House of Commons

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

Monday 7 July 2014

The House met at half-past Two o’clock

Prayers

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

1. What assessment she has made of the effect of serious and organised crime on communities.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

12. What assessment she has made of the effect of serious and organised crime on communities.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

Serious and organised crime has a damaging and corrosive impact on communities across the United Kingdom. This includes violence, drugs trafficking, fraud, modern slavery and child sexual exploitation. Reducing the effects of these crimes and bringing the perpetrators to justice is why I launched a comprehensive new strategy and a powerful new crime-fighting organisation, the National Crime Agency, in October 2013.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her answer. Last month, the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims visited Brierfield in my constituency to meet the local police and learn about their success in tackling organised crime in Pendle. Will my right hon. Friend offer assurances of her Department’s continued support for protecting communities such as Brierfield from serious and organised crime?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Protecting communities lies at the heart of how we want to deal with serious and organised crime. We work with a range of partners to ensure that we tailor our response to the needs of individual communities such as Brierfield. We are also ensuring that every possible avenue is taken to deal with serious and organised crime. Lancashire police’s Operation Genga is bringing together about 20 local organisations to address the issue, and it is a very good example of the benefits that can be achieved through such a partnership approach.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

What actions is my right hon. Friend taking to seize more of the proceeds of organised crime?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend touches on an important issue. Criminals pursue criminal activities for profit, and by seizing their assets we can have a significant impact on them. We have set out in the serious and organised crime strategy our approach for attacking criminal finances. We want to make it harder for criminals to move, hide or access the proceeds of crime. The criminal finances board, overseen by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), oversees cross-departmental work to improve performance on accessing and recovering assets. We are also taking extra powers in the Serious Crime Bill, which has already started its passage in another place, to make it easier for us to get hold of criminals’ assets.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

18. Will the Home Secretary say why the number of arrests based on Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre intelligence on serious, organised child abuse has gone down in the past year?

[Mrs May]

CEOP is an important part of our panoply of organisations that are dealing with various aspects of serious and organised crime. Bringing CEOP into the National Crime Agency was right because it now has access to the agency’s capabilities, but it is important that CEOP continues to have access to a range of capabilities. Sadly, one of the issues that has been raised is the extent to which it can continue to have access to things such as communications data. As that degrades, of course, it becomes harder for CEOP to investigate certain crimes.

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

The Home Secretary will also know that much serious and organised crime is related to fraud. Is she not worried that many people, both outside and inside this House, are saying that the Serious Fraud Office is not fit for purpose, is not resourced enough and depends on advice given by the big accountancy firms? Everyone is saying that we need a powerful Serious Fraud Office. Does she agree that it needs reforming?

[Mrs May]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we need to ensure that we have strong capability for dealing with fraud. That is precisely why I wanted the National Crime Agency to have an economic crime command, which it does. That economic crime command will be looking at a variety of economic and financial crimes. Fraud will, of course, be key within that. It will also look at other issues such as money laundering. That is also why we have changed our approach to the reporting of fraud such that we are now better able to capture incidents of fraud through Action Fraud. We have ensured that the capabilities of City of London police, given its expertise in that area, are fully available. Of course we need a strong Serious Fraud Office, but we also want that strength in the economic crime command within the National Crime Agency.

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

2. What recent assessment she has made of the performance of the Passport Office.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

6. When she next plans to meet the chief executive of the Passport Office.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

8. What recent estimate she has made of the time taken to process passport applications.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

Since January, Her Majesty’s Passport Office has been dealing with a higher demand for passports than for the same period over the last 12 years. The overwhelming majority of straightforward applications continue to be dealt with within three or four weeks, but we recognise that some people are waiting too long. A package of additional measures has been introduced to help HMPO deliver passports on time while still maintaining security. Ministerial colleagues and I are meeting the chief executive of HMPO on a regular basis.

[Pat Glass]

Back in the real world, the situation is unfortunately getting far worse, not better. My office dealt with 17 urgent inquiries last week and has already received three this morning, including that of my constituent Andy Sheen, who has been waiting since May for a renewed passport for his two children. When can my constituents and others hope to have anything like a normal service again?

[James Brokenshire]

The Passport Office has introduced a number of measures and is increasing the number of passports being dealt with each week. I recognise that right hon. and hon. Members are raising individual cases, which is why we have strengthened the MPs’ service and put in place the seven-day upgrade arrangements so that passports can be delivered to people who need to travel.

[Ian Murray]

Over 40 constituents have come to me about late passport applications. It is not just about their passports; it is about their family holidays and individual holidays this summer. Surely the Minister should have foreseen these problems, given the massive increase in foreign applications. What percentage is due to the massive increase in foreign applications and what will he do to ensure that this does not happen again?

[James Brokenshire]

The pressure has been the result of a significant increase in domestic applications. The forecasting that HMPO has undertaken, and its expectation, is that it is domestic applications that have really added to the pressure and led to the highest level of applications in 12 years. Clearly we are focused on those individual cases, which is why additional resources have been put into examination, but there is also the specific measure, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary mentioned, to ensure that there is a focus on those who need their passports to travel and to go on their holidays.

[Heidi Alexander]

My constituent Ms Papafio-Gordon is today celebrating her 21st birthday, but she faces the prospect of not being able to go on holiday tomorrow because of delays in renewing her passport. She has already had to cancel two holidays. She booked tomorrow’s flights only after being told that her passport would be couriered to her home yesterday, but it never arrived. Will the Minister look into the case to ensure that my constituent, on her third attempt, can go on holiday tomorrow?

[James Brokenshire]

The hon. Lady raises an individual case. I know how hard Passport Office personnel are working to ensure that passports are delivered on time to enable people to travel. If she gives me the details of her constituent’s case, obviously I will look into it.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

May I commend the staff of the Passport Office for dealing with constituents from Bedford and Kempston who have had passport difficulties, and the Minister for his calm handling of the issue? When looking forward on the handling of passports, will he consider advising people a year early that their passports are due to expire so that they can renew them without having to wait until the last minute?

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for recognising the incredible work being undertaken in passport offices up and down the country to meet this exceptional demand. Clearly we will reflect carefully on a range of issues once we get through this exceptionally busy period to see where further improvements can be made and to ensure that service is improved further in the years ahead.

[Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I, too, would like to draw attention to the service that my office has received from HMPO, whose staff have been incredibly courteous and helpful in difficult circumstances. It is important that long-term lessons are learnt. Will the Minister assure the House that the review of operating procedures will focus on improving efficiency and ensuring that customer service is at the heart of all HMPO activities in future?

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about focusing on customers and further improving operating procedures. A real focus will be put on that once we have managed this period of excessive demand. Indeed, with regard to forecasting, we are bringing in the Home Office’s scientific lead to examine those projections as well as ensuring that any changes that can be made to improve performance will be made.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

It is important that we learn the lessons and improve the operation of the Passport Office, but I want to take this opportunity to put on the record my thanks to the Minister and to the staff of the Passport Office for going the extra mile to ensure that all the constituents who came to me received their passports in time to travel, including arranging for them to be couriered to those who live in remote locations.

[James Brokenshire]

It is worth recognising that many people working in the Passport Office are going the extra mile to see that people are receiving their passports in time for travel. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for enabling me to highlight the exceptional work that is being undertaken in passport offices.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

On 8 June, the number of passports classed as “work in progress” stood at 493,289. Figures I have obtained show that two weeks after the emergency measures were brought in by the Government, on 22 June, the figure stood at 537,663. Will the Minister update the House on whether the “work in progress” figure is less than when he introduced the initial emergency measures?

[James Brokenshire]

This is an exceptional period of demand. To put this into context, the Passport Office would usually handle about 5.5 million applications per year, and this year it has received about 4 million applications already. That gives some context to the work that is involved. “Work in progress” figures will run into hundreds of thousands because of the output that the Passport Office is delivering—about 170,000 a week. That gives a sense of the scale of the work that is involved. Yes, there are pressures there, but the Passport Office is responding to the challenge.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

What matters when Departments miss their targets is how everybody reacts, and the Home Secretary and Ministers have reacted with energy and determination to resolve this problem. May I thank the Passport Office, which so far, even though it has been a close-run thing in several cases, has managed to resolve 100% of my constituents’ problems so that they can travel on time? Will my hon. Friend join me in thanking my constituents for their patience and my constituency office for its resilience in making sure that so far everybody has got away on time?

[James Brokenshire]

I am pleased to give that recognition to my hon. Friend’s constituents, and, of course, constituents across the country who are working with HMPO to see that issues are resolved. We have put additional measures in place to assist colleagues from across the House with their individual inquiries, recognising the need to ensure that passports can be delivered to enable people to travel on their holidays.

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

3. What assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy; and if she will make a statement.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

Today marks the ninth anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings. I am sure the whole House will wish to convey our thoughts and prayers to those who lost friends and loved ones on that day and remember how we must remain vigilant against those who threaten our country and our way of life. Contest, the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy, has been effective in reducing the risk to the UK and its interests overseas from terrorism. The number of successful prosecutions and foiled plots over the past year demonstrates the skill, dedication and professionalism of the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and security and intelligence agencies in meeting that challenge.

[Mr Bailey]

May I associate myself with the Minister’s condolences for those who lost their lives during that atrocity, and others as well?

Community engagement and peer pressure are essential if we are to curb the recruitment of jihadists to the Syrian conflict. Why have the Government cut funding to the Prevent project, which is designed to do this, and to the groups carrying it out?

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely understand the hon. Gentleman’s rightful focus on the need for strong community engagement. The Prevent programme is about seeking to prevent people from becoming involved in terrorism, with measures that are able to channel individuals towards programmes that might take them off that course. However, he misunderstands the fact that the Government undertook a clear separation between broader integration work and Prevent, with its specific focus on counter-terrorism. It was right to have that focus and to ensure that actions and programmes were not misinterpreted as being about involvement in or prevention of terrorism rather than community integration.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

It was reported this weekend that MI5 could have stopped Michael Adebolajo committing murder if it had more powers. Is the Minister aware that when the Home Affairs Committee was in Kenya, senior ambassadors at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs told us that in all likelihood he would have been in prison in Kenya had it not been for the UK authorities requesting that he be returned to this country?

[James Brokenshire]

As my hon. Friend will know, the Intelligence and Security Committee is currently completing its review of the investigations related to that case, and I do not think it would be appropriate for me to comment further in that regard. The Home Affairs Committee has conducted a broad review of counter-terrorism powers—indeed, I gave evidence to it. Clearly, we keep powers under review, and we have sought to extend extraterritorial jurisdiction for a number of terrorism offences in relation to the Serious Crime Bill, which is currently before Parliament.

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

20. I also associate myself with the Minister’s initial comments. He and the Home Secretary will be aware that a number of organisations that operate in Cardiff have recently been proscribed. Will the Minister clarify the names of those organisations and outline how he intends to ensure that individuals involved in them do not simply rebrand themselves and go under other organisational names in the future? They are not welcome in Cardiff by either the Muslim community or the wider community.

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely endorse the hon. Gentleman’s comments, and I know of the work he is undertaking locally in Cardiff in combating extremism and ensuring that community groups are brought together to confront it. We have made further changes to proscription in terms of aliases related to al-Muhajiroun, and have added the names of other terrorist organisations. We will keep that focus and keep the issue under review. Obviously, the police are also looking at whether there are prosecution opportunities.

[Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

Although I would be the first to commend the leadership and oversight exercised on this policy by my hon. Friend and the Home Secretary, none of it would have been possible without the exceptional contribution of a very talented team of officials across all Departments, including the Ministry of Justice, where I used to work with Michael Spurr and his team on security. The United Kingdom is lucky enough to have world-leading, quality officials and insight in this area. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend would confirm that and put it on the record.

[James Brokenshire]

I am delighted to confirm that. Obviously, there are many people who work hard, day in, day out, to keep our country safe, and it is right that they are commended.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It was reported yesterday that 16-year-old twins from Manchester may have flown to Syria in order to join ISIS. So far, 500 British citizens have gone to Syria to fight. On Wednesday, the Muslim Council of Britain will hold a meeting with all Islamic scholars throughout the United Kingdom to look at the issue of engagement with communities. What further steps do the Government propose to take to deal with those who seek to lure our young British citizens to fight abroad, especially with regard to the internet?

[James Brokenshire]

A number of steps have been taken. There has been real leadership in a number of quarters in British Muslim society, which is very welcome. The right hon. Gentleman highlights the issue of the internet. I draw to the House’s attention the fact that the counter-terrorism internet referral unit has now taken down 40,000 items from the web that are illegal or promote terrorism. It is important that we retain that focus.

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

On this day, it is absolutely right that we remember those killed or injured on 7/7. On counter-terrorism work today, allegations are being reported that AY —previously on a control order and then a terrorism prevention and investigation measure order that lapsed—is now freely recruiting and radicalising young men to go to Iraq and Syria to fight for ISIS. Given the potential security threat of those men returning to the United Kingdom, does the Minister still believe that the TPIM orders that he introduced are fit for purpose?

[James Brokenshire]

Yes, I do. We have some of the most robust and effective legislation in the world to deal with terrorist suspects, and we will not hesitate in using every power at our disposal to protect the security of this country. Clearly, if there is evidence that people are engaged in terrorist-related activity, the police will investigate and take action.

[Lorraine Fullbrook (South Ribble) (Con)]

4. What steps she is taking to further assist the police in reducing the level of crime.

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

We have freed the police from central targets, and police and crime commissioners are addressing the issues that matter to local people. We are cutting bureaucracy so that officers can be at the front line where they are needed, and the College of Policing is driving up professional standards. We are working with forces to tackle national priorities such as organised crime, gangs, modern slavery and violence against women and girls. The evidence is clear—police reform is working and crime is down.

[Lorraine Fullbrook]

The Minister will be aware that crime in Lancashire has been cut by 10%, but there is some variation in overall levels of crime across the country. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the police need to be more innovative and to share best practice right across the country in cutting crime and keeping our streets safer?

[Damian Green]

I agree with my hon. Friend, whose point about innovation is correct. That is precisely why we have introduced an innovation fund, which all forces have bid for. She will be aware from last year’s precursor fund that Lancashire successfully bid for the collaboration we want—a joint initiative with Lancashire county council to create an early action response service for missing people, vulnerable people and those with mental health issues. That is precisely the innovative collaboration that will enable crime to continue to fall.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Did the Minister see the comments made recently by the Police Federation in Manchester about the city centre of Manchester being a dangerous place? Will he take this opportunity to agree with me that Greater Manchester police and the city council work very effectively to keep the streets of Manchester safe, and will he assure the House that GMP will have all the resources it needs to do just that job?

[Damian Green]

I agree that Greater Manchester police is doing a very good job, as, indeed, the figures show: crime in Greater Manchester is down 24% since 2010. It is the use of the resources available to Sir Peter Fahy and his force that will continue to make Manchester safer than it has been before.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

The police in North Yorkshire, and in Selby in particular, are innovative, especially about rural crime. I am pleased that crime is falling there, but the planned closure of Selby’s police custody suite could have an adverse impact on policing in the district. Having to take those arrested all the way to York could take two bobbies off the beat in Selby, leaving the town exposed. Although the decision could save tens of thousands of pounds, does the Minister agree that it is a short-sighted move, and will he urge the chief constable to rethink?

[Damian Green]

The decision to close the custody suite at Selby was first taken in 2000, under the previous Government, and it has been a source of some controversy ever since. The custody suite was reopened, but, as my hon. Friend says, the chief constable has now decided to close it again. I would be very happy to look at the case, and to discuss it with the police and crime commissioner.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary introduced police and crime commissioners. Tragically, Bob Jones, the PCC for the west midlands, died last week. He was an outstanding champion of all that is best in British policing, and a man of great personal integrity. He has yet to be buried, but the Home Secretary’s legislation obliges a by-election to be held on 21 August. How much will a by-election for an electorate of 2 million cost, and does the Minister anticipate a turnout higher or lower than the 13% who elected Bob Jones?

[Damian Green]

I absolutely echo the hon. Gentleman’s tribute to Bob Jones, who gave his life to public service over many decades. He held his beliefs very strongly, and he expressed them very strongly. My condolences and those of the home affairs team go to his wife, and his friends and family.

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that a by-election is triggered by two people calling it. He will also be aware that, frankly, it was not done at the behest of either his party or mine. I take the point that the by-election will take place in the middle of August. It is therefore the responsibility of all politicians—particularly, I should say, of Members of Parliament in the west midlands—to ensure that people get out and vote. As people now realise, the police and crime commissioner is an important post, and it is important that the people of the west midlands have a say in who the next police and crime commissioner is.

[Mr Speaker]

It is always helpful if answers are comprehensive, but they do not have to include the kitchen sink.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

5. What assessment she has made of the effect of recent changes in the level of neighbourhood policing.

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

The Government strongly support neighbourhood policing. It provides a visible presence in communities, cutting crime and disorder. By slashing red tape and sweeping away central targets, we have empowered chief constables and police and crime commissioners to respond to the individual and specific needs of their communities. Police reform is working. Crime is down by more than 10% since June 2010, and victim satisfaction is up.

[Mr Slaughter]

However the Minister dresses it up, in wards where there used to be six neighbourhood officers, there are now two. Consequently, my constituents feel less safe. Antisocial behaviour and crime are actually going up in areas such as Shepherd’s Bush and White City. May we have safer neighbourhood teams back? We need preventive, rather than reactive, local policing.

[Damian Green]

I feel that the hon. Gentleman would benefit from hearing some of the facts about what is happening. Across the Metropolitan police, there are 2,600 more police officers in neighbourhood teams to boost local policing. Specifically in Hammersmith and Fulham, the number of officers in the borough will have increased between October 2011 and 2015. Very specifically, there will be an increase of 92 officers in the safer neighbourhood teams he values so much. That is why crime in London generally and Hammersmith specifically has been falling.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

I know that my right hon. Friend will be aware, not least because it was mentioned at Prime Minister’s questions last week, of the death of Cherylee Shennan in my constituency. I want to put on the record my thoughts about Detective Sergeant Damien McAlister and Detective Constable Karen Kenworthy, both of whom were severely injured in an attempt to save Cherylee’s life, and give him the opportunity to echo them. They serve as a constant reminder to everyone in this House of the danger that police officers put themselves in every day to keep us and our streets safe.

[Damian Green]

I am sure that the whole House will echo my hon. Friend’s sentiment about those officers. Damien McAlister and Karen Kenworthy showed the bravery that we get from officers all over the country in the most difficult of situations. Such bravery is essential, particularly in tragic situations such as the one he mentions, and it should never go without being noticed.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

7. What steps she has taken to co-ordinate lessons learnt across Government from investigations into organised sexual abuse of children.

[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Norman Baker)]

The national group on sexual violence against children and vulnerable people, which I chair, is already delivering a number of significant improvements to our response to child sex abuse, including addressing lessons learned from the investigations and inquiries into historical and organised child sexual abuse. The Home Secretary will make a statement on child abuse immediately after this session.

[Duncan Hames]

I appreciate the Minister’s efforts in this regard. When the Prime Minister said in answer to my question last month that he was happy to look at the case for an independent inquiry, I was optimistic. We may not have long to wait now. The Government set great store by the police investigations. Does the Minister share my dismay at reports that the Metropolitan police has assigned only seven officers to Operation Fernbridge?

[Norman Baker]

That is an operational matter for the police, rather than a matter for Ministers. However, we take these matters extremely seriously and all Ministers have made it plain that we expect the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and others to take all the necessary steps to bring those who are responsible for heinous crimes to justice.

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

Brave survivors of child sex abuse have done a fantastic job of lobbying on this issue over the past week. Are the Secretary of State and the Minister satisfied that the victims of child sex abuse are receiving all the support that they should be receiving from policing and health bodies?

[Norman Baker]

We published a new victims code in December 2013, which sets out the entitlements of victims of the most serious crimes. Other steps are being taken, such as the videoed pre-trial cross-examination pilot, to ensure that we make it as easy as possible for children to give evidence and to ensure that they are not re-traumatised by the process.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

This question would more normally be heard at Education questions because tackling child abuse is about not just detecting crime but prevention, education and safeguarding children. Will the Minister say what arrangements exist for the Department for Education to co-ordinate that action?

[Norman Baker]

As the former Minister for children knows, there are existing and strong links between various Departments, including the Department for Education and the Department of Health, to ensure that such matters are dealt with on a cross-departmental basis. We intend to continue and strengthen those links between Departments.

[Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)]

The National Association for People Abused in Childhood is finding an increased demand for its support and help. It has written to the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims to ask for greater support and services to help those who are coming forward with cases from many years ago, with all the problems that they have experienced as a result. Will the Government do more to ensure that those services are in place?

[Norman Baker]

The Minister with responsibility for policing and victims will respond to the letter as soon as he can, if he has not done so already. The fact that these matters are receiving extra coverage these days, and the fact that the Government has made it very clear that we take these matters seriously, is encouraging people to come forward, including those with historical allegations, and that is exactly right. We expect the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to investigate them properly.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

10. If she will bring forward legislative proposals to criminalise the non-reporting by family members of their reasonable suspicions of other family members travelling abroad for purposes of terrorism.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

We want to support communities to respond to the challenge of preventing terrorism, and to encourage them to refer individuals who may be at risk of radicalisation and exploitation. Prevent practitioners, working with local authorities, the police and other agencies, are providing outreach and targeted projects. We believe this offers the most effective approach.

[Mark Pritchard]

Of course, not all family members will know whether members of their family have gone abroad to prepare for acts of terrorism, but some will. For the sake of social cohesion, community cohesion and national security, will the Minister seriously consider bringing forward new legislation to keep this country safe?

[James Brokenshire]

We keep legislation under review, as I have already indicated this afternoon. It is already an offence, under the Terrorism Act 2000, to fail to disclose information about acts of terrorism. Many families have come forward to identify those who might be travelling to Syria. It is important that we support them and encourage others to report loved ones as well.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

My Muslim constituents report that public discourse about terrorism and security threats is beginning to create a climate of suspicion and hostility towards them in the community. What can the Minister do to ensure that, alongside protecting public security, attention is paid to community cohesion and harmony?

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely understand the hon. Lady’s point. Indeed, that is why we work on social cohesion with the Department for Communities and Local Government. Some fantastic British Muslims are demonstrating leadership, showing that they oppose so much extremism that is done in their name but does not reflect their communities or their religion. We continue to work with them to promote those very clear messages.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

11. What steps she is taking to end modern slavery.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The Government have made much progress in tackling this horrendous crime. Our ground-breaking Modern Slavery Bill will have its Second Reading tomorrow in this House. Later this year, we will publish a modern slavery strategy, which will co-ordinate a comprehensive programme of national and international activity. It will include: the national referral mechanism review, which will report its interim findings shortly; child trafficking advocate trials, which will launch in the summer; and establishing specialist teams at the border.

[Andrew Jones]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply and congratulate her on introducing the Bill, the first of its kind in the world to tackle this disgusting crime. Does she agree that it is important to work with businesses to tackle this part of the problem by eliminating forced labour from supply chains?

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. It is absolutely vital that we work with business on the issue of forced labour and slavery in supply chains, which is why I hosted a round table recently with representatives of business organisations and individual businesses, together with other Ministers, including the Under-Secretary with responsibility for modern slavery and organised crime. We are doing a great deal with businesses to help to raise awareness so we can prevent people from being abused and exploited. Of course, companies have a social responsibility to take appropriate action. If they do not, their reputations will suffer.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Two thirds of the children identified and found as trafficking victims by the authorities go missing again. Will the Home Secretary legislate for a guardian for each of these children, to keep them safe and to act in their best interests?

[Mrs May]

We are trialling the child advocate concept in a number of ways in the coming months. We have made it absolutely clear that, through the Modern Slavery Bill, we will provide for the opportunity to put it on a statutory basis. I hope everybody in this House would want us to use the work of those trials to identify the best approach to take in relation to individuals, whatever their title, who work with trafficked children, to take them through and to help to give them the support they need. We need to ensure that we find and take forward the best approach.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

Does the Home Secretary agree that the trafficking prevention orders included in the Modern Slavery Bill will be a valuable tool for police seeking to disrupt trafficking gangs? What discussions has her Department had with police on the practical implementation of the orders?

[Mrs May]

I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that the police welcomed the concept of prevention orders that we are putting in place through the Bill. She is absolutely right: crucially, the prevention orders will enable us to ensure that action can be taken against someone who has been convicted of an offence of modern slavery so that we can reduce the possibility of that offence being recommitted. Up until now, it has been possible for someone who has served a sentence for such an offence to come straight back out, become a gangmaster and carry on with what they were doing in the first place. The prevention orders will enable us to prevent that from happening.

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

14. What representations she has received on the potential effect on UK migration figures of further EU accessions.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

Representations about EU migration often focus on the large inflows from existing member states since 2004, and we have been clear that, unlike the previous Government, we will always impose the toughest possible transitional controls on free movement from new member states.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful for that answer. The simple fact of the matter, as my hon. Friend knows, is that the last Government totally underestimated both the number of migrants from newly entered countries who have made their way to the United Kingdom and the impact of that on the tolerance of ordinary, hard-working British people when it comes to immigration. Does the Minister agree with me—if so, she can tell us—that if further countries join the EU we must put in place measures that slow access to labour markets unless and until we can be sure that the vast migrations of the past simply cannot happen again?

[Karen Bradley]

My hon. and learned Friend puts it more succinctly than anybody could, and my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have been absolutely clear that there will be new arrangements for future accessions to slow access to labour markets until we can be sure that they will not lead to mass migration.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

15. What steps she is taking to combat cybercrime; and if she will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

Cybercrime is a tier 1 threat to national security. We have strengthened law enforcement capabilities with the establishment of the national cybercrime unit in the National Crime Agency, and by establishing cyber-teams within each of the regional organised crime units, as well as by developing the capability of local police forces. We are also funding the Cyber Streetwise campaign, and Action Fraud’s reporting system for fraud or financially motivated cybercrime.

[Michael Fabricant]

I am grateful for that answer. A friend of mine tells me that a well-known retailer was recently attacked from abroad four times in as many weeks by a cyber organisation.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

John Lewis.

[Michael Fabricant]

I think the hon. Gentleman might have guessed it right. What steps is the Minister taking to stop such foreign cyber-attacks on legitimate companies in the United Kingdom?

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He perfectly sums up the threats we in the UK face from cyber-attacks on businesses and public services. Working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Home Office is involved in the cybercrime reduction partnership, and we have set up CERT-UK, the computer emergency response team, which includes CISP—the Cyber-Security Information Sharing Partnership—through which businesses can share their experiences of cyber-attacks.

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

According to Which?, the average amount lost by people because of scams, including online scams, is £1,500, and online shopping scams are by far the most likely to fool people. The Home Affairs Select Committee has expressed concern that there appears to be a black hole where low-level e-crime is committed with impunity. What impact does the Minister believe the initiatives she has announced are having, and what more can the Home Office do to raise awareness of e-crime for our citizens?

[Karen Bradley]

The hon. Lady makes an important point—that we need to raise awareness and to make sure that people know where they can report cybercrime. Action Fraud, which I visited last week when it was hosted by the City of London police, is the portal through which people can report cyber-attacks. That is where information will be disseminated and intelligence shared, ensuring that local police forces have the information and intelligence they need to be able to act against this crime.

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

Chief Constable Alex Marshall, head of the College of Policing, recently said on BBC Radio 4’s “Law in Action” programme that “at least half” of calls to front-line police officers originated from complaints about social media. What is my hon. Friend and the Government doing to make sure that police officers at all levels have the skills necessary to tackle online crime?

[Karen Bradley]

It is vital to ensure that police officers and local forces understand how to tackle cybercrime and where to report it, and I am very pleased that the College of Policing is providing training for all officers so that they know what to do. As I have said, Action Fraud and other online databases are available, and I know that the police are making sure that they gather the information and share the intelligence.

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary has reported that only three police forces in England and Wales have an effective cyber-attack strategy, and that although reported cybercrime is up by about a quarter, the number of prosecutions is down? Why has she allowed that to happen?

[Karen Bradley]

The Government take cybercrime extremely seriously. That is why it is a tier 1 national security risk. We have invested £860 million in the national cyber-security strategy, and have so far committed £70 million to the national cyber-security policy to build law enforcement capabilities. It is vital for training to be provided, and the Government are committed to ensuring that it is. The report to which the hon. Gentleman referred represents a view of, as it were, a “snapshot” taken some time ago. We have been working very closely with, in particular, the National Crime Agency to ensure that the issue is addressed and training is given.

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

16. What steps she is taking to reduce illegal immigration.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

In every year of this Government, more illegal migrants have left the UK than in any year under the last Government. The Immigration Act 2014 is the latest step in this Government’s reforms, ensuring that there is a tough response to those who abuse the system or flout the law.

[Andrew Selous]

When immigrants are told that they have no legal basis on which to stay in the United Kingdom and should make arrangements to leave, how long is it before the Home Office takes steps to ensure that they do, and what do those measures involve?

[James Brokenshire]

As my hon. Friend will know, we have established immigration enforcement and special command in the Home Office to focus rigorously on ensuring that such people are removed. However, as the Immigration Act makes clear, it is also necessary to create a system that makes it that much tougher for those people to gain access to benefits, and ensures that they are supported so that they are able to leave. That is a focus that the Government will continue to maintain.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

I echo the earlier comments of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey). I too was deeply saddened to hear of the death of West Midlands police and crime commissioner Bob Jones, and my thoughts and prayers are with Bob’s family and friends and his colleagues. He had given years of public service as a councillor, a member of the West Midlands police authority for more than 25 years, and then as the area’s first police and crime commissioner, and his contribution to keeping the people of the west midlands safe was very impressive. I know that he will be greatly missed.

Last week I visited Israel and the Occupied Palestinian territories to meet senior politicians from both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. During my visit, the bodies of the three abducted teenagers were discovered near Hebron. Since then, we have also heard about the terrible killing of a Palestinian teenager. No reason, belief or cause can justify the abduction and killing of innocent civilians.

In spite of that harrowing news, I was able to hold encouraging discussions on how best to combat modern slavery as part of our efforts to garner greater international co-operation on that important issue. Those discussions will feed into the substantial work that the Government are doing to stamp out the horrendous crime of modern slavery. As I said earlier, the Second Reading of the Modern Slavery Bill will be debated tomorrow, and the Bill’s progress will take place alongside the work that the Government are doing to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with this horrendous crime.

[Kerry McCarthy]

It is almost a year since my constituent Bijan Ebrahimi was horribly murdered, and we are still waiting for the results of the inquiry by the Independent Police Complaints Commission into the involvement of the police in the days leading up to his death. As the Home Secretary will know, a separate IPCC inquiry is proceeding, and the chief constable is currently suspended. Can she assure me that the IPCC has been given all the resources that it needs to bring both inquiries to a speedy conclusion?

[Mrs May]

I am sure the hon. Lady will recognise that as the cases that she has mentioned are live, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on the details. However, we are committed to ensuring that the IPCC has the resources that it needs to be able to investigate all serious and sensitive complaints against the police, and to carry out the rigorous scrutiny that the public expect. We have given the commission an extra £18 million and £10 million capital this year, so that it can deal with all serious and sensitive cases involving the police.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

T2. Will my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary say what steps she and her Department are taking to ensure the police use technology to a greater extent to improve their effectiveness?

[The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Damian Green)]

We are taking a number of steps, because my hon. Friend is right that digital technology makes the police more effective, not just by giving them access to information out on the street so they can make better decisions, but by enabling them to stay out on the streets and not have to return to the station. I mentioned the innovation fund earlier. Over £11 million of its first £20 million was allocated to IT projects that give police precisely the sort of technology they need to keep crime coming down.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

First, may I welcome the Home Secretary’s words about her visit and about the terrible loss of young lives in the middle east, and also her tribute to Bob Jones, who, as she knows, was a very kind and thoughtful man as well as a great public servant, and is a friend who will be missed by very many of us?

May I also join the counter-terrorism Minister, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), in remembering the 52 people who were killed on 7 July 2005 and pay tribute to their families and also the 770 people injured that day? That is why the whole House and the whole country recognises the continued need for vigilance against terrorism and those who want to kill, maim or divide us.

The Home Secretary will shortly outline her response to calls for action against historical child abuse, but let me ask her about the child protection system today. Since she changed the law, there has been a 75% drop in the number of people barred from working with children even though the number of offences against children has gone up. Why has it fallen so much, and is she worried about that?

[Mrs May]

There has, indeed, been a fall in the number of people who are automatically barred from working with children. That fall has taken place since 2010 because we did change the system: I think we restored some common sense to the barring regime, because the scheme is now focused on groups of people who work closely with children or other vulnerable groups. Unless they have committed the most serious offences, we no longer bar people who do not work with those groups, such as lorry drivers or bar staff. They were barred under the old scheme, and I do not think those bars did anything to help keep children safe, but anyone working closely with children is still barred and that is the important point.

[Yvette Cooper]

I have listened to the Home Secretary’s response and I have to say I find it very troubling. What is to stop a lorry driver who is convicted of a very serious offence applying to work with children or becoming a volunteer in the future? The figures show the numbers who have been barred have dropped from 11,000 to 2,600. That means there are people who have been convicted of sexually assaulting a child, possessing or distributing abusive images of children, grooming or trafficking who are not being barred from working with children in future, and there has also been a serious drop in the number of those who are barred on the basis of intelligence about grooming even where convictions have not been secured. I really would urge her to look again at this because I am concerned that this system is exposing children to risk.

[Mrs May]

We all want to ensure that the system we have makes sure that those who will be a risk to children are not able to work with children, but I repeat the point I made in response to the right hon. Lady’s first question: under the previous scheme a large number of people found themselves automatically barred who were not directly working with children and were not working closely with children. The new scheme that we have has, in fact, barred some people who would not have been barred under the old scheme. The Disclosure and Barring Service can now pick up and consider serious offences by those who apply for criminal records checks to work with children and those in the new update service, so I say to her that the scheme we have introduced does actually mean some who would not have been barred under the previous scheme are today barred from working with children.

[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

T3. The news of UK citizens becoming radicalised and then travelling abroad to participate in terrorism and conflicts is very worrying. Will my right hon. Friend outline how the Prevent strategy is being used to tackle the problem at source by stopping people being radicalised in the first place?

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

My hon. Friend rightly identifies the concerns in many communities at how Prevent is acting to safeguard them by working with families, communities and, indeed, with those front-line agencies that may be best able to pick up when someone is being radicalised and exploited. That focus remains, as well as, obviously, seeking to work with the internet industry to take down images that are seeking to promote terrorism or radicalisation.

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

T7. Over the past year I have been holding joint events with neighbourhood policing teams on dealing with antisocial behaviour, allowing constituents to share their concerns on a serious issue. Victims often report that they are left frustrated and concerned because despite the number of agencies involved, action is not always co-ordinated and progress can be slow. What will the Minister be doing about this?

[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Norman Baker)]

I refer the hon. Lady to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which does a great deal to improve matters and which I must say some of her colleagues opposed when it came before the House. It introduces a range of sensible, well-judged new powers that will enable some of the problems that have occurred locally to be diminished. The measures include cross-working between different bodies involved in crime prevention.

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

T4. The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims will know that the Independent police and crime commissioner in Gloucestershire has taken the opportunity in both of the past two years to put up council tax by 2% rather than have a proper look for savings. Will the Minister, in a spirit of public service broadcasting, set out some areas where other police forces have taken the opportunity to keep council tax down?

[Damian Green]

Many police and crime commissioners across the country have taken different decisions about taxation, and across the country we have seen crime coming down. Of course the great virtue of the system we have introduced is that if people in Gloucestershire or anywhere else are unhappy with the decisions taken by their PCC, they can, unlike under the old system, vote in 2016 to get rid of them. That is why introducing democracy into police governance is a good thing.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

T9. My constituent Peter Hobson works hard, but earning the minimum wage for a 40-hour week will never enable him to pass the income threshold for his wife to obtain a visa to live with him in the UK under the rules introduced by the Government two years ago. In a parliamentary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on 6 December 2012, the then Minister for Immigration committed the Government to keeping the impact of these rules on family life “under review”. Will the Home Secretary publish the outcome of that review?

[James Brokenshire]

I hear the point the hon. Gentleman has made, but he may also know that an outstanding case at the Court of Appeal is precisely examining these issues. The Government are awaiting the judgment on that case and, obviously, we will reflect further in the light of it.

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

T8. At the weekend, millions of people turned up to watch the Tour de France across Yorkshire, and millions are on today’s route. Will the Home Secretary join me in paying tribute to Yorkshire police forces and the Metropolitan police? Does she agree that the presence of the French gendarmerie, with their experience of manning cycle routes, is another emblematic symbol of the importance of European police co-operation?

[Damian Green]

I am very happy to agree with my hon. Friend, not least because I was in Yorkshire before the Tour started last week to see the police preparations for the operation, which were extremely thorough, as we would expect. The fact that everyone in Yorkshire—I hope it is the same for everyone in Essex and London today—was able to enjoy a peaceful event, with the world watching us, is a tribute to the calm and well-ordered way the British police go about their business.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I understand that the National Crime Agency has suggested to chief constables that they should think carefully about requesting a registered intermediary. The number of requests has increased, and with that, of course, have come consequent costs to police budgets. Does the Home Secretary not think that the way forward might be a central budget for intermediaries requested by the police, so that the best evidence can always be obtained from vulnerable witnesses?

[Damian Green]

The hon. Lady makes a reasonable point, because clearly registered intermediaries do a good job. I will look at the details of what she says the NCA is saying, because the system does not appear to be working badly. I will certainly look at any details she may care to provide me with.

[Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)]

Does the Home Secretary agree that essential to restoring the public’s confidence in the immigration system is not just counting people into the UK, but counting them out of the UK? What progress is being made on that?

[Mrs May]

I can tell my right hon. Friend that this Government are committed to introducing exit checks by the time of the next general election. We have a programme that is working well; we already receive a significant amount of information on people exiting the country from the advance passenger information, provided through the airline industry. I have had discussions with representatives of the rail industry and our ports on how we can ensure that we are also getting exit checks for those who travel out of this country by rail and by sea.

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

I have been asked to raise this question by my constituents, Mr and Mrs Egan, who are foster parents. Their foster child had a passport which, the agency acknowledges, was handed in and destroyed. Apparently he cannot get another one until his natural father completes a lost or stolen form. The father is in Kurdistan and cannot be traced. As things stand, the child will have to wait three years until the destroyed passport expires before they can have another one. I am sure that this is not what anyone intends to happen, but the consequence is that the child will end up in emergency care instead of being on holiday with his foster parents. Will the Minister take a look into that case?

[James Brokenshire]

This is obviously a complex case, but I recognise the issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised. If he shares some further details with me, I will investigate further.

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

Human trafficking is an abhorrent crime, and I warmly welcome the Modern Slavery Bill. Will the Home Secretary listen carefully to the suggestions from UNICEF that it is important to make child trafficking a particularly serious offence with particularly severe penalties?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

The Modern Slavery Bill introduces the stiffest penalty of life imprisonment for anyone convicted of the offences listed in the Bill, and that includes anyone committing those offences to a child. I am determined that we do not get into a situation where the defence has further arguments it can put forward by arguing over the age or possible age of a child which might mean the perpetrator of this heinous crime not being found guilty and not being convicted and receiving life imprisonment. I am convinced that the offences as listed cover the child exploitation cases that have been raised. I am also determined to bring this Bill forward in this Session so that we can convict people.

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

Can the Minister confirm whether the Glasgow passport office offers a full passport service? If the answer is yes, will he explain why my constituents have been directed to offices as far afield as Belfast, Durham and Peterborough to pick up their passports? If the answer is no, will he tell me why does it not offer such a service?

[James Brokenshire]

Many passport offices are handling the applications that are coming through. Applications are being routed to different offices. Our focus is on ensuring that the current excessive workload is being dealt with effectively. Indeed, the Passport Office is rising to that challenge, with the output rising week on week, and our focus remains on continuing that performance.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Public understanding and co-operation in the fight against terrorism is absolutely vital, yet at the moment we have five tiers of terrorism threat level, ranging from “low” to “critical”. Is the Minister of State confident that the public understand how they should respond when the threat level goes up and down?

[James Brokenshire]

We do have different threat levels, which are, I think, recognised and understood. Clearly, it is a question of communicating where there is a change in the threat level, and we do keep these issues under careful review.

[Mrs Linda Riordan (Halifax) (Lab/Co-op)]

As many as one in four road accidents are caused by drivers either speaking or texting on their mobiles. What work is being done to step up prosecutions for this very dangerous and life-threatening activity?

[Norman Baker]

That is a matter I take very seriously, not least because of my previous role in the Department for Transport. We are engaged with mobile phone companies on a whole range of issues to ensure that their products are responsibly used, but the hon. Lady makes a valid point, which I will happily take forward. If she has any particular suggestions, I would be happy to hear them

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Will the Home Secretary undertake to review the workings of police information notices, or PINs? Thousands have been issued by constabularies, including to myself, but in too many cases they do not even follow the Association of Chief Police Officers guidance, to the extent that people are not even aware that they are under investigation and therefore cannot defend themselves.

[Damian Green]

I am always happy to continue to look at the PINs system and how it is operating. I am very aware that my hon. Friend has had his own issues with the Sussex police in this regard and I am happy to keep it under close review.

[Mr Speaker]

Last but not least, I call Kelvin Hopkins.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

Alcohol continues to be implicated in a high proportion of crime, especially crimes of violence. When will the Government take effective steps to reduce levels of alcohol abuse and the associated crime?

[Norman Baker]

We are taking a large number of steps to deal with alcohol abuse, including the introduction of late-night levies, including the local action areas and the early morning restriction orders. We are also dealing with the industry and securing voluntary action from it. In fact, I am meeting the industry in about 45 minutes to see what progress has been made.

Child Abuse

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

15:35

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the sexual abuse of children, allegations that evidence of the sexual abuse of children was suppressed by people in positions of power, and the Government’s intended response.

I want to address two important public concerns: first, that in the 1980s the Home Office failed to act on allegations of child sex abuse; and, secondly, that public bodies and other important institutions have failed to take seriously their duty of care towards children. I also want to set out three important principles. First, we will do everything we can to allow the full investigation of child abuse and the prosecution of its perpetrators, and we will do nothing to jeopardise those aims. Secondly, where possible the Government will adopt a presumption of maximum transparency. Thirdly, we will make sure that wherever individuals and institutions have failed to protect children from harm, we will expose those failures and learn the lessons.

Concern that the Home Office failed to act on allegations of child abuse in the 1980s relates mainly to information provided to the Department by the late Geoffrey Dickens, who was a Member of this House between 1979 and 1995. As the House will be aware, in February 2013, in response to a parliamentary question from the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), the permanent secretary at the Home Office, Mark Sedwill, commissioned an investigation by an independent expert into information that the Home Office received in relation to child abuse allegations, including information provided by Mr Dickens. In order to be confident that all relevant information was included, the investigation reviewed all relevant papers available relating to child abuse between 1979 and 1999.

The investigation reported last year, and its executive summary was published on 1 August 2013. It concluded that there was no single “Dickens dossier”, but that there had been letters from Mr Dickens to several Home Secretaries over several years that contained allegations of sexual offences against children. Copies of the letters had not been kept, but the investigator found evidence that the information Mr Dickens had provided had been considered and matters requiring investigation had been referred to the police. In total, the investigator found 13 items of information about alleged child abuse. The police already knew about nine of those items, and the remaining four were passed by the Home Office to the police immediately. The investigation found that 114 potentially relevant files were not available. Those are presumed by the Home Office and the investigator to be destroyed, missing or not found, although the investigator made clear that he found no evidence to suggest that the files had been removed or destroyed inappropriately.

