious Speech, access to mental health for children and young people is in crisis. Only one in four children diagnosed with a mental health problem is able to get access to therapy. Child victims of psychological and emotional abuse should be fast-tracked for assessment by CAMHS, and the implication of this clause needs to be woven into education, children’s services and health services. Therefore, I will table probing amendments in Committee to seek reassurance that that will happen. As I have said previously, we would not allow a child with a broken leg to leave hospital without a plaster cast; why do we allow children who are emotionally abused to walk away with no support?
As my noble friend Lady Hamwee mentioned, the legislation on emotional neglect covers only young people up to the age of 16. Recent court cases of grooming and coercion of 16 and 17 year-old girls have demonstrated that that needs to be extended to 18. A vulnerable young person remains vulnerable for some time to come. That is why I also support the comments of my noble friend Lord Paddick, who was concerned particularly about women—but it might apply to men as well—in families where adults are being abused mentally as much as children. As we did with the stalking legislation, it is very important to look at the behaviour of the perpetrator and to make sure that all the victims—whether it is just the children or also an adult in the family—are appropriately looked after. It would be absolutely wrong for a mother who has been bullied, coerced and abused by a partner to find that she is being accused as the aggressor in this type of instance.
Under Clause 63, online paedophile manuals will be incorporated into the legislation against access to paedophilic material, and so they should. I have great respect for the work of CEOP, the Internet Watch Foundation and all the ISPs, telephone companies and cable companies that contribute to the IWF. If that helps to make access to information on paedophilia much harder to get, that is good news.
As regards Clause 64 and the proposals on extraterritorial acts of female genital mutilation, my honourable friend Lynne Featherstone has made it a personal priority to start the cultural change on this barbaric practice, for exactly the reasons laid out by my noble friend Lord Attlee. The progress of convictions in the court is woeful at the moment. There are a couple of cases in train, but to have no convictions is embarrassing for this country as a whole. I hope that this clause will make it easier to hold these butchers to account.
We should be realistic that this law on its own, while it will be a useful tool, will not change things overnight. Sex and relationship education, working with the communities that practise FGM and more brave women such as Waris Dirie—now a UN ambassador for the abolition of FGM and the founder of the Desert Flower Foundation—speaking up will start to make things change. A UNICEF report shows that in seven countries almost all women and girls experience some form of FGM, with up to 140 million girls and women currently living with the consequences. So the extraterritorial acts clause will be important in chasing those who travel around the world to carry out this obscene practice.
I am proud that these three clauses are being brought forward by this Government. Inevitably, in typical scrutiny by the Lords, there will be an effective and detailed debate and, I hope, some amendment. Most importantly, it will help to safeguard some of our most vulnerable children and young people, and for that I welcome the Bill.
Lord Blencathra (Con)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the excellent, detailed and knowledgeable speech of my noble friend Lady Brinton. When I was Home Office Minister, I dreaded speeches like that when I tried to put through a Bill relating to Home Office matters. We called them Christmas tree Bills because every department wanted to hang its own very important bauble on the tree—to deal with terrorism, children and various other aspects. Inevitably, as a Minister, one had to have a grasp of a huge range of subjects and when the Bill came to your Lordships’ House it brought out all the experts from every section. The other reason why I detested Bills like this is that one had to amend the original Act and one was required to have about five different Acts open on the table in front of one and six fingers on each hand to understand them. The final introductory comment I would make is to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that she handled nine Home Office Bills in four years. In the final couple of years that I was in the Home Office, in 1996-97, in that frenzy to pass legislation, I think I handled 15 Bills, including Private Members’ Bills. I am not sure whether it did me or the Government any good at the time.
I begin with the proceeds of crime part, which is very important. I am completely supportive of the intention here. I remember talking to policemen. Every single policeman of every rank that I spoke to said that the vital thing that mattered to criminals was cleaning out their money. They factored in going to prison for a few years or even up to 10 years if they had enough money stashed away to live on when they came out. They did not worry about prison. What they really worried about was losing their ill-gotten gains. I would say to colleagues that it is not about the Chancellor making more money, good though that may be, it is about cleaning out criminals and their profits from crime because that acts as a deterrent and a punishment.
Under Clause 10 there is a maximum of 14 years for defaulting on fines of more than £1 million, if the court imposes that maximum penalty, which is then automatically halved or reduced on early release. However, if the money is more than £10 million, the early release provisions do not apply. I admit that sums are not one of my strengths, but it seems that if one had salted away up to £9 million where the maximum 14 years applied and there was early release, and suppose that one was let out after seven or eight years, if the person had invested it reasonably at 7% interest, they would come out to an annual return of about £630,000. That is not bad. I also assume that if the police and enforcement authorities had not been able to track down that initial £9 million, they would not be able to track down the £630,000 per annum—or perhaps the taxman could do it instead. I should be grateful if my noble friend could look at that point and see whether I am almost right. I ask him to revisit the whole area of the figures and the length of prison terms because I do not think that it is adequate.
Clause 36 deals with confiscation orders by magistrates’ courts. Again I suggest that possibly the £10,000 figure may be too low in certain cases. Of course, if the magistrates’ court is attempting to sentence a criminal and feels that its powers are not great enough, it can refer them up to the Crown Court for sentencing. However, I can imagine cases where someone is convicted of burglaries, lower level drugs offences or dealing in stolen goods, where the magistrates may consider that it is not worth while sending it up to the Crown Court for greater sentencing—and the Crown Courts might not like it—but at the same time the only assets those people have may be their BMWs or their cars, which are worth considerably more than £10,000. One needs to look at this clause again to see whether, in certain circumstances, magistrates could have a power to impose penalties greater than £10,000. I understand that at the moment the Metropolitan Police is awash with Ferraris and Porsches that have been impounded because people have not paid their insurance. I am sure that the Metropolitan Police would be quite happy to impound vehicles from drug dealers and others whose vehicles could also add to its resources.
I am totally supportive of Clause 37 on computer misuse, but I am not clear who is capable of understanding it all and prosecuting. Is it the police who prosecute for computer misuse under the 1990 Act? The proposed new Section 3ZA carries a penalty of up to 14 years—or up to life if national security is involved—but the rest of the penalties in Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act are for up to two or five years. Will my noble friend confirm that those other penalties in Section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 have also been upgraded to 14 years, or possibly life, in prison?
Parts 5 and 6 of the Bill deal with the protection of children and terrorism. I dislike the term FGM because I do not think it carries the right connotations or expresses the seriousness of this vile, barbaric practice. I recall that for years we talked about people trafficking. It was only when colleagues in this House and in the other place began to talk about modern slavery that we got traction on it—that the rest of us woke up to what it was about. The use of the term modern slavery as opposed to people trafficking really gave more life to that horrible practice. I do not mean to be derogatory here but FGM sounds like a food additive. It is too nice a term. It is vile, evil child torture. I would like those who have spent their lives trying to deal with this to consider whether we should think of using a more vicious terminology which properly describes what it is about.
I conclude my remarks on this business of terrorism, paedophiles and serious crime, because that is the mantra that the Home Office has been using for the past few years to demand better and greater RIPA powers. I have heard that mantra used again in the past few days by the Home Office. It says that unless it has greater powers there will be a data gap in tackling terrorism, paedophiles and serious crime. The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, is not quite right in saying that nothing has been done on this. I had the privilege a couple of years ago of chairing the Joint Committee on the Draft Communications Data Bill. The committee was made up of noble Lords from this House and Members from the other place. Members of the committee had widely differing views. There were those who wanted the police to get every power under the sun and those who took a view that privacy of the individual was far more important. However, we ended up with a unanimous report and concluded that the draft Bill produced by the Home Office then—which was nicknamed the snoopers’ charter—was far too sweeping and we were rightly critical of most aspects of it. However, we did not simply crucify the Bill, say it was a load of rubbish and leave it at that; we made considered suggestions on how to draft a better Bill. Our overall conclusion was that there was,
“a case for legislation which will provide the law enforcement authorities with some further access to communications data, but that the current draft Bill is too sweeping, and goes further than it need or should. We believe that, with the benefit of fuller consultation with CSPs than has so far taken place, the Government will be able to devise a more proportionate measure than the present draft Bill, which would achieve most of what they really need, would encroach less upon privacy, would be more acceptable to the CSPs, and would cost the taxpayer less”.