The investigation found no record of specific allegations by Mr Dickens of child sex abuse by prominent public figures. On completion of the investigation, the Home Office passed the full text of its interim report and final report, along with accompanying information and material, to the police for them to consider as part of their ongoing criminal investigations.

As Mark Sedwill has said, the investigator recorded that he had unrestricted access to Home Office records and he received full co-operation from Home Office officials. The investigator was satisfied that the Home Office passed all credible information about child abuse in the time period, from Mr Dickens and elsewhere, to the police so it could be investigated properly.

I believe that the permanent secretary, in listening to the allegations made by the hon. Member for West Bromwich East and ordering an independent investigation, did all the right things. I am confident that the work he commissioned was carried out in good faith, but with such serious allegations the public need to have complete confidence in the integrity of the investigation’s findings. I have, therefore, today appointed Peter Wanless, the chief executive of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, to lead a review not just of the investigation commissioned by Mark Sedwill, but of how the police and prosecutors handled any related information that was handed to them. Peter Wanless will be supported in this work by an appropriate senior legal figure, who will be appointed by the permanent secretary. Where the findings of the review relate to the Director of Public Prosecutions, it will report to the Attorney-General, as well as to me.

I will ask the review team to advise my officials on what redactions to the full investigation report might be needed in order that, in the interests of transparency, it can be published without jeopardising any future criminal investigations or trials. I expect the review to conclude within eight to 10 weeks, and I will place a copy of its terms of reference in the House Library today.

In addition to the allegations made by Geoffrey Dickens, there have also been allegations relating to an organisation called the Paedophile Information Exchange, a paedophile campaign group that was disbanded in 1984. In response to another query from the hon. Member for West Bromwich East, the permanent secretary commissioned another independent investigation in January this year into whether the Home Office had ever directly or indirectly funded PIE. That investigation concluded that the Home Office had not done so, and I will place a copy of the investigation’s findings in the House Library today. To ensure complete public confidence in the work, however, I have also asked Peter Wanless to look at that investigation as part of his review.

I now turn to public concern that a variety of public bodies and other important institutions have failed to take seriously their duty of care towards children. In recent years, we have seen appalling cases of organised and persistent child sex abuse, including abuse by celebrities such as Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris, as well as the systematic abuse of vulnerable girls in Derby, Rochdale, Oxford and other towns and cities. Some of those cases have exposed a failure by public bodies to take their duty of care seriously, and some have shown that the organisations responsible for protecting children from abuse—including the police, social services and schools—have failed to work together properly.

That is why, in April 2013, the Government established the national group to tackle sexual violence against children and vulnerable people, which is led by my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Prevention. That cross-Government group was established to learn the lessons from some of the cases I have mentioned and the resulting reviews and inquiries. As a result of its work, we now have better guidance for the police and prosecutors, new powers for the police to get information from hotels that are used for child sexual exploitation, and better identification of children at risk of exploitation through the use of local multi-agency safeguarding hubs. In the normal course of its work the group will publish further proposals to protect children from abuse.

I know that in recent months many Members of the House from all parties have campaigned for an independent, overarching inquiry into historical allegations of child abuse. In my correspondence with the seven Members of Parliament who wrote to me about the campaign—the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) and for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), my hon. Friends the Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith), and the hon. Members for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), for Wells (Tessa Munt), and for West Bromwich East—I made it clear that the Government did not rule out such an inquiry.

I can now tell the House that the Government will establish an independent inquiry panel of experts in the law and child protection to consider whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse. The inquiry panel will be chaired by an appropriately senior and experienced figure. It will begin its work as soon as possible after the appointment of the chairman and other members of the panel. Given the scope of its work, it is not likely to report before the general election, but I will make sure that it provides an update on its progress to Parliament before May next year. I will report back to the House when the inquiry panel chairman has been appointed and the full terms of reference have been agreed.

The inquiry will, like the inquiries into Hillsborough and the murder of Daniel Morgan, be a non-statutory panel inquiry. That means that it can begin its work sooner and, because the basis of its early work will be a review of documentary evidence rather than interviews with witnesses who might themselves still be subject to criminal investigations, it will be less likely to prejudice those investigations. I want to be clear, however, that the inquiry panel will have access to all the Government papers, reviews and reports that it needs. Subject to the constraints imposed by any criminal investigations, it will be free to call witnesses from organisations in the public and private sectors, and in wider civil society. I want to make it clear that if the inquiry panel chairman deems it necessary, the Government are prepared to convert it into a full public inquiry, in line with the Inquiries Act 2005.

I began my statement by saying that I wanted to address dual concerns: the concern that, in the past, the Home Office failed to act on information it received, and more broadly the concern that public bodies and other institutions have failed to protect children from sexual abuse. I believe that the measures that I have announced today address those concerns. I also said that I wanted the work that we are doing to reflect three principles. First, our priority must be the prosecution of the people behind these disgusting crimes. Secondly, wherever possible and consistent with the need to prosecute, we will adopt a presumption of maximum transparency. Thirdly, where there has been a failure to protect children from abuse, we will expose it and learn from it. I believe that the measures announced today reflect those important principles, and I commend this statement to the House.

15:46

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I thank the Home Secretary for sight of her statement. Child abuse is a terrible, devastating crime that traumatises children when they are at their most vulnerable and ruins lives. Perpetrators need to be stopped and brought to justice. Too often, the system has failed young victims, not hearing or believing them when they cried out for help, and failing to protect them from those who sought to harm them. There have been particularly troubling cases of abuse involving powerful people and celebrities, and the failure of institutions to act. As Members in all parts of the House and from all parties have made clear, when allegations go to the heart of Whitehall or Westminster, it is even more important to demonstrate that strong action will be taken to find out the truth and get justice for the victims.

The Home Secretary is right to announce today that she has changed her position on and response to child abuse, but I want to press her on the detail. We need three things: justice and support for victims; the truth about what happened and how the Home Office and others responded; and stronger child protection and reforms for the future. First, any allegation that a child was abused, even decades ago, must be thoroughly investigated by the police. Will she tell us whether all the allegations uncovered or put forward in any of these investigations will be covered by Operation Fernbridge? Will the files that she said had been passed to the police go to Operation Fernbridge? We understand that it has only seven full-time officers working on it. Does she think that they have the resources and investigators they need? She referred to the importance of prosecutions when there have been child sexual offences. She will know that prosecutions have dropped in recent years. Does she believe that that is cause for concern, when recorded offences have increased?

Secondly, we need to know what happened when the allegations were first made decades ago. The Home Secretary will know that former Cabinet Ministers have said that there may have been a cover-up. The previous response from the Home Office was not adequate; the 2013 review to which she referred was not announced to Parliament, did not reveal that more than 100 files had gone missing, and has never been published. Will she tell the House whether she or other Ministers saw that review, and whether they were told about the missing files?

I welcome the involvement of Peter Wanless, who is well respected, but will the Home Secretary clarify whether this is simply a review of a review, or whether it will look again at the original material? Will this review have the power to call for further information, range more widely, and interview witnesses if necessary? She talked about publication of the review; does she mean the original 2013 review, the new review, or both? It would be very helpful to have transparency.

Thirdly, as the Home Secretary will know, I raised the issue of the need for an overarching inquiry directly with her in Parliament 18 months ago, when she made a statement about abuse in care homes in north Wales. She and the Prime Minister rejected the need for such an inquiry at the time, but I welcome her agreement to it now. There is currently a range of reviews and investigations in care homes, the BBC, the NHS and now in the Home Office. Also, more recently, there is an inquiry into events in Rochdale and Rotherham. At their heart, they all have a similar problem: child victims were not listened to, heard or protected, and too many institutions let children down. Reform of those individual institutions must not be delayed, but isolated reforms are not enough. An inquiry needs to draw together the full picture to look at the institutional failures of the past and to examine the child protection systems that we have in place that may continue to fail children today. An inquiry must also be able to take evidence from the public, in public, as the Hillsborough review was able to do. I welcome her comments on that and her decision to keep under review whether an inquiry has the powers it needs and whether a public inquiry is needed.

An inquiry must also cover the child protection system in operation today. The Home Secretary’s answer in Question Time to my question on the 75% drop in the number of criminals barred from working with children suggests that the Home Office is still too complacent in that area. I urge her to include the vetting and barring system and the current child protection system in the overarching review. It is important that we do not have systems in place that store up future child protection problems.

The cases that have emerged involving child abuse and sexual assaults by high-profile, powerful people and celebrities have been deeply disturbing, as has the failure of the system to stop them and to protect children and young people today. Previously, the Home Office had not done enough to respond, but I welcome the further steps that the Home Secretary has announced today. She will understand that that is why we seek assurances that the investigations will now be strong enough. She and I will agree that we need justice for victims, the truth about what happened and a stronger system of child protection for the future. People need to have confidence that the process will deliver justice for past victims and protect children in the future.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady shares my concern to ensure that we have proper safeguards and protection for children in the future and that not only are lessons learned but that action is taken as a result of those lessons being learned following the various reviews into both historical and more recent cases of child sexual exploitation.

The right hon. Lady asked whether all the matters that are felt to be for the police to investigate will be matters for Operation Fernbridge. Actually, a number of investigations are taking place across the country into historical cases of child abuse; it is not appropriate that all those investigations will be in relation to Operation Fernbridge. The National Crime Agency, for example, is leading on Operation Pallial, which is the investigation into potential sexual abuse in children’s care homes in north Wales, and other investigations are taking place elsewhere. All allegations do not necessarily go to a single force; they go to whichever force is the most appropriate to deal with the particular cases and to ensure that people can be brought to justice.

The right hon. Lady asked about the number of prosecutions and offences, which is a matter that is most properly for my right hon. and learned Friend, the Attorney-General, but she will have noticed that he is on the Treasury Bench and has noted her comments.

My right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims answered a parliamentary question in 2013—in October 2013, I think—in which reference was made to the missing 114 files.

The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) asked what I had seen as Home Secretary. I saw the executive summary of both the interim report and the final report commissioned by Mark Sedwill. I did not see the full report for very good reason: the matters that lay behind the report were allegations that senior Members of Parliament—and, in particular, senior Conservative Members of Parliament —may have been involved in those activities. I therefore thought that it was absolutely right and proper that the commissioning of the investigation and the work that was done should be led by the permanent secretary at the Home Office, not by a Conservative politician.

The right hon. Lady asked a number of questions about lessons learnt. Some of those lessons are already being acted on. As I mentioned, the national group that my hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Prevention is leading has already brought forward proposals on how the police and prosecutors could better handle these matters, and it will continue with its work. That will of course feed into the work of the wider inquiry panel that I am setting up. I want it to look widely at the question of the protection of children. I want it to ensure that we can be confident that in future people will not look back to today and say, “If only they had introduced this measure or that measure.” We must ensure that the lessons that come out of the various reviews that are taking place are not only properly learned, but acted on.

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

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement and her setting up of the independent inquiry panel. She set out three clear principles. The most important of those principles is that the panel should do nothing that prevents these heinous crimes from being properly investigated and those who are guilty of them from being prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

[Mrs May]

Although it is right that we look at the lessons that need to be learned, I am sure that the view shared across the whole House is that it is absolutely essential that we do nothing that could get in the way of prosecuting the perpetrators of these appalling crimes. That is why it is right to set this review up as an inquiry panel so that it can begin its work without jeopardising the criminal investigations taking place.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

Frightened survivors of child abuse deserve the truth. I hope and think that they will welcome today’s statement, particularly the announcement that they will have access to all documentation. Will the inquiry team be able to see the files of the special branch, the intelligence services and any submissions made to previous Prime Ministers on people such as Sir Peter Hayman and others?

[Mrs May]

May I first commend the hon. Gentleman for the work he has done over a number of years on these issues? He and a number of other hon. Members and hon. Friends have been relentless in their pursuit of these issues and their determination to bring truth and justice for the victims. As I said in my statement, my intention is that the fullest possible access should be made to Government papers in relation to these matters. As I am sure he and others will recognise, where there are issues relating to who can have access to some files, we will need to have an appropriate means of ensuring that the information is available to the inquiry panel. However, as I have said, I am looking to appoint a very senior figure to chair the panel, so I expect it to be possible to ensure that all Government papers are available.

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

I thank the Home Secretary for her swift and decisive action in this case. Having seen my constituent Mr Tom Perry suffer for years to bring his abusers at Caldicott school to justice, resulting in an eight-year custodial sentence at the beginning of this year for its former headmaster, Peter Wright, may I urge her to ensure that these investigations are expedited? As there is still no duty to report suspected abuse, will she ask the inquiries to look again at mandatory reporting of suspected abuse in regulated activities? I have already discussed that with the Secretary of State for Education and hope that the Home Secretary will take it up as well.

[Mrs May]

I commend my right hon. Friend for her comments. Obviously she has seen a very specific case and knows how long it has taken her constituent to find justice for the treatment that he received. I will indeed raise the specific issue with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, but it is exactly those sorts of issues that I expect the inquiry panel to look at: namely, are there any gaps in what we currently do that mean we are not properly protecting children and, if there are, what appropriate mechanisms could be put in place to ensure that those gaps are filled?

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

While welcoming today’s announcements by the Home Secretary and the observations by her shadow, may I press her on the issue of record keeping? When I became Home Secretary, it became very clear to me—I was asking for information in a quite unrelated area—that there had been a downgrading of the archiving and record-keeping functions of the Home Office. I say that in a non-partisan way, because this issue has continued and is made more complicated in the so-called digital age. Will the Home Secretary ensure that both panels look very carefully—taking advice, if necessary, from the head of the National Archives—at the adequacy or, I am sure, inadequacy of existing mechanisms and resources for ensuring that proper records are kept, particularly in areas such as this?

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Of course the keeping of proper records is very important. Over the years that we are dealing with, there have been a number of approaches to record keeping within the Home Office and, indeed, within other Government Departments. In the 1980s, the system was changed to the so-called Grigg system. Subsequently, the National Archives has issued guidance to Government Departments on the approach that they should take to the keeping of records. Of course, that is exactly the sort of issue that I expect could be part of the inquiry’s work.

[Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)]

I warmly welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. Whatever disagreements we may have, she has always been outspoken in confronting complacency and corruption wherever she finds it. When former public servants give evidence to the inquiry panel, will they be released from any obligations they may have under gagging clauses in severance agreements or, where necessary, the Official Secrets Act?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. It is my intention that people should have the ability to speak openly in giving evidence to the inquiry panel if they are called as witnesses, or in giving written evidence if they so wish. I will have to look at the legal issues around the Official Secrets Act, but it is intended that everybody should have the ability to speak openly. Only if people can speak openly will we get to the bottom of these matters.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the Home Secretary’s decision to set up the various inquiries. Will she pass on my thanks to Mark Sedwill for the very full letter that he sent to me and the Home Affairs Committee? It is the first time that a Home Office letter has arrived before the deadline. As she knows, we will be examining Mr Sedwill tomorrow. In his letter, he said that the head of the inquiry would be an independent legal figure. The Home Secretary has just announced that it will be Mr Wanless, assisted by a legal figure. Is that correct? Has there been a change, then, since Saturday night? What steps did the Home Secretary take when she discovered that the 114 files were missing?

[Mrs May]

On the way in which the review is being set up, yes, we have decided on a slightly different approach. The permanent secretary will be appointing a senior legal figure, as he has said. I felt that it was appropriate to ask for somebody to lead the inquiry who was involved in child protection matters and who was independent in a different way, working with the senior legal figure. Peter Wanless will be leading it, but a senior legal figure will be appointed, and the permanent secretary will make the announcement in due course.

On the 114 files that have not been found, that figure was first given in a parliamentary answer last October, and it was repeated in the very full letter that Mark Sedwill gave to the right hon. Gentleman. The investigator was unable to say what had happened to those files—that is precisely one of the problems. There is no evidence as to whether the files were destroyed or have been mislaid. Obviously, the new review will be able to go back over the work that the investigator did to see whether any further evidence can be adduced.

[Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)]

Having sadly had to deal with a number of historic child sex abuse cases in my time as a Law Officer, may I assure the Home Secretary that the victims of these hideous crimes suffer from them well into their adulthood and often into middle and old age, so the need to bring to justice those who have committed these terrible crimes is surely uncontroversial. Will the Home Secretary make sure that those who have evidence to give or allegations to make can do so in the most convenient form possible—that is, to one central police force which masterminds the national investigation—rather than having a whole host of police forces collecting the information and giving it to the Crown Prosecution Service? At the moment, there seems to be a drip-feed of insinuation, which is causing a lot of distress to innocent people. What we need to see is the guilty prosecuted and brought to justice, rather than the innocent having their reputations trashed.

[Mrs May]

I take very seriously the point made by my hon. and learned Friend. In a sense, we are dealing with two types of allegations. The first are allegations that may be made in cases relating to the information given to the Home Office in the 1980s. There are also allegations about activities at children’s homes in different parts of the country. I will reflect on my hon. and learned Friend’s comment about the appropriate way in which those allegations can be made and properly investigated. I also echo his other point, because I think we have all seen, in interviews given by people who are well into their middle age or older and who were abused as children, that this is not a matter that goes away. It is not something that can be forgotten. It lasts with people for the rest of their lives and we owe it to them to give them truth and justice.

[Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. Survivors of child sex abuse are very brave in dealing with the horrific attacks that they have had to endure. How will the proposed inquiry engage with and thoroughly involve the victims of child sex abuse?

[Mrs May]

I think it would be most appropriate for the chairman and panel themselves to decide what to do on that matter, rather than Government trying to tell them what to do. Once the name of the chairman is announced, I am sure that Members of this House who have experience of dealing with these matters will wish to make their views known, but I think it is best to leave it to the chairman and panel to identify how they wish to work and take evidence and comments from people. May I commend the hon. Gentleman, who is another Member of this House who has done a great deal of work on this matter in trying to uncover the truth about those who have been victims?

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

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement of the overarching inquiry, which is important because if we wish to empower children to resist and report child sex abuse, we need to demonstrate that as adults we are prepared to talk openly about these things. Will she give her view on whether it is correct that no Government record should be destroyed without a record of its being destroyed being kept? If that is what has happened in these 114 cases, is she confident that it is not still happening, and is she satisfied that the Lord Chancellor’s code of practice on the management of records— to which I think the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) referred—is actually being complied with and, indeed, that it is adequate for the purpose?

[Mrs May]

As I indicated in response to the right hon. Member for Blackburn, the panel may well look at the question of record keeping. It is right that there are certain processes in place, as I also indicated in my earlier response. One of the issues we are dealing with is that, over the years and the time period we are looking at, a number of different approaches to record keeping were taken by Government Departments. It is, I think, best practice to identify what has happened to particular records when they are identified, but the practice of what is done has varied over time. That is one of the aspects that we will obviously need to consider.

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I very much welcome the announcement of the panels of inquiry, but may I ask the right hon. Lady a specific question about a north Wales matter? Some 18 months ago, Mrs Justice Macur was appointed to look at the Waterhouse inquiry, specifically to see whether its remit was too narrow and whether there was evidence of wider sexual abuse. She completed her work in July last year; since then, there has been silence. Will the right hon. Lady look into that matter, and advise the House when the findings will be published?

[Mrs May]

I am very happy to do that, and to write to the right hon. Gentleman about the outcome of my inquiry. In relation to certain matters in north Wales, I am obviously aware that Operation Pallial, a criminal investigation, is also taking place. That may be affecting the issue, but I will certainly look into it.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

I strongly welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement of the inquiry. For too long, survivors of appalling abuse have been denied the transparency and justice they deserve, and in Oxford we know too well the long-term toll that that can take. For that reason, we must not raise false hopes today. Does the Secretary of State agree that, in addition to access to Government and police papers, transparency from local authorities will be essential to achieving a just and effective inquiry? How does she intend to achieve such transparency?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is also well placed to comment on these matters. She has done a considerable amount of work, particularly following the recent cases of child sexual exploitation and grooming in her constituency and elsewhere in Oxford, under the Thames Valley police. She is right: I intend the terms of reference for the panel of inquiry to be drawn quite widely, and they will therefore relate not just to central Government papers. I will publish the terms of reference in due course, when it has been possible to discuss them with the appointed chairman. She is also right that local authorities, with both their direct responsibilities for child protection and their responsibilities for placing children in care of various sorts, will be an important source of information.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Whatever investigations and inquiries take place in the coming months and possibly years, will the Home Secretary ensure that there is support for victims, including, crucially, counselling, which for many years has been far too difficult for both children and adults to access? Given the way in which child abuse is sometimes discussed publicly, will she work closely with ministerial colleagues to make sure that the child protection system and those working in child protection are not in any way undermined by inquiries into historical abuse?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman’s question about counselling support for victims is more appropriate for other Departments to consider, but I will certainly raise it with my colleagues. In relation to the way in which we discuss this issue, he is right that many people are working assiduously to protect and safeguard children, and I in no way wish to undermine the work that they are doing. It is important for us to look at a number of allegations and cases where people have been prosecuted for historical abuse, but we have of course seen more recent cases of abuse—I mentioned a number of areas in my statement—and it is important for us to learn from those cases to ensure that we have the best systems in place to provide the protection for children that we all want.

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

I thank my right hon. Friend for her statement. Does she not agree that the situation has dramatically improved since, say, 2003? The public attitude has improved, and legal changes have led to improvements; in fact, the authorities are now in a position to be proactive when they get the chance and when information is brought forward. Does she agree that agencies such as the police and social services should have a legal obligation to provide information to the inquiry on request, and to act in a positive manner towards it?

[Mrs May]

I certainly agree with my hon. Friend that all agencies should act constructively and positively in relation to the inquiry—I encourage them to do so—because that is how we can get to the truth. We have seen that in similar inquiry panels that have taken place. On his first point, I commend my hon. Friend for the work that he has done over many years in looking at the legislative structure, dealing with the issues and working with the police to ensure that the best possible support is given in relation to the activities of paedophiles. Most recently, we have of course seen the new offence of possessing paedophile manuals in the Serious Crime Bill.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell (Blyth Valley) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary look at Operation Rose in Northumberland, which took place a few years ago? It is becoming more apparent that it was a whitewash as more victims come forward each day and each month.

[Mrs May]

I am happy to take away the point that the hon. Gentleman raises. It is precisely because I want to ensure that we cover all the cases that have come up that I think it is important that the terms of the inquiry panel are drawn quite widely. I will look into the matter that he raises.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The country will welcome the principles behind my right hon. Friend’s reviews and panel. Will she, along with other Departments, make it clear to all children, especially looked-after children, that if they have worries that they cannot communicate to the people who are looking after them, there is an outside place to which they can go with confidence to talk about their worries?

On archives, may I refer my right hon. Friend to the letter that she has received from Dr Richard Stone—I do not expect her to respond to it this afternoon—about the hidden stories of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry? As a member of the inquiry, he did not have access to the papers while trying to implement the recommendations. It seems to me to be important that we learn the lessons from that.

[Mrs May]

I will obviously look carefully at the letter to which my hon. Friend refers and at examples from other inquiries that have taken place.

It is important that young people who are victims of sexual abuse feel able to go somewhere to report it. As has been said by more than one Member today, I hope the fact that we are talking about this matter and our acknowledgement of what has happened to young people in the past and the importance of dealing with it will give victims greater confidence that if they come forward, they will be listened to and heard.

We have seen recent cases that have been taken forward by police forces. Sadly, I see the list of the operations that the police are taking forward to deal with child sexual exploitation and grooming up and down the country. Frankly, the number of cases is shocking. Again, as young people see those cases being dealt with, hopefully it will give them the confidence to come forward if they have been victims of abuse.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

As well as setting off these reviews by the great and the good, the so-called independent experts and the people that are known to the Government, would it not be more convincing if the Home Secretary had said, “I’m going to do something else. I’m going to make sure that all those cuts in the public sector and in local authorities are reversed, and that people who deal with child abuse every single day get a decent pay rise”? That is what the Government ought to do if they really mean it.

[Mrs May]

This Government have a record of being willing to deal with and address issues of child sexual exploitation. I particularly commend the work that was done by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) as Minister for children on the strategy to deal with child exploitation, which is having an impact. Of course the Government must constantly look at whether we can do more. That is why it is important to have the panel to look at the lessons learned.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

May I add my welcome for the measures that the Home Secretary has announced? They will offer great reassurance to the public. It is important that all public institutions, including Parliament and the NHS, are held to account. In that respect, will she confirm that the inquiry will have full access to information from quasi-public bodies, such as the BBC, as well as from institutions where we know significant child abuse has taken place, such as the Church?

[Mrs May]

As I have said, the terms of reference will be published in due course. It is my intention that it should be a wide inquiry. It should therefore be possible for it to look not just at state institutions but at other bodies to see whether they have been protecting children appropriately or not, as the case may be.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

In the mid-1990s, a senior ex-Whip who had served in the 1970s told the BBC that the Whips Office routinely helped MPs with scandals, including those, in his own words, “involving small boys”, and that they did so to exert control over those individuals and prevent problems for the Government. That is just one powerful example of how personal and political interests can conspire to prevent justice from happening. May we have a full commitment that the inquiry will consider not just the police and social services but what happens at the heart of power, and that if those systems are found to exist today, they will be overturned, whether or not it makes life uncomfortable for political parties, Parliament or the Government?

[Mrs May]

It is not my intention that political parties be outside the scope of the inquiry. It has to be wide-ranging and it has to look at every area where it is possible that people have been guilty of abuse. We need to learn lessons to ensure that the systems we have in place are able to identify that and deal with it appropriately.

[Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)]

I welcome the reviews announced by the Home Secretary today. We want those reviews to be thorough, but we do not want another Chilcot—we do not want them to drag on interminably. May we be assured that there will be some form of time scale by which they will be expected to report? As far as the 114 missing files are concerned, they are either destroyed, missing or not found. It seems to me that somebody believes they may still be there. Will the Home Secretary assure the House that somebody is still looking for the files and that no stone will be left unturned until we know exactly where they are?

[Mrs May]

On the timetable, as I indicated, I would expect the inquiry panel work to go beyond the general election. It is necessary that it has sufficient time to do its job properly and comprehensively, but I undertake to have a progress update report presented to Parliament before May 2015. The deadline or final timetable is something that needs to be discussed with the chairman of the panel, because it will be partly determined by the way they intend to operate the work of the panel. It will also be determined by the progress of the criminal investigations, because we do not want to jeopardise them.

The investigator certainly did not find any evidence that the files were, in any shape or form, in existence, but I think what I am saying is that there is no categorical evidence that they had been destroyed, because that had not been recorded—hence the issues that have been raised about the recording of matters relating to records.

[Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)]

Sir Jimmy Savile was the honoured invited guest at 11 new year’s eve parties hosted by a Prime Minister. He was given the keys to two hospitals by Health Ministers. He was a trusted friend of royalty. Can we know whether the intelligence services had surveillance on this man? If they did put in reports, why was no action taken on them?

[Mrs May]

In response to an earlier question, I addressed the issue of my expectation of the panel being able to have as much access to Government papers as possible. On the wider issue the hon. Gentleman raises, this is precisely why we need to look back at these cases and ask why somebody who was serially abusing a large number of people—children and adults—over a period of time was able to do so while continuing to be feted by society at large.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The Home Secretary was right to be cautious about an overarching inquiry. Is she now convinced that an inquiry that covers multiple decades and multiple institutions, in the public sector and outside, will be sufficiently focused and effective? The last thing we want is for the inquiry to fail to draw a line for those who have suffered such horrors in their early years.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. There is often a tension between ensuring that a report or an inquiry can look as widely as is necessary to get to the truth, while at the same time ensuring that it does not continue for so long that it ceases to have relevance when it reports. I will be discussing this matter with the chairman of the inquiry to ensure that it can be conducted in such a manner that lessons can be learned sufficiently swiftly for action to be taken to ensure we are protecting children today.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

On behalf of nationalist Members, I welcome the inquiry and the other investigations that the Home Secretary has mentioned, but will she assure me that, where possible, she will keep the devolved Administrations informed of the progress of the inquests and work with them to ensure that we really get to the heart of the matter?

[Mrs May]

I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that we will talk to the devolved Administrations and work with them on the work of this inquiry. Some matters will cover England and Wales, and other matters are of a devolved nature, which makes it particularly important to work with the devolved Administrations.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

I read the executive summary of the 2013 review, according to which 114 files were said to have been lost or destroyed. The investigator says, however, that he looked only at what he called the central Home Office database. What about files that might be held by the Security Service or other agencies? Will the Home Secretary confirm that files held by such bodies and those held on other databases will be incorporated in the review?

[Mrs May]

I certainly think it important for other databases to be interrogated and looked into. As I indicated in response to an earlier question from the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), there are issues around access to certain matters that relate to secret and intelligence material. I am sure, however, that there are ways of ensuring that all appropriate material—whether it be appropriate for the review or for the inquiry panel—will be looked into.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

In the 1970s and ’80s, there was a confusion between sexual liberation and sexual exploitation, and that gave cover for the abuse of some children to escape challenge. Much progress has been made, but victims of child abuse are still being blamed for their own exploitation. Does the Home Secretary agree that if we are to make significant progress in protecting our children, the independent inquiry panel needs to look at current attitudes as well as understand historical attitudes?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady makes an important point about the atmosphere and attitudes against which these abuses took place. We need to be very clear about what amounts to abuse today. That is why, in a related context, the Home Office has run a “This is Abuse” campaign for teenagers to help them identify when abuse is taking place. Sadly, some might have seen abusive relationships that were portrayed to them as normal. We need to ensure that everybody understands what abuse is, and understands their ability to say no.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

The Home Secretary mentioned political parties. On alleged child abuse by past or present Members of Parliament, will she confirm whether the inquiry will consider any allegations or evidence held by the Whips?

[Mrs May]

The intention of the inquiry panel is to be able to look as widely as possible at these issues. I should perhaps clarify a point: the inquiry panel will not be conducting investigations into specific allegations, which would properly be matters for criminal investigations. It is looking across the board at how these matters have been approached in the past and asking the question—I intend this to be drawn quite widely—whether the proper protections for children were in place, and if not, whether those gaps still exist today, and if so, what we need to do to fill those gaps. I expect as much information as possible to be given to the panel to enable it to achieve that.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

In the course of doing constituency casework, every Member will come across vulnerable adults and children. Does the Home Secretary agree that Members of Parliament and caseworkers should undergo Criminal Records Bureau checks? We have legislated for everybody else in similar positions of responsibility to have those checks, so is it not time that we did so here, too?

[Mrs May]

There is, in a sense, a paradox here, in that a Member of Parliament can go into a school without a CRB check, but the inquiry panel will be considering how we can protect children, whether there are gaps anywhere, and whether we need to fill those gaps. I expect its report to identify areas in which the panel considers it necessary, potentially, to legislate further in order to protect children.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for—uniquely, it would seem—understanding the gravity of these never-ending revelations and the need for transparency and urgency in the investigation of them, and gently regretting the rather partisan approach taken by the shadow Home Secretary, which contrasts with the all-party spirit of the 141 Members who called for the inquiry.

Will the panel have the power to summon evidence and subpoena witnesses, will it be able to go where it needs to go, and, crucially, will it be able to trigger criminal investigations of anyone who is found to be responsible for covering up such acts, rather than just the perpetrators?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. I also commend him for the work that he has done for many years, and not just as Minister for Children: I remember how assiduous he was during our time in opposition in trying to ensure that children were properly protected, and that issues such as the abuse and exploitation of children. and their lack of safety, were taken into account and dealt with properly.

If the panel found allegations that it believed would be dealt with more appropriately by the police through a criminal investigation, I would expect the allegations to be passed to the police for that purpose. The panel will be able to call witnesses. Its initial structure will not enable it to require witnesses to come before it, and it will have to consider whether calling a witness would in any way jeopardise or prejudice a criminal investigation that was taking place if that individual was involved in the investigation. However, as I have said, if the chairman decides to recommend that the inquiry panel be turned into a full statutory inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005—which would, of course, have the right to require witnesses to come forward—we will make it absolutely clear that we will go down that route.

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

In the early 1990s, I interviewed seven young men in my constituency, all of whom had been victims of child abuse at Bryn Estyn in north Wales. None of them asked for compensation, but all of them said “We want someone to say sorry.” That was uppermost in their minds: they wanted someone to admit that what he or she had done was wrong.

I had to bring parliamentary business to a halt two nights running on the Floor of the House in order to get the main allegations contained in the then secret Jillings report into the public eye. Shortly afterwards a public inquiry was set up, and all talk of that was shut down for three years. I have given evidence to Operation Pallial, one of the inquiries that have been taking place. Can the Home Secretary give any time frame for when it might report? In my view, this has dragged on for far too long.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Lady has raised an important point. I cannot give her a time frame for Operation Pallial, in relation to its termination. Obviously it is ongoing, and is dealing with individuals and matters as it comes across them and is able to deal with them. However, I will write to her about what it has been doing and how long it thinks the process might take.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

The police are becoming increasingly successful at breaking up human trafficking rings. Adult victims of human trafficking are looked after in safe homes which are run safely and are the responsibility of the Ministry of Justice. Unfortunately, however, children are given to local authorities to be looked after, and there is evidence that they are often re-trafficked and abused again. Will the Home Secretary consider installing for children a system similar to the one that we have for adults?

[Mrs May]

The purpose of the child advocate trials that we are introducing is precisely to find out how we can best ensure that child victims of human trafficking are given the support and help that they need. As my hon. Friend has said—and he recognises this through the work that he has done, particularly when he was chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern day slavery—some youngsters sadly find themselves being trafficked again when in local authority care.

This is appalling. I am afraid that over the years this country can take no comfort at all from its record on children in local authority care, and we have seen many appalling cases as a result of that. I hope that the child advocate trials will show us where best practice is and how we can best support these children.

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s report, and may I suggest that one of the things the inquiry panel might look at is the adequacy, or otherwise, of multiagency activity in pursuing the point she has just made? She has talked twice now about the investigator having determined that files had not been removed deliberately or inappropriately, but she has also said the record of housekeeping on this matter has been varied. Can she tell the House how the investigator determined that these files were not removed deliberately or inappropriately, and if she cannot tell the House that, will the inquiry look specifically into that issue?

[Mrs May]

The review that will be taking place under the direction of Peter Wanless, the chief executive of the NSPCC, with the support I indicated earlier, will precisely be looking at the investigator’s review to see whether it was conducted properly and whether the information was properly dealt with, and will look at what the Home Office did in relation to the files and so forth. So it is a matter that will be looked at by the review of the review.

[Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her important and measured statement. With the apparent loss of in excess of about 100 Home Office documents that are relevant to this statement, current testimonies from past victims take on a greater importance. In view of that, is the Home Secretary satisfied that the police, and in particular the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, have the necessary powers to protect victims from ongoing blackmail? In particular, I gather that there are general concerns around the potential use of photographs and films from the 1970s and ’80s which have now been digitised in order to discourage victims from coming forward.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and, if I may, I will look into the specific issue he has raised about the films or videos from the 1970s which have been digitised. I am satisfied generally that CEOP does have the powers it needs, but he has raised a very specific issue and I will look into it and get back to him.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The three principles of justice for victims, transparency of process and learning the lessons are absolutely right and necessary, but does the Home Secretary not consider that they may not be sufficient unless there is a care package of support attached to the inquiry, because otherwise victims may still feel reluctant in coming forward? She referred earlier to it being for other Departments to look at that; I believe it is for hers.

[Mrs May]

It is, of course, right that the Home Office is establishing the inquiry panel, and we will be discussing with the inquiry panel what it considers will be necessary for it to be able to ensure it can undertake its investigations and review in the best possible way.

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

As someone who called for an overarching review, may I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement? Does she agree that one of the possible causes of the seeming culture of impunity that existed in the ’70s and ’80s was the fact that the courts made no adjustment whatsoever for the evidence of children and young people and there was a statutory requirement that juries in England and Wales had to be warned about the absence of corroborative evidence in sexual complaints?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend’s experience of matters relating to the courts is, of course, greater than mine, but I think he is absolutely right that one of the things that has developed over the years has been a willingness of the criminal justice system as a whole to recognise the need to put in place more specific support for those vulnerable witnesses, to ensure they are able to bring their evidence forward. Of course justice requires that the evidence that people give is appropriately challenged, but it is important that over the years—not just in issues relating to child abuse, but in some other matters as well—the courts have recognised the need to make sure that witnesses are not put off coming forward by what is going to be their experience at trial.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I am still a little unclear as to the scope of the Wanless review into the 114 missing files. The Home Secretary described it as a “review of the review”. Will it have the power to go further and take evidence from other people who may know something about the missing files that was not the subject of the original investigation in 2013?

[Mrs May]

I have put a copy of the terms of reference of the review in the Library, so it will be possible for the hon. Lady and others to see those. She described it as a review of the 114 files, but it is not a review of the 114 files; it is a review of all the work that was done by the investigator to see how the Home Office handled the letters from Geoffrey Dickens and other information that became known to it to ensure that it was handled appropriately. As I indicated, the review will be looking at other matters that relate to the police and prosecuting authorities. It will also look at whether further information is available in relation to the 114 files and whether the original review’s assessment of their significance was reasonable.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

Whether in private homes or public institutions, child sex abuse is, sadly, all too prevalent in British society. Therefore, will the Home Secretary look again, for current cases, at the tariff for serious sexual crimes, given that the current tariffs and sentences are clearly not working as a deterrent?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. This is a matter more properly for the Justice Secretary to look at, and I will ensure that it is raised with him.

[John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)]

Operation Fernbridge has been given details of the blocked 1988 investigation into child prostitution, sex rings, prominent people and children’s homes in Lambeth. Can we be certain that it has sufficient resources to see whether those files still exist—and if not, where they have gone—and to prosecute if possible? In addition, this year in Bassetlaw six people have come forward and made allegations of historical child abuse, but there have been no prosecutions, Nottinghamshire police have lost files and Nottinghamshire social services have destroyed files. Will that be in the remit of one of these investigations now taking place?

[Mrs May]

On the resources available to Operation Fernbridge, it is an operational matter for the commissioner to determine what resources are appropriate for the level of investigation that is necessary. I am sure that we all want the same thing: to ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice. The whole point of the inquiry panel is to look at lessons learned as a result of these various reviews of historical allegations that have taken place. Obviously, I would expect it to be wide ranging in ensuring that it is indeed identifying all the lessons that need to be learned and the actions that need to be taken.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am happy to call the hon. Gentleman if he can confirm on the record that he was here at the start.

[Jason McCartney]

Absolutely, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Good. I call Jason McCartney.

[Jason McCartney]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Much of Geoffrey Dickens’s former Huddersfield West seat was incorporated into my constituency, so there is much local interest in this in my part of the world. I very much welcome the announcement of today’s independent inquiry. Will the Home Secretary assure me that it will look into all the evidence and all the allegations, no matter how old?

[Mrs May]

The point is that the inquiry panel should be able to look at historical allegations and identify what lessons need to be learned. As I indicated in response to an earlier question, I think it is appropriate for me to make it clear again that it will not be for the inquiry panel to determine a particular allegation; if there is an allegation where a criminal investigation is more appropriate, it should be referred to the police for criminal investigation. It will, however, be looking across the board at these historical allegations and at why so many children in so many different environments—in the care of the state and in other areas—found themselves the victims of this abuse and apparently nothing was done to protect them properly.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Further to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), we know that special branch suppressed files alleging criminality in the Cyril Smith case. Allegations have been made that the intelligence services have been involved in the hushing up of police inquiries. Will the Home Secretary accept in terms, and tell the House today that she accepts completely, that without access to those records, including those of the intelligence services, this new inquiry will not be able to establish the truth?

[Mrs May]

I had hoped that I had made it clear to the House that it is my intention and expectation that all material, or Government papers, will be made available to the inquiry panel. The caveat that I put on that—I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and other right hon. and hon. Members will recognise this—is that if, when we are dealing with this material, intelligence matters are involved, certain care will have to be taken in the way in which that material is dealt with. I intend that, as far as possible, Government papers will be made available to the inquiry so that that inquiry can come to a proper determination.

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

I welcome the inquiry that the Home Secretary has announced. Much of the discussion that we have had today has been around historical cases. Is she confident that if such a bundle of documents were to be handed to her today, it would be treated in a much better manner?

[Mrs May]

I would hope that, if a similar bundle were handed in to the Home Office today, officials would ensure that those documents went to the police and were properly investigated. In the case of the material that came in to previous Home Secretaries, the evidence of the review was that material that should have been handed to the police was handed to the police, but we will be looking to ensure that that is what actually took place. Obviously, if such material were handed to the Home Office today, I would expect the Home Office to keep appropriate records and ensure that the police were taking those matters on board as appropriate.

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

May I press the Home Secretary on the issue of intelligence files? Is she confirming to the House that all special branch files that are not connected to national security will be made available?

[Mrs May]

I have indicated to the House that I would expect Government papers to be made available to the inquiry. I remind Members of the House that, where information is currently being used in a criminal investigation, we do not want the inquiry’s work in any way to jeopardise or prejudice criminal investigations that are taking place. I used a phrase in my statement about Government “making all papers available” to the inquiry. Obviously, it is for the chairman and the panel to determine how they wish to conduct the inquiry, but the Government will be open to the inquiry.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement today. Does she agree that although Mr Sedwill found no evidence that the 114 files that were not available had been removed or destroyed inappropriately, it does not in any way mean that it is not deeply concerning that those files have gone missing, nor does it in any way provide positive evidence that they were not inappropriately removed? It just means that no evidence was provided one way or the other.

[Mrs May]

The important point, as I understand it, is—I cannot find the exact phrase in my papers—whether those files were of significance. The reviewer looked at the issues in terms of the files being identified. Obviously, he was not able to look into the files themselves precisely because there does not appear to be a record of whether they had been destroyed, mislaid or simply not found. The purpose of having the review of the review is precisely so that it is possible to go back on those issues and to look at them again and see whether further information is available about those files—that is in the terms of reference of the review of the review—and whether the issue was dealt with properly by the investigator.

[Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)]

On 23 May 2012 at Prime Minister’s questions, I raised the issue of the abuse that took place at Medomsley detention centre. My constituent, John McCabe, was raped every day for nine months by guards and others inside and outside Medomsley. John has waived his anonymity and, because of his courage, 700 victims from the detention centre have come forward, and 70-plus detectives from County Durham police force are going through the evidence. What has always puzzled me is that much of the evidence that was available was already in the hands of the Home Office. Why did the Home Office not instigate the investigation? Does the Home Secretary not accept that the only way to get to the truth about the depths to which paedophile circles have infiltrated state systems is to cut to the chase and announce a public inquiry today?

[Mrs May]

We are absolutely clear that the way forward is to ensure that work can start soon and that we do not delay this work because of the impact it could have on the criminal investigations. The hon. Gentleman mentioned the fact that a significant number of police officers in the County Durham force were looking into the allegations of the abuse that took place at Medomsley detention centre, and I am sure that he would want to ensure that those criminal investigations could continue and that, where evidence that was suitable for charge and prosecution was found, those charges should be laid and those prosecutions should be taken forward. I want to ensure that the work that is now going to be done does not jeopardise the prosecution of perpetrators. That is why I have set this up today as an inquiry panel. As I made clear in my statement, if the chairman of the panel recommends that it would be preferable to move to a full statutory inquiry, that will be done.

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

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. When the Sedwill review specifically established that the Dickens letters had not been kept, did it also try to establish who had authorised their disposal, and if not, why not?

[Mrs May]

The review looked at the way in which the information that had come in from Geoffrey Dickens—and, indeed, any other information—had been handled, to ensure that it was being handled appropriately. The evidence that it found was that matters that should have been handed over to the police for investigation were indeed handed to the police for investigation. As I have said, four pieces of information have subsequently been passed to the police because it was felt that it was now appropriate to do so. The review will look at the whole question of what the investigator did and what evidence they found. It will ensure that that investigation was done properly and that the handling of those matters was entirely appropriate, in order to give greater confidence precisely because questions have been raised.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

In the early 1980s, I was working in child protection in south Wales, and rumours such as those that have been circulating this weekend were also circulating then. Many of the people who were working in child protection in the 1980s have now retired. Will there be a confidential access line to enable such people to come forward and reveal what they saw happening at the time? Such material might not be suitable for a police inquiry, but it might well help to build a picture of what was prevalent then and of what engagement took place between the police and other authorities and those who had concerns about children being picked up at the end of the lane in large cars but found that they could get nowhere with those concerns.

[Mrs May]

It is precisely in order to learn the lessons that we need to know what was going on, and the inquiry is obviously going to have to look quite widely in order to find that out. It will have to look at the documentary evidence from the reviews that have taken place. I do not want to dictate to the inquiry what it should do or how it should undertake its work, but I am sure that the chairman and the panel will be alive to the fact that, in order to get to the truth, they will need to hear from those who have felt unable to speak out in the past.

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

I also welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. May I press her on the point about the missing 114 files and ask how the investigator could have concluded, without having had sight of them, that they had not been “removed or destroyed inappropriately”? Did the Home Secretary ask that question herself?

[Mrs May]

I made it absolutely clear earlier that that review was initiated by the permanent secretary, and that it reported to the permanent secretary. The review itself has been passed to the police, together with any appropriate evidence that it was felt right to pass to the police. Obviously, the review looked at a large number of files and put together evidence as to how these matters were dealt with. The whole question of how it looked at the judgments that were made by the investigator when he undertook the review is one of the issues that will be looked at by the review of the review.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. One consequence of her establishing an inquiry such as the one that she has announced today might be that victims hitherto unknown to the authorities will come forward with new or additional evidence on existing cases. Will she ensure that, as part of the terms of reference for the inquiry, a sensitive and confidential procedure will be put in place to allow victims, including new victims, to come forward and present their evidence in a confidential and sensitive manner and, when necessary, for that information to be shared not just with the inquiry but with criminal investigators?

[Mrs May]

As I said in response to the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), I would expect the inquiry to recognise the need to have appropriate measures in place to enable evidence to come forward from those who might otherwise find it difficult to give evidence or who have been put off from giving it in the past for fear of the consequences.

Local Growth Deals

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

16:55

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Greg Clark)]

With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about growth deals.

During the past four years, the Government’s long-term economic plan has turned the British economy around. The deficit has been cut by a third, employment is at a record high with 2 million more private sector jobs created, inflation is low and the UK is one of the fastest growing economies in the G7.

One of the striking features of the recovery is the resurgence of our regional economies. Since June 2010, almost three quarters of net new jobs created have been outside London. In the west midlands, where I was this morning, export growth is higher than anywhere else in the country. In Yorkshire, more than 16,000 more businesses have sprung up since 2010, but our plan is for the long term and we want to go much further.

National growth is the sum of local growth. For our nation to prosper, every town, every city, and every county needs to be able to fulfil its potential. It is hopeless to try to run proud, distinct and unique cities, towns and counties remotely from London. Instead, the people who live, work and do business in each area must be given the power to exercise local leadership and that is exactly what we have done through the city deals programme.

The 39 growth deals we have agreed today build on the success of city deals and go much further. Responding to Lord Heseltine’s report, “No Stone Unturned”, the Chancellor committed at least £2 billion a year, for at least six years, of resources previously controlled by Departments in Whitehall. Control of this money will now be devolved to business and civic leaders across England. In response to this opportunity, local enterprise partnerships have developed action plans detailing how they would use those resources to drive local growth.

The results have far exceeded expectations. The first year’s available funds were oversubscribed three and half times with proposals that were strong and credible. As a result, I am today announcing the transfer of £2 billion not just for the first year but for subsequent years too. The strength of the proposals means that I can today allocate a total of £6 billion. That includes major strategic investments that will continue over several years and commitments to projects that cannot start next year but for which planning and development can now get under way. That is still within the minimum of £12 billion that the Chancellor has made available, and I am now inviting all LEPs to begin immediately discussions on their next proposals, building on this substantial momentum.

It is important to underline that we are not spending any more taxpayers’ money: this is a transfer of resources from central Government—one of the most centralised Governments in the world—to local communities, where they can get better value for money and make a bigger impact. Across all 39 deals as agreed so far, more than 500 projects will be funded by the local growth fund in partnership with local councils and private investors. They include more than 180 roads schemes, such as the dualling of the A421 in Milton Keynes and the building of a tunnel providing access to Wichelstowe in Swindon, allowing the creation of thousands of jobs and thousands of homes. They include the building or refurbishment of 17 railway stations, including a major upgrade to Wolverhampton station, the extension of the Metropolitan line through to Watford junction, and making Curzon Street in Birmingham ready for HS2, and linking the HS2 station directly to Wolverhampton by tram.

The projects include the devolution of skills investment, such as an oil and gas academy in Redcar—hon. Members may have been wondering when Teesside would come up; the oil and gas academy will provide skills to people in the Tees valley—and an engineering training programme at the MIRA technology park. There will be investments in science and technology, including in the Cheshire science corridor at Alderley Park, a new metrology centre for the world motorsports cluster at Silverstone, where most of the world’s Formula 1 teams have gathered, and an expansion of the Bristol robotics hub.

There will be a dedicated local small business advice and support service run in partnership with the chambers of commerce and other small business organisations in almost every part of England, and there will be further investments in house building, flood defences, tourist attractions, broadband infrastructure and further small business advice.

The city of Glasgow is an indispensable member of the family of great British cities. Having seen the success of the city deals programme in England, I was greatly encouraged by the enthusiasm of Glasgow’s leaders to negotiate a city deal for their own city. Therefore, notwithstanding the fact that Scotland does not have local enterprise partnerships, I have concluded a heads of terms agreement with Glasgow that mirrors the English city deals and will result in £1.13 billion of investment in the Glasgow area, including a rail link to Glasgow airport, an innovative series of labour market schemes that will reduce unemployment, and an investment package in life sciences and small business support. Further details of the life science and business support package will be announced in the coming weeks.

The components of each growth deal will transform the prospects of local economies. However, the whole is even bigger than the sum of the parts. This is a permanent change in the way we run our country and our economy. No longer will Whitehall monopolise decision making and shut out the role of local economic leadership. In this, the week of the 100th anniversary of the death of Joseph Chamberlain, the great mayor of a great city, we are reviving the spirit of local leadership and entrepreneurship on which our nation’s prosperity depends. I commend this statement and these growth deals to the House.

17:02

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement. As ever, the right hon. Gentleman is courteous and constructive. That is part of the reason why he is respected by MPs in all parts of the House and by local authority leaders around the country, including in my own area. The problem is that the Minister is something of a lone voice in the Government, trying to convince his colleagues to help all the regions of the UK to fulfil their promise.

For today’s announcement to represent the kind of progress that we need, three tests must be met. First, does it represent a truly ambitious devolution of power and funding? Secondly, have local communities, their businesses and councils determined the priorities? Thirdly, are today’s announcements new—is this new or additional investment? Of course, we welcome any investment. The Minister knows that I have supported the local enterprise partnership bid in my area, and people across Northamptonshire will welcome the announcement about Silverstone. However, today’s announcement is too little, too late from a Government playing catch-up.

One of the first acts of this Government was the dogma-driven destruction of the regional development agencies, without providing a proper replacement. It was economic vandalism, pure and simple. What of the Government’s flagship regional growth fund, mired in chaos and delay, creating more losers than winners, leaving successful bidders waiting for two years to receive their money, and leaving hundreds of millions of pounds to gather dust? Sadly, after four years of this Government, it is little surprise that we have seen regional imbalances become starker and local areas held back.

Lord Heseltine’s seminal report, “No Stone Unturned”, promised much and raised the hopes of many, but today’s announcement shows that the Government are happy to leave plenty of stones unturned all over the country. Will the Minister say how much of the funding that Lord Heseltine’s report recommended should be devolved has been devolved to local areas, and by how much today’s announcement falls short? The Minister is making the most of today’s announcement—he is one of life’s optimists—but deep down, surely he knows that although it signals some progress, it falls well short of what is needed, not only in scale but in terms of how the Government have gone about this.

The second test is about who makes the decision. Today’s announcement is not real devolution; it is a list of centrally agreed projects. The criteria required shovel-ready schemes; local enterprise partnerships were given the nod on the understanding that schemes needed to be ready for next May, so that it looked like something was happening before the next election. Is it not time to move on from making these kinds of decisions in Whitehall, where local areas have to take part in a beauty parade so that Ministers can pick winners? Why not devolve the funds properly and let local areas decide the priorities? Why not let them make the decisions that are right for their economy, not just right for the Minister’s political timetable?

The third test is whether this is new money. The Minister claims to be announcing £2 billion today, but it turns out that £1.1 billion has already been committed to local transport projects. Some £267 million of this money still has not been allocated. Will the Minister confirm when it will be allocated? As for the £6 billion figure, most of that, as the Minister well knows, is money from local sources that we would try to bring forward anyway; certainly, Labour local authorities are in the lead in doing that. [Interruption.] Well, the Minister has agreed that combined authorities in Labour areas all around the country are trying to show real leadership. Will he confirm how many unsuccessful bids there have been, and tell the House what estimate he has made of the total cost, to both local authorities and businesses, of putting together those failed bids? Is he aware that small businesses in particular have been put off applying by the amount of bureaucracy, and by the requirement to pay the cost of due diligence up front? Many successful applicants have not proceeded for the same reasons. What steps is he taking to address that?

The Minister will be aware that the Leeds city region deal, which he personally signed, has been undermined by the Secretary of State’s announcement on referendums and precepts. Will the Minister reassure me that he will sort this mess out—a mess of the Government’s making—so that the Leeds transport fund can be properly established?

In contrast to today’s much-hyped but severely limited announcements from the Government, Labour has committed to devolving £30 billion of funding from Whitehall to city and council regions to spend on skills, housing, transport, and business support, and to giving combined authorities the power to receive 100% of additional business rates revenue generated by growth to support infrastructure and future economic development. Whereas this Government are failing to deliver for businesses and communities across the country, a Labour Government will step up and genuinely pass down power and resources to local areas.

[Greg Clark]

What a ray of sunshine the hon. Gentleman is! I am grateful for his warm words, but if he thinks that I am a lone voice, I do not know who he thinks the people behind me and opposite him are. It is some “lone voice” that delivers £6 billion of funding from central Government to our local economies. If that is a lone voice, it seems a pretty strong one.

Why is it that whenever Labour Front Benchers get the opportunity, they talk the regions down—I say this to the hon. Gentleman’s colleague on the Front Bench, the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), too—while their colleagues back in their constituencies are talking the regions up? Contrast the comments of the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) with those of Labour leaders right around the country. The Labour leader of Leeds city council said today that this was tremendous news. He said:

“We are glad that the government has now listened to our exceptionally strong case to put the financial power in our hands”,

and that the announcement

“could be truly transformational”.

Sir Albert Bore, the leader of Birmingham city council—I was with him in Birmingham this morning—said:

“This is great news for Birmingham.”

Joe Anderson, the mayor of Liverpool, said:

“This is great news for Liverpool.”

Sir Richard Leese, the long-standing leader of Manchester city council, has said that there has been more progress towards the devolution of powers to the core cities in the last three years of the coalition than during 13 years of Labour. The only “lone voice” is the increasingly lonely voice of Labour Front Benchers opposing the increasingly unanimous view that we should be devolving power around the country in the way that we are. I hope the hon. Gentleman will get with that, because we have confidence in our cities and it is no wonder that the cities are losing confidence in their representation from the Labour party.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the funding that we have provided. I made it clear in my statement that we have gone further than was originally proposed. We made it clear that only £1 billion of the £2 billion figure was competitively available, but we have gone further by allocating £6 billion because the scheme was oversubscribed by 3.5:1, which means that the quality of the proposals was so high that we thought it would be ridiculous to say, “Come back in a year’s time.” Why not give investors confidence to get on with projects now so that they can create jobs around the country?

It is worth saying that this is not just Government investment. For every £1 of Government investment there will be at least £2 of local investment as a result. The hon. Gentleman asked about Lord Heseltine’s view on the scheme. I was with Lord Heseltine this morning, and he has travelled with me around almost every one of the 39 local enterprise partnerships to negotiate the deals. He expresses himself to be “thrilled” with the ambition that we have set through the programme, which exceeds what he thought possible. He is delighted with the programme.

I have thought about the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that we should go further. Of course we should go further, and the Chancellor has committed at least £2 billion a year, but at no point during the 13 years of the previous Government was any of this suggested. It is important that such things should be rigorously funded. I read the Adonis report, and the small print states that 100% of business rates should be devolved to the cities. Under my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, half of business rates are now given to local authorities, which again did not happen during 13 years under Labour. Of course, £11 billion goes to the Treasury, so how will that £11 billion be found? Is there a black hole? In fact, the small print of the Adonis report states:

“This should be revenue neutral to the Exchequer through offsetting reductions in government grants”

to councils. In other words, it is a swizz: £11 billion of grant cuts to councils to pay for the headline with which he came up.

The difference between the Government and the Opposition is that we act on our ambitions by taking money from central Government to invest in local government, rather than the other way around.

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend on this extraordinarily ambitious announcement, which will command support across the whole country. I understand that not every constituency in the land will benefit from that ambition, so may I bring the leader of Mid Sussex district council and his economic development team to tell the Minister about an absolute belter of an idea that we have for the next round?

[Greg Clark]

I am always delighted to meet my right hon. Friend and his council leaders, whom I have met previously. The great advantage of my announcement today that we are immediately reopening negotiations for the next set of projects to build on the momentum is that that meeting will be very timely indeed.

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

May I press the Minister? As co-chair of the Yorkshire group of MPs, I recently saw Lord Heseltine, and he did not look that excited to me about the Government’s policy. Is it not the truth that we have had four pretty barren years? I do not deny that there is some good stuff in the programme, but the fact of the matter is that we still have central direction: some £80 billion will be spent on High Speed 2, with no give or take on the local referendums that some of us would like to see on that expenditure. Could there not be more money for university partnerships with local enterprise partnerships and local business?

[Greg Clark]

I am not surprised that my friend Lord Heseltine was a bit downcast if he was meeting Labour Members, but he has cheered up since he has been in our company. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) should be cheered up that the chair of his local enterprise partnership said today that this is “a game-changing moment” for Leeds. We have worked tirelessly with businesses to play a leading role in the UK economy. His hon. Friend the Member for Corby referred to the Leeds city deal, and when he reads the documents that I sent to every Member he will see that a £1 billion transport fund is now available for the Leeds city region to invest in its own priorities for transport projects across the region. I was talking to Keith Wakefield, the leader of Leeds city council, last Thursday, and the deal exceeded even his expectations for what could be achieved. He is happy, and I hope the hon. Gentleman will be happy, too.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I wonder whether we could make slightly faster progress, because many Members wish to speak and this statement will run to about a quarter to 6 in order to make room for today’s business. Short questions and short answers would be very helpful.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

What is in this announcement for Dorset, and will the Minister answer the question asked by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) about how much money we could get if we abandoned HS2? If we did so, we would have a lot more money for these schemes.

[Greg Clark]

I will not be tempted to go in that direction, because I think that HS2 is very important for further boosting our regional economy. Dorset does very well from the scheme. As my hon. Friend will know, the package of improvements for unlocking transport around Bournemouth airport is very important, and the port of Poole is receiving a lot of investment. There has been particular investment in skills in Dorset to ensure that its growing businesses can attract the people they need to meet the demands of their growing order books.

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

The North East local enterprise partnership has said that it needs to create 60,000 new jobs by 2025 and that today’s announcement will create 4,000 by 2021. Where will the other 56,000 new jobs come from?

[Greg Clark]

The reason we are devolving powers in this way, and the reason the deal with the north-east has received such enthusiastic support, is that the best people to make these decisions, and the people who know about an area’s skills requirements and transport investment, are those who live and work there. I commend to the right hon. Gentleman, who I know takes an interest in these matters, the fact that one of our agreements is to improve the standard of secondary education across the north-east—to do what has been done in London by transforming the prospects of every young person. As someone who grew up in the north-east, I think that will be of immense value not just for young people, but for employers.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

I welcome the fact that both coalition parties are determined to raise standards in the north-east, but will that not also require a change of attitude by some Labour council leaders, such as those in Northumberland who are withdrawing support for travel for those young people seeking to improve their skills, even though they have to travel a long way to get to a further education college?

[Greg Clark]

It is true that one of the hallmarks of a successful local economy is people putting aside their differences and working together. One feature of the growth deals that have been negotiated is the remarkable ability of people who previously did not get on to put their differences aside and work together locally. I hope that will be the case in the north-east.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Some exciting stuff is being bid for in Bristol, such as robotics and the use of composites in marine technology, as well as much-needed investment in public transport, but may I ask the Minister about flexibility? When money has previously been offered by local government, local people have been told that there is no scope for negotiation and that all the money will simply be taken away if they object to the proposed schemes.

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; she gives an accurate description of what happened under the previous Labour Government. One of the differences we are making is giving the flexibility to allow good and capable local enterprise partnerships to set their own priorities, so if an important economic opportunity arises, they should be able to change things around. That will be available to Bristol, as it will to other places across the country.

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

I enthusiastically welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement, particularly the support for the transformation of the Food and Environment Research Agency in Sand Hutton. For that transformation to succeed, smooth and safe access to the A64 will be imperative. What does he understand by the term “shovel-ready projects” that qualify before the highways authority will allocate any of that money to road improvements?

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Member for Corby asked me about that. It is prudent that money should be spent on projects that are available to have that investment; otherwise we are tying up money that could be used elsewhere. A project needs to be deliverable in 2015-16 if that is what the funding is for. The great advantage of announcing a pipeline of future schemes is that if they are not quite ready yet, they will be able to have the green light shone so that they can go forward in future.

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

There are some excellent projects in the Birmingham and Solihull area in today’s announcement, not least the long-awaited Longbridge connectivity package in my area. Will the Minister join me in saying thank you to Labour-run Birmingham city council and the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP for working with the Longbridge connectivity group to make this happen, in contrast with the rather disengaged attitude of the former Conservative city council administration? Does that indicate to him that where local partnerships work, the Government should be more ambitious in devolving power? Is not that the real message of the Adonis report?

[Greg Clark]

The attitude behind the hon. Gentleman’s question is not the attitude that has caused the success of the Birmingham and Solihull deal. People have not been partisan or parochial; they have worked together and not sought to jockey for political advantage. That is the right approach to take.

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement, in which he confirms the Government’s commitment to the north of England. I particularly welcome the investment at the CATCH—Centre for the Assessment of Technical Competence—training facility at Stallingborough in my constituency. That is a partnership between the public and private sectors. Does he agree that those types of partnerships are the way forward if we are to develop the skills that northern Lincolnshire and the Humber area need in the modern economy?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is a doughty campaigner for his constituency, and I have visited him and his colleagues on the Humber many times. He is one of the people who have been instrumental in forging a consensus between the north bank and the south bank of the Humber. Now that that consensus exists, the Humber is motoring; we can see the progress and momentum behind the economy there. He has played his part in that, and I congratulate him on it.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The Minister is a South Bank lad, so he should have some understanding of the challenges faced in the Tees valley. His statement tells of helping to create 1,000 jobs by 2021—in other words, 1,000 jobs in seven years. That is less than 20% of the total number of unemployed people in Stockton, one of five boroughs in the Tees valley. Why has he not come up with something more substantial from the Government in terms of investment for his former community?

[Greg Clark]

The jobs figures that the hon. Gentleman cites are for the first year’s investment only. We have taken a conservative view. The Government do not create jobs directly; it is up to businesses to create jobs. The business community in the Tees valley, very ably led by Sandy Anderson, have come forward with a set of proposals that they believe will propel the Tees valley forward, and we have been able to say yes to them.

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that Government investment in infrastructure projects such as Tipner, and in marine manufacturing and status projects such as Sir Ben Ainslie’s America’s cup challenge, is transforming Portsmouth into the maritime heart of the UK, and that the next focus must be a new life and a new order book for Portsmouth’s shipyard?

[Greg Clark]

I commend my hon. Friend, who has been an absolutely indefatigable campaigner for Portsmouth. That resulted in the Portsmouth city deal, which, as she has rightly said, involved the release of Ministry of Defence land that was not being used to make it available for the marine engineering businesses whose future is very bright across the south coast, and particularly in Portsmouth.

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

The devolution of finance must not only be seen to be accountable but actually be accountable. What discussions has the Minister’s Department had about the appointment of Paul Woolston, the chair of the North East LEP, who has now been appointed to Middleton Enterprises, a company run by Jeremy Middleton, a well-known Conservative who is also on the LEP investment board? We also learned last week that the chief executive is now working for a Middleton company. Have the Minister or his Department had any discussions about this?

[Greg Clark]

Of course, I meet the local enterprise partnerships—all of them—regularly to discuss the kinds of deals we are announcing. The hon. Gentleman will know that the local authority leaders work very closely together—in fact, his own local authority leader, Simon Henig, is the chair of the combined authority—and that they are democratically elected, and I know that they make sure that taxpayers’ money is wisely spent.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

May I congratulate my right hon. Friend, both politically and personally, on his commitment to delivering a further significant tranche of devolution? Does he agree that, in order to see this through, it is very important not only that local authorities abandon the tribalism in evidence on the Opposition Benches, but that they make maximum entrepreneurial use of the other important devolutionary power we gave them—the power of general competence in the Localism Act 2011, which will complement this tranche of measures?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has personal responsibility for that power, since he, with me, piloted the Localism Bill through Committee. The power is available to local authorities and I hope they will take it up.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I first respond to the Minister’s more partisan points before I move on to the less partisan point? People in Manchester will judge his Government on all their policies, including local government cuts 10 times those of other, more prosperous areas and the welfare reform agenda that is hitting my constituents the hardest. On the less partisan point, which is what I had hoped the statement would be about, given the reports by Michael Heseltine and Lord Adonis and today’s statement by Sir Richard Leese, we now really have cross-party consensus for dramatic decentralisation, and I hope the Minister will ensure that it goes further and faster over the coming months.

[Greg Clark]

I had also hoped that this statement would be less partisan, but that was not entirely evident from the earlier exchanges. Greater Manchester has been doing very well in recent years. If we look at the cross-party leadership of Greater Manchester, including Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour leaders, we will see that they get on well together in the interests of Greater Manchester. The hon. Lady should take a leaf out of their book.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

I congratulate the Government, because this is a really important step towards devolution and local decision making. I particularly welcome the contribution to Dorset, which will enable it to build on its already great strengths with its mixed economy. Should any partnerships anywhere in the country run into obstacles in making proposed investments in a timely fashion, will the Department be able to support them? I want to see action, not just words.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I am grateful for her kind words. That is one of the reasons we have established a pipeline so that, if there is a delay in any particular project, another will be ready to take its place and be implemented. Dorset has a huge contribution to make. I have mentioned some of the schemes. One of the very interesting and exciting ones for the visitor economy in Dorset will be a new visitor attraction called Jurassica, which will feature the great strengths of the Jurassic coast. It has been suggested that some exhibits might come from the Opposition Benches, but I am sure the fossils will be from Dorset.

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

Does the Minister agree that this modest but welcome proposal is certainly not a giant step towards rebalancing the British economy? Will he also confirm, as I think he was angling towards doing in an earlier response, that there is in fact no new money involved in today’s proposal? I think that the focus on affordable housing in London is correct, but could not the Government have done more about the borrowing powers of local authorities, to really get affordable housing going in London, where it is much needed?

[Greg Clark]

If the hon. Gentleman reads the small print, he will see that that is part of the announcement. I do not agree with his assessment. He should talk to the leader of Leeds council, who has said:

“This deal spells the beginning of a fundamental shift in the relationship between Whitehall and the regions. It marks the first steps of a new era which will allow the north”—

he is from Leeds—

“to truly control its own destiny.”

Such endorsements show that this is a pretty significant set of changes.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I was delighted to welcome my hon. Friend the Exchequer Secretary to Gatwick this morning, where the Coast to Capital LEP bid of £202 million was announced. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that future growth deals will continue to benefit the county areas, as well as our great cities?

[Greg Clark]

They certainly will. It is very important that our cities should prosper and succeed, but we have huge strengths in our counties and districts, which is why I am particularly pleased that we could extend city deals to all parts of England through what we have agreed in the programme today.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

In Chesterfield, we are grateful that the Minister has approved two of the proposals brought forward by our local enterprise partnership. Does he not recognise, however, that real devolution is not about the Minister sitting in Whitehall and saying which proposals he agrees with? It is about devolving the funds and letting the responsibility lie with local authorities, precisely as Lord Adonis has proposed. Will the Minister acknowledge at the Dispatch Box that what he is proposing is a third of the size of the devolution proposed by Lord Adonis and does not put responsibility and powers truly in the hands of local authorities? Why does the Minister not follow Lord Adonis’s recommendations?

[Greg Clark]

No, the hon. Gentleman is not right. He is right that Chesterfield will have substantial investment in skills, which will be very important for his constituents, but he is wrong to say that there will no flexibilities. It will be open to the local enterprise partnership to bring forward projects, as it has done—it made those proposals—and to vary them if it thinks that that is in the local interest.

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

May I tell my right hon. Friend that the people of Wolverhampton are very heartened by this news, particularly as people have tried to talk down the city in the past? In that vein, will he elaborate on the Wolverhampton interchange, which will help private enterprise and connectivity in the 21st century?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend has been campaigning for improvements to the Wolverhampton interchange for all the time he has been in the House, and it is a great day for him to succeed in that campaigning. The interchange is supported by businesses locally, and it will mean big advantages not just for Wolverhampton but for the whole of the region because of the connections that will be made—for example, from Wolverhampton to the new HS2 station.

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

It is fantastic and so unusual to have an opportunity to heap praise on the Minister, but with the general election 303 days away, how much of the £350 million will Greater Birmingham see before the election, and when might we expect our first down payment on Selly Oak’s life sciences park?

[Greg Clark]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his kind words—it might strike a different tone if he took his place on the Front Bench. There will be a cheque for £63 million of the funding for Greater Birmingham and Solihull at the beginning of the next financial year, but all the rest will be committed. I am sure he would be delighted to come to the contract signing ceremony; it will be written down, just in case people do not trust us.

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

This afternoon, I was with the Secretary of State for Transport in Fylde, where we announced the Lytham St Annes to M55 link road. Will the Minister assure the people of Fylde, who are very excited about this announcement, that this shovel-ready project will indeed get under way in 2015-16, as planned?

[Greg Clark]

It will, indeed.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The process of devolution to Greater Manchester was of course started in 2008 under a Labour Government, but I certainly welcome today’s announcement, including the funds for Tameside college, which serves my constituency. If the Minister has any unallocated funds, may I beg him to look again at the small town centre initiative as part of the Greater Manchester package? That package includes a shovel-ready scheme for the Denton link road that would provide important access to the Oldham Batteries employment site, which has lain derelict for 10 years, but is an important piece of our regeneration jigsaw.

[Greg Clark]

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman was the last Labour Member standing, while there are still plenty of Government Members standing. The great advantage of the arrangements is that he can take his case to Greater Manchester. It should no longer require a Minister to agree to a local project; as a result of this deal, the people who now have the budgets to implement such things are those in the Greater Manchester authority.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

Like our city deal, Oxfordshire’s growth deal is great news for local people: it will deliver more jobs and more housing; it will close the skills gap by delivering vital skills opportunities; and it will take us a big step closer to delivering flood protection. I do not want to seem ungrateful, but will the Minister also consider vital A34 improvements at every future opportunity, because they are essential to our long-term local economic plan?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is nothing if not tenacious. She has had a city deal, she has had a growth deal and now she wants another one. I have said that we will reopen negotiations, and it sounds as though Oxfordshire will be first in the queue.

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

I congratulate my right hon. Friend because he has truly reached parts of England that the last Labour Government failed to reach. The commitment of hundreds of millions of pounds to Cornwall today is really welcome, but does he agree that the power shift from Whitehall to Cornwall is equally vital because it ensures that local decisions can be made for the benefit of our local economy?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She is a great champion of Cornwall. It is crazy to try to run a place as distinctive as Cornwall from Whitehall and Westminster. Quite apart from the investment that is being made, we are giving a big vote of confidence to Cornwall and its ability to run its own affairs. I am delighted to be doing that.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Roger Marsh, the chair of the local enterprise partnership that includes Kirklees, has said:

“This is a game-changing moment for the Leeds City Region.”

Does the Minister agree that, with the £1 billion of investment for the West Yorkshire Plus transport fund, the expansion of the skilled work force, business grants for growth and two days of the grandest of Grands Départs in Yorkshire, this really has been a momentous weekend for Yorkshire?

[Greg Clark]

It has been a fantastic weekend for Yorkshire. This is a Grand Départ of our own: we are setting off in a very different direction from that which we inherited. For 100 years, power has been sucked away from places such as Yorkshire; we are sending it back.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is a worthy heir of Joseph Chamberlain. In Norfolk and Suffolk, we are thrilled by the investment that is coming back to the region as a result of his announcement. Will he confirm that items of expenditure that are not on the current list but that are still on the wish lists of LEPs can be brought forward in a very short period?

[Greg Clark]

I certainly can confirm that. I look forward to meeting the New Anglia local enterprise partnership to take those matters forward.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for investing tens of millions of pounds in unlocking the economic potential of world-class Worcestershire, particularly through skills and transport improvements such as the Worcestershire Parkway station and the Southern link in Worcester. I give him particular thanks for the fact that the money is coming to Worcester rather than going to Wichita, as some Opposition Front Benchers have suggested.

[Greg Clark]

It is indeed. One of the great advantages of travelling around the country negotiating these deals is that one has the chance to meet people in the places they represent. There is no substitute for having a bit of local knowledge.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

I welcome the tremendous £45 million funding announcement for the Congleton link road. Congleton is an aspirational town and Ministers listened to the business case that was put forward by business leaders, East Cheshire chamber of commerce, the local authority, the LEP and elected representatives. Does that not prove that when there is effective joint working, we can really make a difference to the prosperity of the people we represent?

[Greg Clark]

We certainly can. Cheshire is a vital part of the economy, particularly given its investment in science and the possibilities that that brings. It was good to be able to reinforce that through the deal that we negotiated.

[Sir Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

One of the biggest constraints on the economic growth of Worcestershire is the inadequacy of its rail links. I therefore thank the Minister warmly for his announcement of funding for the new Worcestershire Parkway station, which enables me to declare victory in the 25-year campaign to get that vital station built.

[Greg Clark]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. I am just sorry that he will not be able to use it for his commute to this place. However, it will be a good monument to his campaigning over the years.

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

The unforgettable amazing two days in which the Tour de France went through Yorkshire showed what can be delivered by Welcome to Yorkshire, the local councils, the local businesses and the local people if they are allowed to get on with it. This announcement is great news for the Leeds city region, but will the Minister confirm that it will allow us to make the decisions that he knows we need to make with regard to transport, including a link to Leeds Bradford international airport and getting something better than the trolleybus?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is right to say that with £1 billion of investment available, it is up to Leeds, through the combined authority and the local enterprise partnership, to make those choices in a way that it could not before.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

As the shadow Minister will know, in north Northamptonshire unemployment has come down by more than a third in the past 12 months, and £50 million private investment has just been made in Rushden Lakes. Today the Government have made announcements about Stanton Cross, the Tresham institute and the Isham bypass. Next time will the Minister ensure that his statement is known about more widely in advance so that more Labour MPs can turn up? I have counted four Labour Back Benchers, whereas the Government Benches are packed.

[Greg Clark]

It is very disappointing; I sometimes feel that Opposition Members do not want to hear good news, whether it is about the national economy or local economies. We have Deputy Prime Minister’s questions tomorrow so they have another chance to come, and I press them to do so.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcement of the commitment to fund Porton science park. This welcome measure will breathe life into the life sciences sector in Wiltshire. Does he recognise that it will be extremely helpful in securing additional funding from the European structural investment fund so that Wiltshire can secure further development of this vital project?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is right. One of the other decisions we have taken is to align European funds with local enterprise partnerships, so that this kind of joint investment, which makes administrative and economic sense, can take place.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

In what has become an intense competition to welcome the Minister’s announcement most warmly, may I make a bid on behalf of Gloucestershire—I think I am the only Member from the county here—to welcome the Gloucestershire growth deal, which includes a real opportunity to generate more Gloucesterpreneurs and some great participation in nuclear and green projects too? My right hon. Friend will know that I particularly welcome the commitment to finance the last remaining slug of the new bus station, which is the transport hub of the county, as it will make a huge difference. Does he agree that the autumn statement and the Budget provide opportunities for further bids for such projects as the Blackfriars regeneration?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is nothing if not tenacious. I enjoyed my visit to Gloucester with him a little while ago. There will be other opportunities, because negotiations will continue. I dare say that Gloucestershire will build on its success.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Minister’s statement, in particular on transport improvements on the A47 in north-east Peterborough and on the food manufacturing centre of excellence at Peterborough regional college. The imperative for this Government investment should be its impact on the labour market, so will the Minister give an undertaking to encourage LEPs to work collaboratively—for example, with the Department for Work and Pensions to have an impact on unemployment among young people, particularly those not in education, employment or training?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I would like to extend more broadly the next phase of negotiations and discussions, so that where local authorities and businesses can make a real difference to some of our intractable social problems they will be given the chance to show that they can do that.

[James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)]

I welcome the black country local growth deal announced today, particularly the new advanced science and technology centre at Halesowen college, which will allow us to upskill local people in the black country to get the jobs that are available. Does the Minister agree that this type of initiative is crucial to areas such as the black country, where we need to increase skills and generate growth?

[Greg Clark]

I certainly do agree with my hon. Friend. “Made in the black country” is a brand that is proudly marketed around the world, and people have confidence in the quality that that implies, but it is important that the next generation of people in the area are trained in those skills so that that reputation for quality can continue. The investment will help with that.

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his tireless work to deliver this huge local and regional boost to economies. I commend the additional investment in Reading and urge him to pursue a third Thames bridge and semi-fast Crossrail, both strongly supported by business, for the next round.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is no slouch when it comes to local campaigning. He has been a hugely successful advocate for Reading, and I dare say that that will continue in the future.

[Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)]

Unemployment in my constituency has fallen consistently and now stands at 2%. That is good news and shows that businesses are investing, but we need good transport links to get people to work. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the announcement of the West Yorkshire Plus transport fund is a step change in the ability of local providers to get people moving around Yorkshire, particularly given the wonderful advert we had this weekend, which we have already heard about?

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Everyone in Yorkshire agrees that the £1 billion fund will make a transformational difference to Yorkshire’s economic prospects.

[Richard Harrington (Watford) (Con)]

I commend the Minister for his statement, particularly the news about the Croxley rail link, which will link Watford Junction station with the Metropolitan line. Will he write to the chief executive of Network Rail to ask him to prioritise the redevelopment of Watford Junction station, so that the whole of Watford has a 21st-century interchange?

[Greg Clark]

That is the great advantage of these investments: investment in transport can have other consequences for regeneration. It is one of the big reasons why taking things out of Whitehall silos and making decisions in the round is so much more effective. I will certainly talk to my hon. Friend about that outside the Chamber.

[Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for the care he has taken over the detail of the bids, and particularly for backing the winner in respect of Lancaster university’s innovations park and the £17 million of real money coming to Lancashire to support it. I remind him that there was also a proposal to move junction 33 of the M6, which was also part and parcel of this growth bid.

[Greg Clark]

The good news is that when the negotiations open, that proposal can be considered, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will want to persuade his area’s local enterprise partnership to put it forward.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I particularly welcome the £4 million for a construction skills centre at Whitehill in Bordon—a great investment in the future of the people of this town. Will my right hon. Friend join me in encouraging more employers to look at the exciting opportunities in the area?

[Greg Clark]

I will. One of the striking features of this growth deal is how many local employers are committing their own time and enthusiasm to working to ensure that people have the skills that they will want to employ in the years to come. That is good for everyone locally.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

Today’s announcement is a crucial boost to Swindon’s economic regeneration. Does the Minister agree that the process rewards forward-thinking areas that develop shovel-ready plans for growth?

[Greg Clark]

I do indeed. Swindon is the definition of forward thinking, and it is ably represented by both my hon. Friend and our hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) with whom he works so closely.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am sorry to disappoint the remaining Members who wanted to speak. I hope they will be more fortunate in catching the Speaker’s eye next time. I am sure that the Minister will be grateful to receive letters of congratulation. We really must move on to other business now.

Point of Order

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

17:46

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance. The Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), visited the new Hitachi factory in my constituency this morning to make a Government announcement. He was joined by the hon. Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), but neither of them informed me of their intention to visit my constituency, although the hon. Member for Stockton South informed me of his visit after the event. What can you do or say to ensure that hon. Members, and especially Ministers, show the common courtesy of informing the sitting Member of their intent to visit his or her constituency before the visit happens?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)]

I am grateful for that point of order and for prior notice of it. I would like to remind Members that Mr Speaker has made it clear on several occasions recently that if any hon. Member intends to make an official visit to another hon. Member’s constituency on political business, they are under a strong obligation to inform the constituency Member as far in advance as possible. Ministers in particular, with their private office to help them organise their business, have no excuse for failing to fulfil this obligation. I sincerely hope that this will not happen again. Mr Speaker has been quite clear about this.

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to make it clear that I do not wish to cause discomfort to any hon. Member in this place. My role this morning was to drop off my hon. Friend the Minister, at which point I tweeted that I had dropped him off. Realising that I was in the constituency of a neighbouring Member, I asked my office to inform him by e-mail. Are hon. Members obliged to inform other hon. Members when they drive through or drop people off in their constituencies?

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

That is really not a point of order, Mr Wharton. I think we are all grown-up enough to know what the conventions imply about visiting another Member’s constituency. We do not need to go into this level of detail in the form of a point of order at this time. We shall move on.

Bills Presented

Office for Budget Responsibility (Political Party Policy Costings) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alan Campbell, on behalf of Thomas Docherty, presented a Bill to amend the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011 to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to scrutinise and certificate the policy costings of political parties represented in the House of Commons.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February 2015, and to be printed (Bill 34).

Armed Forces (Prevention of Discrimination) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alan Campbell, on behalf of Thomas Docherty, presented a Bill to provide that certain offences committed towards members of the armed forces shall be treated as aggravated; to prohibit discrimination against individuals in terms of provision of goods and services on the grounds that they are members of the armed forces; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February 2015, and to be printed (Bill 35).

Jobs Guarantee Scheme (Research) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alan Campbell, on behalf of Thomas Docherty, presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to undertake a programme of research into a scheme designed to provide guaranteed employment for those aged 18 to 24 and those aged 25 and over who have been in receipt of Jobseekers Allowance for one year or for two years; to require the Secretary of State to report the results of the research to the House of Commons within six months of completion; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February 2015, and to be printed (Bill 36).

Terms and Conditions (Migrant Workers) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alan Campbell, on behalf of Thomas Docherty, presented a Bill to provide that employers may not offer to migrant workers terms and conditions less favourable than those offered to UK nationals for the same employment; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February 2015, and to be printed (Bill 37).

Fixed Odds Betting Terminals (Betting Shops) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alan Campbell, on behalf of Thomas Docherty, presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to create a new planning use class for betting shops with fixed odds betting terminals, which would require the granting of planning permission; to provide that local planning authorities assess demand for fixed odds betting terminal betting shops when considering applications for premises in that planning use class and place a cap on the number of such shops for which planning permission may be granted in any area; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February 2015, and to be printed (Bill 38).

High Cost Credit Services (Retail Premises) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alan Campbell, on behalf of Thomas Docherty, presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to create a new planning use class for retail premises used to provide high cost credit services, which would require the granting of planning permission; to provide that local planning authorities assess demand for retail premises used to provide high cost credit services when considering applications for premises in that planning use class and place a cap on the number of such shops for which planning permission may be granted in any area; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February 2015, and to be printed (Bill 39).

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014 (Repeal) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alan Campbell, on behalf of Thomas Docherty, presented a Bill to repeal the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February 2015, and to be printed (Bill 40).

Letting Agents (Fees) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alan Campbell, on behalf of Thomas Docherty, presented a Bill to prohibit the charging to tenants by letting agents of annual tenancy renewal fees; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February 2015, and to be printed (Bill 41).

Firearm and Shotgun Licensing (Domestic Violence) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Alan Campbell, on behalf of Thomas Docherty, presented a Bill to prohibit the granting of licences for firearms and shotguns to persons who have been convicted of domestic violence crimes; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 February 2015, and to be printed (Bill 42).

Asylum (Time Limit) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, presented a Bill to prohibit the granting of licences for firearms and shotguns to persons who have been convicted of domestic violence crimes; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 43).

Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Stewart Jackson and Mr Peter Bone, presented a Bill to make provision for criminal sanctions against those who have entered the UK illegally or who have remained in the UK without legal authority.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 October, and to be printed (Bill 44).

House of Lords (Maximum Membership) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone, presented a Bill to provide for a maximum limit on the number of Peers entitled to vote in the House of Lords; and to provide for a moratorium on new appointments.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 October, and to be printed (Bill 45).

EU Membership (Audit of Costs and Benefits) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Robert Syms, Mr Stewart Jackson, Mr Peter Bone and Mr Andrew Turner, presented a Bill to require an independent audit of the benefits and costs of UK membership of the European Union.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 17 October, and to be printed (Bill 46).

Benefit Entitlement (Restriction) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Stewart Jackson and Mr Peter Bone, presented a Bill to make provision to restrict the entitlement of non-UK citizens from the European Union and the European Economic Area to taxpayer-funded benefits.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 28 November, and to be printed (Bill 47).

HS2 Funding Referendum Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mrs Cheryl Gillan, Sir John Randall, Michael Fabricant, Mr James Gray, Mr Peter Bone and Mr Andrew Turner, presented a Bill to make provision for a national referendum on whether the proposed construction of the HS2 railway should be supported financially by the UK taxpayer.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 23 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 48).

Overseas Voters Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Sir Peter Luff, Mr Robert Syms, Mr Stewart Jackson and Mr Peter Bone, presented a Bill to make provision to facilitate an increase in the registration of voters resident overseas who are eligible to participate in United Kingdom Parliamentary elections; to extend the criteria for eligibility to register as an overseas voter and to enable those registered as overseas voters to cast their votes through use of the internet; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 23 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 49).

Convicted Prisoners Voting Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Stewart Jackson and Mr Peter Bone, presented a Bill to make provision for rules relating to the exclusion of convicted prisoners from participation in Parliamentary and Local Elections.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 5 December, and to be printed (Bill 50).