Lord Harris of Haringey
My Lords, I stand corrected. It was wrong to say that nothing was done. A Bill was produced and a Joint Committee looked at it. Unfortunately, nothing very much has happened since then, which I think makes my point. It sounds as though the noble Lord did all the work for the Home Office and somehow it still has not happened. I suspect that this comes back to my earlier point about dysfunctionality.
Lord Blencathra
The noble Lord is getting closer to the possible political reality. To be fair to the Home Office, it studied our report carefully. I and one or two others had the privilege of seeing the revised draft Bill, which took into account everything we had said and delivered about 95% of what our report suggested. Unfortunately, that revised Bill did not find favour with all the members of the coalition and therefore it has not emerged in that form.
I say to my noble friend the Minister that if in the next Parliament the Government produce a Bill largely along the lines of the redraft, I am certain that it will have a chance of getting through both Houses of Parliament. But if they are encouraged from any quarter to go back to the original so-called snoopers’ charter, they will merely tack on more powers to a discredited RIPA. In my opinion, RIPA is no longer fit for purpose. It was designed at a time when we had push-button telephones that could hold two or three messages at most, not the modern communications machinery that we have today. If they go back to that old charter, they will face massive opposition in the country and in Parliament, and they do not need to because the blueprint for a better Bill exists.
Finally, I will make a couple of observations that may be slightly more contentious. As we were deliberating on the powers the police needed to look at e-mails and other data in order to capture paedophiles, stories began to emerge of police forces around the country—for example, in Bradford or Leicester—which had ignored complaints over the past 15 years from hundreds of young girls of systematic and habitual rape. The police turned a blind eye to those cases and have only now started prosecuting. I believe that they turned a blind eye because the perpetrators were mainly from the Pakistani community and they did not want to prosecute because of political correctness. Of course the police and security services must have the powers they need to deal with paedophiles on the internet but they must also prosecute hard cases of children being raped and brutalised in reality in this country.
My very final point, which again comes from my experiences on the Bill, is that we discovered that police training was often inadequate to deal with the amount of communications data available. The executive from Twitter told us that she would often get a request from the police saying, “Give me everything you have on Blencathra’s tweeting”, when the answer was, “Look on the net yourself”. We do not need a special order for that. It is out there in the public domain, and they were not fully aware of that. There is a range of things that our modern iPhones and other Samsung-type devices have and the police need to get up to speed on the information that is currently available on the world wide web before seeking some draconian powers to look at a few hundred million e-mails each year.
With those little caveats and pieces of advice to my noble friend on how to take forward serious crime measures and a new data communications Bill, I warmly welcome the Bill.
Lord Elton (Con)
My Lords, I wish I had as many caveats and as much good advice. I stand very briefly, first, to welcome this Bill and to keep my foot in the door in case I can be useful in the later stages; and, secondly, to welcome warmly, as others have done, particularly the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, and my noble friend Lord Henley, the use of the much neglected Keeling schedule. I can almost hear the stopping of the rotation in the grave of my late noble friend Lord Renton, who campaigned tirelessly for this when I arrived in this House back in the 1970s. It is a useful thing, but has a danger in that it brings one’s notice to particular aspects which might take up time.
I apologise for spending a little time on my pocket computer, looking at the anomalies in the sentencing range for defaulting penalties—I am not a sentencing expert. They seem to range from 18 days per £10,000 in the top of band 1, to half a day per £10,000 at the point where the 50% extra penalty cuts in. That needs looking at.
The next thing that drew my attention, which my noble friend Lord Henley was the first to mention, was the gigantic Home Office engine churning out legislation. I was fascinated to hear that my noble friend Lord Wasserman may have spent many years stoking the engine and that my noble friend Lord Blencathra spent some time driving it. I suffered from it. My noble friend’s estimate was very high and I would agree with it. My other noble friend’s was rather low. I shall look at the record when I get home.
The other thing that needs saying is a word of caution. I understand my noble friend Lord Wasserman’s interest in getting a single coherent control of both security and serious organised crime, but bringing it into central government under the Home Secretary or the Home Office is something we have been very leery of for many generations. ACPO exists because of a fear of having a national police force, and it sounds to me as if this would rapidly grow into something like the FBI or something more sinister from Europe. It would need very careful control and if we are to have it, since it will already have its hand in security, the Select Committee in the other place must have oversight of the whole of its work. However, I would approach this with the greatest caution.
I will make one other reference to my noble friend Lord Blencathra. If we called the crime of FGM child mutilation, it would carry revulsion and also be quite an accurate description of what is done. I will detain your Lordships no longer. I apologise for taking so long.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, despite the frequency of Home Office Bills at times appearing to match the frequency of gas and electricity bills, the Minister has shown an enthusiasm for this Bill that has been surpassed, not for the first time, only by the noble Lord, Lord Wasserman. This Bill has a number of separate intended courses of action, rather than a single new theme or policy objective running through its provisions, other than a desire to make serious crime a less attractive proposition for those tempted to go down that road—mainly, though not exclusively, through higher sentences and more offences. It covers the asset recovery process, through amendments to the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, and increases sentences for attacks on computer systems, through amendments to the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
It moves on to serious, organised and gang-related crime generally, creating a new offence of participation in an organised crime group, and making changes to the law relating to serious crime prevention orders and gang injunctions. It provides for new powers on entering and searching premises for drug-cutting agents, makes changes to the criminal law in respect of protecting children and it makes amendments to the Terrorism Act 2006 to confer or extend extraterritorial jurisdiction relating to the UK courts in respect of the offences of preparation of terrorist acts and training for terrorism.
We have had detailed and highly informative contributions in this debate, which have rightly addressed—and, basically, welcomed—the main provisions of the Bill. The issue, though, is not so much to question the changes it seeks to make, or the outcomes it seeks to achieve, but rather to question whether the Bill always goes far enough or simply restates existing legislation that is not being fully enforced; whether it will always achieve the objectives desired; and whether there could or should have been other issues covered in the Bill—a question that my noble friend Lord Harris of Haringey in particular addressed.
We support doing more to recover the proceeds of crime. Performance in this area has actually got worse under the current Government. The amount collected by the police and the volume of confiscation orders has fallen, yet there are still some £1.5 billion of outstanding orders because assets have been hidden, moved away overseas or reduced by third-party claims. Only 18% of confiscation orders worth more than £1 million are recovered. The National Audit Office report indicated that just 26p of every £100 of profit that a criminal makes is confiscated.
We have been calling on the Government to end early release with regard to default sentences where organised criminals refuse to pay, and to stop loopholes enabling criminals to transfer assets to families. We will want to look carefully at the provisions to see whether they will be effective in confiscating criminal assets. It also appears that over the past five years or so, £200 million-worth of assets have been frozen by the UK courts in response to overseas requests for legal assistance, but that none of that money has been returned to the countries that asked us to seize and freeze those assets. Do the Government accept that that is the case and, if they do, do they think that will help in securing co-operation when we want it from overseas jurisdictions?
In her opening speech, my noble friend Lady Smith of Basildon indicated our support for the measures in Part 5 on the offence of child cruelty and conduct likely to cause psychological suffering or injury, as well as physical harm; on the new offence of possession of paedophile manuals; and on extending the extraterritorial reach of offences under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. However, there has been a drop in Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre arrests and in the number of child abusers being caught. Child cruelty conviction rates have fallen. In 2009, there were just over 700 convictions—about 720—but last year it fell to just above 550. Why do the Government believe that these developments have happened, and what measures do they propose to address the situation?
Violent crime has also risen while the number of prosecuted criminals has gone down. Reports of rape and domestic violence, like those of child abuse, are up, but convictions are not matching those rising reports. What is going up is the cost of some police and crime commissioners. The Northamptonshire commissioner, for example, now employs 34 staff at a cost of £1.4 million. That is at a time when the proportion of adults reporting seeing a police officer on foot patrol in the local area at least once a week has declined.
The Bill creates new offences and increases maximum sentences for attacks on computer systems and cyberattacks. These are crimes that can have serious consequences for the economy of the nation, of individual companies or of groups of companies, as well as for our national security. Such crimes are planned, premeditated, probably sustained and carried out over a period, and the perpetrators know that they are hitting large numbers of people, including the most vulnerable in society. They should be dealt with severely. We should also be tough on those who through computer crime seek to trick and defraud large numbers of people who end up losing considerable amounts of their hard-earned money and savings.