European Parliament Elections Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Peter Bone and Mr Andrew Turner, presented a Bill to make provision for an open list system for elections to the European Parliament.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 9 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 51).

Defence Expenditure (NATO Target) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Sir Gerald Howarth, Sir Edward Leigh, Mr Bernard Jenkin, Mr James Gray, Sir Peter Luff and Mr Peter Bone, presented a Bill to make provision about the meeting by the United Kingdom of the target for defence expenditure to constitute a minimum of 2% of Gross Domestic Product; to make provision that the definition of defence expenditure is subject to independent verification; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 5 September, and to be printed (Bill 52).

UK Borders Control Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Stewart Jackson, presented a Bill to make provision to ensure that the United Kingdom has absolute control over the right to prevent non-UK citizens from entering the United Kingdom; to determine the circumstances in which non-UK citizens may be required to leave the United Kingdom; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 9 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 53).

School Admissions Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Stewart Jackson, presented a Bill to make provision to ensure that pupils with a parent with a terminal or seriously disabling illness receive priority in the admissions process to maintained schools in England.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 7 November, and to be printed (Bill 54).

Bat Habitats Regulation Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope presented a Bill to make provision to enhance the protection available for bat habitats in the nonbuilt environment and to limit the protection for bat habitats in the built environment where the presence of bats has a significant adverse impact upon the users of buildings.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 55).

Working Time Directive (Limitation) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope, supported by Mr Stewart Jackson, presented a Bill to limit the application of the EU Working Time Directive; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 23 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 56).

Employment Rights Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Christopher Chope presented a Bill to make provision for a statutory code of practice to clarify and simplify the law relating to protection against unfair dismissal of miscreant employees; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 57).

Free Movement of Persons into the United Kingdom (Derogation) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Philip Hollobone, Bob Blackman, Mr Graham Brady, Mr Aidan Burley, Mr Stewart Jackson and Philip Davies, presented a Bill to repeal Articles 21 and 45 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, EC Directive 2004/38/EC and EC Regulation 492/2011.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 March 2015, and to be printed (Bill 58).

British Bill of Rights and Withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Philip Hollobone, Bob Blackman, David T. C. Davies, Mr Graham Brady, Mr Aidan Burley, Mr Stewart Jackson and Philip Davies, presented a Bill to make provision for an application to the Council of Europe to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights and the introduction of a British Bill of Rights.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 March 2015, and to be printed (Bill 59).

Wind Farm Subsidies (Abolition) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Christopher Chope, Bob Blackman, Mr David Davis, Mr Aidan Burley, Mr Stewart Jackson and Phillip Davies, presented a Bill to make provision for the cessation of subsidies for the development of wind farms.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 March 2015, and to be printed (Bill 60).

Department of Energy and Climate Change (Abolition) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Philip Hollobone, David T. C. Davies, Mr Graham Brady, Mr Aidan Burley, Mr Stewart Jackson and Philip Davies, presented a Bill to make provision for the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change and for its functions to be absorbed into the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 March 2015, and to be printed (Bill 61).

Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the United Kingdom) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Philip Hollobone, Bob Blackman, Mr David Davis, David T. C. Davies, Mr Aidan Burley, Mr Stewart Jackson and Philip Davies, presented a Bill to make provision to exclude from the United Kingdom foreign nationals found guilty of a criminal offence committed in the United Kingdom.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 March 2015, and to be printed (Bill 62).

Hospital Car Parking Charges (Abolition) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Philip Hollobone, Bob Blackman, Mr David Davis, Fiona Bruce, Mr Graham Brady, Mr Aidan Burley and Mr Stewart Jackson, presented a Bill to prohibit charging for car parking at NHS Hospitals for patients and visitors.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 March 2015, and to be printed (Bill 63).

BBC Privatisation Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr Aidan Burley and Philip Davies, presented a Bill to make provision for the privatisation of the British Broadcasting Corporation by providing shares in the Corporation to all licence fee payers.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 March 2015, and to be printed (Bill 64).

Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Abolition) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Mr Peter Bone, supported by Mr Christopher Chope, Mr Philip Hollobone, Mr Graham Brady, Mr Aidan Burley, Mr Stewart Jackson and Phillip Davies, presented a Bill to make provision for the abolition of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, and its responsibilities to be allocated to other Departments of State.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 6 March 2015, and to be printed (Bill 65).

Housing (Affordability, Supply and Tenant Protection) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Caroline Lucas, supported by Jeremy Corby, John Cryer, Mrs Mary Glindon, Jonathan Edwards, Mr Elfyn Llwyd and John McDonnell, presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to commission a programme of research into reducing rent levels in the private rented sector, improving terms and conditions for tenants, increasing housing supply, and providing a large-scale programme of sustainable council housing in England; to require the Secretary of State to report to Parliament within six months of completion of the research; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 October, and to be printed (Bill 66).

Railways Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Caroline Lucas, supported by Hywel Williams, Ian Lavery, Jeremy Corbyn, Jonathan Edwards, Katy Clark, John Cryer, John McDonnell, Mr Elfyn Llwyd, Kelvin Hopkins, Grahame M. Morris and Martin Caton, presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to assume control of passenger rail franchises when they come up for renewal; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 October, and to be printed (Bill 67).

Public Services (Ownership and User Involvement) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Caroline Lucas, supported by Jeremy Corbyn, Katy Clark, Grahame M. Morris, Mr John Leech, John McDonnell, Mr Elfyn Llwyd and Ms Margaret Ritchie, presented a Bill to promote public ownership of public services; to introduce a presumption in favour of service provision by public sector and not-for-profit entities; and to put in place mechanisms to increase the accountability, transparency and public control of public services, including those operated by private companies.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on 24 October, and to be printed (Bill 68).

Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (Statutory Requirement) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Caroline Lucas, supported by Valerie Vaz, Yasmin Qureshi, Tim Farron, Glenda Jackson and Barbara Keeley, presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to provide that Personal, Social, Health and Economic education (PSHE) be a statutory requirement for all state funded schools; for PSHE to include Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) and education on ending violence against women and girls; to provide for initial and continuing teacher education and guidance on best practice for delivering and inspecting PSHE and SRE education; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 October, and to be printed (Bill 69).

Football Governance Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Damian Collins, supported by Mr Clive Betts, Tracey Crouch, Mr Jim Cunningham, Philip Davies, Paul Farrelly, Penny Mordaunt, Steve Rotheram, Mr Adrian Saunders, Mr Gerry Sutcliffe, Justin Tomlinson and Mr John Whittingdale, presented a Bill to require professional and semi-professional football clubs in England to disclose the identity of their owners; to give the Football Association powers to block the ownership of a club by anyone whom they consider is not a fit and proper person; to require all creditors of a football club to be compensated equally should the club go into administration; to facilitate the raising by supporters’ organisations of the finance required to acquire a controlling stake in a football club; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 7 November, and to be printed (Bill 70).

Road Traffic Regulation (Temporary Closure for Filming) Bill

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)

Iain Stewart, supported by Mrs Cheryl Gillan, Stuart Andrew, Eric Ollerenshaw, and Karen Lumley and Steve Baker, presented a Bill to make provision for the restriction or regulation of traffic on roads in connection with filming; and for connected purposes.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 7 November, and to be printed (Bill 71) with explanatory notes (Bill 71-EN).

Estimates

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[1st Allotted Day]

estimates 2014-15

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

Universal Credit

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Relevant documents: Fifth Report from the Work and Pensions Committee, Session 2013-14, Universal Credit implementation: monitoring DWP’s performance in 2012-13, HC 1209 and the Government response, HC 426.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2015, for expenditure by the Department for Work and Pensions:

(1) further resources, not exceeding £45,438,318,000 be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1233 of Session 2013-14,

(2) further resources, not exceeding £74,721,000 be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £44,850,071,000 be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(John Penrose.)

17:56

[Dame Anne Begg (Aberdeen South) (Lab)]

Universal credit is a major welfare reform. It will eventually replace tax credits and most existing working-age benefits, including out-of-work benefits and housing benefit. It is estimated that, by the time it is fully implemented, universal credit—or UC, as it has now become known—will be paid to 7.7 million households, and we hope that that will be the case.

During last week’s debate on work and pensions, I said that the problem with welfare reform was that it was devilishly complex, took a long time to implement, and always had unintended consequences. I think that all three of those things apply to universal credit. We can agree that its design should bring some advantages. It should improve the position of claimants when they move into work or take on more work, because their benefit will be reduced gradually on the basis of how much they earn, rather than suddenly being cut off if their working hours exceed a certain limit. It should remove many of the “cliff edges” that exist in the current system. Because it is both an in-work and an out-of-work benefit, it will remove the constant applying and reapplying for different benefits as someone moves in and out of work.

However, it is wrong to talk about UC’s “simplifying the benefits system”, because that is not possible to any significant extent. The benefits system is complex because people’s lives are complex, and are constantly changing. UC will be a more streamlined system, but it will not be a simple one. That is clear from the problems that have been encountered in efforts to implement it. The national roll-out of new UC claims was due to take place between October 2013 and April this year. Existing claimants of “legacy benefits”, including jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance and housing benefit, would then be migrated to UC between April 2014 and the end of 2017. However, problems with IT systems meant that major changes to the implementation timetable were made in July 2013, and then again in December last year. That slowed down the process dramatically.

UC claims were introduced on a very small scale from April last year in a few jobcentres in Greater Manchester, which were initially called “pathfinders” but are now referred to by the Department for Work and Pensions as “live service sites”. In the event, national roll-out from last October amounted to the expansion of new UC claims to only a further six jobcentres around Britain, and it has recently been expanded again to a further nine sites in the north-west, bringing the total number of jobcentres where UC is available to 19, less than 3% of the jobcentre network—hardly a national roll-out.

New claims to UC are now not expected to be extended to the whole of Great Britain until 2016 and the bulk of existing claimants will not be moved on to UC until 2016-17. The process will not be completed until later than the original target date of 2017.

The Secretary of State brushes aside any criticism of the very small number of people who are on UC by arguing that the Government are

“taking a careful and controlled approach to achieve a safe and secure delivery.”—[Official Report, 30 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 645.]

I think we would all agree that it is right to ensure that the system works properly before extending it, but, as the Work and Pensions Committee said, there is a difference between cautious progress and a snail’s pace.

The facts are clear. Since UC started in April last year fewer than 7,000 claims have been processed. By comparison, more than 1 million people claim just jobseeker’s allowance. In January this year alone, there were almost 250,000 new jobseeker’s allowance claims. That is how much churn there is in the system. Almost all the 7,000 UC claims are from people in the simplest circumstances: young, single, and usually recently unemployed. Last week, 15 months after UC began, claims from couples started to be accepted—but only in a handful of the live service sites. We have been told that claims from people with children will begin “later in the summer”. We all know what Parliament’s timetables are like and we wonder when “summer” actually is, so can the Minister give us an idea of what “summer” means in this context?

Achieving only that tiny number of claims to date illustrates the scale of the challenge still facing the Government in trying to replace existing working-age benefits and tax credits with UC by 2017, including migrating all the claimants of the relevant existing benefits over to it. Given the excruciatingly slow pace of roll-out to date, it is hard to see how the target date can be met.

To put this into context, the other new benefit which has had its implementation slowed down is the personal independence payment, although even PIP has more new claims in payment than UC. By March this year 83,900 PIP decisions had been made, which is far higher than for UC, and that involves a smaller cohort and has been done in a shorter time scale. In our report, we asked the DWP to set out its revised estimates of UC caseloads and costs for each year to 2017-18, to reassure Parliament and the public that there is a clear and detailed revised implementation plan. The Government’s response to our report did not include any of that information.

The problems with implementing UC arise largely from failure to get the IT right. Problems with Government IT systems have happened so frequently that they have almost become a cliché, but the UC IT challenge seems especially difficult to tackle and to be throwing up particular challenges. Some £40 million in IT expenditure had to be written off in 2012-13, and a further £90 million is being “written down” in five years instead of 15 because the useful life of the software is much shorter than anticipated. That may seem like an accounting detail, but it shows that the use of public money has not been cost-effective to date, and a great deal more public money is at stake in the UC programme.

The Government’s current approach to the IT problems is to continue to spend millions of pounds—between £37 million and £58 million—on the old IT system during 2014 to extend its functionality so that it can cope with a wider range of claimants in the live service sites. At the same time, extensive sums are being spent on developing IT for the long term. That has had various names and various incarnations: first it was called “the digital solution”, then “the end-state solution”, and the latest terminology seems to be the “enhanced digital service”. Unfortunately we on the Select Committee still do not know what that means. The Secretary of State’s explanation last Monday did not help us clear that up.

The National Audit Office has summed up very well the lack of information available on how the IT for UC will be taken forward. It said last December that the uncertainties include the following: how it will work; when it will be ready; how much it will cost; and who will do the work to develop and build it. We still do not have answers to any of these questions. It would be helpful if the Minister provided some answers to those key points in her response to the debate, because the Work and Pensions Committee has still not had an explanation.

We have asked Ministers for more information about the IT during three evidence sessions over the space of nine months. We repeated this request in our report, including asking the DWP to set out the costs of the IT development work, because the published information on IT costs does not take us beyond November 2014, but we received no answers in the Government response to our report. All it said was that UC will be delivered via

“a multi-channel service that makes greater use of modern technology to ensure the system is as effective, simple and transparent as possible.”

I still do not know what that means, and I do not know if anybody does.

The one thing we do know is that the new “enhanced digital service” will not be ready to test before the end of this year, and even then it will only be tested on 100 claimants to start with. We still have no indication of when it will be possible to test it on a bigger and more representative group of claimants. The challenge of getting from an IT system that is capable of processing 100 claims by the end of 2014 to one that can deal with frequently changing claims from more than 7 million households by 2017 is clearly an extreme one.

Our report recommended that, given the small number of people currently claiming UC, the Government should consider whether it would be a better use of taxpayers’ money to abandon further development of the existing system and focus solely on the end-state solution. The Government said in answer to a recent parliamentary question—although this was not set out in their response to our report—that the enhanced digital service will be integrated with the existing UC service where

“it is both practical and operationally sensible”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 434W.]

Again, I am not sure what that means, so perhaps the Minister can translate those vague phrases into something more meaningful and detailed when she responds.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The Chairman of the Select Committee talks about the enhanced digital solution, which I think has the characteristics of a front-end which is then fed by a number of the legacy systems, which is why applications development work must be done on both of them. In terms of the technical architecture, I do not think that is altogether surprising, different or new.

[Dame Anne Begg]

I have to say that that is a better explanation than anything I have heard from any of the Ministers—although I am not sure I even understand that explanation—but the question of what this digital solution actually entails is concerning: is it a complete rewriting of the IT or is it, as the hon. Gentleman says, about bringing the legacy systems in and developing them? That was not the original impression we were given, however. Is there to be an original design or the use of the original IT—although, as we know, there is a failure to develop that or to adapt it to cover the different circumstances that people have?

The Committee was also concerned—we expressed this quite forcefully in our report—about the DWP’s lack of co-operation with our formal role in scrutinising UC. I am sure the House would agree that, as our report says, effective Select Committee scrutiny depends on the provision of accurate, timely and detailed information by Government Departments. The DWP has not always provided that to the Committee in the case of UC.

As well as publishing a highly critical report on UC last September, the National Audit Office was then involved in a long-running dispute with the DWP about how much it should write off for the wasted IT. Because of the accounting concerns, the NAO refused to sign off the DWP accounts for 2012-13 for six months, which delayed their publication from June to December. The Secretary of State was, not unreasonably, unwilling to appear before the Committee to give oral evidence about UC until the accounts were published, so our own scrutiny process was delayed and hampered.

The DWP has also been very reluctant to provide us with information about UC and the serious problems it has encountered with it. When the NAO reported on those problems in September last year, it came as news to us, because the Government had not told us about their own concerns about UC and the actions they had taken to address them during 2012 and early 2013, even though our Select Committee had held several oral evidence sessions during that time and published a substantial report. On two occasions the Government published details about major changes to the timetable for UC implementation only when forced to do so by the prospect of the Secretary of State having to appear before us to give oral evidence. Information was released at the session itself on one occasion, and two working days before on another—even then, very little detail was available. That, of course, gave the Committee no time to assess the implications of these announcements properly before we put our questions. We believe that it is unacceptable for the Government to provide information about major policy changes to Committees only when forced to do so by the imminent prospect of being held to account in a public evidence session.

The Committee does not, as the Secretary of State has suggested, want to run his Department—far from it—but we do expect to have access to the information we need to scrutinise it effectively. However, the Secretary of State told us in February:

“I do not have to tell the Committee everything that is happening in the Department until we have reached a conclusion about what is actually happening”.

That view was reiterated in the formal Government response to our concerns, which said that the DWP

“does not regard it as necessary to provide a running commentary on the day to day management of the many large and complex programmes currently underway”.

I will let hon. Members come to their own conclusions about what that implies in terms of respect for accountability, transparency and the formal scrutiny role of departmental Select Committees.

Our report also highlighted the problems the UC delays are causing for other key organisations, particularly local authorities. Local authorities currently administer housing benefit on the Government’s behalf but were expecting the introduction of UC to mean that new claims for housing benefit would end by April this year. The UC implementation delays mean that local authorities will now be administering housing benefit until at least 2016. It is very difficult for them to know how best to run and staff their housing benefit departments until the Government clarify what funding they will make available for that. We asked the DWP to clarify the funding that will be available in 2014-15 and 2015-16 to cover the additional costs to local authorities, but no details were provided in the Government’s response; they simply said that they would ensure that they were in a position to inform local authorities of their individual budget allocations

“in sufficient time before the start of the 2015/16 financial year”.

Local authorities will also have an important role in helping more vulnerable claimants cope with the transition to UC. Our 2012 report on UC examined the implications for vulnerable people in detail. Since then, the fundamental problems with implementing UC have, understandably, dominated public debate and the Committee’s attention. Ensuring that vulnerable people are not excluded from, or disadvantaged by, UC should remain a priority for the Government, and how vulnerable people will be supported through the transition remains a key concern for the Committee. The Government have acknowledged that vulnerable people will need support to adjust to UC. Lord Freud, the Minister with responsibility for welfare reform, told us that how support would be provided for vulnerable people was almost as important as UC itself. But it is still far from clear how that will work in practice, and a great deal still needs to be clarified about how that support will be provided and funded.

Working with the Local Government Association, the Government produced the first version of the local support services framework—LSSF—last year. That sets out how they expect support for vulnerable people to be provided, in partnership with local authorities, housing providers and the voluntary sector. However, there is little detail on how the LSSF will operate in practice and how it will be funded, even though an “update” was published at the end of last year. The Government said last December that the final version of the LSSF would be published in autumn 2014, but in their response to our report that date had changed to autumn 2015. We understand that the delays to UC implementation mean that the timetable for providing support to claimants will also need to change, but the organisations DWP expects to deliver this support—local authorities, housing providers and voluntary organisations —all need to know what they are expected to provide, so that they can plan and budget for these new responsibilities.

In all the debate about IT systems, costs and case loads, it concerns me that the central point of UC is being lost: it is meant to make the benefit system work better for millions of claimants, help them to move into jobs or work more hours, and make it less complicated for them to move on to and off benefit as their lives change. Until we have more clarity, transparency and detail from the Government about progress with the UC project, it is difficult for anyone, including my Committee, to make a proper assessment of whether UC will genuinely deliver the improvements for claimants that this costly and complex welfare reform was intended to deliver.

18:15

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

The DWP is delivering the biggest welfare reforms for a generation, improving services for claimants and cutting costs concurrently. The objectives are: to control the costs of welfare; to get as many people as possible into or back to work; to strengthen incentives to work by making it pay; to support people who need welfare; and to be fair to the taxpayer. Benefits have been capped so that no household can receive more on out-of-work benefits than £26,000, which is what the average working family earns. That is still very generous, as many people in full-time employment do not earn as much as £26,000; we are talking about an equivalent of £500 a week for couples and those with children and £300 a week for single people. Housing benefit has also been capped so that benefit claimants face the same lifestyle decisions as other working people have to make—living where they can afford and limiting the size of their family to what they can afford.

The most radical reform is the introduction of universal credit, a new single benefit integrating income support, income-based jobseeker’s allowance, employment and support allowance, housing benefit, child tax credit and working tax credit. At the heart of this hugely ambitious UC programme is the intention to make work always pay. The scale and complexity of administering UC cannot be overestimated, and its introduction will necessarily be incremental. Under UC, 1.1 million households will keep more of their earnings when starting work of 10 hours per week; and 3.1 million households will have a higher entitlement, with 75% of those being the poorest households. Replacing that complex range of benefits with one new single benefit offering incentives to work and protection for those who cannot work is a significant challenge, and a policy of incremental expansion is the right way in which to introduce it.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Lady consider the fact that UC is not going to be a single benefit? Some recipients will be the equivalent of jobseeker’s allowance claimants now, and they will have one set of conditions and so on, and another set of claimants will be people who have been deemed to be unfit to work. Inherently, UC will not be a fully singular benefit.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

As my hon. Friend—I will call her that as we are co-members of the Work and Pensions Committee—will know, there are component parts to UC and different claimants will be entitled to different components. As the Chair of the Committee has said, people’s lives are immensely complex and they change, which all adds to the complexity of running any benefits system. Let us consider housing benefit, for example. Family members move in and out of the home, which changes the entitlement, and people have fluctuating health conditions, which make their circumstances change. It will always be a complicated system, but the intention is to simplify it and to minimise the cost of administration.

The National Audit Office has said that the United Kingdom will benefit by £38 billion as a result of universal credit. This Government have grasped the nettle that the previous Government avoided. After 13 years of Labour, welfare spending increased by 60%, costing every household an extra £3,000. Housing benefit increased by 35%. Between 1997 and 2010, spending on tax credits increased by 340%. Long-term unemployment almost doubled between 2008 and 2010, from 396,000 to 783,000. The number of households where no member had ever worked doubled. The maximum housing benefit award reached an eye-watering £104,000 a year. Labour subsidised people to live in the private sector on rents that other ordinary working people could not afford.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the hon. Lady tell us how many claimants received the sum of money that she just mentioned? How many claims were in that region?

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

I am not for one moment giving the impression that that was typical of the average claim; of course it was not. The fact that there was no cap meant that it was possible, in certain circumstances, to rise to those really out-of-control levels.

The reforms to the welfare system will ensure that as many people as possible who are fit for work are helped into work, and only those people who are either unable to work for a whole complex range of reasons or who are on very low incomes are eligible for benefits. The scale of that task is gargantuan, but we have made good progress and we continue to progress towards improving the lives of the long-term unemployed and bringing the welfare budget under control for the benefit of the working people who pay for it through their taxes.

18:21

[Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

If ever a debate title were a misnomer, it is this one, because it should be “The failure to implement universal credit”. Failure is pretty much par for the course for the Department for Work and Pensions, certainly in the implementation of its policies, which aim to reduce costs to the benefit of claimants and taxpayers. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), the Chair of the Select Committee, has detailed the fantastic amounts of public money that have already been lost in a failed IT system. She has also touched on the unwillingness of Ministers in the DWP to answer questions from the Select Committee. I point out in passing that every Select Committee is appointed by this House of Commons, and its sole purpose is to scrutinise the Department which bears the same name.

We see constant failure in the implementation of the work capability assessment. On four occasions, Professor Harrington has attempted to ameliorate the agonies which individuals who are subjected to the work capability assessment are put through, yet we are still receiving letters from our constituents detailing the humiliating experiences. This is a really serious matter. An individual claimant can be sanctioned for failing to attend a work capability assessment. We have all had examples from constituents of the letter detailing the appointment arriving two or even three days after the specified date. We have also heard about those who have turned up for the assessment only to be told by the assessors, “Sorry, we can’t take any more people today.”

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

As usual, my hon. Friend is making a passionate speech. I have mentioned this story before, but let me repeat it. One of my constituents was sanctioned for having a heart attack during his work capability assessment. The nurse undertaking the assessment told him he was having a heart attack, but he was still sanctioned.

[Glenda Jackson]

It is not usual for me to be gobsmacked, but I certainly am by that story, even though I have heard from constituents who, while not necessarily experiencing heart attacks, have had absolutely disgraceful treatment. We are also seeing a rise in the number of appeals concerning employment and support allowance, and the appeals that have been lodged are taking longer and longer to come to a conclusion. I will not go into the whole debacle of the personal independence payment, but it is simply scandalous that some of the most vulnerable people in our society, whom the DWP is supposed to be assisting, are being left in many instances with no financial support whatever. To add insult to injury, this Government have also reduced the funding of local authorities. Many local authorities were absolutely central to ensuring that people with disabilities could live human, productive lives. That money has now been taken away.

I hope to bring home to the Chamber the absolute chaos out there at the moment, and to concentrate on the questioning that an individual claimant has to go through and the kind of questioning to which the Secretary of State responds. It is clear that he is burdened with delusions of adequacy, but some of his responses to my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee at his most recent appearance in front of us were absolutely disgraceful.

Let me detail the experience of an individual claimant. A 71-year-old pensioner, dubbed by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to be self-employed, applied for housing benefit. It has now taken 17 weeks and still there is no final cut-off point where she has been assured that she will receive housing benefit. The most recent inquiry that came to her was to detail the cost of a bill of £3.40; the second was to detail the cost of a bill of £7.47. Both of those claims took place in 2012. The mind boggles at that, when the Secretary of State, who has lost millions and millions of pounds on a failed IT system, has categorically refused to give the Select Committee any detail whatever about his newly trumpeted business plan. He has refused to discuss the costs of the plan or whether there will be any direct savings either to the taxpayer or to the overarching benefit system. It is an absolute disgrace that the Select Committee, which has been appointed to scrutinise the DWP, is being buffeted away. It seems that the Department is opting for some kind of bunker mentality, but it will not work.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Was she as surprised as I was to learn in the evidence given by Sir Bob Kerslake to the Public Accounts Committee this afternoon that the business case that she has just mentioned, which, according to the report, is due to be finalised by the end of April, has still not been agreed by Her Majesty’s Treasury?

[Glenda Jackson]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend, and I would hope every Member of this House, would be shocked to realise that the DWP is still not giving the right answers—it is ludicrous to expect the right answer to come from the Department for Work and Pension, as simple humility is not part and parcel of its make-up. The Committees and Government Departments that scrutinise where public money goes are being pushed to one side. I have already referred to the bunker mentality of the DWP, and the example that my right hon. Friend gives me is just par for the course; it happens constantly. Arguments are not even being put up. We are all being told, “Oh no, it’s none of your business; it’s our business.”

My hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee has given details of the actual answers. There is a pattern, which I find very disturbing. I have already touched on the issue of disregarding any serious questioning on costs. Ever since this major benefit change came into being, the Department has employed what I would call a programme of black propaganda, and every single one of the red tops has taken it up with glee and run with it. That black propaganda told the people of this country—I am paraphrasing; the DWP would never be this cogent—that everyone who was claiming benefits was doing so because they were too lazy to work. Nothing could be further from the truth. I have already touched on the agonies that are being endured by people with serious mental and physical disabilities, and the pattern is ongoing.

A report from the Office for National Statistics last week scrutinised the level of complaints made against all the Government Departments about the misuse of statistics, and guess which one came top of the list! It was the Department for Work and Pensions. Throughout the time I have been a member of the Select Committee, we have raised again and again the issue of the misuse of stats and the misuse of the English language to proselytise this black propaganda and to confuse and distort what should be central to the Committee’s concerns—namely, the well-being of the people who require benefits, not because they are lazy or workshy, or even because there are no jobs, but because they should be supported by the people of this country, as they always have been.

After the last debate on this issue, I was touched to receive a response from the people of this country. If there is a silver lining to the black cloud that is the DWP, it is that the majority of people in this country still believe that the welfare state should do what it was meant to do, which is to support people who, through no fault of their own, cannot maintain themselves without the support of the rest of us. That support is alive and well out there in the country. The one place where it is certainly dead is within the Department for Work and Pensions.

18:29

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

We are having an interesting debate. I should like to pay tribute to the Chair of the Select Committee, on which I serve—the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg) does a fantastic job, and she painted a good picture in her opening remarks, in which she set out all the facts. We must recognise, however, that this is a complex area. Governments and Oppositions of all political flavours have, over decades, contributed to the challenge. Many have been well-meaning and tried to resolve all the problems. Simplicity is a great objective, but it is probably one of the hardest things to deliver.

Listening to the debate so far, I have heard those who see the glass half full and those who see the glass half empty. A couple of the contributions from the Opposition have seen it has half empty, but let me remind the House of what we have in common. Both parties have said that universal credit is the right way to go.

We also need to be mindful of the fact that the purpose of a Select Committee is not, frustratingly, to look at what is right and what is working. We never look at that. Rightly, we look at the areas that are not working and need improvement. It is absolutely right, as the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) said, that we should ensure that those who are vulnerable get the help they need. Like her, I get constituents coming into my surgery who have not had fair treatment at the hands of the Department for Work and Pensions, but that problem has been growing for years and years. It is to the credit of this Government that they have tried, for the first time in 60 years, to consolidate the system and to simplify it and pull it together so that it works better in the future.

[Glenda Jackson]

The flaw in the hon. Lady’s argument is that the Select Committee has been consistent—there has been complete cross-party unity on this—in presenting to the Department for Work and Pensions the areas where we believe improvements could be made and, in many instances, putting forward ideas about what kind of help is needed. There has also been a consistent response from the Department—namely, total rejection.

[Anne Marie Morris]

The hon. Lady is right to say that the Select Committee has put forward a number of arguments, but that is what we are there to do. We are not there to tell the Department about the things it is doing well—more’s the pity, as that would give our work some balance—so she is right in that respect. I think that she is describing issues of obfuscation and not getting the facts, but my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) was instructive in that regard when, earlier in the debate, he said that communication was the key. The devil is in the detail, and it is very difficult—when talking about, say, technology —to communicate with people and tell them exactly what is being done. I would love to say that technology was simple, but it is not.

Let us remind ourselves of the objectives of the change, to which both sides of the House agreed. The objectives were simplification, reducing costs and smoothing the transition from benefit to work. The Chair of the Select Committee talked about dealing with the wretched precipices that make people’s lives so difficult. The Committee has worked to hold the Government to account, and we should be trying to get a better result rather than just point scoring for the sake of it. The Chairman has done a good job of trying to get that balance right.

Let us look at where we are going. When we get this sorted out, 3 million households will be better off by £177 a month. We will have a system that provides better child care support, with an extra £200 million for child care helping 100,000 extra families working fewer than 16 hours a week. We will also have an extra £400 million to increase child care support to 85% of all working families. Let us look to the longer-term future: in 10 years’ time, UK plc will benefit by £35 billion. That will be a worthwhile and significant achievement. The path must continue to be trodden and the Committee must continue to fight the fight to keep the Department for Work and Pensions honest in all that it says, and to strive to get the best possible results. This must be a partnership, however.

Progress to date has included the launching of pathfinders, and we also have additional schemes such as the long-term schemes in our jobcentres. After the initial launch in the north-west, we now have universal credit rolling out in 14 jobcentres. By the end of this year, it will be in place in 90 of them. That will mean that universal credit will have been rolled out to one in eight jobcentres. That is not an insignificant achievement in that period of time, given the complexity involved. We already have 6,500 people on universal credit. I appreciate the Chairman’s view that that is a small number, but it is a start and a move in the right direction.

A point that has not been raised is that this is not just about nuts and bolts, IT systems and budgets. It is about a fundamental culture change, and as we know, changing a culture is one of the most difficult things to do in any organisation, never mind in the country as a whole.

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

My hon. Friend may recall that during my short time on the Select Committee, we visited the pathfinder in Oldham and Bolton. I was struck by the enthusiasm of the user groups and the staff for the new culture of helping people into work, and by the fact that people in those user groups were able to work for longer hours without falling off the precipice. Given the good news on working and benefits, should the Government not continue to press forward with universal credit?

[Anne Marie Morris]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point and he is absolutely right: that was indeed what we heard. It points to the suggestion that the Government’s movement is beginning to deliver results.

The claimant commitment has now been rolled out in every job centre. It is quite a challenge, because we are saying to those who claim that benefits should absolutely be there for anybody who needs them—there are some basic things that we all believe to be the absolute right of any individual, because they are about respect for the individual—but that the taxpayer must also feel that his or her interests have been properly represented. The claimant commitment is a move in the right direction, ensuring that there is no longer any opportunity for an individual to believe that a life on benefits is a lifestyle choice. No taxpayer would believe that that is right, and I do not believe that any Opposition Member believes it is—they would say that this is about helping those who really need it: the vulnerable, the disabled and those in really difficult positions. I think we should all agree that this is an important step forward, and 600,000 claimant commitments have been signed.

By 2016-17, the vast majority will have moved to universal credit. Although that is perhaps not what we would ideally have wanted, it seems to me that it is not bad progress. However, I and my fellow members of the Select Committee have obviously been privy to a number of the issues that have already been alluded to as a big challenge, and one of them is undoubtedly the IT systems. I share the concerns, frustration and lack of understanding about how the pilot worked, about what the end-state solution will be, and about the fact that £40 million has effectively been wiped off and £91 million amortised.

I think the real issue is that as a Committee we needed context. Having worked in the private sector, I know that when very large IT systems are introduced, there will always be a write-off. When we sit in the public sector looking at a new IT system without the context of what it takes to roll out such systems and what the normal practice is for write-offs, we find it hard to judge. It would have been fair to want and to effect more explanation from the DWP. Indeed, would it not have been wonderful to have more input from my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South who, I think, might have been able to give us the necessary language and understanding? He has explained why the two systems have to carry on in parallel whereas we, perhaps because we do not know very much about IT, naively thought that that was a waste of money and that we could just move straight to end state. I hope that the Minister will give us a little more clarity on that.

The Chair of the Committee also mentioned one of the challenges with housing benefit. Although universal credit has been rolled out and although it is right to have done that in slow steps, checking them as we went, it still does not include housing benefit, ESA or tax credits. I share the general concern about how exactly the Department will incorporate some of those more difficult pieces into the system. At the moment, as the Chair of the Committee said, the cases we have been considering have been the easy ones, but we have now moved on from single people to couples. It is a matter of communication and understanding how things will be done effectively. With housing benefit in particular, it is important that advice and guidance are produced for local authorities and that the local support services framework is produced in its final form earlier rather than later. Financial information, early information and the final LSSF are undoubtedly needed sooner rather than later, and I share the concerns about the current timeline.

Although some are frustrated with the slow development of the system, it seems to me that going slow and steady to ensure that we treat vulnerable people with the care they need must be right. We must get this right for the vulnerable and nothing would be worse than rolling the scheme out early and getting it wrong. That would be a serious mistake.

Despite some of the challenges, there has been a significant achievement. When we get this done—and I hope that there will be cross-party support for it—it will be the biggest transformation in the system for 60 years. It will also make it clear that there is a proper balance between society and the taxpayer and those who need proper support to enable them to participate fully in working life. The fact that the claimant commitment has been so successful in beginning to change that mindset must be a good thing.

I would question the fact that although the Opposition support universal credit as a concept, they are now suggesting that if they were in government after the next election they would freeze it, but not the pilot, I understand. It seems to me that we do more damage if we start stopping and starting programmes. If the Opposition support universal credit, as I believe they do, they should support what is being done. Of course we should hold the Department to account, but let us also consider sensible steps forward. I cannot see that freezing something is a sensible step, because all it does is stop the progress that we all agree would be a good thing in the longer term.

One can strive for the perfect, but one can never achieve the perfect. We have made good steps as a Government but there is more that can be done. Most important, the lesson I would like the Department to take away is about better and timely communication, particularly on complex issues such as IT, a subject on which I do not claim to be an expert and on which I suspect that not many members of the Select Committee would claim to be experts either.

18:39

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

Although I have huge regard for the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), I must disagree with some parts of her speech, most notably because there has been a swathe of errors not just in universal credit but, as we debated last week, in the other programmes for welfare reform. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) remarked on the unfortunate way in which the welfare reforms have been framed and debated in the media, including irresponsible press releases that perpetuate the vilification of people on benefits and paint them as the new undeserving poor. I have found that deeply offensive and such an approach has been used in Ministers’ speeches. Many people have found that offensive.

[Anne Marie Morris]

The hon. Lady is a fine contributor to our Select Committee and adds a lot of intellectual rigour and brings a lot from her previous background. My challenge is: would it not be lovely if we could control the media? She is absolutely right, I am sure, that some inappropriate things have been said by the wrong people, but when it comes to who said what and whether what is reported in the press is true, I find it a very hard leap of faith to make to accept her other point. I do not believe that any member of the Government would wantonly wish to put out any message in the way that she describes—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Lady has already had 14 minutes. Let somebody else in—we need short interventions.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Language such as that about “shirkers” and “scroungers” has been used in the House by Ministers, and I reiterate that I find this deeply offensive.

If we consider welfare reforms in the round, we can see that there have been huge errors in how they have been delivered. If we consider them in the context of other reforms to the welfare state, we can see that we are experiencing a decimation of the welfare system that was set up after the second world war, with people who are sick and disabled through no fault of their own increasingly being denied access to a basic standard of living. In addition, the changes to access to health care and to justice are also affecting benefit claimants and because of the changes there has been a 20% reduction in the number of benefit claimants whose appeals are successful. We need to look at the situation in the round. I find it disappointing that a debate such as this is not seen in the context of everything else that is going on.

On the implementation of universal credit, I do not understand how the Secretary of State can still be in a job. Mistakes and errors have cost hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. That has been accompanied by cover-up and claims that the system has been reset.

I endorse all the positive comments that have been made about the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg). She is a fantastic Chair, always allowing people to engage and giving them the opportunity to speak, but she has been shown such disrespect. If anybody has not seen how the Secretary of State behaved in that Select Committee meeting in February, I invite them to watch it. It was a disgrace.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

I thank the hon. Lady for allowing me to intervene. I hope she will also allow that the Secretary of State was sorely provoked. If we are going to look at the behaviour of one person, we need to look at the behaviour of others who took part in that exchange.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am sorry, I do not agree with that. The exchange is on record and people can watch it. It was clear that when the Chair of the Select Committee asked in February why we had not had the information that was available, the democratic role that Select Committees play in our parliamentary system was ignored. The response to the Select Committee’s report is a further justification for my comments. I am not alone in my views. There has been criticism from the Major Projects Authority and the National Audit Office.

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

The previous Conservative Government had form in this area, particularly in relation to benefits, although my hon. Friend probably was not in the House at the time. We heard a lot of ballyhoo about the horizon project, but at the end of the day it cost billions to put right. Again, it was the people on benefits who suffered as a result. The Conservatives have form. They come up with all sorts of excuses over the years, and claim to be compassionate. They are not. We have only to look at people with disabilities, who still have to go through medical tests.

[Debbie Abrahams]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. No, I was not in the House at that time. We recognise that we did not get everything right either—I am sure there will be an intervention about that—but this Government and this Secretary of State are now in power. It is their programme that we are scrutinising and it is a categorical failure. It is a mess. I have spoken about the waste of money. The Major Projects Authority said that there have been so many changes to universal credit that it cannot be seen as the same project: it must be seen as a new project.

As I said last week, and as was mentioned also by the Chair of the Select Committee, we started off with four pathfinders, including one in my constituency, Oldham. Those were announced in 2011 and were meant to be followed by a national roll-out in October 2013. On the day that the Secretary of State was supposed to provide evidence to the Select Committee, we learned that there was not to be a roll-out. Again, he was very indignant that we were questioning him about that. It was appalling arrogance.

As we have heard, there are supposed to be 7.7 million people on universal credit when it is fully implemented. Currently about 6,000 people are on it. The Secretary of State thought it was highly amusing when I asked him last week how long it would take at the present rate for 1 million people to be on UC. It is a matter of simple maths. Perhaps he, like the Chancellor, has problems with that. The answer is 2091. The Secretary of State did not like answering that.

Last September the National Audit Office reported IT problems that the Government had known about for 18 months but had failed to tell us about. That is deceptive and dishonourable. Some £40 million spent on software has had to be written off and a further £91 million written down. Good money is being poured after bad as the Government continue to spend £37 million to £38 million on the old IT system, while at the same time spending extensive sums on an end-state solution or, as it is now called, enhanced digital—whatever.

In addition to saying that it was now treating universal credit as a new project, the MPA, together with the NAO, reported its concerns on significant issues of governance, transparency, financial controls over supplier spending, and ineffective departmental oversight. It could not get worse. How is the Secretary of State still in his job? In any other profession, he would have gone. Why is he still there?

We supported and still support the principles of a simplified benefits system and one that makes work pay, but whether that will happen is questionable. There is real concern that the aim of making work pay will not be achieved. Recent evidence has shown that by 2018 cuts to the basic and work allowances will mean that universal credit is £685 a year less generous for a lone parent with two children, saving the Government £1.7 billion a year. There are also concerns that UC will weaken the incentive for second earners in couples to work. One in five children in poverty now lives with a single-earner couple. Ensuring that more second earners, principally women, are able to take up employment will be critical to reducing child poverty rates. Finally, the decision to leave council tax support out of universal credit means that the aim of simplicity is being undermined, with many claimants facing two rates of benefit withdrawal when they move into work or when their income increases.

The introduction of universal credit has been a car crash—a demonstration of how not to implement policy and of how the policy intention of making work pay is failing. This Government and this Secretary of State are failing to reform our welfare system. Of course, we need to make sure that welfare spending is not profligate, but in reforming our welfare system so that it is fit for the 21st century, we must remember why we developed our model of social welfare, retaining its principles of inclusion, support and security for all, protecting any one of us should we fall on hard times or become sick or disabled. It is a hand-up, not a hand-out.

18:57

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) in what seems to have become a very large meeting of the Select Committee. We will see whether that changes by the end of the debate. It is a pleasure to be in the Chamber talking about universal credit again. I forget how many times in the past year we have done so in the course of ministerial statements, urgent questions or other debates on the same topic. We may have spent more hours debating it than people have spent claiming it, but I hope that will not continue to be the case.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) spoke, she confirmed that there is still general support for the principle of universal credit. I took issue with the Chair of the Select Committee in a debate last week when she rightly set out how hard welfare reform is, but we have to bite the bullet. We cannot keep tweaking and expanding over-complex systems. At some stage we need to start again with a new system that meets modern needs. We must accept that the existing architecture will not last much longer without falling over in an awful heap. We need to find a new welfare system that works for the people who claim from it, works for the taxpayer and achieves the outcomes that we want.

I hope the Government will press on with universal credit. I hope they can find a smoother path than there has been so far, but the direction of travel is right. I hope we can reach the end position more quickly than we fear. It is worth reiterating what we are trying to replace. The NAO report set out that we are trying to replace six different benefit systems that have about 13 million annual claims and pay out about £67 billion a year. Those are huge amounts of money and represent a huge complexity that we are trying to sort out.

For the investment of £2.4 billion—perhaps the Minister could clarify whether we are expecting a higher cost for universal credit than the original estimate—we are expecting £38 billion-worth of savings by 2023. The Government response quoted a £35 billion benefit; I assume that that is the net of those two numbers, and not that the estimated saving has drifted down a bit. Again, it would be helpful to understand what savings we think there will be over the period. I think there is to be an annual saving of £7 billion, so there is a huge prize for making the system work. It should be better for claimants, who will understand what they will get, and better for the people administering UC, who will understand what they should be giving out. I think that we have all been in that awful situation of hearing someone ask, “Am I better off in work or on benefits?” That is not a simple calculation. It is hugely complex to work out the answer, but we need to be able to answer that clearly.