However, the issue is not simply one of the level of sentences and breadth of offences provided for in the Bill. They may well be a deterrent—although, interestingly, the Government’s impact assessment says that there is no evidence that cybercriminals will be deterred by a longer sentence. The biggest deterrent, of course, is the likelihood of being caught.
Fraud and computer crime has been rising. It is a 21st century crime. It does not hit the headlines in the way, for example, that gun and knife crime or violent assaults do, but those who are victims of computer crime and fraud can also suffer devastating consequences. In some cases, it can have a serious effect on their health and, in extreme cases, even lead to death—as the Minister said in his opening speech. It does not hit the headlines because some feel almost ashamed of having to admit allowing themselves to be fooled—and perhaps because some of our major companies, including financial institutions, would not regard it as helpful if the full extent of the problem were widely known. It does not hit the headlines because there is no immediate victim in the way that there is in the case of gun and knife crime or violent assault, particularly when that is on a vulnerable person. Yet it is an area of criminal activity that is expanding fast and becoming of increasing concern, as reflected by the measures proposed in the Bill.
I hope that when he responds, the Minister will be able to say what the Government are doing to provide the necessary resources to fight this kind of crime at all levels. Police forces have made cuts; the temptation must be to make those cuts in areas that will have the least impact as far as adverse headlines are concerned. Have police forces around the country increased or decreased the number of officers engaged full-time in working to detect and prevent computer crime and the fraud associated with it? If the numbers have increased at a time of cuts in front-line policing, has that been in proportion to the increase in the volume of such crime?
On the national and international scene, this is an area in which the National Crime Agency and the City of London fraud unit are involved. Have their resources been increased and, if so, by how much? Are we still in a situation where the prospects of bringing the perpetrators of such crimes to justice are less than those of being able to disrupt the fraud or scam that is occurring, but without being able to call the key perpetrators to account?
The Bill does not offer a coherent government plan for tackling online fraud and economic crime. Recorded offences of fraud have increased by a quarter over the past year but prosecutions and convictions have gone down while business crime, which surveys indicate is going up, is not counted in official figures despite online crime exploding. I hope that the Minister will be able to give some assurance on these issues because, important though it is that sentences should fit the crime, it is equally important that the required resources are there to keep such online fraud and economic crime in check and not allow it to become a crime with, all too often, apparently easy and secure pickings for those who engage in it.
As my friend Lady Smith of Basildon has already said, we support further action against those aiding and abetting criminals, subject to ensuring that innocent parties are not sucked in as well. We also support the proposed amendment to the Terrorism Act, although we question whether the Home Office is doing enough within communities to deter young people from acting on the words of those who encourage them to go to Syria.
This is not one of those Bills where major battle lines over principles have to be set out at Second Reading. However, there are details about the effectiveness and potential consequences of at least some of the Government’s proposals which will need to be addressed in Committee, as will the extent to which the Government are actually providing the necessary resources to deter or bring to justice the perpetrators of some of the serious offences set out not only in the Bill but in existing legislation.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
My Lords, this has been a good debate. Even though the Bill itself has been widely welcomed and there has been general agreement about its purposes, noble Lords have raised matters which we will be required to resolve and deal with in Committee. In handling this Second Reading debate, I will do my best to answer as many of the questions as I can. We have strayed a little; I am thinking in particular of my noble friend Lord Blencathra’s contribution regarding his communications data Bill, while the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, gave my noble friend Lord Faulks some indication that he might be troublesome on the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill that is to come. In the mean time, we can all agree that the serious and organised crime which this Bill is designed to address is a significant threat. We must equip the National Crime Agency, the police and others with the necessary powers to counter that threat.
We can also agree that we need a robust body of law to protect children from harm. Passing new laws will not, of itself, change anything on the ground. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, emphasised that, as did many other noble Lords. As we move from clause to clause, noble Lords will want to test whether the provisions of this Bill provide for adequate enforcement, as well as for the legislative changes that we are proposing.
A number of noble Lords have properly and helpfully used this debate to set out some of these issues. It is striking that many contributions have related to Part 5, concerning child cruelty and female genital mutilation, but it is not surprising given that so many Members of your Lordships’ House are committed to enhancing the protection and life chances of children. In responding to some of the specific points raised, I will start with these provisions. I thank my noble friend Lady Brinton for her contribution; she is very keen that we scrutinise these aspects. The noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan, suggested that we should brush away the Victorian cobwebs which surround this area.
The Government accept that the current offence of child cruelty in Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 is still effective and that the courts are able to interpret it appropriately. We acknowledge that some of the language is outdated and that the law may be easier to understand if it is updated and clarified. That is a reasonable approach to take. It is why we are amending the 1933 Act to make it absolutely clear that children subject to cruelty likely to cause psychological suffering or injury are to be protected by law. My noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, questioned why the offence applies not to 18 year-olds but only to those up to the age of 16. We recognise that there are circumstances in which people of 16 and 17 require protection. Young people over 16 are lawfully able to be married and are generally deemed capable of living independently of their parents. They could themselves be parents or carers of a person under 16. Those under the age of 16 are generally more vulnerable and more dependent on those who care for them. That is why Section 1 focuses on protecting those under 16, though it is not to deny the vulnerability of those who are older than that.
With regard to Clause 62, the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, asked that for child cruelty offences prosecution should be the last resort. I agree totally with that view; prosecution is a last resort, and in cases regarding children Section 1 of the 1933 Act is really only one part of a comprehensive legislative framework for protecting children. The role of social workers and partners in caring for young children is to protect the child and to support the parents to do just that. Our proposed changes to Section 1 of the 1933 Act will not change that responsibility.
Baroness Meacher
My comments on this area did not really have to do with whether the legislation was adequate; rather, they were to suggest that we need to discuss what sort of support will actually be available for these children and their parents, particularly because—this is a slightly political point—there are massive cuts to local authority services and a risk that services will not be available along the lines that I was suggesting. If you find a parent emotionally abusing a child and causing severe psychological damage, there may be nothing between no intervention and some sort of criminal sanction. My point was about trying to look at whether guidance or something needs to be in place to ensure that the criminal route really is the last resort. I think that the Minister will understand what I am trying to get at.
Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I understand exactly what the noble Baroness is saying. All I will say is that at every point at which I have been taking Home Office legislation through the House, these sorts of points have been made. I hope that I have been able to emphasise that it is exactly the points that the noble Baroness has been making that are uppermost. We are urging local authorities and those with responsibility for the welfare of children to have a high regard for their role in preventing abuse, and indeed for detecting it. As someone mentioned earlier—I think it was my noble friend Lady Hamwee—it is schools and a whole series of individuals with responsibility for the welfare of children, in terms of their general activity of support, that are important to make success of legislation such as we are bringing through. It puts legislation in context to see it being a supporting pillar of a caring society, does it not? That is what we are seeking to do with this legislation.
That applies to FGM as well, on which we have had some really good contributions. In welcoming the measure, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, said that more should be done to tackle this issue. Of course successful prosecutions are the key to stamping out FGM, and the DPP has announced the first prosecutions while the CPS is also considering 11 other cases. However, we agree that legislation cannot in itself eradicate FGM; it is important that we change the law where necessary, but there are other pressures that we can bring to bear. I note the robust comments by my noble friend Lord Blencathra in this regard and indeed the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Elton, both of which I think are worthy of our consideration when we come to the clauses in Committee.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, asked why the new offence of the possession of paedophile manuals does not extend to Scotland. This provision does not relate to reserved matters and, as such, under the Sewel convention, we would legislate here at Westminster only with the consent of the Scottish Parliament. We have discussed the provision with the Scottish Government and they have indicated that they will monitor the new offence and then take a view on whether to bring forward a similar offence in the Scottish Parliament. If, however, they change their mind before the passage of this Bill is complete then I am sure this House, and indeed Parliament in general, would consider such a request favourably as part of the legislative process.
Parts 1 and 4 of the Bill, as I have indicated, ensure that the National Crime Agency and others have the powers that they need to pursue relentlessly, to disrupt and to bring to justice those who commit serious and organised crime. We heard an excellent speech from my noble friend Lord Paddick, who informed our debate by drawing on his experience of policing. He and other noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, and my noble friends Lord Bourne and Lord Blencathra, pointed to the importance of ensuring that confiscation orders made under the Proceeds of Crime Act are robustly enforced. Serving time in prison does not excuse the liability to compensation. People who have not paid their compensation orders are still liable for them and will still be pursued because, as was said during the debate, the whole point of the exercise must be to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains. That is the fundamental point of these measures. The measures in Part 1 of the Bill, which I set out, will assist in that regard.