I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) said when we went to see UC at work in the north-west. What sticks in my memory is the genuine enthusiasm on the part of everyone who was working with UC for the system, the ideas and the changes. However, I also remember the horribly clunky and complex IT systems that we saw, which did not seem able to talk to each other, and which required a lot of manual interventions to make the processes work. I am looking forward to going to Hammersmith in October to see the latest iteration of how UC works, and to see whether we have managed to get a much slicker and smoother system. I certainly hope that we have.

There have been two benefits from this change. We hear that the claimant commitment, which has been rolled out in my constituency, is bringing about real changes in behaviour. The contract part of that helps to make it clear to people what they are expected to do; that is working. The other area where we have seen real advantages is in the use of real-time information. Many of us, perhaps wrongly and cynically, feared that that would be the bit of the process that would fall over; we feared that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs would struggle to make it work, and that trying to add it to its complex systems might be a bit too much. That has actually worked fine; the data seem to work, and there are even more enhancements that we can make to the use of that in the meantime, before we get to see the whole UC in action. So there have been some positive steps so far.

Only about 7,000 people are claiming UC. We have to be honest: that is a long way short of where the Government, the Committee, and indeed everyone, were hoping the UC would be. We have to accept that that is disappointing, but it is far better than rushing on with the system only to have it completely fall over, and creating a tax credits-type fiasco of the kind that we all remember from a decade or so ago. I do not remember the person who headed the Department responsible for tax credits, or the responsible Minister, having to resign. I do not remember the then Chancellor holding his hands up and saying, “I think I’ll resign in embarrassment at this farce.” It is a bit rich to call for the Secretary of State to resign when these implementation mistakes were not his fault; as I understand it, he spotted what was going wrong and sorted it out. There is no call for him to resign at all; that was a cheap and unnecessary shot.

I agree with the concerns expressed about the engagement with the Select Committee; that was a bit of a disappointment to us. Clearly, there had been a long period in which it was known that there were issues with UC. A lot of money had been wasted, and there had been lots of changes to the programme; the Committee was just not aware of that. I accept that the National Audit Office was involved, and that the Public Accounts Committee had various runs around this, but it would have felt a lot better for us, when we were trying to scrutinise the Department’s performance and finances, and the programme as a whole from a policy perspective, if we had had some kind of understanding that there were pretty major issues that would make the project look a lot different from how it was meant to look. That would have been a slightly more respectful way to treat the Committee. I do not expect daily updates on everything that is happening, but we are talking about something fundamental. That could have been handled a little better. Perhaps we would then have had a slightly less tense meeting with the Secretary of State earlier this year. I personally do not recall finding him offensive or unhelpful; the meeting was a little bad-tempered, but I suppose that when one is scrutinising someone, it can be a little difficult. I suspect that there was fault on all sides in that very long meeting.

I will come back to the Committee’s recommendation on how many IT systems we should be working on. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) may have clarified something, but I am not sure that we can say that the new digital end-state solution is an enhancement of the current one. I think that we have always understood that a twin-track approach was being taken; we were working on two different systems at the same time, one of which would succeed the other. There are reports that the Cabinet Office recommended moving to the end-state solution earlier this year, rather than staying with the twin-track approach.

There is a fundamental question here: if we are working on two different systems, one of which will succeed the other, and there are only 7,000 or so people claiming on the first one, is it better to focus all resources on the final end-state system, and divert people, money and time to that, rather than trying to work on both at the same time, even if that means a slightly longer implementation period, and a slight further delay? Perhaps testing just one system may get us to the right position; I do not know. It may be that to make this work, we have to go through the first system before we can move on to the second. The answers that we have had on that are not clear. It looks to quite a lot of people as though there may be a more cost-effective way of achieving this, given the timetable that we are on.

I reiterate my view that this is a great reform; everyone should want to see it work. I ask the Government to press on and make it work.

19:05

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

Some social security commentators have described a universal credit-type proposal as the holy grail of social security thinking. It is certainly true that the idea is nothing new. It was not invented by the current Government; it has been debated and investigated by previous Governments. In an earlier debate on the subject—I think it was an urgent question —my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling) made it quite clear that when he was Secretary of State for Social Security, he looked at the project and concluded that without very significant time and money being invested, it would be too difficult to deliver.

There has obviously been a learning curve to which, for whatever reason, the current Government seem to have decided to pay no attention. If we sometimes seem quite cynical and sceptical about the whole process, it is because of a lot of what we have heard over the past four years. There was total confidence that UC would be the answer to all sorts of questions, and would be relatively easy. I do not think that many people present, except my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), were on the Welfare Reform Bill Committee in 2011. The then Minister of State for Employment, the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), who responded to most of the debates in Committee, was prone to describing his proposals as an empty bookcase. The Bill was the architecture; a lot of other things would come along later. I think he spoke more truly than he thought he did, because clearly it was a rather empty bookcase; a lot of the issues had not been fully bottomed-out and talked about in the way that they should have been.

One example of that—I will come on to others—is free school meals. We discussed the issue in the Bill Committee in 2011. Various people made written submissions and proposals, and there were discussions, about how that might or might not work as part of the project. We learn now that the Department still does not know how it will deal with free school meals in the further roll-out of universal credit. Three years later, we have not made much progress on something quite important and basic.

[Dame Anne Begg]

Does my hon. Friend agree that anyone building a bookcase has to know the size of the books that will be displayed on it before they can get the architecture right? Perhaps that was a lesson that the Minister forgot.

[Sheila Gilmore]

That is a very good analogy for how we have arrived in this position. The trouble is that it is not some sort of blunder: my hon. Friends have referred to some of the other big changes going through the DWP, and the same pattern has been seen with disability living allowance and the personal independence payment. First, a straw man was erected: there was a statement about certain things in the previous system, some of which were not entirely accurate, being really bad and having to be changed. There was then a brief initial consultation period before the Department went ahead with the change, which was not properly piloted. As a result, every new PIP applicant since June 2013 is part of the testing process. That is not a pilot, unless it is a pilot on a gigantic scale. Many people who are anxious and worried while they wait for their PIP payments to come through, are being treated as guinea pigs, after a failure to analyse the problem, implement the scheme or test the proposals. The pattern is not unique to universal credit.

Had we been told from the outset that there would be a slow roll-out because of the need for testing, we might not be standing here now debating whether the glass is half full, but we have been told so often that the glass is full and everything is going well. When the Select Committee prepared a report in November 2012, we concentrated on vulnerable claimants. At that time we were told that all the implementation plans were on track for 2013, which was not the case. By February 2013, the Major Projects Authority told the DWP to reset the entire project—that was an internal, private report of which Members had no knowledge at the time. That information did not come out clearly until July 2013, when the Secretary of State told the Select Committee that there were major changes to the roll-out. The NAO reported in September 2013, and the Secretary of State’s response was, “Oh, I knew about all those problems all along.” Perhaps he did know about the problems all along, but he did not tell many people about them. There were further changes in December 2013.

Some speakers, in trying to support universal credit, suggested that at least we have some people on it. There are 6,000 people on universal credit, and it will be rolled out to more jobcentres, but those are the very simplest cases. In essence, for those claimants universal credit is little different from jobseeker’s allowance. There is little to say that universal credit is a big breakthrough to a different form of benefit, because until now claimants have been single people. Apparently, we are now able to roll out universal credit to some couples, but the claimants so far have been single people. Some 70% of claimants are relatively young. They are new benefit claimants who do not have complications, basically. If universal credit is to bring together various benefits successfully, the difficult cases will be the real test, not the straightforward ones.

One bit of universal credit thinking that has been rolled out is the claimant commitment, which has been rolled out to JSA claimants, not merely those who are technically in receipt of JSA-style universal credit. The Government have rolled out the stick without rolling out the carrot. One of the problems with the claimant commitment is not necessarily getting people to agree what they will do to find work but that minor breaches of that agreement can lead to loss of benefits. The carrot—the bit that is meant to help people not only to find work but to make work pay—has not yet been introduced because the vast majority of people are nowhere near being on universal credit.

Since our original debates on the Welfare Reform Act 2012, we have experienced obfuscation through the use of computerese. MPs, like many lay people, are not IT experts. Initially, concerns were raised about the size of the IT project—various Governments have run into trouble with IT in the past—and people asked, “How do we know this will be different?” Any concerns were simply brushed aside because the Government had a new “agile” way of doing things that meant everything was going to be fine. About 18 months later we learned that that way of doing things had been abandoned, so clearly everything was not fine, but that is what we were told.

Other things that were “fine” included security, establishing people’s identity and the difficulties with online transactions. Those concerns were raised from the outset. I recall an informal briefing at which the Minister, Lord Freud, was asked questions by people who were expert, such as people who had served on housing associations. They asked, “What about the verification of people’s housing claims? How is that actually going to be done?” At the moment, those claims are done fairly intensively with people having to produce information, although housing associations have been allowed to verify that information because they have seen the lease, and so on. Lord Freud simply ignored all that and said, “No, universal credit will have far less fraud and error, and it will all be fine.” But of course it has not been fine, and it is now recognised that the notion that everything could be done online has not only been delayed but will never happen. One reason why that will not happen is that security has been recognised as a major issue. The same Ministers who told us that security was not a problem have now told us that it is a problem. When a Department is paying out substantial sums of money to millions of individuals, doing it fully online is not practical. After Ministers initially enthused about how everything would be straightforward, and after having been told different things at different times—even when the reality was that something else was going on—we are somewhat sceptical.

As other speakers have said, we were told that a certain type of IT is being used for the very small number of current claimants but that, at the same time, the Department was working on what in February 2014 was called the end-state, open-source, web-based solution. [Laughter.] Exactly. I know the meaning of each individual word, but I have never been clear about what the phrase means. We were told that it was a digital solution—it therefore seems to be an important aspect of the whole programme—and that it would be ready to be tested on 100 claimants by November 2014. As the Select Committee report found, the system is still a long way from being viable. There is a huge difference between operating something like that for a small group of 100 claimants and operating it for far more people.

The Select Committee thought that what we were being told about was a different and digital way of doing things, and we specifically asked for more detail. The Government’s response to the Select Committee report evaded the question, and it is all there. First, the response talked about the claimant commitment, which I have already mentioned and did not have anything to do with the digital solution. Secondly, the response talked about a

“more challenging and supportive relationship between claimants and coaches.”

“Coaches” is the new name for jobcentre advisers. Again, that does not really tell us anything about the digital solution. There are concerns about how scalable those intensive relationships will be. Thirdly, we were told that there will be more online services, but many JSA claims are already made online, so again it is unclear whether that has anything to do with the end-state or digital solution.

Therefore, having gone around the houses about the claimant commitment, the things that are already happening online and the more supportive relationship, all that we have been told is that the digital solution is

“a multi-channel service that makes greater use of modern technology”—

I am glad that it makes use of modern technology, rather than ancient technology—

“to ensure the system is as effective, simple and transparent as possible.”

Those are all worthy aims, but they tell us nothing about what the end-state solution actually is, what it does, how much progress has been made towards it, how many people are working on it, what it will cost or what the interface will be between claimants and the system. It is nothing more than an aspiration.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend, who is making some extremely pertinent points, but many of my constituents who are in work receive varying pay packets. For example, one week they will work overtime but the next week they will not. Some of them, such as school meal supervisory assistants, are employed only in term time. Does she have any confidence at all from what we have heard so far that the system could be sufficiently sophisticated and robust to take into account natural human activity, which does not consist of people earning exactly the same wage for 52 weeks of the year and with exactly the same family circumstances?

[Sheila Gilmore]

Again, there is the theory and then there is what happens in practice. If in all cases the information from Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs works, it should be reasonably accurate, but when people have very variable earnings there will be considerable problems, particularly with monthly payments, because it will take a long time to adjust for somebody whose earnings vary a great deal. That will leave some people in considerable hardship.

[David Mowat]

To answer the intervention made by the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), the whole purpose of having the real-time information interface out of the HMRC systems, which was a prerequisite to universal credit, was to address precisely that point.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but obviously there are other complications for people with very variable earnings, and I am not confident that they will all be overcome.

Finally, on the IT that we are expected to believe will be in place at some point, last week the Secretary of State delivered absolutely no clarity when we debated this in the Chamber. When I intervened to ask him what the end-state solution was, he replied:

“It is universal credit completely delivering to everybody in the UK. That is the end-state solution—live, online and fully protected.”—[Official Report, 30 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 645.]

Again, that is describing the end aspiration in a very generalised way, but it tells us absolutely nothing about whether it will work.

Any change of this sort requires a lot of thought and practice. One of the issues about which there remains considerable concern—we have not heard a great deal about this from DWP—is the direct payment of housing benefit to the claimant and then to the landlord. To be fair, DWP has been carrying out pilots for two years to see how that would work, and I think that they have now come to an end. I understand that an independent evaluation is now with the Department, although it has not yet been published—perhaps the Minister knows more about that than I do. However, the data from the organisations that have been piloting it are now in the public domain. They looked initially at some 6,700 people —in different small groups across the country—that it was tested on. At the end of the pilot, 4,700 were still on direct payments, but 1,993 of the original group had been returned to having payments made directly to their landlord. That is a considerable proportion of the total. That rings some alarm bells on how well it will work. The landlords involved in those pilots have said constantly that it worked only as a result of very intensive work that has been done precisely because they are pilots. There is considerable concern that that will not be scalable to the required extent. Although I certainly commend the Department for running those pilots, we need to hear what lessons have been learnt, whether any further changes to the plans are required and how these things will be made to work in the longer term.

There are many other aspects of universal credit that people have raised concerns about. In many ways we have almost forgotten about some of the downsides, such as second earners being less incentivised to work under universal credit rules, as drawn up by the Government—they could be changed—than they are under the current system, and there is the fact that some families with disabled children will receive less than they do at the moment. There was a lot of debate about those issues, and the fact that we are nowhere near including some of those people is probably why those concerns have gone off the boil, but we should not forget about them. Even if universal credit is properly implemented, it is not a case of all winners and no losers, because a significant number of people will still be worse off under universal credit.

The detailed rules for universal credit can be changed, and in some ways that is where the bookcase has its merits. Some of the concerns about the rate of tapering of income, which has been changed since the original proposals, and how we deal with school meals, child care and families with disabled children could all be addressed. I think that it is a pity that at this stage we are so far away from those people being included in the new system that we do not even need to look for the answers. Just over 6,000 people are on universal credit, and that is predominantly JSA with a few changes, so the simplest of cases and situations. That is not really a fantastic achievement. I am sorry if that is describing the glass as being half empty, but that is certainly how it appears to me.

19:27

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore). This is the second time in a week that we have had the opportunity to debate universal credit. I will focus my brief remarks on some of the comments made by Labour Members, which I think can be characterised thus: “We are doing our job. If only the Secretary of State would do his job, everything would be okay.”

I had thought that it was agreed that universal credit is a much-needed project. It is a project of national significance. I think that it is analogous to the Olympics, but in fact harder to deliver. Opposition Front Benchers might give that some thought when considering how to conduct themselves in this debate. The project might be harder to deliver than the Olympics, but it is as important to our country. I will comment on the progress and some of the issues around that, and also talk at some length about Labour’s four-point plan—it has now been published—to “save” the programme, and a rattling good yarn it is too. I will not repeat the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), but the project is a national imperative. We are trying to make work pay, to streamline benefits and to mimic the whole process of transition to work.

Developing a set of IT applications to be used by 8 million users is quite difficult. Frankly, neither political party has shown a great deal of success in doing that over the past decade or so. If we accept that it is a hard thing to do, then perhaps Members might try to do a little more than they have today in getting behind the 1,000 or 2,000 people who are working on the programme —working weekends and doing the stuff that needs to be done to get this to happen.

Are there problems with this project? I do not know; I am not an expert on it. I hate to say this, but I do not even serve on the Select Committee. Perhaps I am here as an imposter. I have had some experience of IT. I have spent a large part of my life explaining to people why IT projects are late and why it is not my fault but somebody else’s—I got quite good at that by the end. During a quality assurance test on an IT project—in fact, we do not have IT projects any more; this is a business change project—one of the indicators of difficulties relates to the number of project managers. If the project manager has changed a lot, there will be reasons for that: it is a very clear flashing red light. This programme has been unlucky—I use that word advisedly—in that it has had a number of different project managers who have had to move on for different reasons. Of course, that creates issues about how things are done, as in this case.

I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Edinburgh East said about roll-out. It was not clear that she thought that the Secretary of State was rolling it out wrongly; rather, she seemed concerned that he had not told her in advance, at the start, how he was going to do it. That is an entirely different matter, because sometimes things are changed for tactical reasons. When the Olympics are being delivered, things are sometimes done in a different order. That is not unreasonable and not necessarily wrong.

[Sheila Gilmore]

I hope that the hon. Gentleman would not want to misinterpret what I said. There is nothing wrong with changing one’s mind and trying to adjust as one goes along, but what has been wrong has been the complete confidence, with each turnaround, in everything being fine and in how we should not be worried any more. We have seen that on several occasions.

[David Mowat]

As I said, I have not been serving on the Select Committee and I have not heard about the confidence she mentions. My point is that decisions are made during the life cycle of a programme that effect changes, and if, every time that happens—

[Debbie Abrahams]

There was a two-week difference between the Department saying that everything was fine in a memo that we received and the NAO’s publication of its cataclysmic report condemning what the Department is doing. Is that the sort of time scale that the hon. Gentleman has in mind?

[David Mowat]

I do not know, because I was not aware of that. The hon. Lady’s intervention, like much of her speech, is along the lines of, “We’re doing our job; if only the Secretary of State would do his job and hurry up and get this delivered, everything would be all right.” My substantive point is that delivering this application is harder than delivering the Olympics, and it behoves all of us to get behind the 1,000 or 2,000 people who are trying to do it. That is not to say that individual mistakes have not been made. There have almost certainly been lots of mistakes; it would be odd if there had not been.

As to progress, the issue is not that things have not been done; it is what we do now and how we deal with it. I am going to be kind to the Opposition and talk about the Olympics rather than the national health service project that wrote off about £10 billion. The Olympics was a joint success—a success for our country—and yet its budget increased by a factor of four. When the right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) came to the House and announced that the budget was going up by a factor of four, Members on both sides of the House, broadly speaking, tried to understand why that had happened, accepted it, and knuckled down to get the project delivered. In the end, there was not a cigarette paper between the two parties in terms of the approach to that project of national significance—as this one is. The Secretary of State and his team are trying to do a very difficult thing in delivering this application, to be used by 10 million people, in parallel with existing systems which, every week, continue to be used by 10 million people. Of course mistakes have been made; as I say, it would be odd if they had not. The issue is whether, on the whole, it is being managed correctly and whether, structurally, we are doing the right thing.

I had thought that Labour supported the basic tenets of universal credit, but some of the comments by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) about scope implied that she has severe reservations. She may be right; I am not an expert. It seems odd that Labour Members are raising issues such as scope at such a late stage of the programme. To some extent, they are the Opposition and perhaps it is reasonable that they oppose, but there is a difference between opposing and what I would call opportunistic carping—not only that, but opportunistic carping that is destructive, not constructive.

That brings me to Labour’s four-point plan, to which Mr Baldrick would have been delighted to give his name. Point 1 is to stop the programme and think about it for three months—not to review it, not to stop rolling it out, but to stop it completely. It is not totally clear to me what they would be stopping—development, implementation, the front end, the legacy systems and interface work, or perhaps all of it. It is not totally clear to me what they would do with the 1,000 people—to take a round number—who are currently doing all these tasks. They are saying, “No, let’s just stop it, with an immediate write-off of all that.”

Point 2 is to get the NAO to have a look at the programme. That is fair enough; one cannot argue with asking the NAO to look at something. Of course, it would have to use people with expertise in programmes of this type, of whom most of the good ones are in the civil service and working on this programme. Nevertheless, let us do it anyway.

The really interesting thing about the plan is points 3 and 4, which represent major, significant scope changes. If we make such changes to a programme right near the end, that is when everything goes wrong—when things have to be retested, budgets change, and all the rest of it. The great thing about these major scope changes is that, according to the four-point plan, they will be done at “no additional cost”. The two points propose to remove some of the onus on self-employed people and to continue to pay the primary carer.

On the train this morning, between Watford and Euston, I costed Labour’s four-point plan at £89,611,207.31. That costing—I am very happy to take an intervention on it—includes 11 new applications, 47 new screens, 190 database changes, 201 reports, a 40% test rerun, and 88 new interfaces. I may have spent only 11 minutes on the calculation to come up with that number, but that is 11 minutes more than Labour Members have spent on putting it into their plan and saying they can achieve it with “no additional cost”. I would be delighted if one of them wants to intervene on me—but intervention came there none.

[Sheila Gilmore]

rose—

[David Mowat]

Ah!

[Sheila Gilmore]

The hon. Gentleman should be clearer about why he thinks, for example, that making payment to the primary carer would have such huge costs, especially at a point when, it is fair to say, the systems are unlikely to have reached implementation for families with children.

[David Mowat]

The problem arises precisely because the systems are nearing completion. Costs in the life cycle of an IT project escalate the nearer to the end we get. To repeat a couple of the estimating parameters I used, Labour’s plan would require 11 new applications and 47 new screens. If the Labour party has its own estimate and it took it more than 11 minutes to put it together, I would be very happy to accept that it is right, but all it has done is write a sentence.

[Dame Anne Begg]

From the Select Committee’s point of view—not that of Labour Back Benchers—the problem is that we do not know any of those things. The hon. Gentleman has made assumptions, but we do not know whether the IT has developed sufficiently to take account of families with children or whether it would cost anything to make the payment to the primary carer instead. We do not know—that is our objection. We have not been told. We have not been kept in the loop.

[David Mowat]

The hon. Lady makes a reasonable intervention and I understand it, but if Labour Front Benchers, whose four-point plan this is, do not know the cost of their proposed scope increases—which is reasonable, because I do not know how much they would cost, either—we would expect them to say, “We don’t know the costs,” not, “These scope increases will be delivered within the same budget as the rest of the programme.” The point I am making is that that is irresponsible. It is not indicative of Front Benchers who take what has to happen to the programme seriously or who, 10 months from now, intend to be the Government of this country. The reality is that 10 years—two Parliaments—is too soon.

19:41

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The Work and Pensions Committee has done the House a service with its report, and the tributes to its Chair from both sides of the House are well deserved.

The hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) is absolutely right to say that there is widespread agreement that universal credit is, in principle, a good idea, but I am afraid the universal credit project has had all the hallmarks of disaster right from the start, as a number of us pointed out at the time. Everybody hoped, as we were assured, that the lessons of previous failures had been learned, but unfortunately they had not.

It started to go wrong within just a few weeks of the general election. Ministers published a Green Paper entitled “21st Century Welfare”—I have my well-thumbed copy with me—which introduced the idea of universal credit. Paragraph 7 of chapter 5 stated:

“The IT changes that would be necessary to deliver a more integrated system would not constitute a major IT project”.

There was an utter failure, right at the outset, to grasp the scale of what the Government were about to embark on. How on earth the phrase “would not constitute a major IT project” came to be written in a Green Paper, I have absolutely no idea, but I am quite sure that no official in the Department would have been responsible for writing such a ludicrous claim. I am afraid that from that moment on, things have got progressively worse.

Will the Minister comment specifically on my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) about this afternoon’s announcement by the head of the civil service, Sir Bob Kerslake, in evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, that the Treasury has not yet approved the revised business case? A week ago today, the Minister said in response to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), the shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions:

“The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has approved the UC Strategic Outline Business Case plans for the remainder of this Parliament (2014-15) as per the ministerial announcement (5 December 2013, Official Report, column 65WS)”.—[Official Report, 30 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 434W.]

The Minister said that the Treasury had agreed the business case, but today the head of the civil service told the Public Accounts Committee that the Treasury has not agreed the business case. The Minister owes us an explanation of the discrepancy between her answer a week ago and what the head of the civil service has said today.

The project has suffered from three levels of failure: policy failure, delivery failure and governance failure. I will say a little about each of them. First, policy failure is perhaps the most serious one. As the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson) has rightly pointed out, the point of universal credit was to make sure that people would be better off if their income increased because they got a job or did extra hours or for some other reason. However, the difficulty involved in achieving that apparently simple goal was never understood by Ministers, and the hard graft of delivering it has therefore never been done.

Last September’s National Audit Office report, which my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) has rightly described as cataclysmic, noted:

“Throughout the programme the Department has lacked a detailed view of how Universal Credit is meant to work.”

That has been the central failure: the Department simply has not worked out what the system is supposed to do.

More than three years after the implementation of universal credit started, we still do not know, as we have been reminded in this debate, which recipients of universal credit will be entitled to free school meals for their children. That is not a minor detail; it is a very serious problem for the aim of making sure that people are always better off if their income goes up. If the truth is that a household will suddenly lose their entitlement to free school meals if they reach a specific income threshold—that appears to be where we are heading—of, for example, £9,000 a year, their income will be a great deal less than it was before the small increase that triggered that change. The Citizens Advice briefing for today’s debate has an example of a lone parent who, if free school meals are decided on the basis of income threshold,

“will be worse off by taking on extra work however many hours she works”.

Solving that genuine policy difficulty is at the heart of what the Government are trying to do with universal credit. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) has reminded us, she and I served on the Welfare Reform Bill Committee. On 24 March 2011, the Secretary of State said:

“we have to resolve some of these issues like free school meals…You asked when. I believe that during the Committee stage we should be in a much stronger position to make it much clearer how we will do that.”––[Official Report, Welfare Reform Public Bill Committee, 24 March 2011; c. 154-55, Q299.]

The Committee stage ended on 24 May 2011, just over three years ago. When I asked the Schools Minister about the subject last Thursday, he said that an announcement would be made “shortly”. It appears that we are heading for some sort of income threshold. If that happens, it will create a huge new work disincentive in universal credit for a very large number of people that will be far worse than anything in the current system, for all its flaws.

The universal credit rescue committee—I am grateful to the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) for drawing attention to its work—submitted its report to the Labour party two weeks ago. It pointed out that the work incentives for second earners in a couple are a good deal worse in universal credit than they are in the current system. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth underlined the importance of that point.

Leaving council tax support out of universal credit undermines simplicity, with many claimants facing two separate rates of benefit withdrawal when they move into work or their incomes increase.

The decision to pay universal credit to only one member of a couple, rather than reflecting the current system in which payment with respect for children is paid to the main carer—an arrangement with which you, Madam Deputy Speaker, are particularly familiar—raises significant risks for many women and their children.

Universal credit also creates an extraordinary new red tape burden for self-employed people and partners in small partnerships who want to claim universal credit. The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales says that about 60,000 partners in small partnerships will want to claim universal credit and that it will be virtually impossible for them to meet the proposed red tape challenge.

It is the policy failures that are the most serious, but it is the delivery failures that are the most spectacular. As the Minister for the Cabinet Office said in a television interview, implementation has been “lamentable”. I wrote to the Secretary of State on 16 November 2010 to point out that his timetable was unrealistic, and I wrote to him again on 18 April 2011. The Secretary of State wrote a perfectly friendly response on both occasions, but simply denied that he had a problem.

In November 2011, the Secretary of State announced that 1 million people would be claiming universal credit by April 2014; in fact, there were approximately 6,000. In May 2012, he announced that new applications for existing benefits and credits would be entirely phased out by April 2014; Ministers now say that that will not happen until 2016. Even assuming that everything goes well from here, which it will not, the project is at least two years late.

Late last year, it was finally admitted that the transition to universal credit will not be complete by 2017. Everybody has known that for months. The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) was right to make some very thoughtful comments about that. However, while everybody knew about the problems, Ministers flatly denied them. The Secretary of State told the House on 5 September 2013:

“The plan is, and has always been, to deliver this programme within the four-year schedule to 2017…that is exactly what the plan is today. We will deliver this in time”.—[Official Report, 5 September 2013; Vol. 567, c. 472.]

That was complete fantasy. He was still doing it on 18 November, when he said that

“universal credit will roll out and deliver exactly as we said it would.”—[Official Report, 18 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 947.]

Everybody knew that that was untrue. Why do Ministers not simply tell us the truth about what is going on? Some £40 million has been written off so far, with more undoubtedly to come.

I was worried about achieving one universal credit IT system in anything like the proposed time scale, but we are now in the extraordinary situation of building two different universal credit IT systems. How much more will that cost? The Select Committee asked that question—surely that is what Select Committees are supposed to ask about—but the Government response simply does not provide any answers. Surely we can at least be told how much extra it will cost us to have two IT systems instead of one.

Lessons also need to be learned from another group of serious failures—the governance failures in the project. To answer the question quite rightly asked by the hon. Member for Warrington South, five different officials have had responsibility for the project since it started. However, the central problem is that the project has been managed primarily with a view to minimising embarrassment for the Secretary of State. That is essentially what decisions have been about. Problems, when obvious, have simply been denied; information that would have shed light on what was going on has been buried; and the people who have asked difficult questions have been fobbed off. Members of the public have made freedom of information requests to see the risk register, the milestone schedule and the project assessment review, but applications have of course been refused, and when the Information Tribunal found in favour of those members of the public, the Department simply appealed again.

Ministers are absolutely determined that nobody should know what is really happening. With this project, there is an obsession with hiding things; of pretending that all is well when it obviously is not; and, as the National Audit Office has pointed out, of only admitting to good news. That is not a culture that will deliver a successful project, and it certainly has not delivered success in this case. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn referred to a “bunker mentality”, and there absolutely is such a mentality.

Obsessive secrecy has no doubt spared the blushes of the Secretary of State, at least for a time, but it has hindered progress on the project. It has meant that it has taken longer than it should have done to recognise problems and to deal with them, and a large amount of money has been wasted. If, two years ago, the Secretary of State had put up his hands, and recognised that he and his advisers had got it wrong and that the project would take longer than they first said, much of the subsequent waste and delay could have been avoided. Instead, they just kept on denying that there were any problems, so the problems kept on getting worse—and the project is not finished yet.

The project is at least two years late, and it will have wasted much more than the £130 million already acknowledged. It is essential, as the universal credit rescue committee has argued, that the project is now paused. Central policy decisions still have not been made—Ministers cannot spend hundreds of millions of pounds on an IT system if they do not know what it is supposed to do—and Ministers have not made such decisions. As has rightly been said by the rescue committee, taking advice from the former chief information officer of Rolls-Royce, who served on it with distinction, we need a plan that is published, is audited by the National Audit Office and contains milestones with dates, so that everybody knows how the project is going. Why pretend that it going well when it clearly is not?

[David Mowat]

The point I made was that the review could be done in parallel with continuing the programme. Let us say that 1,000 people are working on the programme at the moment. What will the right hon. Gentleman do with those 1,000 people during that three-month review?

[Stephen Timms]

As I have said, the idea for the pause is based on the recommendation of Jonathan Mitchell, the retired chief information officer of Rolls-Royce, who has managed extremely large IT projects in that company—possibly even larger than those for which the hon. Gentleman had responsibility. He has said that when a project is as out of control as this one clearly is, it is essential to stop, to make policy decisions and to draw up a plan before simply shovelling in hundreds of millions pounds more.

[David Mowat]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Timms]

I will not, because I should conclude.

Outstanding policy issues need to be decided, the work incentive design flaws need to be fixed and a hard-headed view needs to be taken about whether this project can be rescued within an acceptable time and cost. Opposition Members hope the answer to such a question will be yes, but we cannot assume that it will be. The question needs to be asked frankly and answered honestly. It should not be left until the election; it should be done now.

19:49

[The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)]

I have listened to everything that has been said and I have a hefty set of answers to give, but let me put everything in context by starting with what I hope we can all agree on. In between the doom and gloom that swept across the Chamber from Opposition Members, they seemed to agree that the benefits system needs to be changed, and this Government are bringing about the fundamental reform that is needed. The biggest reform in 60 years will ensure that we reward work, support aspiration, encourage responsibility and help those who need it most. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) said, this piece of work is of national importance. We cannot run away from making the significant changes that are so necessary; it is because they are so imperative that we are making them.

Universal credit is at the heart of our reform. Its aim is to make work pay by ensuring that claimants are better off in work than on benefits. It will promote personal responsibility by ensuring that people actively seek work and increase earnings. At the same time, we will continue to provide support for those who need it most. Universal credit will have a positive impact on claimants. Up to 300,000 more people will be in work, and about 3 million more households will gain from universal credit, with an average gain of £177 per month. We are investing £600 million in child care support, with about 100,000 extra families becoming eligible for such support for the first time. From April 2016, 85% of eligible costs will be covered by the child care rate. Alongside that, thousands of disabled adults and children will receive more support, including a higher rate of support for all children who are registered blind.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Will the Minister give way?

[Esther McVey]

If I may carry on for a while, I will then answer the hon. Lady’s question.

I want to thank the Select Committee for continuing to support the policy objectives of universal credit—improving incentives to work and, as has to be key, smoothing the transition from benefits into work. Public and parliamentary debate has focused on IT systems, and IT is an important enabler, but universal credit is much more than that; it is a transformational change that is building a welfare system fit for the 21st century. It is already making a difference to people and their lives: we have stronger work incentives, there is more support from work coaches and universal credit claimants are spending twice as much time looking for work because they have the extra support.

We know that 90% of universal credit claimants are claiming online. Many Members spoke about the IT system.

[Sheila Gilmore]

Is it not the case that very high levels of jobseeker’s allowance claimants are claiming online anyway, so that is not really to do with universal credit? Is it not also the case that the number of hours people are spending looking for work has nothing uniquely to do with universal credit, because the Department has rolled out the claimant commitment far beyond those who are in receipt of universal credit?

[Esther McVey]

Obviously more people are going online because that is key to all our changes. When we were providing support during the roll-out, we were enabling people to get online and use IT. That was part of the system. Obviously it is working and more people are using IT and getting online. As for the claimant commitment, that is an integral precursor of universal credit. We had to ensure that all of our 26,300 members of staff knew how that worked. Of course they are working with JSA claimants, but that is one of the changes towards universal credit that we have put into place.

Members have spoken about the IT system. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South, who has worked so ably on such systems, spoke with much knowledge on this matter. I am afraid that there was no knowledge from Opposition Members on this matter. We all agree that it is a complex IT system. I believe that there is a logic that we can all follow in what is happening. We are ensuring that it is slow, it is steady and it is working. The IT system is probably best described as a series of component parts. Some of it will stay—that is known as the legacy system—some of it will be built on, some of it will be plugged in and other bits will be newly built and form part of the enhanced digital solution. As we are rolling out the system, we will constantly be learning and working on it to inform the enhanced digital solution. It is like a pincer effect: we are rolling out what we have and learning as we go along to inform the enhanced digital solution.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am not au fait with IT systems, but I am au fait with very complicated plans. This is a very complicated plan, so the expectation must be that it will go wrong and require tinkering and adjustment right to the end. That is what we should expect; not some blueprint that will be perfect all the way through. We know where we want to go. We have to be prepared to make adjustments as we get there.

[Esther McVey]

I thank my hon. Friend. That is why we are learning as we are rolling the system out and using that to inform what we are doing.

We have a multi-disciplinary team of 90 people, 30 of whom are digital specialists. They are developing the digital system as we go along. It is not a twin-track approach. We are continually learning and informing. We have one system. That is what we are doing. I hope that that goes some way towards answering the questions that have been asked about IT. One thing that we can all agree on is that it is complex. We will learn as we go along and we have the right person doing the job.

[Stephen Timms]

Is it the case, as the Minister said in her written answer on Monday last week, that the Treasury has approved the universal credit business case—yes or no?

[Esther McVey]

I have just had the answer that I gave last week checked. It stated:

“The Chief Secretary to the Treasury has approved the UC Strategic Outline Business Case plans for the remainder of this Parliament (2014-15) as per the ministerial announcement (5 December 2013, Official Report, column 65WS)”—[Official Report, 30 June 2014; Vol. 583, c. 434W.]

That was the response and I have just had it verified.

[Stephen Timms]

Will the Minister tell us, then, why the head of the civil service today told the Public Accounts Committee that the Treasury has not approved the universal credit business case?

[Esther McVey]

I will look into that additional point and get back to the right hon. Gentleman. On his last point, I have had the answer checked by my officials and it was correct.

On the roll-out, the new service is now available in 24 areas across England, Wales and Scotland, where it is providing people with stronger incentives and support to get into work, stay in work and increase their income. On 23 June 2014, we began rolling out universal credit for single people to jobcentres across the north-west of England, starting with Hyde, Stalybridge, Stretford, and Altrincham. Last week, it went live in Southport, Crosby, Bootle, Bolton and Farnworth. I am pleased to say that today, Wirral, Birkenhead, Bromborough, Hoylake, Upton and Wallasey began accepting claims for the new benefit. Once the north-west expansion is complete, 90 jobcentres—that is one in eight jobcentres in Britain— will be offering universal credit.

From 30 June, we expanded the service to couples in five of the existing live areas: Rugby, Bath, Inverness, Hammersmith and Harrogate. That meets our commitment to expanding the new service to more areas and to more claimant types from this summer. We will continue to roll out universal credit carefully in a safe and secure manner—starting small, testing and learning from delivery. That remains the right approach. Later in the autumn, it will be expanded to include families.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South answered the question about whether somebody will be able to feed in information about how many hours they work per week. Such real-time information is another part of the programme that we had the foresight to put in place. That is working well and the roll out of it is nearly 100% complete—it is more than 99% rolled out.

I have just received a quote from a claimant in Warrington who is working 20 hours a week:

“I’m currently working 20 hours a week but am able to pick up extra hours when overtime is on offer because UC is flexible in that way and I don’t have to worry about my benefit just stopping if I work more than 16 hours. I know I will still get support until I earn enough to completely pay my own way”.

That is what we always intended to happen. There is a cushion of benefit to support people, but they are able to take extra hours and to progress in work without being stopped from working by the old-fashioned rules and regulations that Labour Members allowed to continue for so long. That is what we are trying to change. We all agreed, including the Select Committee, that those changes were needed. That is an example of a claimant saying what is happening to them right now under this system.

Sadly, I come to the questions that were asked by the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams). One thing on which we agree is that the media must talk about people and depict people carefully and sensitively. Nobody wants to point the finger at anybody. Nobody on the Government Benches has used any inflammatory language, because that is not right. I have always been very careful about the words that I use, because we all know people who have fallen on hard times and have needed the support of the state. It is imperative that each and every one of us checks our language, because it means a lot, whether it is on the internet, in newspapers or on the radio. I totally agree with her about that.

However, I totally disagreed with the hon. Lady—I am sure she will understand this—when she asked how the Secretary of State is still in his job. I had to smile at that rather absurd comment, given what he has delivered in four years. We have a record number of people in work. We are delivering on youth unemployment: it has gone down consistently for nine consecutive months. It is now 100,000 lower than when Labour was in office. Under Labour, youth unemployment went up by 45%. We have had the biggest fall in long-term unemployment, which doubled under Labour, since 1998. There is not just a record number of women in work, but a record rate of women in work too. All of those things are why the Secretary of State is still in his job: he has changed things around fundamentally.

The hon. Lady talks about a £40 million write-down. Projects of this size usually have about 30% write-down rate—this has a 10% rate. Labour’s track record of IT failure is £26 billion written off with no scope whatever, so we can move on to why universal credit is so important. Even the Joseph Rowntree Foundation is very clear about the benefits of universal credit, recently stating:

“Universal Credit is a once in a generation opportunity to reform a failing and overly-complex system. It will revoke the worst work incentives of the current system, smooth transitions in and out of work and make it easier for people to access all the support they are entitled to.”

Those are the reasons why we are correct in pursuing universal credit.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. She and the Department have simplified the system, making it easier for recipients to understand what they can do to claim benefit. Above all, if they are capable of working, they should be in work. In contrast, the Labour party made the system so byzantine that our constituents had to appeal constantly to get the answers they wanted.

[Esther McVey]

My hon. Friend is spot on. Not only was it complex, but people sometimes did not know whether to take a job. People were locked into a life of benefits because they did not know if they would have been better off working. We are changing that.

I have listened to the points raised by hon. Members and I hope I have provided more clarity. I believe that we are making a transformational change. Yes, it needs to be slow and steady—[Interruption.] I am afraid that the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) is laughing. We are putting people into work. We are getting them off benefits. We are helping them to progress and supporting them into work. That is what those on the Government Benches are about: support and reforming the benefit system to the benefit of all of the UK.

Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

Common Agricultural Policy

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Relevant documents: Seventh Report from the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Session 2013-14, Implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy in England 2014-20, HC 745, and the Government response, HC 1088.]

Motion made, and Question proposed,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2015, for expenditure by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

(1) further resources, not exceeding £968,601,000 be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1233 of Session 2013-14,

(2) further resources, not exceeding £371,350,000 be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £1,308,388,000 be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.—(Gavin Barwell.)

20:13

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

I welcome the opportunity to debate the implementation of the common agricultural policy in England. I welcome the Minister to his place and look forward to his comments.

Looking at the estimates for the forthcoming year, it appears that there will be a 2% increase in the overall budget against last year’s final position in the 2012-13 supplementary estimate. It appears that the £43 million increase in programme spend is largely due to the £124 million increase due to the transfer of the CAP disallowance funding from 2013-14 to 2014-15, in line with a Treasury agreement to allow flexibility in disallowance funding between years. There is also a £38.4 million increase to the Environment Agency’s flood management budget, which is extremely welcome and includes the £20 million announced in the 2014 Budget. It would be helpful if the Minister, in his response, reassured us that this is new money and that we are not being asked to make savings from, for example, the EA’s Yorkshire and Humber budget to transfer to other parts of the country. That leads to the question, since I understand that the National Audit Office is not in the position to provide figures for the debate, of what the projected figures for disallowance, and any quantifiable fines from the new CAP reform coming into effect next year, will be.

Against that backdrop, the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was extremely pleased to consider the Department’s proposals. When we reported last year, we found much to like. We support the Government’s intention to raise the minimum level of claim threshold to five hectares, and to move money uphill. It is extremely important to state at the outset, however, that that money must go to active farmers and not simply to those who own the land. I would like to go into some detail in that regard, and the Minister cannot help but be aware of our particular concerns.

I would like to record my particular thanks to the previous Minister with responsibility for farming, my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), who was mindful of our concerns about areas where common land is prevalent. The Committee supports the Government’s position that England should adhere, as closely as possible, to the greening measures set out in the direct payments regulation, and not adopt a national certification scheme approach to greening. In our conclusions, we recommend that the Government maintain the 9% rate of transfer from pillar one to pillar two, and only move to 15% in 2017 if they can demonstrate that additional funds are required and that there is a clear benefit from the projects proposed. Clearly, a compromise of 12% is less than 15% and more than 9%. Perhaps the Minister will share the Government’s thinking in that regard, but we are pleased that the farming voice, and that of the Committee, was heard.

The Committee recommends that the Government take steps to ensure that those actively farming receive the direct payments and that those farmers who have responded to the call to diversify are not captured inadvertently on the “negative list” of business types ineligible for CAP funding under pillar one. We recommend that the Government update the commons registers and allow commoners associations to claim on behalf of all those who actively farm commons, so that the commons attract the share of pillar one money intended for them. I am aware of the position in North Yorkshire and Cumbria, and that the register will be updated from October. I believe that in County Durham and other parts the situation might be slightly different. My concern, which I am sure the Committee shares, is that the update to the register cannot take place before 1 January 2015, so a number of eligible claims will be excluded. What will happen to specific claims that are relevant and should be awarded, but may not be in place by 1 January 2015? It would be extremely helpful to put the minds of those farmers at rest.