Let me deal with some of the particular points made. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said that more needs to be done to strengthen default sentences. The Bill includes significant increases in the length of default sentences where an offender fails to pay higher-value confiscation orders. As a result, an offender who defaults on a confiscation order of more than £10 million will in future serve up to 14 years in prison rather than five years as now. The noble Baroness asked whether that was the right figure. We will no doubt be monitoring closely the impact of these changes, and provisions in the Bill enable us to make further changes to the default sentencing framework through secondary legislation. My noble friend Lord Blencathra referred to Clause 36, which relates to the making of confiscation orders in magistrates’ courts, for example. We agreed that the existing £10,000 threshold may be too low, which is why we have included an order-making power in the Bill to increase this figure through secondary legislation. I trust that that will be welcomed by my noble friend and I expect that we will be debating these issues in Committee.
The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, asked whether enough groundwork was being done to ensure that the Northern Ireland Assembly agreed the necessary legislative consent Motion. I understand her interest in making sure that that is the case. We have worked very closely with the Minister of Justice, David Ford, on the development of this Bill in general. The provisions in Chapter 3 of Part 1 have been included at his request and he has agreed, in principle, to pursue a legislative consent Motion for them. It is now a matter for David Ford to take forward, but we are ready to assist him in any way that he would consider helpful.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, asked about the distributing of moneys under POCA. One of the key incentives of our criminal finances improvement plan, which is overseen by the Criminal Finances Board, is to ensure that the asset recovery incentivisation scheme works effectively. To this end, we intend to review the scheme later this year to ensure that it works to support front-line agencies in the way that he has suggested.
A number of noble Lords mentioned the participation offence; I expect that we will be returning to this in Committee. This new offence is designed to capture anyone who takes part in the criminal activities of an organised crime group. It is not just about corrupt lawyers and accountants; it is about anyone who is involved in criminal activities. Taking part in such activities will in future be a criminal offence rather than just an issue of professional misconduct. For the regulated sector, which would include lawyers and accountants, failing to report someone else who is known or suspected to be involved in money-laundering is a criminal offence, but that is not the same as an individual themselves taking part in the activities of the crime group. We will shortly be meeting with the Law Society and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales to discuss their concerns. I am sure that elements of the new offence will be scrutinised when we come to them in Committee.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby wanted to hear more about other strands of the serious and organised crime strategy, namely the three Ps of Prevent, Protect and Prepare. I agree that they are just as important as the Pursue strand. The measures in the Bill to improve the operation of serious crime prevention orders and gang injunctions are designed to prevent people from engaging in serious and organised crime. However, here, as elsewhere, prevention is better than cure. I noted very much the right reverend Prelate’s comments about involving the police, local government, education and faith groups, in the last of which he has shown what can be done, particularly in local circumstances.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, queried the draft of new Section 36A of the Serious Crime Act 2007, which is concerned with the standard of proof that is applicable to proceedings in Scotland in relation to serious crime prevention orders. The noble and learned Lord has made a telling point in contrasting the approach taken in the Bill with that taken in the 2007 Act as it applies to England and Wales. I undertake to consider the matter further before Committee.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, felt that the Bill reinforced, in his view, another big push in a failed drugs strategy. I know that the noble Lord is totally sincere in his view that drugs are an iniquity and I know that he does not favour drugs but takes a more liberal view towards those who find themselves in a world of drugs. I think that he is wrong. Drugs are illegal because scientific and medical analysis has shown that they are harmful to human health. They can destroy lives, as we all know, and cause misery to families and communities. The drugs strategy—reducing demand, restricting supply, building recovery and supporting people to live a drug-free life—aims to take a balanced, evidence-based approach to tackling drug use that works within international conventions. We are confident that our approach is the right one. Drug use has fallen to its lowest level since records began in 1996. People going into treatment today are far more likely to free themselves from dependency than ever before.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, and my noble friend Lord Wasserman asked about the responsibility for counterterrorism policing. Our position has not changed. We will take a decision following a review and conduct that review only when the NCA is more established. I remind the House that the NCA came into being only last October.
Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, referred to the provision in Clause 65 that extends extraterritorial jurisdiction for offences under the Terrorism Act 2006. That is an important provision to help further to protect the country from those who commit acts preparatory to terrorism or undertake terrorist training abroad.
I have a further point for the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. The Government are making £860 million-worth of investment over five years to 2016 through the national cybersecurity programme and have so far committed £72 million of that programme over four years to build law enforcement capabilities to tackle cybercrime.
I have been overtaken by time and a lot of issues have been raised. I hope that I will be able to help noble Lords by writing to them in the period between now and Committee. I will try to take the opportunity at that stage to reinforce those views so that they are on the record. In the mean time, I thank noble Lords and commend the Bill to the House.
Prisons: Overcrowding
(10 years ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)
My Lords, I wish to repeat as a Statement an Answer given to an Urgent Question in the other place by my right honourable friend the Lord Chancellor. The Statement is as follows:
“Let me start by challenging the premise of the Question posed by the right honourable gentleman. We do not have a prison overcrowding crisis. Today’s prison population is 85,359. This is against total useable operational capacity of 86,421. This means we have more than 1,000 spare places across the prison estate.
By next April we will have opened an additional 2,000 places. This includes four new house blocks, which will start to open from the autumn. We also have a number of additional reserve capabilities to cope with unexpected pressures. At the time of the election next year, we will have more adult male prison places than we inherited in May 2010, despite having to deal with the financial challenges that the previous Government left behind.
Since last September, the prison population has started to rise again. This has happened for a number of reasons. They include the significant increase in the number of convictions for historic sex abuse. Those people committed appalling crimes, and probably thought they had got away with it. I am delighted to be finding the space for them behind bars.
Because that increase was unexpected, I have agreed to make some reserve capacity available to ensure that we retain sufficient margin between the number of places occupied and the total capacity of the system until the new prison buildings come on stream later this year. What this means in reality is that, in a number of public and private prisons, a few more prisoners will have to share a cell for a few weeks. We may not need these places but I would rather they were available in case we do.
I am also taking steps to address what I believe is a weakness in our prison system: that we have had no access to the kind of temporary or agency staff that you find as a matter of routine in our health and education systems. I am therefore establishing a reserve capability among former staff to give us the flexibility to adapt to short-term changes of population by bringing reserve capacity into operation. We have some staff shortages in London in particular because of the rapid improvement in the labour market, and this will help us to cover any gaps.
Let me also set out for the House how we are managing the prison estate. My objective is to bring down the cost of running the prison estate while maintaining capacity levels. An important part of that is replacing older, more expensive prisons with new or refurbished capacity that is less expensive to run. So far this Parliament we have opened 2,500 new places, with a further 2,000 places due to open in the next nine months. This has enabled us to close a little over 4,500 places in older prisons in the past two years, saving a total of £170 million during the current spending review period.
In addition, we have launched a benchmarking programme across the prison estate to bring down costs. I introduced this programme in the autumn of 2012 as an alternative to privatisation, at the request of the Prison Governors Association and the unions. The leaders of the Prison Officers’ Association described my decision to do so as a ‘victory’ for them. I am grateful to our staff for their hard work in taking these changes forward.
This programme of change has been praised by the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office. The NAO said recently:
‘The strategy for the prison estate is the most coherent and comprehensive for many years, has quickly cut operating costs, and is a significant improvement in value for money on the approaches of the past’.
We will end this Parliament with more adult male prison places than we inherited, more hours of work in prisons than we inherited, more education for young detainees than we inherited and a more modern, cost-effective prison estate than we inherited. That is anything but a crisis”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating his right honourable friend’s Answer but, as far as this side is concerned, it does not begin to deal with the questions that have been raised in the past few days. Last week, the highly respected Chief Inspector of Prisons voiced serious concerns over the impact on prisoners and staff of overcrowding in the prison estate. He referred to a rising trend of suicides and self-harm, of tension and violence, and of the inability to offer meaningful work or recreation. It was frankly astonishing to hear the Secretary of State for Justice airily dismiss these concerns on the “Today” programme, sounding like a political Dr Pangloss of whom Voltaire would have indeed been proud. He seemed to think it was only a matter of prisoners doubling up in their cells for a few weeks until the crisis passed, as if that was merely a trifling inconvenience for the prisoners and—as importantly if not more so—for those whose task it is to ensure good order and their safety.
When will the Government acknowledge and act on the facts that violence against prison staff has increased by 45% since 2010; that there has been a 60% rise in the number of times the prison riot squad has been called out; and that the use of Gold Command to deal with serious incidents has doubled in the past two years? It is time for the Secretary of State to stop playing to the gallery, to start listening to the chief inspector and to deal properly with the crisis in the service.
Lord Faulks
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, suggests that there is a great degree of overcrowding. He will know, because he is experienced in the field, that there is a difference between the certified capacity and the certified normal accommodation. It is true that, in the short term, some prisoners have to double up, but they double up in the context of cells that have been approved for occupation by two, and of infrastructure that has also been approved in the prison in which they reside. Of course, in an ideal world most of these cells would be occupied by one person, but none the less these are prisoners who are in their cells in circumstances where there is temporary overcrowding and where they are in fact serving a prison sentence.
I reject the suggestion that the Secretary of State is somehow cavalier about the problems of so-called prison overcrowding. Of course, any death in custody or any self-harm is a matter of great anxiety to all those concerned with the management of prisons. We are fortunate in having prison officers of a very high standard and prison governors who are concerned for the welfare of prisoners.
It is difficult to ascertain exactly what is causing the increase. The fact is that, unfortunately, the suicide rate among young males is reflected to some extent by an increase in the general population outside prison as well. Every death is subject to an investigation by the police and the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman and there is, of course, a coroner’s inquest. The Secretary of State has commissioned an independent advisory panel on deaths in custody to review self-inflicted deaths of 18 to 24 year-olds in custody from 1 April 2007, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, who I am glad to see in his place.
The Government are by no means complacent about any incident of self-harm or death and are doing their best to avoid such consequences. However, it does not help the morale of prison officers or the welfare of prisoners generally to manufacture some crisis which, in truth, is no more than and no different from the situation that prevailed in many years when the party opposite was in government. For example, the so-called overcrowding figures were higher between 2003 and 2010 than they are now. This is a storm that has been manufactured and does not help the welfare of prisoners.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, whether or not the present shortage is under control, as the Statement asserts, can the Minister assure those of us on these Benches that the Statement should not be taken as suggesting that the more prison places there are the better? Will he confirm that the Government’s aim remains to achieve a reduction in the prison population by reducing reoffending and keeping offenders out of custody through rehabilitation where possible? Is that policy not achieving some success? Does he also accept that an obvious way to free up necessary space in prisons is to enable the early release of the 3,500 prisoners who have already passed their tariff date for release but are still serving indeterminate sentences for public protection, which were, after all, abolished by the Government to their credit in 2012?
Lord Faulks
My Lords, the Government take no pride in the increase in the prison population, of course, but it is a matter for the judges to decide the length of sentences and whether an individual is sent to prison. It is the Government’s job to ensure that there is prison capacity to deal with the sentences that are passed. The Government are indeed anxious to prevent the cycle of reoffending. As my noble friend quite rightly says, the Transforming Rehabilitation programme is particularly designed to deal with the many short-term prisoners—less than 12 months—who have unfortunately simply gone in and out of prison as a matter of routine. He is right to refer to the fact that the Transforming Rehabilitation programme, which went on stream in June, is going to mean that for the first time those prisoners have support outside prison from the probation service and that they receive contact with the probation service before they leave prison. That should help to reduce the prison population in the long term.
As to his observation about IPP prisoners, to whom I know he was referring, of course there is some anxiety about this. The Government, as he correctly acknowledges, repealed the relevant legislation. Steps are being taken to ensure, in so far as it is possible, that prisoners can be released when it is safe for that to happen. That will sometimes involve prisoners going on appropriate courses, but it should not be thought that simply going on a course automatically makes them appropriate for release. It is a matter for anxiety and the Government are particularly concerned that those who should be released are released and that the prison population should be kept as low as it can be, commensurate with public safety.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that there are many ordinary, decent, right-thinking members of society representing all manner of political persuasion or none who find their minds exercised by two considerable ironies? One is that while for many years the level of crime has been falling substantially, the prison population has nevertheless been going in a totally different direction. Secondly, and perhaps more fundamentally, despite the historical traditions of decent and law-abiding attitudes in the United Kingdom, of all the major countries of Europe we, per 100,000 of population, incarcerate many more than any other major country. I am not entirely certain of the figures for France, Italy and Germany, but they are far below ours. The figure for Britain, I remember, is 149 per 100,000. Is there no possibility of a deep and searching study into those two considerable ironies?
Lord Faulks
My Lords, as the noble Lord says, the level of crime has gone down under this Government. Sentences are longer than they were, as the sentencing guidelines suggest. Unfortunately, while serious crime remains a problem, that is unlikely to change. I take the noble Lord’s point, but I cannot announce any investigation from the Dispatch Box.
Lord Howarth of Newport (Lab)
My Lords, the House has just given a Second Reading to the Serious Crime Bill, which creates new imprisonable offences and provides for longer sentences for existing offences. Does the Minister not think that the Home Office should think more carefully before it introduces torrents of legislation that place great pressure on the Prison Service, which is already highly stressed and at the limits of capacity?
Lord Faulks
The Serious Crime Bill is intended to deal with serious crime, which unfortunately is a problem. If serious crime is committed, sadly it will result in sentences of imprisonment.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, this is an Urgent Question and the time allocation of 10 minutes is up.
Ending Sexual Violence in Conflict, and Iraq
(10 years ago)
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The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement made earlier today in another place by my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary on Iraq and on last week’s Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict. The Statement is as follows.
“Mr Speaker, with permission, I will make a Statement on Iraq and update the House on the outcome of last week’s Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict.
The Sunni extremist group Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, ISIL, issued a series of attacks and car bombings in Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, Samarra, Ramadi and Jalawla, over the past 10 days, culminating in the capture of Mosul on Tuesday. From Mosul, ISIL, with other armed groups, took control of the towns on the main route to Baghdad, including Tikrit, 110 miles north of the capital. The Iraqi security forces initially proved unable to resist these attacks, although there are now signs of a fight-back in the area around Samarra.
These are extremely grave developments. ISIL is the most violent and brutal militant group in the Middle East. It has a long record of atrocities, including the use of IEDs, abductions, torture and killings. The reported massacre of 1,700 Shia air force recruits is more evidence of its brutality.
ISIL’s aim is to establish an Islamic state in the region, and it is pursuing this goal by attacking the Government of Iraq, gaining control of territory and inciting sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Muslims. The group has bases in northern Syria as well as in Iraq. While the majority of its members are Iraqi or Syrian, it also includes a significant number of foreign fighters among its ranks. As I have previously told this House, we estimate the total number of UK-linked individuals fighting in Syria to include approximately 400 British nationals, who could present a particular risk should they return to the UK. Some of these are inevitably fighting with ISIL.
Over the past few days, I have held discussions with Foreign Ministers from the region, including with Iraqi Foreign Minister Zebari and Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu, with whom I discussed the welfare of more than 60 Turkish citizens kidnapped in Mosul. Our national interest lies in supporting a sovereign and democratic Iraq to resist those threats, offering assistance where necessary, and working with others to prevent the spread of terrorism in Iraq and throughout the region.
On Friday, I held talks with Secretary Kerry in London. We agreed that the prime responsibility for leading the response to these events lies with the Iraqi Government. The United States, which is the country with the most appropriate assets and capabilities, is considering a range of options that could help the Iraqi security forces push back on ISIL advances. President Obama has been clear that action taken by the United States will succeed only if accompanied by a political response from the Iraqi Government.
We are taking action in three areas: promoting political unity among those who support a democratic Iraqi state and stability in the region, offering assistance where appropriate and possible, and alleviating humanitarian suffering. We have made it clear this does not involve planning a military intervention by the United Kingdom.
On the first of these points, yesterday I underlined to the Iraqi Foreign Minister the need for his colleagues to form a new and inclusive Government who will bring together all Iraq’s different groups and will be able to command support across Iraqi society. ISIL is taking advantage of political disaffection, including among Saddam-era officers and soldiers, and Sunni tribal fighters, who have lost trust in the Iraqi Government. Overcoming this will require a concerted political effort by the Government, including working with the Kurdistan regional government against this common threat. I welcome the fact that the Iraqi Supreme Court has today ratified the large majority of the results of April’s elections in Iraq, and I call on it to announce the full results as soon as possible to allow for the rapid formation of a new Government.