The Committee supports the continuation of dual use under pillar two, but we think that Natural England must display a lot more rigour in arranging agri-environment contracts to ensure that payments under those schemes go to those who do the work and whose income is forgone. We make a specific recommendation that I hope will be echoed across the House this evening—that Natural England must be in a position to give advice. It should not be seen just as the policeman; it must be there to provide advice to farmers who seek it.

One of the central recommendations—it is certainly close to my heart, given the area that I represent—is that where there is a dispute between landowners, tenants and graziers, they must have access to a dispute resolution mechanism, set up along similar lines to that suggested by the tenancy reform industry group. In this day and age, it is worrying that those whose interests are sometimes ignored or trodden on should not have access to arbitration or a simple, swift dispute resolution mechanism along the lines we propose.

The Select Committee highlights the risks associated with the Government’s plans to develop a new single IT system for CAP funding through which all agencies would be able to administer the CAP. We do not wish to rehearse the grief from previous Administrations, but we are aware of recent history and we do not wish it to be repeated. An undertaking and some assurance from the Minister that that is not intended would be most welcome this evening.

We support the Government’s ambition to encourage and support as many people as possible to apply for CAP funding online, but that approach will simply not be available to some farmers. We received an assurance from a DEFRA Minister in our recent deliberations that a paper-based application process would be retained and that guidance will be provided in paper format in the run-up to the new scheme. It was thus of some concern when the chief executive of the Rural Payments Agency, in giving evidence to the Committee in April this year, told us that there is absolutely no way that a paper format application can be made. That will send shockwaves through rural areas.

In my own constituency, I had a briefing from NYnet, the county council’s regime that is working in tandem with BT to try to roll out broadband in the area. By 2015-16, however, only 78% of my Thirsk, Malton and Filey constituency will be covered. That means that 22% of Thirsk, Malton and Filey will have no access—I repeat, no access at all—to fast-speed broadband. That 22% is where all the farming communities live, and it means that they will be severely disadvantaged. We are all familiar with those trying to apply online who find either no access or receive internet access that is so slow that all the information that has been entered can be lost just as people are trying to press the send button.

I say to the Minister that it is no comfort to farmers to be told that they should seek a satellite connection, as they simply cannot afford the prohibitive cost. I repeat the Committee’s recommendation to the Government that the BT money that is being rolled out—particularly the element coming from the BBC licence fee and the next round of licensing—should go to those rural communities across England that have the slowest speed and the weakest broadband coverage. We cannot expect the farming community to go digital by default from 1 January, yet have no access to broadband.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I, too, am a member of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Does the hon. Lady agree that throughout the UK and particularly in isolated rural areas, farmers are being marginalised because of lack of proper access to broadband, and that the Minister should use his good offices to make representations to BT about that problem? That issue was highlighted in our rural communities report. Does the hon. Lady further agree with me—on a compelling point that she made—that there is a need for proper guidance and form filling to be available in paper form?

[Miss McIntosh]

I thank the hon. Lady for her sterling contribution and excellent work on the Select Committee. I agree that this goes to the heart of how applications will be made from 1 January. We need clarification, because we cannot have the Minister saying one thing and the RPA saying another. If, as the RPA assured us, paper forms will not be available to submit, intensive tuition must be made available to those required to go digital from 1 January.

I want to raise one or two more points before putting some questions to the Minister. Another issue that the RPA shared with the Committee during the evidence session in April is that the reality will be less than was first hoped and more complex, even without the known unknowns such as the disallowance or fines. The cost to implement will, according to the RPA, be between 15% and 40% higher than previous schemes and, possibly, than previously thought. I shall ask the Minister a couple of direct questions about that.

The impact of flooding on farmland is another important issue that cannot be underestimated. Thousands of acres in Yorkshire and the Humber area were under water in 2012-13 and 2013-14, and thousands of acres were under water in Somerset and the south-western parts of Scotland at the time of flood incidents. The impact on the productivity of farming has been severe.

Will the Minister confirm whether farmers will be eligible for parts of the CAP, perhaps under pillar two, and the rural development fund, if not agri-monetary schemes, for storing water on land? How long would it take? Will such storage constitute reservoirs? When will DEFRA be in a position to publish the reservoir safety guidance, for which we have been waiting for some months, if not two years, because it will have a direct bearing on this matter?

Is it a source of disappointment to DEFRA that the CAP reforms have in many respects become more complex and less simple in an already complex system? Is it indeed the case that the CAP schemes are likely to be between 15% and 40% higher than previous schemes, and how has the Department budgeted for that in the estimates? Is the Department seeking to simplify and minimise the administrative cost in the new schemes, even against that backdrop?

Will the Minister respond to a question that has been asked by me and by the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie)? In April, the RPA told our Committee:

“It is not actually possible to submit by paper to the new scheme, because of the way that it is structured.”

That completely contradicts what Ministers told us in their evidence. I repeat that farmers in areas with no broadband service face considerable problems. Will the Minister assure us that making access to CAP funding digital by default will not cause problems for farmers in areas that lack broadband coverage or significant speeds? Will he also assure us that the new digital support centres, which form an important part of the assisted digital service, will be accessible to all farmers, including hill farmers in relatively remote locations such as mine? Will he confirm that there will be a certain degree of privacy, and that farmers will not be expected to sit in a public place, such as a library, sharing commercially sensitive information with members of the public? The Committee believes that that would not be appropriate.

What makes the Minister think that the United Kingdom’s allocation of pillar two funds, which was much less than had been predicted, will not adversely affect the competitiveness of English farmers, especially in view of the fact that the Government now say that they will modulate 12% and that the proportion will increase to 15% if they believe that to be necessary? What will be the criteria for the move to a 15% rate of transfer from pillar one—direct payments—to support in the final two years of the pillar two rural development programmes? As I have said, we are pleased that the Government listened to the views of the farming community and those of the Committee before reaching their decision, but it would nevertheless be helpful to know what those criteria will be.

In June, the Secretary of State unveiled the details of how the Department would implement the greening rules in England, and referred to a specific problem relating to hedges. He said that the need to validate all claims and map digitally every hedge to EU standards might significantly increase the risk of delayed payments to those who adopted that option. What progress has DEFRA made in talking to banks to ensure that farmers who receive late payments as a consequence of the inclusion of hedges in ecological focus areas will be treated sympathetically? What guidance will it give farmers in regard to how hedges should be measured? I am sure that the Minister will want to allay our concerns, and those of farmers who have contacted us, about any change in the date on which farm payments will be made. What effect will the inclusion of hedges as an option enabling farmers to comply with EFA requirements have on disallowance risk? Will the Minister tell us how the Department will forecast what that risk will be?

During the evidence session, when asked about the level of disallowance that the agency expected to incur under the new CAP, the chief executive of the RPA told the Committee

“we would be doing incredibly well if we can hold disallowance to 2% of future scheme expenditure”,

which is calculated to be in the order of £40 million. From that, it would be reasonable to infer that the UK’s disallowance risk will be increased. We are at a disadvantage this evening because we are debating the subject without the figures from the National Audit Office.

The proposal to move money uphill is obviously welcome, but, as I said earlier, we must ensure that it is those who are actively farming, particularly on common land, who will benefit. DEFRA announced in April that farmers in England who operate within the moorland line would receive approximately £26 more per hectare in direct payments under the new CAP, an increase of about 90% in the moorland rate. That is great news, and a victory for commons, given that 96% of upland commons are above the moorland line. I repeat, however, that we must ensure that the money goes to the commons and the graziers. I hope that the Minister will respond favourably to our request for a dispute resolution mechanism. It would be great if he could also assure us that commoners and graziers who wish to claim payments under the new CAP schemes will not be disadvantaged by the poor state of the registers in North Yorkshire, Cumbria, County Durham or elsewhere.

The new environmental management schemes which are open to all upland farmers are obviously welcome, but I hope the Minister will assure us that those farmers will not be left worse off overall by the changes introduced under the new scheme if, as a result of the comprehensive area assessment, the new environmental land management schemes are not open to farmers who are currently operating the uplands entry level stewardship schemes.

I would like to end by highlighting how current payments have worked least well: in respect of rewarding active farmers and graziers on the common land. It is crucial that those who are actively involved in the commons—those active farmers and graziers, or at least those who perform an active part in managing the commons—receive payment timeously, whereas people who do nothing with the commons should not receive a payment where that is not appropriate. Therefore, I urge the Minister to agree that lessons must be learned from how the existing direct payment scheme—the single payment scheme—was implemented in relation to common land, and to ensure that those who till the land on our behalf are indeed the beneficiaries of the new proposals.

With those comments and questions, we await with great interest the Minister’s response.

20:35

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee and its Chair, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), on producing a very pertinent report.

On previous occasions I have found the Minister to be a very reasonable, intelligent and empathetic person, and I hope those qualities are going to be on display at the Dispatch Box tonight. I was slightly disappointed when I initiated a debate about the hill farmers in Teesdale that he was not able to respond, but I am going to put the points again in the hope of getting a slightly more sympathetic response than I received previously.

In my constituency, there are a large number of hill farmers who are very much affected by these CAP changes. It is an unusual area, because they are almost entirely tenant farmers farming on common land. They have been farming in the same way for about 500 years, and they have produced a very special way of life and a very special and valuable ecology, so I applaud the remarks in the report and from the Select Committee Chair on common land.

When I went to see the Upper Teesdale Agricultural Support Services, it was particularly concerned because it felt that the European Union had not understood the way commons operate in this country and that the rules at European level were not very sensitive to the needs of English hill farmers for that reason. There was also concern about the change in the payment times in the underlying reforms: payments had previously been made on a six-monthly cycle but people were going to have to wait much longer—sometimes 18 months and in one case as long as nine years. That is a significant problem.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, and it allows me to refer to the register, which is out of date. My brother and I have shared a farm in Teesdale, of which the hon. Lady is aware. Does she realise that Teesdale is often cited as the area whose farmers earn the lowest income of any hill farmers in England and Wales?

[Helen Goodman]

The hon. Lady is right. Newcastle university estimates that the average income of a farmer in my constituency is £11,000 a year. Many of them are on working tax credits—or were on them under the previous Government, but I am not sure how many of them are still getting the working tax credits.

The Select Committee report is excellent on the major problem such hill farmers face, which is to do with delivery: the totally inadequate service that the farmers receive from the Rural Payments Agency because of the requirement to apply for money online and because the system is constantly collapsing. The Select Committee report states at paragraph 34 that

“farmers can be heavily penalised for a genuine mistake but not appropriately compensated when it is the Rural Payments Agency who is in error.”

What has happened repeatedly in recent months is that the farmers have gone to upload their data and information, and the RPA computer system has been down, necessitating the farmers to go home and come back another day. That is absolutely absurd. Sometimes they have a round trip of 20 miles to access the computer in the UTASS centre in Middleton in Teesdale. When the system is down, they have wasted several hours and have to go back another day in the vain hope it will be up again. I wrote to the Minister about this, and I really think he should not be penalising the farmers when the RPA is at fault.

The next extremely pertinent recommendation from the Select Committee is recommendation 36, which states:

“The IT system remains, however, one of the standout challenges of this round…Given the lessons of the past we question whether this is the right time to be introducing a new IT system.”

How very right the Committee is. It is not just about a new IT system, with all the risks, complexities and problems that a new system always seems to entail in this country; one of my local farmers calculated that because DEFRA’s systems are so complex, and because he has to apply to so many different things and for each system he is meant to have a different authentication, he is supposed to remember 27 different personal identification numbers. This is absurd. This is grotesque. This is Kafkaesque. I find it difficult to remember my bank number and the number to get into the House of Commons, so how can these farmers, whose real job is farming up on the hill, be expected also to run the sort of complex IT system that would make a banker blench?

The Select Committee’s next point, which is absolutely right, was about the importance of encouraging and supporting people to apply online but realising that

“there will be some for whom such an approach is not appropriate. A paper-based application process must be retained”.

That is absolutely essential. Once upon a time, the farmers got the forms through the post, sat at their kitchen table, had a cup of tea, filled the forms out, put the stamp on the envelope, shoved it in the post box and, boom, the whole thing was done. Now that is not possible and the farmers have to drive to the library or the UTASS centre to get help with the uploading.

The whole thing is completely inefficient because, as recommendation 38 indicates, the rural broadband programme has not succeeded so far. We know that 5 million people in this country do not have access to broadband. Until 100% of people have access to broadband, how can it make sense to have a totally online approach and not have a paper-based approach alongside it? In my constituency, 40% of the farmers have no access to rural broadband, so DEFRA and the RPA are taking an absurd approach. It is essential to maintain a paper-based system. It is not reasonable for the Government to make public spending cuts through a digital-by-default process and pass all the burden back to the farmers for delivering the Government’s own administration system. The farmers experience that as oppressive and nerve wracking; it raises anxiety levels to a completely unreasonable pitch, given the significance of what the Government have to do.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I hope that the hon. Lady is not painting a picture of the old system through rose-tinted spectacles. As I am sure she will recall, when the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) was in charge of DEFRA there was a paper-based system whereby farmers were not paid for years, never mind weeks. At least under the current regime the majority of farmers are paid on 1 December, allowing their cash flow and business to flourish.

[Helen Goodman]

We will see whether the hon. Gentleman’s picture of the current system turns out to be right—I do not think it is accurate. I do not think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South was particularly happy with the criticisms I made of the system in the previous Parliament—they were also significant—but the fact is that this Minister is in the DEFRA hot seat now and it is his responsibility to run a system which is usable and farmer friendly. That patently is not happening at the moment. I am extremely concerned to hear the Chair of the Select Committee say that the head of the Rural Payments Agency is considering not having a paper-based system when we know that the rural broadband roll-out programme will take another three or possibly four years. It is absolutely plain that we need a paper-based system for another five years, and I hope that the Minister will be able to stand at the Dispatch Box, allay all the fears of our farmers and tell us that that is what he will ensure happens.

20:45

[Sir James Paice (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

May I start by reminding the House of my interests, which are in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests?

It fell to me as the then Minister to start the negotiations for what is now seen as the reform of the common agricultural policy. I never know why we use the word “reform” because that is the last thing that we actually have. We have ended up with a complete mish-mash, which is really unacceptable in today’s world. The CAP is about to be implemented. The subject of tonight’s debate bears all the relevance and the power of initiation by the Commission and reflects the impossibility of 27 Ministers managing to agree on any suitable alternative. For the Commission to claim that it represents a stroke of common sense is clearly nonsense. We have ended up with a very complicated system that will not help farming move forward and that does not face up to the changed realities of the world in which we live—a world in which, in the next 30 or 40 years, the supply of food may well not meet demand. European agriculture will not reform as it should to meet those challenges.

I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister negotiated an overall reduction in the CAP spend—the first for many years. I am sorry that it necessitated what can only be described as “handsome bungs” to France and Italy to get their agreement to the cut, and that we therefore ended up with a reduction to pillar two funding, which is unfortunate.

The Government are absolutely right in the way that they have gone about implementing much of these reforms. I particularly welcome the measure to help young farmers. I suspect that deep in the belly of Government, particularly in the Treasury, there is some resentment that that decision has been made compulsory. It is something that I have always believed should be part of British policy, and it is something that has been commonplace elsewhere in Europe. I am delighted that it is now part of the system.

The Government are also right to continue the same entitlements and regions, and I strongly support the moving of support uphill—the increased funding for moorlands—for all the reasons that we have heard. Of course I entirely support the move towards simplicity and the way that the Government have tried to reduce some of the burdens. Getting rid of the soil protection review, for example, is one measure I strongly welcome. None the less, I have a few comments to make.

My first comment relates to the three-crop rule that has now been imposed. I understand why it arose. I believe that it originated from the problems in Germany where there has been constant mono-cropping of maize for anaerobic digestion, which has been damaging to the environment. But what we have will achieve nothing. We have not achieved a rotation. There is nothing to stop farmers growing the same crop in the same field year after year as long as they grow the right percentages overall on their farm. Whereas farmers who actually practise a rotation by block-cropping with another farmer—the whole farm goes into wheat in year one and the next door farm goes into oilseed rape or beans and then they swap the following year—will not be allowed to do so under the new rules. They will have to grow a bit of each on each farm, which will add considerably to their costs. As it is not creating genuine rotation, it is a pointless and bureaucratic exercise that will achieve nothing for the environment.

Secondly, there are the environmental focus areas. Again, a broad-brush arbitrary figure of 5% has been decided on at European level. There is ample evidence now from a number of research bodies, including work the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has done, that what really matters is not the area of land we manage for conservation but the way that we manage it, ensuring that it is properly managed and not neglected year after year. This plan makes no reference to that, and that is a major error in the system.

I welcome the decision to include hedgerows in the ecological focus areas. It is right that they should be included, but I am concerned about what that will mean not just for mapping, which has been mentioned, but for entitlements. The Minister might want to reflect on that. The areas of land that farmers farm—that is, the area that they claim against—might not include their hedgerows, but when those areas are taken in, as they need to be in order to be within the 5%, farmers might not have enough entitlements for the overall amount of land that they will then be considered to farm. I hope that the Minister will look into that.

Contrary to what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) said, I pay tribute to how the Rural Payments Agency has made dramatic strides since the days when her party were in government. When we took office, every farmer in the land was incensed by the performance of the RPA and it is now, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) rightly said, delivering the vast majority of payments on day one of the window, at the beginning of December. That is a considerable achievement by the present management and I think they should be rewarded and recognised for what they have managed to achieve.

The challenges of implementing the new system are huge. It is far more complicated and, as the Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) said, will cost a considerable extra amount that the Government can ill afford. It is also an absolute waste of money given the bureaucracy that I have described. For the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland to suggest that the present system should be continued and that now is not the time to change systems belies belief. The present system is, metaphorically, held together by string and sticky tape. It is completely obsolete, even for the process it currently tries to operate, and it is a tribute to the RPA that it has managed to improve performance even using such an obsolete system. To suggest that it could somehow manage the new process is ludicrous.

I also wanted to mention appeals. I hope that under the new system the Government will ensure a satisfactory appeals process. I must confess, even though I had to judge those appeals for a time, that the current system is not satisfactory. Individual responsibilities, the responsibility of the RPA and the whole background of penalties and EU disallowances are not clear. Let me use one of the most ludicrous cases I saw as an example to demonstrate what has to change. Somebody had sent all the forms in to the RPA by registered post and yet the claim was rejected on the basis that it had never arrived. When the farmer submitted the registered post docket to the RPA to show that the letter had gone, he got a letter back saying that that proved that an envelope had been received but did not say what was in it. I felt that that was ludicrous, but there was no absolute proof that the RPA had received the forms and it was impossible to allow the claim. The new appeals system must cover such situations.

I strongly support the points that have been made about digital by default. I hope that the Minister will reconsider it and ensure that farmers are entitled to continue to use paper at least until they can access broadband. I am trying to be constructive, so if he concludes that that is not possible I suggest that he finds a way of ensuring that farmers who employ land agents—as many do, of course—solely because they cannot access broadband themselves should be recompensed in some way, perhaps by a small discrete sum within pillar two.

That leads me to pillar two and the rural development programme. I take issue with the Government over how the funding has been split, because they seem to have fallen for the line that if one spends more, one gets more. That does not always work. Even though we all know that the pot is not as large as we would like it to be, I regret the Government’s decision to increase the share of the pot going to the environment, not because I do not care about the environment—I strongly care—but because it has been abundantly clear over the past 10 years or so that simply spending money on the environment does not necessarily produce results. What really matter are outcomes and far more should be directed at those. We could have ensured that a greater share of the rural development pot was used for other purposes, in particular the economy and innovation in farming, to enable farmers to face the inevitable decline in the basic payment, as it is to be called, and no doubt its eventual disappearance. Farmers need to be able to invest and face up to that day. Just £140 million out of £3.5 billion to assist farmers is not a good deal.

On the new environmental land management scheme, my hon. Friend the Minister will know what I am about to say. I recognise that there is a £2.2 billion overhang from the current system of entry-level schemes and higher level stewardship, which must clearly be allowed for, but I am concerned about the way the new scheme will operate and the potential for cherry-picking. The implication is that funding will go only into schemes where it is likely to do most good. There are vast areas of the country, including much of my constituency in the north, in the fens and further up into northern Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire, which nobody will pretend are the most beautiful areas, or that they contain a massive abundance of wildlife, but if such areas receive no funding and are completely outside the new scheme, the situation will get worse. We might end up with biodiversity deserts, because the funding has been concentrated on the hotspots. I hope the Government will look at that carefully.

Our land is precious. The report that came out two weeks ago from Cambridge university about agricultural land use over the next few decades makes salutary reading. It demonstrates that in the worst-case scenario we could be 7 million hectares of land short in the next 30 or 40 years. Clearly, that cannot be made up. It demonstrates that all policies must address the use of our land in the most effective way to combine looking after the environment with food production, its primary purpose. There is a great deal more to be done to achieve that. These reforms are not the right way forward, but I commend the Government on the way they have tried to implement an impossible task.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. May I suggest that we aim for around 10 minutes each? That way we will get everybody in nicely, including the Front Benchers.

20:58

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

I, too, draw the attention of hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests regarding agriculture.

The debate tonight is on the CAP in England, and my farm is in Wales so it is not covered, but the common agricultural policy and the way it is delivered in the United Kingdom have implications for all the devolved nations as well. The important word is “common”. While the UK farmers continue to compete within the European single market, we need a common policy. It is important that we remain within the single market: 40% of all lamb produced in the UK is exported. Although we welcome some of that lamb going to the middle east, and some, we hope, to China in the future and perhaps even to the United States, the bulk of the lamb goes to the continent.

We have a single market there, a market that is open for every second of every minute of every hour of every day throughout the whole year. I can remember when we did not know whether that market was open or not. We could take lambs to market and one day they were worth £10 less because the market was closed; the next day they were worth £10 more because the market suddenly opened. That was no way to do business.

The original purpose of the common agricultural policy was to lift incomes in rural areas, and that is as important now as it was then; incomes in rural areas are still lower than in urban areas. A reduction in the European Union budget naturally resulted in lower pillar one and pillar two allocations. I am particularly concerned about upland areas, where incomes are very low. Hardly any farm businesses would show a profit without the single farm payment, and those that did would generate no cash for investment, yet in his written evidence about food security to the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), said:

“Farm subsidies can allow inefficient farmers to continue to operate a farm rather than exit the industry.”

Giving oral evidence to the Committee, he said:

“we can support farming better through Pillar 2”.

I can tell him that that causes considerable apprehension in farming communities, particularly in the uplands.

The family farm remains the foundation of the rural community and the rural economy. Money received by farmers gets recycled among many local businesses—garages, shops and other tradespeople. The single farm payment enables farmers to invest, become more efficient, and be more market-facing. It gives farming businesses the resilience to come through periods of poor weather when outputs are reduced and costs soar, as in spring 2013. Any suggestion of moving away from direct payments would devastate many rural areas, break down the cohesion of rural communities, and have a drastic effect on traditional production chains and, indeed, total food production.

I turn to the thorny issue of voluntary modulation, which turned into an almighty row between farming organisations and environmentally focused charities—and one can understand why. Those on both sides of the argument were going to receive less money. Pillar one was reduced by 2.7%, and pillar two by 5.5%. One might ask why there is not this row in other countries. Only five other countries of the 27 in the European Union even engage in voluntary modulation at all, and two do it in the reverse order, moving money from pillar two to pillar one. The Flanders area of Belgium modulates by 5.5%, Germany by 4.5%, France by 3.3%, Latvia by 7.4%—we have to remember that it had a 50% increase in its pillar two allocation—and the Netherlands by 2.5%.

Of course, as we have heard, in England the modulation is 12%, probably rising to 15% in 2018. In Wales, there is 15% modulation. In Scotland I believe it is 9.5%, and it is zero in Ireland. Why is the UK such an exception to all this? The answer probably lies in the UK’s pillar two allocation. The UK receives €2.3 billion for pillar two in this financial period, whereas Poland receives €9.7 billion, Italy €9.2 billion, France €8.8 billion, Spain €7.3 billion, and Germany €3.3 billion. Why does the UK have such a poor allocation for pillar two? I will not go into the suggested reasons, but there is common cause to be made. The farming unions could combine with the environmental charities to review our pillar two allocation fundamentally, which would be good for farmers, the environment, rural communities and the UK as a whole. Our pillar two allocation is low, which I do not understand. I cannot find any reason why we have such a poor allocation. Increasing the allocation would be good for our farming community, but it would be good for our environment, too.

21:05

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

It is a great pleasure to take part in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), who made a good case for Welsh farmers. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice). He referred to the Rural Payments Agency and how much it has improved, much of which was down to his stewardship when he was a Minister. He worked very hard, and payments are getting out on time. We inherited quite a mess, which leads me on neatly to my first point.

When the single farm payment was introduced in 2003-04, there was no doubt that the Beckett formula was complicated. It took years to sort that out, and we paid more than half a billion pounds in fines to the EU for the mistakes that were made. We do not want to repeat those mistakes, and I appeal to the Minister to ensure that we do not do so. I have been sold on the idea that the maps are best done digitally, especially because of the hedgerows and everything else, but if farmers do not have access to broadband, they either have to have somewhere to go—not just a library but somewhere where they can access broadband securely and privately—or they have to be able to use agents. Farmers do not expect to be given a fortune, but they need money to do that. We are working hard to deliver rural broadband, and I am certain that we will get there, but we are not there now. If we make a mess of introducing the reform in the first year, it will carry on year in and year out. That is precisely what happened with the previous system, and it took years to sort it out. In fact, there are some cases that have never been sorted out.

I hope that people who were not able to register under the old system for various reasons—some people pursued their registration for years—are able finally to register their land under the new system. I also pay tribute to the idea that young farmers should be helped, because the population of this country and the world is growing and we need to produce more food.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I share my hon. Friend’s views on the importance of supporting young farmers. On the question of broadband, does he share my view that there is scope for supporting wireless broadband to reach rural areas that are hard to reach by wired means, as it were?

[Neil Parish]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. Wireless broadband will reach parts of my constituency in the Blackdown hills that fibre optics will not, but wireless broadband will not necessarily get there in time to ensure that applications for the single farm payment can be made online. That is why we must take care to get the payment right in the first year.

Ensuring that it is the working farmer who receives the payment is a good idea, and I am interested in what the Minister has to say about that, but we do not want to create the biggest bureaucratic nightmare to prove whether someone is or is not the farmer. If we are not careful, we will make the system increasingly complicated.

I spent rather a long time—some might say too long—dealing with the CAP in another place, and I think that one of the overall problems is that across 28 countries, from Finland to Greece, from Poland to Germany and right through to Great Britain and Ireland, there are so many crops that can be grown, so many soil types, so many temperatures and so many amounts of rainfall, with some areas getting very little and others being flooded, that if we try to come forward with a common policy, we will end up with the biggest mess known to man and woman. There is no doubt about it. We cannot have a common policy unless there is much greater flexibility.

Are we to have a policy that demands three rotational crops, because Germany grows solidly maize, maize and maize? This country has very diverse farming and lands, with uplands and grasslands, but many countries have hardly any grassland. Somebody driving from Calais to Berlin will see hardly a single hedge the whole way there, because they have all been ripped up over the years as a result of a different policy on the way they farm. We have great hedges, and it is good that they have become ecological focus areas. In my view, the hedges are probably the most important part of a field, because they are home to wildlife and birds. That, above all, is what we need to concentrate on.

[Mr Spencer]

I wonder whether one of the unexpected outcomes of trying to apply that policy across the whole of Europe is that we will end up supporting the least efficient farmers and those that are economically challenged, perhaps because they farm in arid areas or small alpine villages, whereas we should actually be supporting the most efficient farmers, many of whom are in France or the UK.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend is right to a degree, but is it right that the most productive land across the whole of Europe, including in East Anglia, should get the highest payments, given that farmers there can make the most from that land? We must have some balance in the process. We have talked about the uplands tonight, and there is no doubt that upland livestock farmers struggle. In my view, it could be argued—my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire will probably jump out of his seat—that some of those farmers in East Anglia, Cambridgeshire and elsewhere across the country who can grow very good arable crops, perhaps 10 tonnes of wheat per hectare, could see just a little bit of those payments move uphill. That is what we are trying to do, but I think that we probably need to do a little more. There is an argument there, but I think that we need to ensure that we support farming in those marginal areas, which is more difficult.

We must also ensure that in the end we deliver a policy that encourages food production. It is great to support the environment, but we must remember that in the uplands and on a lot of the permanent pasture on the hills it is the cattle and sheep that will keep farming as it is. It was not put there by God; it was put there by farmers. We must remember that it is the farmers who look after the countryside. We must remember that in order to support them, we must ensure that they have an income. We have to spread that as far and wide as we can.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

On this, my 65th birthday—

[Hon. Members]

Hear, hear.

[Mr Spencer]

Retire!

[Bob Stewart]

Certainly. Will my hon. Friend enlighten me as to whether we have any control over how we allocate the CAP in England, or is that decided in Brussels?

[Neil Parish]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend on reaching that great age. There are—dare I say it?—others in the House who have reached an even greater age. He asks a difficult question. We are limited by how much of it we can decide ourselves, as a lot is decided by the European Commission and, finally, the Council. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire said, it is very difficult to change things at that stage. We can tweak some of the environmental schemes a bit—there are the odd things we can do—but in the end we have to go along with much of what is in the policy.

Overall, the CAP overall should be moving towards a simpler system, but we are not getting that. We should be weaning farmers off more and more public support, but I want that to happen across the whole of Europe. As the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire said, there are many different types and levels of payment. Margaret Thatcher said, “Don’t buck the markets”, but that is exactly what we do. We have all sorts of different levels of payments across the whole of Europe and then expect farmers to compete in a single market, which is almost impossible. More and more of the subsidy should be phased out, and farmers should increasingly stand on their own two feet. We should make sure that we get a decent price for food and use biotechnology to produce even more food so that in the end we can feed the growing population.

21:14

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

I start by drawing Members’ attention to my declaration of interest in the register.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) said, the countryside we see today is the result of many generations of farmers who have managed it and created the landscape that we hold so dear. For many generations, they did that without any support from politicians or Governments because they cared for the countryside and wanted to farm for many generations to come.

The common agricultural policy is probably the single most successful policy ever dreamt up by a politician in that it was designed to keep Europe well fed. For three generations, our nation has enjoyed supermarkets and shops full of food, and people have become used to having food on the shelves when they demand it. During the war, my grandmother would go to the shops to buy lamb chops and be told, “You can’t have lamb chops—you’ll have beef dripping”, and she would have accepted that. We have now had two or three generations of consumers who have no concept of what food insecurity is like. We should be very grateful not only to the common agricultural policy but to our farmers for giving us this period of being well fed.

Many changes are coming in the common agricultural policy shakedown, and not all of them should be welcomed. There are large implications for how the UK’s food will be produced in future. We should bear in mind that food production and our being well fed as a nation is the fundamental point of this policy. Putting that at risk would be a great disaster.

[Jesse Norman]

The National Farmers Union has said:

“A modulation rate of 9%”

on pillar two

“would have been able to fund all current DEFRA rural development programmes, renew all agreements expiring within the funding period and have a further £1 billion to spend on new commitments.”

Does my hon. Friend agree that makes it harder for UK farmers to compete, and has this not worked out as well as well as he would have liked?

[Mr Spencer]

As I was saying, a number of challenges are coming up. UK farmers are particularly skilled at competing. For at least two generations, they have competed on an uneven playing field and managed to continue their business in doing so. I accept my hon. Friend’s point. It is also worth bearing in mind that the taxpayer is putting an enormous amount of cash into the system and so has to get not only food security but a benefit to the environment that they are not getting at the moment.

It is very easy to stand up in this Chamber, be critical of Ministers and say that they could have done this or that. What we do not hear about, however, is the stuff that the Secretary of State and the Minister block—the ideas from Europe that did not make it into the final agreement. If the Minister has time during his summing up, it would be interesting if he could indicate some of the things he was able to stop happening that would have had us jumping up and down in the Chamber if they had made it through and some of our near neighbours on the continent had got their way.

Many Members have referred to the need for broadband in order to deliver the documentation required to make an application. There are farmers in Nottinghamshire who are based within 5 miles of the city centre of Nottingham whose current internet speed is 3 megabits. It is almost quicker to drive to Nottingham to collect a form than it is to try to dial-up on the internet to download it. They are very close to a major urban population, but BT has no plans to take them out of that not spot. Nottinghamshire county council has a programme to roll out broadband across Nottinghamshire, but unfortunately those farmers are not part of that programme. We have to find a way to help them.

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

The other day, I took an entrepreneur to see another Minister about setting up a private system of wireless connection. In north Dorset over a period of weeks, he has got hold of some very big names to establish a system of up to between 30 and 50 megabits. The point he made was that BT needs to be far more transparent with the public and tell all of us what exactly it will be able to achieve and, if it cannot do that by a certain time, entrepreneurs should be given far more encouragement by our Government to get in there and sort out this problem.

[Mr Spencer]

I recognise that new technologies may be able to assist, but there will always be not spots—those little black holes—where people are left out of the system. We need to find a way to help those farmers.

I think that the three-crop rule is one of those well-intended European Union rules that will have unintended consequences. My right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) has referred to the fact that many areas are block-farmed. Large contracting companies that help their neighbours with farm contracts and that block-crop from farm to farm will no longer be able to do that, which will lead to a number of extra road miles, inefficiency and environmental damage as a result of the amount of fuel burned and road traffic. That is not a desirable consequence and it will not benefit the environment at all.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I draw attention to my declarations in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Does my hon. Friend agree that a solution to this problem would be that every single piece of land eligible to claim should grow three crops in three years, which would eliminate the problems of the mono-cropping of maize in Germany and, as I saw last week, between Paris and Strasbourg?

[Mr Spencer]

If I could extend my hon. Friend’s proposal to three crops in five years, that would allow for a normal cropping rotation of two weeks for oil seed or pulse, followed perhaps by a spring crop. We do not recognise some of the challenges that face UK agriculture today as we take more and more agricultural chemicals out of our toolbox. The rise of resistant black grass, certainly in the midlands and East Anglia, is a real challenge and we are going to have to allow spring cropping to deal with it.

On the 5% greening, I am glad that the Government are allowing hedgerows to be used. We must, of course, move as quickly as we can to incorporate stone walls and other environmentally beneficial margins at the same time. If the mapping has to be digital, I remind Members of the challenges the previous Administration faced while trying to move to a mapping system. If I may use a Sherwood expression, the Minister must make sure his ducks are in a row and that, when we get to that system, farmers can get their payment as soon as possible. If there are delays, and if the system is complicated and farmers have to wait for their single farm payment, will the Minister engage with the banking sector to make sure that the banks support farmers through that break in cash-flow and that there is other such support?

In summary, three things matter to this nation: that we are well fed; that the environment is maintained and protected; and that, in order to deliver those things, we have profitable farmers. At the end of this monumental process of CAP reform, I hope that we can deliver all three of them.

21:25

[Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)]

It is a privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer). I will not detain the House for long, but as a farmer by trade—I make hon. Members aware of my declaration of interests—I could not let this opportunity pass without commenting on CAP reform and its implications in England, and without congratulating the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee on its report.

For me, CAP reform should always be about simplification, encouraging a level playing field and inspiring competition and innovation as we strive to break through plateauing crop yields and to stop declining livestock numbers, and as we endeavour to become more self-sufficient and to increase food production to meet the ever-increasing global population. However, I realise that a balance has to be struck on the environmental impact of modern-day farming, which my hon. Friend mentioned. It is worth pointing out that the vast majority of farmers see themselves as custodians of our countryside, and want it to be preserved for future generations.

[Richard Drax]

I entirely support what my hon. Friend is saying. The gold standard in farming is actually set in this country. If only Europe would follow it.

[Julian Sturdy]

I entirely agree. UK farmers have set the gold standard for many years, and will continue to do so, but the issue is now about giving them the tools of support for them to take that next step forward.

To go back to the environmental schemes, sadly, I fear that we are starting to tilt the balance of CAP reform too far from the primary aim of farmers, which is ultimately to produce food. For centuries, we have taken our peacetime food supply for granted, mainly because of how easy it was in the past to import food from abroad. Agricultural policy in both the UK and throughout the rest of the EU has moved away from maximising food production towards rewarding environmentally friendly practices.

As the National Farmers Union has pointed out, we have only 36 harvests in which to increase our global food production to a level at which it can feed 9 billion people, and just 11 harvests before another billion people need to be fed. It may surprise some hon. Members, but I will be in my late 70s when we reach the 36th harvest. What that shows is that we only get one chance a year to advance crop yields, and the number of years is counting down rapidly.

I want to turn to the greening elements of CAP reform. With the ecological focus areas and what farmers will have to do to meet the 5% requirement—buffer strips, laying land fallow, catch crops, nitrogen-fixing crops and hedges, the inclusion of which I join many hon. Members in welcoming—it is probably not as bad as the farming community first feared, but some more detail is still to come out. By “detail”, I mean that the most important thing is to get clarity as soon as possible.

Overall, the Government have definitely made the best of a bad job. We must have a practical approach to greening. Sadly, the three-crop rule is far from being an example of that practical approach. I am sure that it will prove to be a bureaucratic nightmare that serves no purpose and delivers no environmental benefit in the UK or across Europe.

The UK is currently 68% self-sufficient in terms of food that can be produced here. Sadly, there has been a steady decline in that level over the past 20 years. Nearly a quarter of the food that is eaten in the UK is imported, when it could be produced here. Yields have levelled off and cereal, potato, orchard fruit and fresh vegetable production are well below their 1991 levels. CAP should give more weight to sustainable intensification because we have to produce more food on a finite amount of land in a sustainable way.

The decline is not irreversible, as has been shown in the fresh fruit market, where the growth is driven largely by demand. British shoppers want to buy British produce and back British farmers, especially in the wake of the horsemeat scandal. According to a recent NFU survey, 78% of shoppers believe that supermarkets should sell more British produce.

Ultimately, the best way to boost yields, increase production and ensure our future food security is to invest in cutting-edge technology. I am delighted by today’s announcement that the hard work of the York, North Yorkshire and East Riding local enterprise partnership has paid off. Sadly, I was not called in the statement earlier, so I thought that I would take this opportunity to comment on it. My constituency will benefit from three new Government-backed projects to facilitate the provision of cutting-edge agricultural technology. The £11-million investment in the food science campus at Sand Hutton will create 800 new jobs in agri-food research and product testing. The £8-million investment in the BioVale initiative at the university of York will provide a biotechnology cluster that will host a range of high-tech industrial biotechnology companies, creating a further 500 highly skilled jobs. The £1-million investment in Askham Bryan college, where young farmers learn their craft, will enable a new state-of-the-art training centre and engineering centre of excellence to be constructed.

We have to be upfront about the fact that it will remain a challenge to feed the growing global population. However, such investment demonstrates the Government’s commitment to meeting that rising challenge. It will ensure that research is carried out in close collaboration with the farming community, so that it benefits the businesses on the ground and delivers a far-sighted, coherent, joined-up approach to the future challenges of food security. The investment will deliver growth and jobs across my region. Most importantly, it will help to give the UK the competitive edge that it needs to unlock the potential in the agriculture sector, to become a world leader in combating the growing threat to food security, and to set the gold standard.

In conclusion, like many other Members, I welcome the young farmers’ scheme. Sadly, I do not fall into that category any more. I also welcome the moving of the funding up the hill. That move is long overdue, but I welcome it. Like a number of Members, I still have concerns over the bureaucratic nature of the new scheme. My fear for the long term is that if we continue to pump taxpayers’ money into agri-environmental schemes that take land out of production when food insecurity is an ever-growing problem, and food prices rise on the back of that, there will come a point when there is a public backlash and the Government of the day could ultimately pay the price.

21:34

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am delighted to take part in this very important debate.

I thank the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) for providing a comprehensive analysis of her Committee’s report in relation to CAP. She took it a stage further with some detailed technical points to which I am sure the Minister will respond. She also raised issues relating to broadband access to the new IT system, which will in many ways be universally rolled out overnight. There are great concerns about that. The issue was picked up by other hon. Members, including former Ministers, was digital by default.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) also raised that issue and asked how people would be able to access the new IT system when it is the only game in town. She spoke with passion about the financial and IT challenges facing her hill farmers, pointing out that 40% of them have no access to rural broadband. She called for something that I think we can all agree on: a useable and farmer-friendly system of payments.

The right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice), with his expertise in the Department, bemoaned, rightly, the lack of progress on real reform. He supported the idea of moving payments uphill—I think that that has universal support across the Chamber, with many hon. Members speaking to that point—and described the three-crop rule, another matter raised by many hon. Members, as pointless and bureaucratic. It has received universal condemnation not only from farmers but from environmentalists too.

The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) spoke up for direct payments to support hard-pressed farmers. I think that at one point he was talking against modulation of pillar two, but he then flipped it around and said that there could, and perhaps should, be common cause between environmental groups and farming organisations to argue for greater pillar two payments to support very hard-pressed farmers. That was an interesting twist at the end.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), in a very good contribution, said in response to an intervention that we are limited in how much we can decide. I will come on to that in a moment, but I think that even with this mish-mash, as it was described by the right hon. Member for South East Cambridgeshire, there is scope for some decisions within England and in the other nations and regions.

The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) praised the CAP, praised farmers and praised Ministers—it was a very praiseworthy speech. He spoke well for his constituents and farmers.

The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) opened his remarks by calling for a balance to be struck between the environment and farming and food security. That relates to the gist of what I want to talk about in a moment. It is fair to say that although there has been praise in various areas, there has also been a feeling of weary resignation among many of the contributions tonight. I think the phrase he used was “the best of a bad job”. I say to Members on all sides that in the next stage of reform we really have to do better, go further, take a lead and do a much better job.

This round of CAP reform has been criticised by all sides. Peter Kendall, the president of the National Farmers Union until February this year, complained last year that the Secretary of State had disadvantaged farmers with his stance on CAP negotiations. He complained that the Secretary of State had come back with

“less than he started with”

for British farmers. The NFU described the round last year as “disappointing” and as a “missed opportunity”.

The newly-elected NFU president, Meurig Raymond said more recently that we now have

“a CAP package which has huge practical hurdles for all concerned in agriculture. It’s not the promised simplification; policy measures distort farmers’ commercial decisions and do little to help us gear-up to the long-term food production and environmental challenges which we know are ahead.”

The criticisms from farming unions come from one perspective. Environmental organisations come from another viewpoint, but they have also derided CAP reform. In particular, they have derided the greening measures as so much “greenwash”. The greening proposals linked to direct payments are described as

“so vague as to be useless”

in a study by the authoritative journal Science, which estimates that as many as nine out of 10 farms would be exempt from key greening measures.

[Mr Spencer]

As the hon. Gentleman commented, I am an optimist and I was optimistic in my speech, but surely he must recognise the challenges of linking agricultural systems such as those in Greece, where it is so arid it is only possible to grow olives, and the large plains of East Anglia?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Yes, indeed. That is why it is essential that the framework works in respect of what CAP reform has always set out to do—to break the link between pure production subsidy and the targeting of the subsidy at public goods, increased innovation and productivity, and not just production. It cannot be a one-size-fits-all model. The framework has to be there at an EU level, but the implementation at the level of the nation state is critical. We should not be afraid to take the lead on that and to try to get our balance right as between the environment, farming and food security.