On our second objective, we are examining what more can be done to assist the Iraqi authorities directly in their security response. We are urging the Iraqi Government to take effective measures to organise their security forces effectively and push ISIL back from the areas it has occupied while protecting civilian life, infrastructure and vital services. We are discussing with the Iraqi Government areas for co-operation, including the possibility of offering counterterrorism expertise. We are also providing consular assistance to a small number of British nationals who have been affected. For this purpose, a UK-MoD Operational Liaison and Reconnaissance Team arrived in Baghdad on Saturday to help assess the situation on the ground and assist the embassy in contingency planning.
Thirdly, we have responded rapidly to the humanitarian emergency. Around 500,000 people are reported to have been displaced in the north and now need urgent support. Last week we were the first donor country to send a field team to the Kurdistan region, where they met UN and NGO contacts and the Kurdistan authorities. My right honourable friend the International Development Secretary announced on Saturday that we would provide £3 million of immediate assistance including £2 million from the Rapid Response Facility to NGOs for water and sanitation and other emergency relief and £1 million to the UNHCR for mobile protection teams and for the establishment of camps. We are considering urgently what further assistance we could provide.
The rise of sectarianism and religious intolerance is fuelling instability in the Middle East. This has been compounded by the brutality of the Assad regime, whose relentless war against its own people has created an opening for extremists. That is why we will continue to support the moderate opposition in Syria who have had the courage to fight directly against ISIL and other extremists, as well as urging the Iraqi Government to take the political and military steps required to defeat such groups in Iraq. We are also working to reinforce stability across the region, including through providing significant security support to the Governments of Lebanon and Jordan, as well as £243 million in humanitarian assistance. We will intensify our efforts in the coming weeks and days to tackle this serious threat to international peace and security.
Addressing the crises of today should never prevent us from dealing with the longer-term issues that are fundamental to conflict prevention in many parts of the world. Last week I co-hosted the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, the largest ever summit held on this issue. One hundred and twenty eight countries and 79 Ministers attended, along with eight UN agency heads, as well as presidents, prosecutors from the ICC and international tribunals, and another 300 delegates from conflict-affected countries.
The summit had two primary objectives: to agree practical action to tackle impunity for the use of rape as a weapon of war, and to begin to change global attitudes to these crimes. We opened the summit up to thousands of members of the public at 175 different public events. Our embassies held events to mirror what was going on in London for the entire 84-hour period and we mounted an intensive social media campaign that reached all parts of the world.
This was the most important milestone in our efforts to address this issue and my intention is to create unstoppable momentum in addressing these crimes, which are among the worst experienced in the world today. We set in motion a series of practical steps and commitments. We launched the first ever international protocol on how to document and investigate sexual violence in conflict, as a means of overcoming the barriers to prosecutions of these crimes.
I announced £6 million in new UK funding to support survivors of rape, and the US, Finland, Bahrain, Australia, Japan and others also made new and generous pledges. The African Union also announced a pilot project in the Central African Republic to respond to the urgent needs of victims of sexual violence. The Somali Government launched a new action plan on Somalia, supported by the UN and the international community, for addressing sexual violence, which has blighted the lives of thousands of women, men and children.
Within the summit, I convened a special meeting on security in Nigeria following the abduction of more than 200 schoolgirls in April and a summit on this issue in Paris last month. We agreed that a regional intelligence fusion unit should be made operational immediately. The countries of the region also agreed rapidly to implement joint or co-ordinated patrols along their borders, and Cameroon committed to add a battalion to the regional task force. The UK, the US and France pledged to support these regional efforts. On behalf of the UK, I announced a separate package of support for Nigeria, including tactical training for the Nigerian army, assistance to regional security and intelligence co-operation, and a joint UK-US educational programme to educate an additional 1 million children in Nigeria. All the parties present also agreed on the need for UN sanctions against Boko Haram’s leadership and Ansaru, another dangerous terrorist organisation in Nigeria.
Finally, states and delegates at the summit joined together to sign a statement of action, uniting Governments, UN agencies, civil society, experts and survivors with a shared determination to end sexual violence in conflict. We will now work hard to ensure that the momentum is sustained and accelerated in the months and years ahead. We will publish a comprehensive report on the summit that will distil the expert recommendations and political discussions that took place. This will serve as a reference point for future work.
We will turn our focus to practical implementation of the international protocol in priority countries. We will ensure it is translated and disseminated around the world, and we will champion its use and promote its principles in the projects that we fund and in international institutions. We will continue to use our team of experts to strengthen the capacity of affected countries to address accountability and to work with UN special representative Zainab Bangura and UN Action to improve international co-ordination and the capability of militaries to respond and prevent sexual violence.
For the past two years the United Kingdom has led the way internationally in addressing these vital issues and we must continue to do so until the scourge of sexual violence is finally confronted, addressed and defeated”.
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating her right honourable friend’s Statement made in another place earlier today. Let me come to Iraq first. Iraq clearly faces fundamental threats to its integrity, security and stability. Faced with a lightning advance by a few thousand ISIL fighters from their base in Syria, the Iraqi army’s presence in the northern and western Sunni-majority provinces of Iraq effectively has collapsed.
Beneath these latest advances for ISIL is a deeper and fundamental question, not just for Iraq but also for its neighbouring countries across the region. That question surely is: can they in time develop a pluralistic, democratic politics where people live together as citizens rather than divide along sectarian, ethnic or religious lines? Alas, the answer today still remains uncertain.
Inevitably and understandably, these events have rekindled the debate around military intervention in Iraq 11 years ago. For most British people, including many of us who supported the action at the time, the fears of those opposed to the intervention have been vindicated by subsequent events. It is futile to deny that subsequent history as surely as it would be folly to repeat it, yet it is also facile to suggest that the crisis affecting Iraq today can be attributed solely to the consequences of intervention. Such an account denies the truth that the slide towards crisis in Iraq has been exacerbated by the civil war in Syria. These are two nations, both sitting astride the Sunni/Shia fault line, engulfed increasingly by sectarian violence while the rest of the region has looked on as sectarian tensions rise. Tragically for Iraq, the hallmark of Nouri al-Maliki’s Shia-dominated Government has been a sectarian rather than an inclusive approach. By way of contrast, the welcome progress made since 2003 by the leadership of the Kurdistan regional government only serves further to highlight the extent of the Iraqi central government’s failures in moving the country forward
I have a couple of questions for the Minister. Can she set out what specific steps are being taken by the UK Government in co-ordination with allies to encourage the formation of a new Government in Iraq, bearing in mind, as she told us, that the large majority of results now in April’s elections have been ratified? Secondly, what conversations are taking place to urge Prime Minister Maliki to take concrete measures to reduce sectarian tensions, empower regional government and reprofessionalise the Iraqi armed forces?
The Foreign Secretary today and in statements over the past week confirmed that military intervention in Iraq is not being contemplated. We welcome that assurance. We do not believe that the Government should agree to any proposals significantly to increase the nature or scale of support that we are already giving to the Iraqi Government without a much wider debate in Parliament and indeed in the country. I hope that the Minister and the Government agree.
It is clear that Iran is heavily engaged in Iraq today and it is disappointing to hear Tehran apparently ruling out direct talks with the US earlier this morning, but we very much welcome confirmation that the Foreign Secretary has been in touch with his Iranian counterpart earlier today. Does the Minister agree that there is now an urgent case for ensuring an effective British diplomatic presence in Tehran to help co-ordinate discussions? The Minister may be able to tell us that there will be some news about this matter very shortly. Certainly, her right honourable friend hinted as much in another place this afternoon.
As the crisis continues, the scale of the humanitarian suffering of course also grows, so we warmly welcome the additional humanitarian funding that the UK Government have already announced. Will any further requests from Iraq’s Government for additional humanitarian support be considered promptly? Many British citizens will have watched the scenes both in Syria and in Iraq with growing concern and anxiety, so it is right that we pay tribute to the British intelligence and security forces who are doing such vital work to keep us safe. Will the Minister set out the Government's latest assessment of the threat posed by British citizens returning from the region?
The Government will be concerned, as we all are, with the safety of British diplomatic staff in Baghdad, Erbil and Basra. Will the Minister assure the House that all the necessary plans are in place to guarantee their safety? The most urgent task now is for Iraq’s leadership to unite and galvanise its response to this crisis. The future of the whole country and the fate of millions depend upon it.
I turn briefly to the preventing sexual violence in conflict summit in London, which the Minister spoke of. That summit was a real credit to the work of the campaigners and activists across the world who tirelessly worked to raise this issue up the political agenda. The British Government and the Foreign Secretary have done a great deal in recent months. We from this side commend them sincerely for that work. However, not least in this House, if I may say so, it is important that we commend the Minister for her important part in this exercise. Indeed, I had the pleasure of reading two—I do not know how many she made last week—fairly short speeches in which she puts the overwhelming case very well.
The Foreign Secretary was right though to say in his Statement that the priority has to be to translate words into practical action, and we welcome the further £6 million pledged by the UK to support survivors of sexual violence in conflict. The statement of action to tackle the culture of impunity surrounding sexual violence in conflict, which is referred to in the Statement, was indeed an important step forward. Alongside agreeing a coherent legal framework, can the Minister set out this evening, or in writing, what further steps may be taken to tackle some of those underlying issues that contribute so much to impunity—such as the independence of the judiciary—within conflict-affected states? We look forward to the publication of the comprehensive report on the summit. It may be too early for the noble Baroness to give us any indication of how long it will be before that is published, but we hope it is not too long. The real test, as I know the Government recognise, is now whether the summit here in London can make a real difference on the ground in conflict zones across the world. The Minister and the Foreign Secretary will have our support to make sure that work is done.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, I start by thanking the noble Lord opposite for his support, both in relation to a difficult emerging situation in Iraq and his kind words about ending sexual violence in conflict. There is no doubt that sectarianism, which appears to be the root cause of so much of what we see across the region, can be resolved only by making sure that Governments respond to the needs of their citizens and respond in a way that is pluralistic and does not make communities feel isolated. There is no doubt that successful elections and the subsequent formation of an inclusive Government is going to be an essential part of rebuilding Iraq.
I heard the very gracious words from the noble Lord in relation to the Iraq war. I, of course, come at it from a very different perspective. I was part of the anti-war position. Even I would have to say that it cannot be said that intervention was the sole cause of what we see now, but we would all probably have to admit that it had a significant impact on the region. In terms of working with the region, it is right that the relationship with Iran has been strengthened over time. Noble Lords will be aware of an imminent announcement—something could be said tomorrow—about what we intend in terms of our relationship with Iran. The noble Lord asked what steps we are taking to support the new Government. I think the new Government have to be formed as soon as possible and have to be inclusive. It is right that we support the Government of Mr Maliki, but also that we demand of him conditionality in relation to how he makes sure that all Iraqis are included in any future Government. I take it upon myself to ensure that the House is always informed of changes and I assure the noble Lord that if there are to be changes to our approach in Iraq I will certainly bring the matter back to the House.
We stand ready to provide further humanitarian support. I am proud of the fact that we were among the first to respond and we keep that support under review. Of course, there is an ongoing threat from returning fighters. The Home Office is very aware of this. Noble Lords will be aware of high-profile arrests that have been made. It is important that we continue to monitor that situation, as well as supporting our staff and ensuring that our travel advice is kept up to date. Of course, a number of British nationals either live or work out there.
Turning briefly to ending sexual violence in conflict, the noble Lord is absolutely right: of course it is great that we had this conference but it must translate into real action. If everybody does what they pledged to do at the summit last week, we will have a real, genuine and long-term impact on tackling and ending sexual violence in conflict. It is important for this to be translated into practical action, including tackling what is known as the underlying impunity. The way we do that is by supporting the legal systems of individual countries and ensuring that the evidence is gathered properly and prosecutions are prepared properly and that we get convictions for these offences which send out a very strong message.
Of course, the particular part of the summit I led on was the work and role of faith communities in ending sexual violence. Sometimes in those situations they are the first point of call and only form of support. More fundamentally than that, if there is to be a culture change, where the shame sits on the perpetrator and not on the survivor, faith communities have an incredibly important role to play and must lead this challenge.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
My Lords, of course I welcome the powerful message from the violence in conflict conference last week. That was a very good initiative. Obviously, it needs to reach not just states and Governments but all the non-state actors and private armies around the world that are engaged in violence.
Does my noble friend not agree that what is happening now in northern Iraq is an immediate threat to our national direction, purpose and security of a very high order, putting in question many of the policy assumptions we have had in recent years? I see no particular point in rowing backwards now to the issues of the difficult past in Iraq but will she assure us that we will continue to work very closely—as I think she has indicated that we are doing already—with the regional powers? That is obviously with Iraq itself but also with Turkey, Egypt and Iran, and even with Saudi Arabia, which of course has a Sunni affiliation but can do a great deal, I think, to help reduce support for the butchers of Mosul, and of course with the United States as well, with its technology and the proposals it has already made. Does she agree that in doing so, sensibly and with our own unique experience, we could help to halt this grim development which breaks open the old assumptions that have governed the nations of the Middle East since the end of the Ottoman Empire, and that we should do so, even if at the moment we do not like Mr al-Maliki’s divisive policies? They may have to be changed, but the immediate task is to prevent a further smashing up of the Middle East order, which we have sought to protect over the past few years.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, as always, my noble friend makes an important point. He will be heartened to hear that over the weekend my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary spoke to the Foreign Minister of Iraq, Zebari; the Foreign Minister of Turkey, Davutoglu; the Foreign Minister of Iran, Zarif; and to John Kerry on Friday. He and the Government absolutely accept that this has to be resolved as a regional issue. Every state has a responsibility to support stability, including Saudi Arabia. We cannot accept that countries are affiliated to certain elements within Iraq. We have to encourage all Iraqis—the Sunni community, the Shia community and indeed the Kurds and the Kurdistan regional government—to work together to provide that stability, which is so badly needed.
Baroness Uddin (Non-Afl)
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that since 2010 I have been raising the issue of the 300,000 women in Bangladesh who were raped by the Pakistani army. Therefore, as a campaigner I take pleasure in congratulating her on her leadership and that of the Foreign Secretary. I welcome the international protocol that has been announced. It marks a crossroads in protecting vulnerable women, although I know that in the end implementation is everything.
The £6 million that has been announced is much to be welcomed, especially if it adds to the pot of the international community. Given the past week’s momentous event, would the Minister say whether there is any room to create a constructive provision of support and resources for the survivors of past atrocities and conflicts? In particular, what is her view about measures to provide justice, reparation and apologies to the 300,000 Bangladeshi women victims of the Pakistani army in the 1971 war?
Baroness Warsi
The noble Baroness makes an important point and has tirelessly campaigned on this issue for many years. As the Minister with responsibility for both Pakistan and Bangladesh, I was incredibly pleased to have the opportunity to convince both countries to sign the international declaration on preventing sexual violence in conflict. I was delighted to see that both countries took that pledge. This could have consequences for their own nations and states, but both countries are also huge providers of peacekeeping troops, which are sometimes the first point of defence where this sexual violence happens.
Supporting victims was an essential part of the summit and one of the priorities. It includes supporting victims now, but also supporting victims from the past. As the noble Baroness will be aware, many of these horrific stories of sexual violence do not even come to the fore because victims are not prepared to speak about them. One thing that we can all agree on is that the summit gave a voice to survivors, and that in itself will start to tackle the cultural impunity.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, one of the reasons why my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford and I always attempt to speak at the same time is because we so often agree completely with what each other has to say. In addition to endorsing everything that my noble friend said, I simply want to address two or three issues.
While I congratulate the Minister and the Government wholeheartedly on the ending sexual violence summit, she will understand if I concentrate my remarks on Iraq. I understand where the Government are coming from in keeping their assistance extremely limited at the moment, but will she tell the House whether the Prime Minister continues to abide by his royal prerogative in taking any measures that he considers necessary in order to persist with bringing about a resolution to the situation? This is the gravest political situation that we have seen since 2003, because if ISIS gets control of a swathe of territory we are in real trouble.
My second question relates to what the Foreign Secretary has been doing in his conversations with the Prime Ministers of the regional powers. Are we encouraging Saudi Arabia and Iran, which have recently thawed relations with each other, to continue to resolve this situation together? The noble Lord, Lord Bach, referred to Iran not having direct talks with the United States, but if Saudi Arabia and Iran can work together, that would be significantly helpful.
Finally, has there been any discussion in the Foreign Office and government about taking this issue to the United Nations Security Council? If there is one point where we need decisive action by the international community, it seems to be now. Events are moving very quickly indeed, so I exhort them to do so.