The conservation director of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Martin Harper, observed that the proposals

“failed to maximise the amount of money that it could have invested in wildlife-friendly farming and now it has made the greening measure meaningless.”

So we have “meaningless” and “useless” from the perspective of environmental organisations; and “deeply disappointed” and “a missed opportunity” from the perspective of farming unions. A change is needed in Europe and in the UK on how CAP is done. We need to show real leadership and real direction on both farm productivity and sustainability—it is not happening.

The key question is whether the more than £15 billion annual subsidy payment to farming in the UK—and £11.5 billion in England specifically—provides the best value for taxpayers’ money. A study last year suggested that sensitively adjusting the focus of the subsidy in the UK to enhance environmental and public goods, including things like flood alleviation, rather than purely units of production, could produce annual additional benefits of over £18 billion in the UK. The study did not take into account the additional benefits of cleaner air and cleaner water, which would further improve the net gains.

The Secretary of State—one would think he would find favour with that sort of approach—said last year:

“I do believe there is a real role for taxpayer’s money in compensating farmers for the work they do in enhancing the environment and providing public goods for which there is no market mechanism.”

He also said specifically last year:

“I believe that transferring the maximum 15% from Pillar 1 to Pillar 2 would be the right thing to do where we can demonstrate it would deliver worthwhile and valuable outcomes for farming and society and contribute to rural economic growth and enhance the environment”.

He was quite specific on that. When the Secretary of State said that repeatedly, wildlife and environmental groups had every right to be optimistic at least on pillar two funding, even with their disappointment on the greening elements of direct payments. As the RSPB said in its response to the consultation earlier this year:

“We…welcome the Secretary of State’s assertion that Pillar II ‘unquestionably represents the better use of taxpayers money’”,

and it went on to urge the Government to

“follow through on their intention to maximise the benefits that Rural Development can deliver.”

The Secretary of State, then, was unequivocal, unyielding and unbowed all the way through—until he crumbled, U-turned and settled on 12%. I have to ask why he was outflanked and outgunned by other forces; what happened to his unequivocal stance?

The Government have signalled that they will review the situation in 2017, but I have to say that this looks like a smokescreen to cover the Secretary of State’s embarrassment at being forced to retreat from the repeatedly stated 15% modulation that he had repeatedly promised. That is not the only sign of weakness either, as the decisions on degression and capping of CAP are also spectacularly lacking in ambition and vision.

[Jesse Norman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I cannot, I am afraid; I do not have time.

The Secretary of State’s minimalist position, choosing to go no further than the bare minimum prescribed by the European proposals, shows a worrying lack of leadership as well as a depressing lack of ambition for the best use of public money. Farming unions and landowning associations must understand—I hope they do—and have to engage with the growing public discontent of hard-pressed people and families who face a cost-of-living crisis at public money going to some of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the country on the basis of the size of land that they farm.

Last year, more than 35 of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in the UK claimed over €1 million each a year in farm subsidies. A couple of hundred others claimed in excess of €300,000 a year. That is divorced from the reality of what we have heard about today—the reality of small-scale upland farmers struggling to get by; the reality of medium-sized mixed, traditional family farms that are vital to the fabric of our rural economy struggling to compete; or the reality of tenant farmers struggling to get their first foot on the rung of purchasing land against a backdrop of rising land prices fuelled by lucrative subsidies. It is certainly a world away from squeezed UK consumers facing rising food bills, and the exponential growth in food banks in every town and village in the country.

There might be some rationale if the biggest payments were tied to additional investment in agricultural innovation, to productivity improvements, to encouraging new entrants to farming, to pioneering environmental improvements in large-scale arable agri-businesses, or indeed to any marginal improvement. However, those payments are not for “additionality”; they are for scale and units of production, pure and simple. They are a reward for being big, and the bigger you are, the more European money—I am sorry; public money—you get.

As long as there is still subsidy flowing through the common agricultural policy to farmers across the EU, we must ensure that the right share of that funding comes to our farmers in the UK, but placing rigorous demands on the highest CAP payments is about demanding more—in productivity, environmental innovation and entry to farming—for the public money that is spent on the very biggest of the biggest subsidy recipients.

This is a value-for-money argument, and a fairness argument. I am talking about fairness for smaller and tenant farmers who lose out as the big money goes to the biggest landowners, fairness for the public who want real and transparent value for the money that they pay out each year, and fairness for this and future generations who are concerned about the environment, about the countryside that they love, and about sustainable agricultural production.

It is time to challenge the accepted wisdom, and to shake off any sense of the cosy complacency adopted by the Secretary of State. We must not assume that this is the way it must be. We can change things for the better for farmers, for the public, and for the good of the nation. If we do not do so, the voices of discontent over CAP payments will grow and grow. We need to do better than this.

Let me end by again thanking the Select Committee for the very good report that was introduced by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton. I am sure that the Minister will respond to the detailed points that have been made.

21:47

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

It is a pleasure to be in the Chamber with so many fellow farmers. I have heard many of them declare their interests this evening. I congratulate the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) on securing the debate, and thank members of the Select Committee for their report.

Let me begin by saying a little about the approach that the Government took during the negotiations. My right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Sir James Paice) explained very clearly the difficulty that we experienced. We set out to secure a common agricultural policy that was simpler and greener, but despite the best endeavours of my predecessors and a very talented negotiating team, we have ended up with a CAP that is more complex because it was not possible to move the European Commission, or indeed sufficient numbers of other member states, to our position. Our view all along had been that we should keep pillar one—the single farm payments—as simple as possible, and that pillar two was the right option to deliver for the agri-environment.

There are two key issues about which farmers are expressing concern. One is the issue of the three-crop rule, which will affect at least 7% of farmers; the other is the issue of the environmental focus areas and some of the administrative burdens connected with them.

It is important to note the successes that my predecessors achieved in the negotiations. My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) asked what had been my achievements. I have to say that I was not involved in the negotiations, so the credit for what we achieved should go to my predecessors. However, when it came to the three-crop rule, we did manage to increase the threshold to holdings with 30 hectares or more. We did manage to get the Commission to accept that there should be a distinction between spring barley and winter barley, or spring wheat and winter wheat. And we did manage to move the Commission away from its initial proposal for action that would have been very intrusive—looking at farmers’ incomes to see exactly how much they were earning from agriculture—and, instead. to establish a negative list to remove, for instance, airports, railways and golf courses. So there were successes in the negotiations.

On implementing the CAP, however, we have tried to stay true to that basic stance that we adopted during the negotiations: first, we should keep the implementation of pillar one as simple as possible so farmers can implement this in the most flexible way that works for their own individual holding; and, secondly, we should take the environment very seriously, and we want to deliver for the environment through pillar two—through the agri-environment schemes for which this country has built up an admirable track record.

[Jesse Norman]

Does my hon. Friend share my surprise that the shadow Minister should be so strong in his condemnation of the position the Government have ended up with through these negotiations, without in any way spelling out what the Labour party would do on any of the issues?

[George Eustice]

Well, I think there was quite a degree of consensus. I suppose we have to recognise that the last Government gave up a chunk of our rebate supposedly in order to get CAP reform, but that did not work either. I want to stay on the substance of the issue before us this evening, however.

In terms of applying this basic approach of keeping the pillar one payments as simple as possible, when it came to greening we were clear we wanted to have the flexibility to allow farmers, for instance, to use hedges to count towards their environmental focus areas.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

The inclusion of hedgerows as being eligible for pillar two payments is one of the Government’s successes. On that point, while many areas of the country have hedgerows as field boundaries, there are other areas, such as the Cotswolds, that have stone walls as field boundaries. May I ask him to press the Commission hard that those sorts of landscape features should also be included for payment?

[George Eustice]

There were serious administrative difficulties in terms of allowing hedgerows and all landscape features to count towards the environmental focus area, because each one has to be mapped, and we took the decision in the end that hedgerows were so important to many parts of the country that in the first year we should include those hedgerows and endeavour to get the mapping done, and where it could not be done in year one—we have three years to complete the mapping— farmers would self-declare the hedgerows. We do not rule out adding things like stone walls in years two or three, once we have got hedgerows in place. The task of mapping every single individual feature on every farm is an enormous one, however, and we therefore wanted to start first with hedges, before moving on to things such as dry stone walls.

[Miss McIntosh]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[George Eustice]

I am going to try to make progress, I am afraid, and I will address many of the points my hon. Friend made if I have time to get to them.

On the agri-environment schemes, we have been clear that 87% of the pillar two budget will go on the new environmental land management scheme. At the higher end, the scheme will be broadly similar to the existing higher level stewardship scheme, but we will also have an additional rate that has more requirements and obligations than the existing entry level stewardship scheme, and which is more proactive and is almost a middle rate. These will be more targeted, and my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire raised concerns that this would effectively lead to white areas or deserts where there would be no such support. Alongside this scheme we intend to deal with the problem of so-called white areas by ensuring that there will be directed options right around the country so that whole areas of the country will not be excluded, and grants to support the planting of woodland, for instance, will be universally available.

Many Members touched on matters relating to the three-crop rule, which will cause difficulty for some farmers—up to around 7%, possibly more. We gave serious consideration to advancing what is called a national certification scheme—a nationally designed scheme that would achieve the same thing—because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire said, the three-crop rule does not in itself guarantee crop rotation. Indeed, there are all sorts of anomalies, not least that a cabbage and a cauliflower are regarded as the same crop botanically as far as the EU is concerned, and there will be lots of similar complications to work through. When we looked at the alternatives, however, we found that they were all more complicated and even more difficult to administer than what was already on the table.

A number of hon. Members have mentioned the uplift to the single farm payment, which is important. It recognises the value we place on upland and moorland farmers, not just as custodians of the countryside, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) mentioned, but as food producers. We are, therefore, equalising the basic payment for upland farmers and lowland farmers, and we will almost double the rate for moorland farmers to about €70 per hectare.

My hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton raised a number of issues, the first of which related to commons. We understand the concerns about the commons register, which has always been the starting point for the mapping of commons. There are disallowance risks in departing too far from the system we have had in place to date, but I can confirm that in addition to starting with that existing commons register, the RPA will utilise other information available to it, such as aerial photography, to help ensure that those who are entitled to claim on common land can.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the issue of disallowance, and I can confirm that we have set aside a figure of 2% to plan for that. It is our aspiration to get to zero disallowance, but the way in which the disallowance scheme works is incredibly complicated and convoluted. Frequently, the disallowance we get is through no fault of our own; it is often because the European Commission does not understand its own rules, and we can get into very protracted arguments. For instance, the fruit and veg scheme has been notorious as a cause of disallowance. The system is very complicated and I do not think we will ever be able to eliminate disallowance altogether.

A number of hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton, have highlighted the issue of the modulation rate—the inter-pillar transfer. We have made it clear that we will modulate at 12% initially and have a review in 2016. She asked what the criteria for that will be. There are two basic criteria, the first of which is whether there is sufficient demand for those agri-environment schemes to warrant an increase in that budget. That links to a question raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman). The second is an assessment of the impact on the competitiveness of British agriculture.

Many hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), have raised concerns about the new IT system. The existing RPA computer system is simply not fit for purpose and we need a new system. The new common agricultural policy is far more complicated, and there are coefficients attached to some environmental focus areas. Somebody growing peas or beans will find that that counts for only 0.7% towards their EFA—0.7% of the area declared—whereas for hedges there is a coefficient of up to 10 times the area of the hedge. The idea that we could do this by drawing things on maps with pencil, as we do under the existing system, and sending that in to the RPA is simply not credible. We therefore believe that to cope with the new system we have to have a digital by default approach and to have everyone adding their data by computer, because that will be simpler.

I completely understand the point that many hon. Members have made about broadband access. We are investing £500 million through BDUK—Broadband Delivery UK—and a further £250 million in phase 2. We have a third fund of £10 million to pilot creative ideas for those really hard-to-reach areas. In addition, we will have an assisted digital package. We will send paper guidance to every farmer in year 1, so although they will not have a paper application form, they will have paper guidance. That guidance will include detailed information on our digital offer. The crucial thing for those lacking the computer literacy to complete their form online or those who have no broadband access is that we will be setting up a number of digital service centres right around the country, particularly targeted at those areas where there is a problem. Farmers will, thus, be able physically to take their information into an office, which will have privacy and be discreet, and work with an RPA agent to enter that information on the system. That is the right thing for everyone. It is right for those farmers, because it removes the risk of them getting penalties and disallowance.

[Helen Goodman]

rose—

[George Eustice]

I will finish now, because we are nearly out of time. My right hon. Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire highlighted the issues of appeals and a proportionate system. I can tell him that I am now the one who looks at those appeals, this issue is close to my heart, and we are examining it and reviewing it as I speak. The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams) talked about pillar two, and said that we still needed those single farm payments of pillar one. Part of the 2016 review will examine the competitiveness of agriculture.

In conclusion, we have introduced a CAP that is more complicated than we would have liked, but in the way that we are implementing it, we are staying true to the approach that we took in negotiations to make it as simple as possible

Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54 (4)).

The Speaker put the deferred Questions (Standing Order No. 54)

Estimates 2014-15

Department for Work and Pensions

Resolved,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2015, for expenditure by the Department for Work and Pensions—

(1) further resources, not exceeding £45,438,318,000 be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1233 of Session 2013-14,

(2) further resources, not exceeding £74,721,000 be authorised for use for capital

purposes as so set out, and

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £44,850,071,000 be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Resolved,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2015, for expenditure by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—

(1) further resources, not exceeding £968,601,000 be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1233 of Session 2013-14,

(2) further resources, not exceeding £371,350,000 be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £1,308,388,000 be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament.

The Speaker then put the Question on the outstanding Estimate (Standing Order No. 55)

Estimates 2014-15

Resolved,

That, for the year ending with 31 March 2015:

(1) further resources, not exceeding £256,135,013,000 be authorised for use for current purposes as set out in HC 1233, HC 1231, HC 1208, HC 1186 and HC 1234 of Session 2013-14, and HC 124 of this Session.

(2) further resources, not exceeding £32,926,583,000 be authorised for use for capital purposes as so set out, and

(3) a further sum, not exceeding £214,518,524,000 be granted to Her Majesty to be issued by the Treasury out of the Consolidated Fund and applied for expenditure on the use of resources authorised by Parliament—(Mr Gauke.)

Ordered, That a Bill be brought in upon the foregoing Resolutions relating to Estimates, 2014-15;

That the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, Danny Alexander, Nicky Morgan, Mr David Gauke and Andrea Leadsom bring in the Bill.

Supply and Appropriation (Main Estimates) Bill

Presentation and First Reading

Mr David Gauke accordingly presented a Bill to authorise the use of resources for the year ending with 31 March 2015; to authorise both the issue of sums out of the Consolidated Fund and the application of income for that year; and to appropriate the supply authorised for that year by this Act and by the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2014.

Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 33).

Business without Debate

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

European Union Documents

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

Ukraine and Russia: Eu Restrictive Measures

That this House takes note of European Union Documents Council Decision 2014/145/CFSP of 17 March 2014 concerning restrictive measures in respect of actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine, and Council Regulation (EU) No. 269/2014 of 17 March 2014 concerning restrictive measures in respect of actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine; and welcomes the Government’s support for the measures proposed by the European Commission to enable a swift response, if needed, to continuing efforts by the Russian Federation to threaten the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.—(Anne Milton.)

Question agreed to.

Delegated Legislation

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Northern Ireland

That the draft Northern Ireland Assembly (Elections) (Amendment) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 4 June, be approved.—(Anne Milton.)

Question agreed to.

[Mr Speaker]

With the leave of the House, we will take motions 5, 6 and 7 together.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

That the draft Representation of the People (Northern Ireland) (Amendment) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 4 June, be approved.

That the draft European Parliamentary Elections (Anonymous Registration) (Northern Ireland) regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 4 June, be approved.

That the draft Anonymous Registration (Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 4 June, be approved.—(Anne Milton.)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Representation of the People

That the draft Donations to Candidates (Anonymous Registration) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 4 June, be approved.—(Anne Milton.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Co-operative Societies

That the draft Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Act 2010 (Consequential Amendments) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 14 May 2014, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.—(Anne Milton.)

Question agreed to.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),

Tribunals and Inquiries

That the draft Transfer of Tribunal Functions (Mobile Homes Act 2013 and Miscellaneous Amendments) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 14 May 2014, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved. .—(Anne Milton.)

Question agreed to.

[Mr Speaker]

With the leave of the House, we will take motions 11 to 14 together.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),



That the draft African Development Fund (Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative) (Amendment) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 12 June, be approved.

That the draft African Development Bank (Thirteenth Replenishment of the African Development Fund) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 12 June, be approved.

That the draft International Development Association (Seventeenth Replenishment) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 12 June, be approved.

That the draft International Development Association (Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative) (Amendment) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 12 June, be approved.—(Anne Milton.)

BAckBEnch Business

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

Ordered,

That Mr Nigel Evans be a member of the Backbench Business Committee.—(Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

Health

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

Ordered,

That Robert Jenrick be a member of the Health Committee.—(Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, on behalf of the Committee of Selection.)

Meningitis B Vaccinations

Monday 7th July 2014 Commons Chamber

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

22:04

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to raise the important matter of meningococcal B—or MenB—vaccines in this short debate. I also thank the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), for kindly responding on behalf of the Government. I appreciate that I have dragged her to these green Benches at a time when she might well be negotiating with the drugs companies and it might be difficult for her to respond to every one of my points. Nevertheless, she will understand that I must make them on behalf of my constituents and other members of the public.

There will be a number of hon. Members in this House with constituents whose lives have been affected by meningitis B. I have constituents who have had to deal with the suffering and loss caused by meningitis B, which is why I am here today further to raise the need for a national roll-out of the vaccination. My constituents, Dr and Mrs Turner, who are here today, tragically lost their 19-year-old granddaughter on new year’s day this year. As you are aware, Mr Speaker, their granddaughter, Emily, and her parents are constituents of yours. Emily’s uncle is a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray).

Meningitis B is a comparatively rare disease, with about 1,800 cases in the UK each year. According to the charity Meningitis UK, however, many thousands of people die as a result of contracting the illness. The infection progresses rapidly and can lead to permanent disability or death within 24 hours of the symptoms becoming evident. That is sadly what happened to Emily. One in 10 people who contract the infection will tragically die despite the treatment that is available today. Of those who survive, one in five will have devastating life-long disability such as brain damage, hearing loss or limb damage.

Infants under the age of one year are disproportionately affected by meningitis B, with the number of cases peaking at the age of about five to six months. However, there is unfortunately another peak during late adolescence when students mix at university. Those are the two age groups that are most likely to contract meningitis B and the fact that there is another peak later in life highlights the need for a vaccine during infancy to protect people from lifelong suffering from this potentially devastating disease.

Parents up and down the country were given a sense of hope when in January 2013 a vaccine was licensed in the UK as well as in Europe and the US. The Bexsero vaccine was developed by the drug company Novartis and protects against approximately 73% of the different strains of meningitis B with apparently limited side effects. That was obviously very welcome, but there have been extremely long and costly delays in implementing any vaccination programme. The vaccine was turned down by the NHS after being considered by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.

The passion felt by many members of the public that the vaccination should have been implemented straightaway has resulted in various petitions urging the Government to do so. The charity Meningitis Now, which I heartily and sincerely congratulate on its constant campaigning, delivered a petition of 36,000 signatures to Downing street. My constituents organised a petition of around 5,000 signatures and I had great pleasure in presenting that petition to Parliament earlier this evening.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for bringing this matter forward for consideration. Meningitis B numbers have halved in the past 25 years, but there is no room for complacency. Some of my constituents have experienced devastating effects from meningitis, so, as the MP for Strangford, my issue is whether the hon. Gentleman feels that the vaccine, when it becomes available, should be available to the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. As I shall discuss later, this is obviously a big and costly undertaking for the NHS. As I am sure the Minister will mention later, there are delicate negotiations to be had, but if we start with babies—preferably babies under the age of 12 months—and then roll it out to students, the whole population will eventually have been vaccinated. Perhaps that will take too long, and once we have vaccinated those cohorts of the population, we might be able to find the money later to vaccinate other cohorts, but let us start, for goodness’ sake. In particular, vaccinating young babies would be an important start.

In my view, and in the view of many others, the Bexsero vaccine should have been rolled out immediately. Doing so could have prevented around 600 cases of meningitis B, and the associated 200 deaths between January 2013 and now. Although there have been delays in rolling out this vaccine on a national scale in the UK, it has been available privately since December 2013 for parents able to pay the high price, and it has been used across several university campuses in the United States. I am sure the House would agree that it is unsatisfactory that where a vaccine has been licensed and is available for use, only those who can afford to pay can get it.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) on achieving this debate on an extremely important subject that impacts on many of our constituents. I have been tabling questions to the Minister about this. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the most important issue is the time scale for the roll-out of this vaccine? I agree that the important age cohort is infants, and that vaccination should be rolled out to other age groups later.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. The key thing that we want to hear from the Minister tonight is an honest assessment of when the roll-out of the vaccine is likely to happen. That information will be particularly important to parents of young babies.

Within the announcement that there would be vaccine as part of childhood immunisation, the Department for Health stated that the Bexsero vaccine would be made available—I quote from a letter dated 25 April 2014 to me from the Minister—

“subject to it being made available by the manufacturer at a cost-effective price”.

That is the crunch point, as that will be a very large cost to the national health service, and the Minister needs to negotiate a good low price so that immunisation does not become prohibitively expensive. If anyone would like to see a copy of that letter, they should email me at [e-mail] and I will willingly send them a copy. I am told that I am not allowed to deposit it in the Library, otherwise I would do so.

There are three things that I would like to ask the Minister to do. First, what does her Department consider to be a “cost-effective price” for something that will save many lives in the future? Surely it is impossible to put a monetary value on young lives. I urge her not to base her decision solely on how much the vaccine will cost, but to look at the hugely positive effects that implementing a vaccine will have, especially when one considers the trauma that parents have to go through and the devastating pain of losing a young child suddenly within 24 hours. Indeed, there are large costs associated with not vaccinating, as it is estimated that every case of MenB which leads to a severe disability will cost the Government £2 million to £3 million during the life of that child.

Secondly, the announcement made in March confirmed that the vaccine would be introduced only for infants at two months old, with a limited catch-up period for babies up to four months. Given that, as I said earlier, cases peak at around five or six months and the illness remains most common in babies under one year, I urge the Minister to consider implementing the vaccine for all infants under one year old at the time of introduction, to ensure that we protect as many babies as possible. In her response tonight could the Minister inform me of the difference in cost between providing the vaccine for all two-month-old babies, with a catch-up for all four-month-old babies at the time of introducing the vaccine, and the cost of providing it for all 12-month-old infants? I appreciate that she might not have those figures this evening. If she does not know the figures, I would be grateful if she would undertake a cost-benefit analysis of vaccinating all 12-month-old babies and let me have the figures. That would be helpful.

Thirdly, as I said earlier, there is another peak of individuals contracting meningitis B during late adolescence, as my constituent’s granddaughter sadly did. At university, people’s lifestyle is totally different; they mix and get different germs, and unfortunately that seems to mean that they are more susceptible to this dreadful meningitis B. There is therefore a strong case for a roll-out of Bexsero to university students to prevent the spread among that age group. As I have said, some campuses in the US have already administered the vaccine to stop outbreaks of meningitis across the student body. When evaluating the costings, will the Minister please embark on a cost-benefit analysis of providing the vaccine to all 18-year-olds in full-time education?

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended a study to inform its decision on whether to recommend a vaccine for adolescents as the second most at-risk group of people. In her letter to me of 25 April, the Minister told me that the Department is

“considering how best to proceed with this”.

I urge her to instigate the study as soon as possible to prevent any further delays. Once it has been decided how to develop the study, people must be recruited to it as soon as possible, and once the results are available, they should be presented to the JCVI without delay, so that a recommendation can be made quickly. Only with speedy action and decisions can we prevent any more unnecessary deaths and suffering as a result of meningitis B in this group.

I would like to end where I started. Thousands of families suffer from the devastating effects of meningitis B, but we now have a preventive vaccine, which is fantastic news. The vaccine has been licensed for 18 months without being rolled out by the NHS. That delay has had a devastating effect on families of individuals who have contracted the infection and died or become seriously disabled. Now that the JCVI has given a positive recommendation for roll-out of the vaccine, that should happen swiftly. I urge the Minister to conclude rapid negotiations with Novartis. I ask the drug company to enter those negotiations with the Government in a spirit of good will, so that we can get this vaccine rolled out as quickly as possible. I also urge the Minister to consider expanding the current proposal of vaccination to include children up to one year old and adolescents, so that we cover all high-risk groups.

It is now possible to prevent further tragedies similar to that of Emily and thousands of others. We have experienced too many delays already. Let us end those delays, make quick progress, and find ourselves in a situation in which parents are confident that their child will be safe from the devastating effects of this dreadful infection. Every day’s delay is a potential life lost. Please will the Minister act as quickly as she can?

22:17

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) on securing this debate on the meningococcal B—or MenB, as I think we will call it—vaccination. It is a hugely important topic to which he has done great justice. Obviously, this is a very topical public health issue. He is not alone in this House in having had constituents who have felt the devastating effects of MenB, and he put his case passionately; I certainly respect that. Of course, we recognise the devastating impact that MenB disease can have, and Members have described it. It is often known among clinicians and parents as a parent’s greatest fear.

Children aged less than five years are most affected by MenB. As my hon. Friend mentioned, the peak of the disease is in infants aged 6 to 12 months. MenB is fatal for about one in 10 of those who develop meningitis and/or septicaemia. With early diagnosis and treatment, most people can make a full recovery, but around a tenth of survivors have major physical or neurological disabilities, including amputation, deafness, epilepsy and learning difficulties, so it is truly devastating. It is, thankfully, relatively uncommon, with an average of about 1,000 cases per year in England and Wales over the last decade. Incidence has been decreasing in recent years, as was alluded to in an intervention, but it is unpredictable and it could rise again quickly. That is why the advent of a vaccine that could provide protection against MenB is so welcome.

If the House will indulge me, I will go over the history of the investigation into the vaccine and the work of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. It is worth noting for the record that the JCVI is an independent departmental expert committee that provides scientific advice to inform policy making. It is a statutory standing advisory committee for England and Wales under the National Health Service Act 1977. It has no statutory basis for providing advice to Ministers in Scotland or Northern Ireland, although Health Departments in those countries may choose to accept the committee’s advice or recommendations, and they generally do.

In anticipation of a MenB vaccine being developed and licensed, the JCVI began work to consider a possible MenB immunisation strategy in 2010. The MenB vaccine Bexsero, manufactured by Novartis, was licensed by the European Medicines Agency in January 2013. The JCVI’s work before that date enabled it to provide advice at the earliest opportunity, so it is not quite right to say that there has been a great delay. The work had begun in anticipation to try to get us ahead of the situation. The JCVI looked to base its recommendations on the best available evidence for efficacy and cost-effectiveness.

Following the licensing of the vaccine, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health requested a recommendation from the JCVI on the use of a MenB vaccine under the provisions of the Health Protection (Vaccination) Regulations 2009, which provide the basis for the public’s right of access to national immunisation programmes in the NHS constitution. The Secretary of State has a statutory duty to implement a recommendation from the JCVI on a new immunisation programme, so far as reasonably practicable, where cost-effectiveness has been demonstrated.

The Secretary of State and my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), subsequently met to discuss the MenB vaccine with the national meningitis charities Meningitis Now and the Meningitis Research Foundation. Like my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds and other Members in previous debates, I pay tribute to those charities for their excellent work.

The JCVI published an interim position statement on the MenB vaccine for consultation in July 2013 to assist it in making a complete assessment of the available evidence. That interim statement did not recommend a national immunisation programme because of uncertainties about the vaccine’s effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. In response to its consultation, the JCVI received new and recently published evidence on the MenB vaccine. The JCVI also considered comments and queries received in response to its interim position statement. Many of those comments and queries followed similar lines to those raised by my hon. Friend and made the same points on the severity of the impact on children who survive MenB. All the evidence and submissions led to further detailed analysis of the cost-effectiveness of a MenB immunisation programme.

Having considered the outcome of the further analysis at its meeting in February 2014, the JCVI recommended on 21 March that there should be a carefully planned national MenB immunisation programme for infants, starting at the age of two months. The JCVI made it clear that that recommendation was subject to the vaccine being available at a cost-effective price lower than the list price of £75 a dose.

There was some rather inaccurate media reporting when the JCVI’s recommendation was published that suggested that external influences might have led the JCVI to change from the position in its interim statement. The JCVI is an independent committee that greatly values its independence, so I remind Members that, in response to its consultation, the JCVI received new and recently published evidence and relevant comments that led to further analysis and the recommendation that the programme should be cost-effective subject to vaccine price. That is why the JCVI’s position shifted; there was no question of external interference.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I am grateful for the way in which my hon. Friend is presenting her reply. From what she has said so far, the only issue seems to be the cost-effectiveness of the vaccine. Will she give any indication of when the cost-effectiveness issue is likely to be resolved so that a roll-out can begin for two-month-old babies, with a catch up for four-month-old babies?

[Jane Ellison]

Rather frustratingly, for me and for my hon. Friend—he alluded to this in his speech—I am not in a position to answer that, because to do so would be to pre-empt the stage we have reached with the issue. What I can say is that this country has world-leading vaccination programmes and a great deal of experience in planning them and rolling them out very effectively. I can assure him that all our experience would be brought to bear in a positive way at that stage. I cannot pre-empt either the timing or the price, but he can be assured of the expertise that sits behind the UK’s vaccination programme.

The Government welcomed and accepted the JCVI’s recommendation and hope that the UK will be the first country in the world to launch a national immunisation programme for MenB. As I have just said, that would continue our successful track record in providing a world-leading national immunisation programme.

I acknowledge that some people might say—I would not blame them—that cost-effectiveness should not be an issue when talking about a vaccine to protect very young children from a potentially fatal disease. However, it is important to consider cost-effectiveness so that money spent on new immunisation programmes does not use finite NHS funds that would otherwise provide more overall benefit to the wider population if spent on other treatments or services. We all recognise that those decisions are not easy, which is why so much expert thought and careful consideration go into them.

My hon. Friend asked when immunisation would start, and I have explained that we are not in a position to comment on that, but we are in a position to draw on great expertise when we face that issue. As I have said, the JCVI recommended that a MenB vaccine be introduced but only at a cost-effective price, below the list price published by Novartis. Therefore, the first essential step is to agree a cost-effective price for the vaccine with the manufacturer. We want to agree that with Novartis as soon as possible so that children can benefit from the vaccine, but we need to ensure NHS funds are used effectively, as I have explained. We must also follow due process on spending approvals within the Government before launching any procurement. That is quite a complex process involving a detailed business case.

We see the onus as being on the manufacturer to respond positively to the JCVI’s recommendation so that we can purchase the vaccine at a price that represents good value for money for the NHS. If we can obtain the vaccine at a cost-effective price, the introduction of the new vaccination programme would need to be carefully planned with the manufacturer and the NHS so that parents can be confident of a sufficient and sustainable supply of vaccine, with arrangements in place in the NHS for it to be provided and for clear information to be given to parents to enable them to make an informed choice.

I hope that it will give my hon. Friend some reassurance to know that last year the NHS introduced three new vaccination programmes and another one was rescheduled, which demonstrates that that is something we can do. That large expansion in the national immunisation programme was unprecedented. We must ensure that the NHS is fully equipped to be able to deliver another programme safely before introducing it. We hope to be able to start the procurement process soon and to purchase the vaccine at a cost-effective price.

My hon. Friend asked about adolescents. The JCVI’s advice was that research was needed on the effectiveness in adolescents of preventing transmission of infection. I am aware of the cases on US campuses to which he alluded. The Department is considering how best to commission the necessary work. If I have any update on that situation, I will write to interested Members after the debate. In addition, I will give an update on where we are in the process as soon as I am in a position to do so. If the procurement is successful, we will be in a position to make firm plans for the introduction of the new MenB immunisation programme. At that point I will be able to say a lot more. I accept that it is frustrating that I cannot say as much as he would like.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this incredibly important subject. All of us, as constituency MPs, and certainly those of us who are Health Ministers, are extremely aware of the importance that many parents place on this subject and the fear that MenB raises for some many people. He was right to ask me to come to the House and address the subject, even if I cannot do so in quite as much detail as he would like. I look forward to updating the House in due course and will do my very best to ensure that I keep all interested Members fully up to date as we progress with this important process.

Question put and agreed to.

22:30

House adjourned.

Ministerial Corrections

Monday 7th July 2014 Ministerial Corrections

Monday 7 July 2014

Home Department

Monday 7th July 2014 Ministerial Corrections

Passport Office (Delays)

The following is an extract from a speech given by the Minister for Security and Immigration, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) during the debate on Passport Office (Delays) on 10 June 2014.

[James Brokenshire]

Between 1 January and 31 May 2014, HMPO received 3.3 million applications—350,000 more than the same period last year, and the highest volume of applications received for this period over the last 12 years. Indeed, in both March and May this year, HMPO recorded the highest level of applications received in any month over the last 12 years.

[Official Report, 10 June 2014, Vol. 582, c. 523.]

Letter of correction from James Brokenshire:

An error has been identified in part of the speech I gave during the debate on Passport Office (Delays).

The correct response should have been:

[James Brokenshire]

Between 1 January and 31 May 2014, HMPO received 3.3 million applications—350,000 more than the same period last year, and the highest volume of applications received for this period over the last 12 years. Indeed, in both March and May this year, HMPO recorded the highest level of applications received in any month over the last eight years.

Passport Applications

The following are extracts from speeches made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and the Minister for Security and Immigration, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) during the debate on Passport Applications on 18 June 2014.

[Mrs May]

I have explained that HMPO is dealing with an unprecedented surge in demand for passports. HMPO has issued 3.3 million passports in the first five months of this year, compared with 2.95 million in the same period last year.

[Official Report, 18 June 2014, Vol. 582, c. 1136.]

[Mrs May]

Her Majesty’s Passport Office has issued 3.3 million passports in the first five months of this year, compared with 2.95 million in the same period last year.

[Official Report, 18 June 2014, Vol. 582, c. 1145.]

[James Brokenshire]

Her Majesty’s Passport Office issued 3.3 million passports in the first five months of the year, compared with 2.95 million in the same period last year.

[Official Report, 18 June 2014, Vol. 582, c. 1175.]

Letters of correction from Theresa May and James Brokenshire:

Errors have been identified in part of the speeches given during the debate on Passport Applications.

The correct response should have been:

Her Majesty’s Passport Office has received 3.3 million applications for passports in the first five months of this year, compared with 2.95 million in the same period last year.

Student Visas

The following is an extract from the Statement given by the Minister for Security and Immigration, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) on Student Visas on 24 June 2014.

[James Brokenshire]

Overseas students at privately funded further education colleges are not allowed to work at all, yet one college—the London School of Business and Finance—has 290 foreign students who worked and paid tax last year.

[Official Report, 24 June 2014, Vol. 583, c. 207.]

Letter of correction from James Brokenshire:

An error has been identified in the statement given on 24 June 2014.

The correct statement should have been:

[James Brokenshire]

Overseas students at privately funded further education colleges are not allowed to work at all, yet one college—the London School of Business and Finance—has over 290 foreign students who worked and paid tax last year.

Petition

Monday 7th July 2014 Petitions

Monday 7 July 2014

Meningitis B Vaccine

Monday 7th July 2014 Petitions

The Petition of Dr Christopher Turner, Mrs Gillian Turner, Mr Peter Styles, Mrs Julia Styles, Mr Peter Skoulding, Mrs Julie Skoulding, Miss Lucy Skoulding and others

Declares that the most common cause of meningitis in the UK is bacterial meningitis caused by a meningococcal group B infection; further that the Petitioners believe meningitis and meningococcal disease are greatly feared by both doctors and parents; further that the disease strikes without warning, can be difficult to diagnose in the early stages, and can lead to at worst death of a child or teenager within 24 hours from the onset of mild symptoms or severe disabilities including loss of limbs, deafness, blindness and mental changes in survivors; further that in addition to hospitalisation costs to the NHS involving intensive care sometimes for extended periods of time, it is estimated that the cost for care of each survivor is £3 million during their remaining lifetime; further that in addition, litigation claims to the NHS for clinical negligence in respect of meningitis B run into millions of pounds annually; further that the introduction into the Childhood Immunisation Programme of Haemophilus influenzae B, meningococcal C, and pneumococcal vaccines has been highly successful in almost eradicating these causes of meningitis; further that in contrast, the Meningitis B vaccine (Bexcero) received its licence in January 2013 but has been denied by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) for NHS patients; further that it is available for those parents wealthy enough to pay privately at a cost of £75 to £125 per injection; further that two injections are normally required; further that the vaccine manufacturer has offered significantly reduced, but unspecified, prices to the NHS; further that whilst the number of cases of meningitis B vary from year to year, it is reported that in 2010 there were 1870 cases, that is five families affected each day; further that the death rate ranges from 5 to 10 per cent of cases; further that disabilities are reported to occur in 20 to 30 per cent of survivors; further that the sum of this failure to implement meningitis B vaccination on the NHS is a significant burden on taxpayers and the national exchequer in both the short and long term, notwithstanding the effects on individual families and the cost to them both in monetary and psychological terms; and further that taking a median figure of 25 per cent with residual disability at £3 million pounds each, the cost to the Exchequer reaches £140 million pounds per annum and this is likely to be an underestimate when family factors are taken into consideration.

The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Department of Health to introduce meningitis B vaccine for all on the NHS.

And the Petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Geoffrey Clifton-Brown.]

[P001365]

Written Statements

Monday 7th July 2014 Written Statements

Monday 7 July 2014

Social Tenants: Complaints Process

Monday 7th July 2014 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Kris Hopkins)]

The Communities and Local Government Select Committee report into the regulation of social housing in England included a recommendation for the Government, working with the social housing sector, to make sure that tenants of social housing are aware of the correct process to make a complaint about their landlord. The Committee pointed out in its report that numerous complaints are misdirected to the Homes and Communities Agency and this can be frustrating for tenants as well as a waste of resources for the agency.

To respond to this recommendation, I am, today, writing to David Orr, the chief executive of the National Housing Federation, Grainia Long, the chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, and the chairman of the Local Government Association to ask for their thoughts and ideas on how we can ensure that tenants are aware of the correct process when making a complaint and what work they have done, or are planning to do, with their members on this important subject.

My ministerial colleague, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West (Stephen Williams), has been working with the national tenant organisations and others to promote the role that social tenants can play in helping to shape their housing services. He will be writing to landlords shortly to publicise our forthcoming guide “Tenants Leading Change”, which will explain the role that tenant panels can play. He will be asking landlords to promote and disseminate this to their tenants and reminding landlords of the need to make it clear how their tenants can raise a complaint.

In 2011, the Government made a change in the way social housing tenants could make a complaint against their landlords. For the first time MPs, councillors and designated tenant panels were given a formal, statutory role in the complaints process—local problems are best resolved locally by the people who live and work in those neighbourhoods. Whereas the vast majority of tenants have a good relationship with their landlords and never need to make a formal complaint about the service they receive, for those who do though it is important that they can raise that complaint with the right person and that it can be dealt with as quickly as possible.

The key stages in the complaint process are:

Step 1—In the first instance a tenant should make a formal complaint to their landlord.

Step 2—If the complaint cannot be resolved, a tenant can contact a designated person that is either their MP, local councillor or designated tenant panel. The designated person can take up the case to resolve locally or, if necessary, refer the case to the housing ombudsman.

Step 3—If neither of the previous two steps have managed to resolve the complaint a tenant can contact the housing ombudsman directly.

The housing ombudsman’s website gives a clear and easy to understand explanation of the process and the Homes and Communities Agency’s online guidance explains its role and gives advice on where and how to make a complaint. The gov.uk website also sets out how to make a complaint.

Agriculture and Fisheries Council

Monday 7th July 2014 Written Statements

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)]

I represented the UK at the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council on 16 and 17 June. Alun Davies AM and Richard Lochhead MSP were also present for parts of the meeting.

Monday 16 June

Dairy sector

The Commission presented its report on the development of the market for dairy. This was followed by an exchange of views on the draft Council conclusions on the future of the dairy sector. The main point for discussion was the proposal, led by Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland and Denmark, to relax quotas for 2014-15. After a lengthy debate and failing to achieve a qualified majority in favour of changing the current quotas, the presidency concluded that the Council conclusions could not be adopted at this Council.

School Schemes

The Council noted the presidency’s progress report on the Commission’s legislative proposals for reform of the school milk and fruit schemes without discussion.

The implementation of the provisions concerning producer organisations, operational funds and operational programmes in the fruit and vegetables sector since the 2007 reform

The Council adopted conclusions on the Commission’s report on the operation of the fruit and vegetable producer organisation scheme, including a clear message on the need to cut red tape, simplify the rules and provide much needed legal certainty. The Commission made an accompanying statement committing to review the legislative framework for the fruit and vegetable sector by 31 December 2018.

CAP reform implementation

Ministers highlighted the common agriculture policy (CAP) implementation decisions they had taken and some of the accompanying challenges faced by national administrations and farmers. The UK paper requesting a pragmatic and sensible interpretation of the new CAP regulations, particularly with regard to the greening requirements, was referred to and supported by a range of other member states.

Informal Lunch—US Secretary of Agriculture

EU Ministers attended an informal lunch with US Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, to discuss progress on the transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP).

Any other business

Country of origin labelling for meat

The Commission updated member states on its exchanges with the European Parliament (EP) following the latter’s request for more detailed labelling of the country of birth on fresh meat. All those who spoke stressed that the current rules had been carefully negotiated and could not now be changed.

Severe weather in Slovakia

Slovakia raised the impact of recent storms on its forests and suggested they would call on the EU solidarity fund.

Athens conference on scientific support to agriculture

The presidency reported on a recent conference in Athens on scientific support to agriculture.

National Emissions Ceiling Directive

Twelve member states supported Hungary’s request that Agriculture Ministers be involved in negotiations on the national emissions ceiling directive given the potential impact on agriculture of restrictions on ammonia and methane emissions.

Tuesday 17 June

“Omnibus” Regulation on the Implementation of the Landing Obligation

The Council discussed the latest position on the “Omnibus” regulation, which amends existing technical rules with a view to facilitating the introduction of the landing obligation from 1 January 2015. This will now go forward for discussion with the European Parliament, to reach an agreement by the end of the year, ahead of the first year of the landing obligation.

Implementation of the Common Fisheries Policy: Discard Plans

The Commission welcomed the progress made on the development of discard plans under the new regionalisation process, a new way of working that decentralises decision making and brings it closer to the fisheries affected. I intervened to reaffirm support for the introduction of the landing obligation and the regionalisation process, highlighting the work being done to tailor the first discard plans to the specific needs of the pelagic fisheries in each region.

Any other business

Management of Capelin—TAC for 2014

The Commission reported they had now received an offer of capelin from Greenland and will bring forward an amendment to the total allowable catch (TAC) and quota regulation as soon as possible to provide a TAC for this stock.