Baroness Warsi
My noble friend will be aware that the United States has said that all options are still on the table, but I can say that the United Kingdom is not planning a military intervention. We are looking urgently at other ways to help, examining where, for example, we can give support in relation to counterterrorism expertise.
My noble friend makes an important point about regional players. Saudi Arabia and Iran of course have a role to play. Many of these groups and countries unfortunately feel a sense of affiliation to certain sections within Iraq and it is important that we stress again the need for stability and communities to work together. I am not aware of any proposals at this stage for United Nations Security Council involvement, but if I do I will certainly write to my noble friend.
Lord Hylton (CB)
My Lords, with regard to Iraq, can the noble Baroness say whether she has any information about the alleged presence inside Iraq of units of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, or indeed of any other Iranian forces? I ask that because, if there is any truth in that allegation, it could have a very destabilising effect. Secondly, will HMG consult with the Government of Iraq and the Kurdistan Regional Government with a view to finding out whether Kurdish military forces could come to the assistance of, and possibly recover, the city of Mosul? If that could be done, it would enable a large number of displaced people to return to their homes and avoid the necessity of their being in camps.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, the situation on the ground is of course becoming clearer as each day goes by. Even the Iraqi Government were to some extent caught by surprise by the pace of what happened in the north. I cannot provide specific information on the noble Lord’s questions. I can say that the Iraqi Government will lead the protection of their communities. Of course, that will include the Kurdistan Regional Government, which is a part of the wider support in bringing stability to the country. We will of course support the Iraqi Government. That is why it is important that they are formed as soon as possible.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend, the Foreign Secretary and all those working on the Ending Sexual Violence initiative at the Foreign Office on the global summit last week. As a member of the steering board of the initiative, I spent much of the week there, and it was truly impressive. It was a coming together of government Ministers from across the world, NGOs, campaigners and survivors. The events were numerous and very moving. I hope it has started a global movement that will draw a red line that makes sexual violence unacceptable in future.
What is happening now in Iraq is an illustration of exactly how important the initiative is. There has been so much sexual violence, often not publicly spoken about, in Syria, and it will be happening right now, as we speak, in Iraq. Can my noble friend please assure me that the situation for women and children there will be considered when the Government are thinking about how to address the overall situation?
Baroness Warsi
I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend. She has worked tirelessly on the issue and has been a huge asset in making the summit a success. Of course, sexual violence unfortunately takes place where security breaks down. We heard the harrowing accounts from victims where, tragically, women’s bodies are used as battlegrounds when conflict strikes.
I think my noble friend will accept that this change will take time. Ultimately, it will happen when there is a culture change, when communities stand up and say, “This will not be tolerated”, wherever the conflict zone and whatever the situation on the ground, and when that support mechanism is there. When perpetrators know that if they commit, command or condone any form of sexual violence, they will be brought to justice, we will truly start to end this scourge.
Baroness Thornton
My Lords, I will be very quick, I promise the noble Lord.
First, I congratulate the Minister and her right honourable colleague the Foreign Secretary on their commitment and on the conference last week. It was a huge privilege and very moving—I agree with the noble Baroness—to attend that event, as I did on behalf of the equality scheme. I know that my colleagues from the FCO team were also there. It was also good to bump into my noble friend Lord McConnell and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. I spent most of Thursday there, and I was particularly impressed and moved by the exhibition by the women from the Congo and the workshop of young women from all over the world. It was a brilliant event, and I did tweet about it like mad all the way through.
Can the Minister give us some idea about the likely timescale and whether some thought has been given to the markers that will need to happen to get to where we want to be? She is quite right that this is a long haul. It is going to take some time but it seems that there are events happening across the world that need to be used to take this forward. I wondered whether some planning had been put into that.
I also wondered whether the Minister was as irritated as I was, and as I am sure other people were, by the comments that John Humphrys made on the “Today” programme this morning. He seemed to suggest that because Angelina Jolie is a very beautiful and famous woman it somehow undermined her support, which has been totally admirable and long-term, for this issue and that this meant that our Foreign Secretary did not have his eye on the ball on other issues. I wondered whether everybody else was as irritated as I was by that discussion.
Baroness Warsi
First, I thank the noble Baroness for her contribution at the summit and for her support for it. She is absolutely right that we must have milestones going forward and she will be heartened to know that already the work has started. Expert teams have been put in place and are working on the ground to help countries prepare their action plans. She will also be aware of two new indictments that have been accepted at the ICC, both with specific reference to sexual violence crimes. It is important that we see more prosecutions but those will be milestones in themselves. Further work will happen at the United Nations General Assembly meeting later this year but she can be assured that the Foreign Secretary is incredibly passionate about this issue. He and his team will make sure that it will continue to be taken forward.
In terms of the comments, that is everyday sexism—what can we say about it? If there are men out there who believe that women cannot be beautiful and brainy, perhaps they should read the speech that the Foreign Secretary gave in Washington last year, when he said that it is finally time for women to take their place at the important tables where decisions are made and for their full economic, political and social participation, and that it is only then that we will have a truly fair society. I hope that the BBC will pick up Hansard.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne (LD)
I congratulate the Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Government on last week’s superb conference, which I had the honour to attend and speak in. However, does the Minister not agree that it throws up a curious anomaly, which should be addressed—and I believe she would wish to address it—between the principled stand of the United Kingdom and that of the European Union on rape as a war crime? The European Union overrules the Geneva Convention by saying that medical care for women victims who have been impregnated in the war should not include abortion if that is against local law. The Minister will of course agree that the United Kingdom is the single biggest donor to ECHO and that the second and third biggest, which are France and the Netherlands, agree with us. Is there a possibility that the Minister would be willing to work on this important issue, since the European Union provides medical care for every single war zone globally and is therefore treating women victims purely on humanitarian grounds and not under the Geneva Convention?
While the Minister is concentrating on that question, perhaps I might ask an important question about Tikrit in northern Iraq. Will the British Government associate themselves with Tikrit in future as a wholly Kurdish city or would they be willing to comment—perhaps to the KRG as well as to the Baghdad Government—that since maybe only 25% of Tikrit’s population is Kurdish, having the Peshmerga contain the city as it is at the moment might cause further unrest in future once Mosul has been cleared? If Tikrit is already clear, might the Government be willing to put some pressure at that moment on the KRG?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, my noble friend makes an important point. I will go back on that issue and write to her because she raises a significant point about sexual violence in conflict. In relation to Tikrit, where conflict happens it creates an opportunity for some of these ongoing challenges around disputes to rear their head again. I am sure these will form part of the discussions that we will have with the Iraqi Government about forming and creating an environment in which these discussions can happen. We can then deal in a united way with making sure that the country is stable.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
My Lords, I apologise to the Minister and to noble Lords that my slight impediment made me miss the first minute or so of her Statement. One is greatly heartened by the participation we have had in the conference to end sexual violence which arises as a result of warfare. I would like to ask the Minister specifically about Iraq. We and the West played a huge part in what is happening today. We gave our blessing to Nouri al-Maliki. For more than 10 years, 1,000 people a month have died in Iraq. It may be called democracy, but it is not what democracy is intended to deliver. I worry that we almost pass over the hint that our US allies talk about making an arrangement with Rouhani in Iran. Under Rouhani’s presidency we have had two executions virtually every day since he was elected. He and his Iranian revolutionary guards, the Quds force, have put tremendous pressure on al-Maliki. We have seen some of the outrages, such as the slaughter of unarmed Iranian refugees in Camp Ashraf on 1 September 2013. In the present situation, should we not be looking outside the box? Are we not going to have a similar civil war—
Baroness Northover (LD)
Especially as the noble Lord was not here at the beginning and we are over time, perhaps he would conclude.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass
I will do my best. Is it not a fact that we will have a similar civil war to that happening in Syria if we do not—as the Minister suggested—get international intervention? She should know as well as I do that, unless we resolve the Iraqi problem with some sort of federal solution, we will not make any impact for the good of that community.
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, of course we have interests with Iran and feel that it is an important player. It is an important part of the stability that can and will be created in the region. Even for somebody who was vehemently against the intervention in Iraq, it is wrong to distil everything down to a simplistic analysis. Not everything is due to western action or inaction. We have to be quite bold in saying to the region, to the people and to the Governments in these regions, “You have to take responsibility and create pluralistic Governments and societies where people feel that the rule of law applies”. It is only then that stability will be created.