Anti-microbial resistance in animal husbandry

Sweden, supported by Denmark, called on the Commission to provide an update to the 2011 action plan on the responsible use of anti-microbials in animal husbandry, claiming that antibiotic resistance contributes to approximately 25,000 deaths per year and €1.2 billion costs to health care services. Commissioner Borg stated that this is a high priority for the Commission. A five-year road map has been published and a full progress report will be published this year.

Animal, plant and control package: smarter rules for safer food

The presidency described progress made on the package of measures. The discussion focused in particular on import controls with divergent views among Ministers on the need for a risk-based “open” system or precautionary “closed” system. I was robust in calling for the outcome to be a genuine simplification with fewer powers delegated to the Commission and respect for subsidiarity in relation to fees and charging of businesses.

Plant Reproductive Material

I specifically supported the presidency paper and its pragmatic approach. Some Ministers took the opportunity to highlight particular changes they wanted to the Commission’s proposal.

UK-Caribbean Ministerial Forum

Monday 7th July 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)]

I wish to update the House on the eighth biennial UK-Caribbean ministerial forum, which took place in London from 16 to 17 June 2014.

The forum brought together Foreign Ministers and representatives of the countries of the Caribbean community (CARICOM), the Dominican Republic and the CARICOM secretariat. The premiers of the UK’s Caribbean overseas territories of Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands participated as observers. Together we committed to further strengthening the partnership between the UK and the Caribbean, and agreed on a plan of action to take forward co-operation on areas of joint interest.

The forum focused on promoting prosperity and economic resilience in both the Caribbean and the United Kingdom. It included sessions on economic development, energy, education and security, as well as discussions on foreign policy issues. In addition, and in recognition of the importance of the commercial relationship between the UK and the Caribbean, where our bilateral trade is already around £2 billion a year, delegates attended a UK-Caribbean trade and investment forum, a private sector event focused on boosting business-to-business links.

At the conclusion of the forum, Ministers agreed a communiqué summarising our discussions and setting out follow-up activity for the UK and Caribbean to pursue in partnership.

On energy, we agreed to work together to explore the potential of natural gas and renewable sources as an alternative to the current oil import dependence in the Caribbean, to work with the private sector to share experiences and technical expertise of smart grids and distribution systems, and to enhance dialogue on utility reform.

On education and skills, we agreed to build partnerships between UK and Caribbean educational institutions, to bring together young leaders from academia, business and civil society, and to work together to boost skills development programmes.

To enhance our mutual security, we discussed information and asset-sharing agreements, including sharing data on criminal activities, fingerprints and associated information, and financial and tax data. In addition, we shared views on building effective extradition systems to ensure that perpetrators of criminal activity cannot evade justice.

Representatives of the UK and the Caribbean also stated our shared commitment to promoting global sustainable development, and agreed to work together to secure a single compelling framework and a set of post-2015 goals centred on eradicating extreme poverty.

We also discussed current foreign policy challenges and reaffirmed our commitment to the peaceful resolution of conflict, consistent with the principles and purposes of the UN charter, including the right to self-determination for all peoples.

The UK-Caribbean ministerial forum is part of how we protect and promote our national interests, strengthen our economy and make the most of the opportunities of the 21st century. It represents an important element of UK-Caribbean relations. I will place in the Library of the House a copy of the agreed text of the communiqué from the UK-Caribbean ministerial forum.

Code of Practice: Mental Health Act 1983

Monday 7th July 2014 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)]

We have today launched a consultation on proposed changes to the Code of Practice: Mental Health Act 1983. Following this consultation, we will lay before Parliament a revised code by the end of 2014. It is intended that this will become effective from 1 April 2015.

Since the code was last published in 2008, there have been substantial changes and updates in legislation, policy, case law, and professional practice. A revised code needs to reflect and embed developments since 2008 in areas including the use of restrictive interventions; use of police powers to detain people in places of safety; and the use of community treatment orders.

In publishing “Transforming care: A national response to Winterbourne View Hospital” and “Closing the Gap: Priorities for Essential Change in Mental Health” we committed to improving mental health services. “Closing the Gap” sets out 25 priority actions to improve the provision of mental health care, promote recovery and the experience of patients, their families and carers. “Transforming Care” also committed the Department of Health to review and consult on a revised code to address the need to improve the quality of care received by patients detained under the Mental Health Act 1983.

The code is an important lever for delivering these changes. Health care and social care professionals consult the code routinely to inform their practice, safeguard patients’ rights and ensure compliance with the law. The code is also used by patients who are detained or otherwise subject to the Act, and their families, carers and advocates.

We are committed to ensuring that high-quality care is always provided for patients detained and treated under the Act. Care should always promote recovery, be of the shortest duration, be the least restrictive option, keep the patient and other people safe, and ensure value for money for the taxpayer.

The consultation sets out proposed changes to the code but does not include any changes to either primary or secondary legislation. The draft code includes new chapters on: the care programme approach; equality, human rights and parity of esteem; mental capacity and deprivation of liberty; and victims.

The revised code will apply to the use of the Act in England.

Copies of “Stronger Code: Better Care—Consultation on proposed changes to the Code of Practice: Mental Health Act 1983” and “Mental Health Act 1983: Draft Code of Practice for Consultation” have been placed in the Library. Copies of the consultation documents are available to hon. Members from the Vote Office and to noble Lords from the Printed Paper Office.

G6 (Barcelona)

Monday 7th July 2014 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The informal G6 group of Interior Ministers from the six largest European Union countries, plus representatives from the United States of America, the European Commission and Frontex, held its most recent meeting in Barcelona on 25 and 26 June 2014.

The summit was chaired by the Spanish Interior Minister Jorge Fernández Díaz and I represented the United Kingdom. The other participating states were represented by Thomas De Maizière (Germany), Angelino Alfano (Italy), and Bernard Cazeneuve (France). Poland was represented at official level. James Cole (the Deputy US Attorney-General), Alejandro Mayorkas (US Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security), Cecilia Malmstrom (European Commissioner for Home Affairs) and Gil Arias (Executive Director of Frontex) attended as guests.

The first formal session (attended by the G6 members only) was an analysis of the evolution of G6. It was agreed to keep the G6 in its present shape and format.

The second formal session concerned the fight against jihadist terrorism and radicalisation with a focus on co-operation with northern Africa, the Sahel and middle eastern countries. Discussion centred on the problems caused by conflicts in these regions and the issues caused by foreign fighters travelling to join these conflicts then returning to EU member states. Delegates noted the evolution of the terrorist threat and how it had been shaped by these factors. The importance of information sharing and the role of the EU passenger name record (PNR) directive in this was agreed by all. I stressed the need for the wording of the draft directive to be robust and it was agreed that bilateral co-operation was essential in the interim.

The third formal session related to the fight against drug trafficking in the Atlantic. The presidency noted that while this was a problem for the western hemisphere generally, it was a particular concern for Spain. A number of delegates stressed the point that the use and classification of development funds must be considered to address these problems at their root. The US said they were working with a number of countries on this issue and were happy to continue to do so and to share the experience and knowledge they have. I raised the point that the money generated by the international drug trade helped to support terrorism and that practical co-operation to address this was therefore essential.

The discussion at the formal dinner on 25 June focused on the fight against irregular immigration in Europe. I stressed the need for action in the countries of origin and for member states to fulfil their responsibilities for effective asylum processing and border controls. Italy made the point that their Mare Nostrum programme could not remain in place indefinitely and gave their view that it should be replaced by a European equivalent. Concerns were voiced however that, while the programme had undoubted humanitarian benefits, it nevertheless acted as a pull factor for migrants to the region. Doubts were also expressed by some about the idea of Frontex undertaking a more operational role in the Mediterranean.

The formal lunch on 26 June was an opportunity to discuss relations between the EU and the US. The conversation was positive and members agreed the need for the EU and US to co-operate closely in operational joint initiatives. Specific measures such as the PNR agreement, the agreement on processing and transfer of financial data messaging relating to the terrorist finance tracking programme (TFTP), and the Europol-US agreement were seen to be helpful tools to strengthen operational co-operation in common fields of interest.

The next G6 meeting will take place in France but the date has not yet been confirmed.

Door to Door Action Plan and Cycle-Rail Integration

Monday 7th July 2014 Written Statements

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

My right hon. Friend the Minister of State for Transport, Baroness Kramer, has made the following ministerial statement:

I am today publishing a Door to Door Action Plan following on from the Door to Door Strategy which the Department for Transport published in March 2013. The strategy sets out the Government’s plan to make it easier and more convenient for people to use greener transport modes for their everyday journeys by ensuring they are better connected. This is the second progress report. The first Door to Door Action Plan was published in December 2013. This further update identifies progress towards making this a reality. By considering the whole journey and improving integration between the different transport modes, people will have more choice to use public transport and leave the car at home.

As part of delivering this strategy, I am making an additional £15 million capital funding available in 2015-16 for improving the integration between rail and cycle journeys. This extends the £14.5 million programme of improvements already delivered by the Government which have been the major enabler in doubling the number of cycle parking spaces at stations during the term of this Government. A further announcement will be made on projects to be taken forward once a robust bidding process has been completed.

This action plan identifies the work we have done in the last 14 months to improve integration between sustainable transport modes. It also ensures that people recognise that this area of work remains a priority for government. It focuses on the four core areas featured in the strategy:

accurate, accessible and reliable information about different transport options for their journey;

convenient and affordable tickets, for an entire journey;

regular and straightforward connections at all stages of the journey and between different modes of transport;

safe and comfortable transport facilities.

Examples include the £70 million ITSO on Prestige (IoP) project that has upgraded London’s Oyster system to also accept ITSO smart ticketing and bank issued contactless payment cards. This is now bearing fruit: Southern Railway launched smart card ticketing into London in December 2013 and will be followed by c2c and South West Trains later this year.

The Department has reached agreement with TFL and the train operators who currently accept Oyster to allow passengers to use their contactless payment cards as an alternative later this year.

In addition, the Department has made available an additional £100 million funding to extend the Access for All programme from 2015 until 2019 and deliver improvements at 42 more stations. Also, continuing with the successful relaunch of the franchising programme we now require a franchise operator to consider improvements to the door-to-door journey experience for its customers, in line with our Door to Door Strategy.

I will be placing a copy of the update to the Door to Door Action Plan in the Libraries of both Houses. It will also be published on the Department’s website at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/door-to-door-action-plan.

High Speed Rail in the North

Monday 7th July 2014 Written Statements

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

Improvements to transport connectivity between the northern cities, including through HS2, through east-west high-speed rail links and road improvements, would be a key driver in realising the potential for the cities of the north to become a “Northern Powerhouse” for the UK’s economy. HS2 is a vital part of our plans to deliver significant transport infrastructure that will not only maximise benefits across the UK, in terms of journey times and connectivity, but will help balance the UK’s economy, drive regional regeneration, support job creation and deliver substantial economic growth.

We are firmly and fully committed to our plans for a high-speed rail network connecting Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds as part of our plans for HS2 phase 2, on which we consulted earlier this year.



In his report, “HS2 Plus”, Sir David Higgins set out his recommendations that the Government should undertake further work on bringing the benefits to the north sooner, improving city centre to city centre and east-west connectivity and enhancing integration with our existing network.

In response to his report five cities—Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield—are already engaged in a programme of work looking at northern connectivity. I am looking forward to seeing the outputs from this work. I am also very grateful for the responses to the HS2 phase 2 consultation, which we will report on in the autumn.

The Government have now asked Sir David to produce ambitious proposals for connecting the great northern cities. This work will look at how to bring the benefits of high-speed rail to the north more quickly, as well as initial proposals for faster east-west connections—including options on route, time scales and cost—by the time of the autumn statement later this year.

In completing this work Sir David will discuss emerging issues with leaders from the midlands and the north, and will work with Network Rail to ensure this is part of a comprehensive plan for the entire railway network in the north of the country, as well as liaising with the Highways Agency to ensure it is fully integrated with the strategic long-term plans for the national road network, currently being developed. Separately we are continuing to work on improved rail links to Scotland.



HS2 is a key part of this Government’s growth strategy and I am keen to maximise its benefits as we look to deliver economic growth in the north and across the country more generally.

Grand Committee

Monday 7th July 2014 Grand Committee

Monday, 7 July 2014.

15:30

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Amendment of Schedule 1: injunctions to prevent gang-related violence) Order 2014

Monday 7th July 2014 Grand Committee

Motion to Consider

Moved by

[Lord Faulks]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (Amendment of Schedule 1: injunctions to prevent gang-related violence) Order 2014.

Relevant document: 2nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)]

My Lords, the order before us today amends Schedule 1 to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act to allow for advocacy in a youth court to be funded by civil legal aid for under-18s in respect of injunctions to prevent gang-related violence. The purpose of this draft order is to maintain the existing availability of civil legal aid for under-18s in respect of advocacy related to injunctions to prevent gang-related violence. An amendment to the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 is necessary to reflect the change of venue for such injunctions made by the Crime and Courts Act 2013 from the county court to the youth court, which is a specialist type of magistrates’ court.

Before setting out further details about the order and why the Government are taking this action, I will briefly explain some background. Civil legal aid is currently available for injunctions to prevent gang-related violence under Part 4 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 by virtue of paragraph 38 of Part 1 of Schedule 1 to LASPO. These proceedings are currently heard in a High Court or county court, and Part 3 of Schedule 1 to LASPO, which sets out when advocacy may or may not be funded by civil legal aid, allows for this, subject to a means and merits test. Section 18 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 amends Part 4 of the Police and Crime Act 2009 to provide that, where a respondent is aged under 18, a youth court will have jurisdiction to grant gang-related injunctions. This reflects the Government’s view that a youth court is a more suitable venue for such proceedings involving a child. The youth court is a type of magistrates’ court, designed in a child and youth-sensitive way. However, legal aid for advocacy for proceedings before a magistrates’ court is generally excluded from the scope of the civil legal aid scheme by virtue of Part 3 of Schedule 1 to LASPO.

With that background in mind, I will turn to the reason for the order before us today. The Government recognise that restrictions may be placed upon a person’s liberty as the result of an injunction to prevent gang-related violence. Breach of an injunction can lead to contempt of court proceedings which, for 14 to 17 year-olds, can result in a supervision order or a detention order being made under the Crime and Security Act 2010. The Government therefore consider that legal aid should remain available for advocacy in proceedings in respect of injunctions to prevent gang-related violence for under-18s, notwithstanding the change of venue for these proceedings as a result of the Crime and Courts Act 2013. To maintain the existing availability of civil legal aid, it is necessary to make an order specifying that advocacy for such proceedings is in scope of the civil legal aid scheme set out in LASPO. That is achieved by the order before this Committee today.

I hope that noble Lords will welcome the order. It makes a relatively minor but important change to the civil legal aid scheme which complements the wider changes made by the Crime and Courts Act 2013. I therefore commend the draft order to the Committee and I beg to move.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, has outlined, Schedule 1 to the LASPO Act sets out the scope of the civil legal aid scheme. It is well documented that the Labour Party, along with many other organisations, opposed what the Government did in respect of civil legal aid when they brought this Act into law. Having said that, from the autumn of this year, proceedings related to gang-related injunctions concerning people under the age of 18 will move to the youth court from the county court. We in the Opposition think that is a sensible move and support the transfer, along with the provision for civil legal aid to be available when the proceedings move, which is what this order seeks to do.

I note from the papers that, as this is regarded as a relatively minor change, no specific consultation was undertaken and no guidance is provided. This is not a policy change and the impact is regarded as minimal, with no major impact on regulating small businesses. However, it is said that the operation and expenditure on legal aid is continually monitored by the department, so perhaps the noble Lord could shed some light on what has happened to date, for the benefit of the Grand Committee. Would he also agree that the effect of these injunctions was extremely important and serious for individuals, both those who are the subject of them and those whom they seek to protect? Does he have information on how effective the injunctions have been to date? If he is not able to provide that information today, will he write to me with further details including any case studies that can highlight the effect to date?

With that, I should say that I am very happy with the order.

[Lord Faulks]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for his comments. Although it is perfectly true that the party opposite has been opposed to legal aid changes, it does not oppose this order because it does not change the eligibility of legal aid but is concerned only with the venue of these hearings.

The description of the change as “minor” simply refers to the effect in terms of substance, rather than suggesting that the injunctions related to minor matters. They do not. They are a relatively new weapon in the hands of local authorities and the police to try to control gang activity, and particularly to discourage youths from joining gangs. That is sometimes to those particular youths’ benefit. Say older brothers or other members of the community put pressure on them to join a gang; an injunction preventing your doing so is a very good answer, so in a sense it protects individuals from themselves.

There has not as yet been an enormous take-up of the orders. However, they have been operational, particularly in London, the West Midlands, Birmingham, Merseyside and Manchester. As I said, it is very much those on the periphery of gangs whom we are talking about; those at the centre of the gangs tend to attract the attention of the police and may end up being prosecuted for specific offences. The injunctions are important, and although they are not yet widely used we hope that their use will increase, particularly in London, where gangs are so much of a problem, as your Lordships’ House will be well aware.

Although the noble Lord did not specifically ask, I should say that if an injunction is breached it can result in an order for contempt of court, which can conceivably result in a sentence of imprisonment of an individual. I reassure the House that there will then be legal aid in those circumstances, although that will be criminal legal aid rather than civil legal aid, which covers these circumstances.

The change of venue reflects the Government’s view that the youth court is a more suitable place for proceedings that involve a child to be conducted. We therefore believe that this is a reasonable and sensible amendment, which aims to ensure that civil legal aid remains available for advocacy for under-18s in respect of the injunctions to prevent gang-related violence. I hope that noble Lords agree that this is a proportionate and sensible measure.

Motion agreed.

Adoption and Children Act Register (Search and Inspection) (Pilot) Regulations 2014

Monday 7th July 2014 Grand Committee

Motion to Consider

15:39

Moved by

[Lord Nash]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Adoption and Children Act Register (Search and Inspection) (Pilot) Regulations 2014.

Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, the regulations that we are considering today would allow approved prospective adopters in the named pilot areas to look at information about children on the register. The regulations are some of the first to be laid under Part 1 of the Children and Families Act 2014.

The Adoption and Children Act register is successful in finding adoptive families for children. In the past three years, more than 1,040 children in England have been matched by the register with families who can meet their needs and give them stability and security. However, despite this success, there are still large numbers of children waiting on the register for a new family. At the start of June this year, the register contained 1,345 children waiting for adoption and 747 adoptive families. Once they have been approved to adopt, adopters have to wait to be matched to a child, with possible matches first scrutinised by the adopter’s and child’s social worker. The adopters currently have a limited, passive role to play in that process. This leads to delays for children that might otherwise be avoided, which is detrimental for those children. It can also be enormously frustrating for adopters when they are unable to play a more active role in identifying children for whom they might be suitable adopters. We believe that opening up the register so that adopters can access it will significantly speed up the matching process. This will be particularly beneficial for those children who are currently seen as harder to place yet so desperately need a loving home. These include children from minority-ethnic backgrounds, sibling groups and disabled children. We discussed this point at length during the passage of the Bill. Too many of these children wait too long for adoptive parents.

Evidence for this approach is already demonstrated by the current exchange days, where social workers are able to meet adopters to share more details about the children who are waiting for homes. The register held six national exchange days between March 2013 and January 2014 and 109 children were matched by local authorities at these events—that is, 80 groups of children. A total of 412 prospective adopters attended these events with around one in five matched with a child as a direct result of attending. An adoption worker from the London Borough of Barnet recently emphasised the benefits of this adopter-led approach:

“Exchange days really are unique … they help to bring the children to life for the adopters, and allow them to explore potential matches that they may not necessarily have considered”.

Exchange days are important and we are working with the sector to increase their use. They are not the answer alone, however. Exchange days work because adopters have better information about children waiting for adoption. This helps them to identify with children they would not otherwise have considered. Many of these matches might not be ones that would necessarily have occurred to social workers. The best way to capitalise on this approach and achieve more matches more quickly is to allow adopters to have direct access to the register. Allowing adopters to search the register for themselves, to see videos and pictures and to hear and see children speak and laugh will allow the child’s real personality to shine through. In short, it will allow some opportunity for all-important chemistry to play a part in adopters identifying a child who they might wish to adopt.

Of course, noble Lords will already be aware that allowing approved adopters to search the data of children is not new. Many already choose to subscribe to magazines such as Be My Parent and Children Who Wait. Opening up the register will take this one step further as local authorities are under a statutory duty to refer children to the register if they are not exploring a specific local match for children. We want to pilot this approach for nine months to ensure that we can understand in detail how to make the process work most effectively in practice before undertaking a national rollout. Of course, the safety of children and the privacy of their information are paramount. That is why we are putting in place all the necessary safeguards to ensure that sensitive personal information about children and adopters is fully protected in line with the Data Protection Act 1998.

I reassure the Committee that the information that approved adopters will be able to access will be non-identifying, so there will be no risk that individual children’s full names or precise locations will be identified. Only approved adopters will be able to search details of children on the register. They must give written confirmation that they will keep their password and information about children safe. Noble Lords will also be reassured by the fact that the pilot will be subject to stringent data security measures. In addition, it will be run by the experienced team from the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, which has run the register service for 10 years without a data security lapse.

Noble Lords will remember that we published the indicative version of the regulations shortly before the House began scrutinising the then Children and Families Bill. We later undertook a formal public consultation. Respondents were very supportive of the pilot proposals. Noble Lords will see from the schedule to the regulations that, subject to approval of the regulations, adopters from 29 local authorities and voluntary adoption agencies across England will be involved in the pilot. I was delighted that all 29 agencies agreed to participate within a week of our invitation. No agency declined. This demonstrates the real appetite across the sector for these improvements. Caroline Ibbotson, director of the Yorkshire Adoption Agency, said:

“We are really looking forward to being involved in the Register pilot. We believe it gives our approved adopters a great opportunity to get fully involved in the family finding process and that it will increase the number of potential families being considered for each child”.

Piloting these improvements to the register will give us the best chance of evaluating the impact before making decisions about how to proceed. Our evaluation will include suggestions made during the consultation earlier this year. We will publish an evaluation report within three months of the end of the pilot.

In summary, I know that this Committee will agree that we must do everything we can to find loving homes for some of our most disadvantaged children. The work of the register is a crucial part of this effort. These regulations would enable the register to match children more effectively. Jeanne Kaniuk, managing director of adoption services for Coram, has said that this kind of approach,

“has given adopters a good opportunity to get a real sense of the children and what their individual personalities and needs are. This helps adopters to understand the reality of the children waiting, and has proved an effective way to find good matches—for example, brothers aged 12 months and 4 years were successfully placed with adopters following an Exchange Day in the East Midlands, and have since been successfully adopted”.

I commend the regulations to the House.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I rise briefly just to make a couple of comments on the regulations, and register my interest as chair of CAFCASS. In principle I am very supportive of this pilot. There are a number of good reasons for adopting this sort of approach, and I am aware from my work that a number of innovative programmes such as adoption activity days, which have been instigated to increase the number of adoptions and get a better matching process, have proved successful.

My first point is that it is of course of great importance to us all in this House to ensure that vulnerable children are properly protected and safeguarded. I listened with a lot of attention to what my noble friend said about the stringent safeguards that have been put in place to ensure that those data are protected. It is good to hear that but we are all aware of some things that have happened in recent times, however stringent the safeguards around data protection and IT systems have been. Can my noble friend reassure me just once more that he feels that every possible safeguard has been put in place?

As to my second point, I know that the evidence from the adopter-led matchings that we have seen so far has led more adopters to take a greater sense of ownership for what they are doing and to consider a wider range of children. I know that there are early signs that adopter-led matching enables adopters to think perhaps in terms of a broader group of children, rather than the just the nought to two year-olds who adopters so often feel they still want. Has the Minister any more information about the number of adopters involved in this and similar processes who have shown that they are happy to adopt slightly older children, or perhaps sibling groups? This, again, was one of the issues that came up when we were considering the then Children and Families Bill.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, I too welcome in principle the regulations, which will enable access to the register by prospective adopters. As the Minister has said, we debated the principle of this extensively in the course of the Bill, when it was a Bill, and I do not intend to spend time on that. It is worth experimenting further to see if this will improve the timescales within which children can be successfully matched, provided that there are sufficient safeguards, as the noble Baroness has just said.

The safeguards as regards access by prospective adopters, and the identities of the children outlined in the arrangements, are satisfactory and robust. The issue is the one identified by the noble Baroness opposite: data security. I agree with her that we want to be as clear as possible about this.

I know the register will be separated into Part 1 and Part 2, the latter for those children who could be placed in a fostering-for-adoption placement, which is sensible and important. I simply want to make two points. One is about the consultation. Although the Minister said it was a full public consultation, there were only 41 responses to this. Given the importance of this measure, that is a very low level of response. I wonder if that is because, as the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has pointed out, there were only six weeks for this consultation over a very busy bank and public holiday period from the end of February through to April, taking in Easter and so on. That is important, and I would be grateful if the Minister could comment as to why it was only six weeks, when the normal period of 12 weeks might have got more responses and more helpful pointers from respondents.

My second set of points concerns the pilots. This is extremely important, as the Minister said, not only to ensure that the systems work, but to see if we can garner any further information about the outcomes for children from this approach. Nine months is not a terribly long period to see what happens to children as a result of adopter-led access to the register. I do not know, but there may be unintended consequences of adopter-led adoption. Surely we would want to know, for instance, if—relatively—more of these matches instigated by adopters either failed or were more successful. I have looked carefully at the explanatory notes that set out the scope of the pilot, which I think should be made a little wider, looking not just at the actual matches but at what happens to the inquiries by adopters in relation to particular children. How many of them actually lead to a match, and how many are stopped in process by social workers for whatever reason? Can we extend the remit of the pilot, so we get under the skin of what is happening before the whole facility for access goes live nationwide?

Thirdly, I have a thought. I have great respect for both the Department for Education and for the BAAF, but I wonder if there was merit in this pilot being evaluated independently, and not by either the department or the BAAF, which are obviously responsible for its administration. But I broadly very much welcome the measure, and look forward to seeing the results of the pilot.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to noble Lords for their comments. Turning to the points raised by my noble friend Lady Tyler, I reiterate a few points and add a few more on the safety front. Of course the safety of children—and of adopters—and the privacy of their information is paramount. The pilot will be subject to stringent independent accreditation to ensure that any risks are managed appropriately. It will be run by the BAAF, which has a very good record of this, as I said. Section 129 of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 sets out that wrongful disclosure of information on the register is punishable by a fine of up to £5,000 and up to three months in prison. Information that approved adopters will be able to access about children will not enable them to make any direct approaches. All approved adopters must give written confirmation that they will keep their password safe and will be reminded of their data protection duties. If they do not use the register within a fairly short period, they will not be able to continue to access it. We will have a pretty close idea who has access to the register at any time.

The noble Baronesses asked about the number of adoptions made. It is early days. There is good evidence from the States. We know that one-fifth of matches are made through exchange days. In answer to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, I can say that we will analyse in detail the experience of these matches to make sure we improve matching and for what we can learn. I pay tribute to her party for introducing exchange days in the first place.

The real driver here is to try to speed up the process. The evidence is clear that every year that children fail to be adopted reduces their chance of being adopted by 20%. We must be very mindful of the damage to those children during that time.

On the length of the consultation, I should say that we published indicative regulations five months before the consultation began, so we thought it was long enough.

I hope I have answered all the points that noble Lords made. I can think of no better way of concluding our discussions today than by quoting an adopter who visited an exchange day. The adopter said:

“For the first time, these children featured in magazines were suddenly real and we could potentially be their new forever parents… I don’t think I would have approached some of the children just by reading their profiles or seeing a picture… It was a very effective way of dispelling some preconceived ideas or anxieties about children waiting for placement”.

Motion agreed.

15:57

Sitting suspended.

Terrorism Act 2000 (Code of Practice for Examining Officers and Review Officers) Order 2014

Monday 7th July 2014 Grand Committee

Motion to Consider

16:05

Moved by

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Terrorism Act 2000 (Code of Practice for Examining Officers and Review Officers) Order 2014.

Relevant document: 4th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)]

My Lords, as noble Lords will know, Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000 allows an examining officer to stop and question—and, when necessary, detain and search—individuals travelling through ports, airports, international rail stations or the border area to determine whether that person appears to be someone who is or has been concerned in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism. Examining people at ports and the border area contributes on a daily basis to keeping the British public safe. Those engaged in terrorist-related activity travel to plan, finance, train for and commit their attacks. Most major international terrorist plots have involved individuals travelling through international borders to plan and prepare their attacks. Schedule 7 is an important part of the UK’s counterterrorism strategy and integral to the UK’s border security arrangements.

The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act, which received Royal Assent on 13 March 2014, made changes to Schedule 7—and to Schedule 8, which provides for the treatment of persons detained under Schedule 7 powers. These changes were made following extensive public consultation in 2012 and are intended to reduce the potential scope for Schedule 7 to be operated in ways that may interfere with individuals’ rights unnecessarily or disproportionately, while retaining operational effectiveness.

The changes made to Schedule 7 include: reducing the maximum period of examination from nine to six hours; extending to individuals detained at a port the statutory rights, already available to individuals detained under Schedule 7 at a police station, to have a person informed of their detention and to consult a solicitor privately; clarifying that the right to consult a solicitor includes consultation in person; ensuring that all individuals examined for more than one hour are formally detained and given their statutory rights; introducing statutory review of the need for continued detention; introducing a statutory requirement for training of examining and reviewing officers; establishing a statutory provision that undertaking strip-searches of persons detained under Schedule 7 powers requires reasonable grounds to suspect that the person is concealing something which may be evidence that they are involved in terrorism, and requires a supervising officer’s authority; repealing the unused power to seek intimate samples— for example, blood or semen; and making express provision that an examining officer may make and retain a copy of information obtained or found in the course of an examination.

Noble Lords will appreciate that our discussions are consequential on the full debates that we had when the Bill was before us. The existing code of practice must be revised to reflect the changes made to the powers by the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act and to make specific provision on training and reviews. I am grateful to noble Lords for attending this debate and beg to move.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, this is consequential on previous debates. It is amazing how much and how quickly all that agonising goes out of one’s head, and one has to remind oneself of the subject of it. I am glad that we have had the chance to consider the draft code of practice and the covering SI. What concerns me is the delay in the introduction of the review arrangements, which I assume is because it has simply not been possible to get the training in place quickly enough. I am not suggesting that the better provisions of the legislation, as they are after the work done on the then Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, should be delayed. However, could my noble friend confirm that training is on track for the more senior officers, who will be detailed to undertake the reviews, and how supervision will be carried out in the mean time? I notice that the code says that it will be delayed until the relevant provisions come into force. However, in distinction, the paragraphs about audio recording say that there is no requirement to follow the code until next April. That is the time when the review provisions are to come into force, or so we are told. I do not know whether I am seeing a problem where there is none. Perhaps my noble friend has information, although he may not, about the proportion of officers who will be trained to undertake the more senior role.

I shall raise a point again that I raised during the passage of the Bill. Will training cover how officers should deal with the family or other accompanying passengers of the individual who is being held or detained? I think that I mentioned during the Bill’s passage that I had come across an example, which I hope was a rare one, of an individual being told that, if he insisted on waiting for a legal representative, it would be a problem for his elderly mother, with whom he was travelling. In other words, inappropriate pressure was put on him to forgo a right. I am also not clear what happens if, because of detention, passengers miss their flights. I hope that my noble friend can also confirm that the facilities for this work are satisfactory and appropriate. We have talked about short-term holding facilities a good deal, of course.

The code refers to legal privilege, where the restriction seems to be on copying, not on looking at it. You cannot erase something from your head although, obviously, there would be a restriction on using it—but what happens if a privileged document is copied when it should not be?

Paragraph 41 suggests that consultation with a solicitor is invariably not allowed. This is in the examination part of the code, not the detention part. I had thought that it was always allowed, but not necessarily with a solicitor of the individual’s choice. Is that only when the individual is actually detained?

Paragraph 42 states that an examining officer may grant a request that a named person is informed of the examination at his discretion and that:

“Where reasonably practicable, the request should be granted”.

Is it discretion or reasonable practicality?

Paragraph 45, which is where we get on to detention, states that the power may be exercised,

“where the examining officer considers it is appropriate to do so”.

The last bullet point of paragraph 46 states that:

“Detention is an option (during the first hour of examination)”.

Is that bullet point just about the first hour of detention? If I am asking too many questions, I have no doubt that my noble friend will ask to write to me.

However, I will raise a couple of matters which I hope he can confirm now. First, paragraph 7.2 of the Explanatory Memorandum reads:

“Examining people at ports and the border area contributes daily to plan, finance, train for, and commit their attacks”.

I shall not reread that, but when the Minister looks at it, he will realise that some words must be missing. I do not think you detain people in order to help them plan their attacks. I have had a word with the Minister’s officials, and I think they think it is a typo, but quite an important one.

My second question is on similar lines, but I think I am on dodgier ground. It is on annexe A to the code, which explains to the detainee that he is detained to determine essentially either whether he is involved in terrorism or whether he is entering or leaving Northern Ireland. I thought, or perhaps I had assumed without applying much thinking, that it should be “and” rather than “or”. Looking at Schedule 7, Northern Ireland is dealt with in a separate paragraph. Will my noble friend confirm that detention can be solely to establish whether somebody is going into Northern Ireland without any terrorism-related aspect? I am sorry to have slung that at my noble friend. I looked at this rather too close to the time of the debate to give him notice of the rather detailed points which I have just raised.

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

I will be giving the Minister a somewhat easier time than he has just been given by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

I thank the Minister for the explanation of the purpose of this order, which brings into operation a code of practice for examining officers and review officers in respect of the exercise of the powers under Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000 and under Schedule 8 to that Act where the powers are exercised in connection with Schedule 7, as amended by Schedule 9 to the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. The code of practice revises the preceding code of practice to take account of amendments made to Schedules 7, 8 and 14 to the Terrorism Act 2000 by the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014.

The Explanatory Memorandum refers to commencing the remaining provisions of Schedule 9 to the 2014 Act this month to coincide with the issue of the code of practice brought into operation by this instrument, with the exception of the provision to which the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, referred requiring review of the detention of persons detained under Schedule 7, which are being delayed until next April to allow sufficient time to develop, accredit and train all examining and review officers. I shall pursue some of the points she raised. Will the Minister say how many examining and review officers still require to be trained, how long the training of each officer takes and why the required training has not been completed by this month and has had to be delayed? The need for such training must have been known for some time. Could the Minister also spell out the impact of this delay, in practical terms, including any impact on the provisions of this instrument, which comes into force at the end of this month?

The Explanatory Memorandum also refers in paragraph 4.5 to consultation on this issue having taken place with “National Business Leads”. Perhaps the Minister could remind me who or what this organisation is or these people are.

As the Minister said, the Explanatory Memorandum states in paragraph 7.2 that:

“Schedule 7 is an important part of the UK’s counter-terrorism strategy and key to the UK’s border security”.

The memorandum goes on:

“The changes to Schedule 7 in the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act are intended to reduce the potential scope for Schedule 7 powers to be operated in an unnecessary or disproportionate way, whilst still retaining their operational effectiveness”.

It then lists the changes made under the 2014 Act. They include ensuring access to legal advice for all individuals examined for more than one hour. In that regard, could the Minister clarify what legal entitlements people have when detained under Schedule 7? Will they have access to free legal advice?

The changes also include reducing the maximum period of examination from nine hours to six hours. The Government and others recently expressed concerns about the numbers going from this country to Syria apparently to be trained and engage in violence in the current conflict, and the possible consequences of that. In the light of concerns about what might happen if and when these people return to this country, with or without others, and what their intentions might then be, is it the Government’s view that all the changes made by the 2014 Act, including reducing the maximum period of examination from nine hours to six hours, actually enhance our ability to minimise the risk of those potential threats? Do the Government believe that the new code of practice provided for in this order—reflecting the amendments made to Schedule 7 to the 2000 Act by the 2014 Act—contribute to rather than potentially diminish our security in the present climate?

I simply conclude by commenting that the Explanatory Memorandum states that,

“the majority of consultation respondents agreed that the revised code clearly reflected the changes made to Schedule 7 powers in the”,

2014 Act. What it is not able to say is that the majority of respondents agreed that in today’s climate all those changes are still appropriate. We will not oppose this order, but I hope that the Minister will respond directly to the points and questions I raised, as well as those of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, I thank both my noble friend Lady Hamwee and the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for their contributions to our discussions on these issues. It is important that I try as best I can to answer the questions now. If there are things left unsaid at the end, I am obviously very happy to write. It was fortunate that there was a brief adjournment before we started because it gave my noble friend a chance to have a word with officials and give advance notice of the things that she was particularly concerned about. Perhaps I can deal with the details.

On paragraph 7.2, we can give an undertaking that we will correct the wording so that it reads as it should. It is perhaps not capable of being interpreted at the moment. As my noble friend admitted, she was on slightly weaker grounds when it came to annexe A because the wording is designed to ensure that the code of practice works equally well whether the person is stopped at a GB port or the person is stopped at the Irish border. That is why the wording is as it is. Perhaps my noble friend will tell me if she feels that that is not correct.

She asked whether training was on track. It is on track and is a nationwide programme. We are working out a training package and rolling it out nationally because we want to make sure that we operate to consistently higher standards. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked for quite a few details about the training programme, the time taken and what was involved. If he is happy for me to do so, I should be pleased to write to him with further details of what the training involves.

[Lord Rosser]

I am happy to await a letter from the Minister but can he cover in his reply why the training has been delayed? The word “delay” is used in the Explanatory Memorandum. I mentioned that the need for such training must surely have been known for some time. He could address that point in his letter, as well as the impact on the instrument of the delay referred to in the Explanatory Memorandum.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am quite prepared to do so. I know off the top of my head that the problem is that standards are not equal across the country, but we are obviously now trying to make sure that officers’ roles under these powers are considerably enhanced and need to operate properly at every point. We are cutting down the hours, which is fine; there is no security risk by doing that as long as the process is properly managed and dealt with. That is part of the reason for the change.

My noble friend said that she thought there was perhaps already an opportunity for consultations. As I say, the interview depended on whether it involved those detained at a port or those detained in a police station. Those detained within a port were not necessarily supported with the same rigour as those detained within a police station. That will change under this new regime.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked which organisations we consulted. I do not have those names but I would again be happy to write to him. If I may, I will write both to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, and to my noble friend Lady Hamwee together, so that they will also have the answers to each other’s questions. I know that they share an interest in those answers.

That more or less concludes my response, although I wish to mention a couple of other things. Review provisions will commence on 1 April 2015. Audio recording is delayed to allow facilities at ports to be provided; noble Lords will understand that facilities at ports are not as good as they may be elsewhere, but it is already a requirement to report interviews at police stations.

I hope that I have been able to deal with at least some of the questions. I remind everyone that only 1% of examinations result in detention, and 96% of those examined under Schedule 7 are held for less than an hour. We are dealing with those in detention, who are a relatively small number of individuals, but we must make sure that they are properly safeguarded and that we have processes in place to ensure that the security of the country is maintained.

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord wishes to respond to me now or in a letter, but I referred to the reduction in the period for examination from nine hours to six hours, and to the concerns expressed very recently about what is happening with people going to Syria, then perhaps returning to this country, and what their intentions may be. I asked the Minister whether the Government feel that the provisions covered in the code of practice, and which arise as a result of the 2014 Act, are all still appropriate in the light of the security concerns being expressed by the Government and others in relation to Syria.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I can assure the noble Lord that they are appropriate. Indeed, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation recorded in his report in 2012 that these particular interviews have been instrumental in securing evidence which has assisted in terrorist prosecutions, and that they are very important. The truth of the matter is that the number of people detained for over six hours is very small and usually confined to circumstances where the examination was more protracted than it needed to have been. We are now satisfied that we can do this within six hours, otherwise we would not be bringing this legislation forward.

Motion agreed.

Ministry of Defence: Use of Biofuels

Monday 7th July 2014 Grand Committee

Question for Short Debate

16:32

Asked by

[Lord Soley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is the Ministry of Defence policy on the use of biofuels for the Armed Forces.

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to bring this matter before the Committee and the Minister. He knows my views on this subject, which go back to a Question for Written Answer on 16 January this year. On that day I got what I regarded as probably one of the most disappointing and depressing Answers I have had to a Parliamentary Question for a very long time. Basically, I asked about the use of biofuels by the Army, Navy and Air Force, and the answer came back that they are used in “road transport”. The only hopeful part of the Answer was the last line, which stated that:

“The MOD is encouraging these manufacturers to work towards adopting biofuels in the future”.—[Official Report, 16/1/14; col. WA 37.]

It is a depressing Answer by any standard because there are three very good reasons why we should be using, in particular, the new generation of biofuels. The first of those reasons is climate change. However, even if you are not worried about climate change, the second reason is security of fuel supply and the safety of our troops in the field. I will say more about that in a moment. The third reason concerns research and development. We in this country are in danger of falling seriously behind what is being done in many countries in Europe and elsewhere. From my point of view this is an important issue, so the Answer on 16 January was deeply depressing.

Perhaps I may put this in context by talking first about what other countries are doing. I shall give a few examples to show the Committee how far behind we have slipped compared with other nations. As one would predict, the United States is well ahead, but I shall give a few examples. It has what it calls, curiously, the “Great Green Fleet”. It might sound an unusual name, and it is, but basically the United States intends the whole of that fleet to be biofuel-enabled by next year: aircraft, ships, everything else and the marines who are in it. I will come back to that point.

One of the reasons I think this is so important is that there is a tendency to think of biofuel as just something you drop in aircraft tanks or in ships’ fuel supplies. It is not. It goes much further than that. The United States Marine Corps makes the point that marines are equipped with biofuel resources for their safety. In Afghanistan, for every 50 convoys bringing in gasoline, one marine was killed or wounded. That is why quite a few years back they started producing biofuels in Afghanistan. They were flying aircraft on algae produced on site because that could not be blown up en route from Afghanistan. More importantly, to convey how far ahead they were, I point out that they realised that to supply the energy needs of marines sent into the field, those marines had to carry 700-gram batteries—no, not grams; I will have to give the figure in a moment. They had to carry heavyweight batteries, and that weighed them down. Now they are provided with resources that enable them to provide their energy needs in the field entirely from the sun and other renewable resources on site. In other words, they are safer and their equipment is lighter. It is a very important step forward, and it produced great advantages for them.

I wonder what we were doing in Afghanistan with this. I suspect we were not doing any of it. I suspect we were not even using the fuels being supplied by the United States for its own aircraft. We must remember that these were for high-performance aircraft. The F18 Hornet flies at close to mach 2. This is not used just for small aircraft—it is not of limited use.

By 2020, half the energy needs of the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps will be from non-fossil fuels. F18s are flying on biofuels right now. The Library Note, which is very useful on this, gives a lot of background. One of the best extracts is from the New Scientist. It indicates the way that the United States Marine Corps was operating. The figure I was missing a few moments ago is that it saved marines carrying 700 pounds of batteries when they went out on patrol. If you have any knowledge of what troops have to carry on their backs when they go on patrol, you will know that it is a major saving.

It is not just the United States. On the Floor of the House the other month, I drew attention to the Italian navy warship which is operating in the Baltic at the moment and is entirely biofuel-enabled. The other year, the Royal Netherlands Air Force was flying high-performance Apache helicopters on biofuels. The pilots’ only comment was that it smelt different—not so sulphurous—when they returned to base. There was no performance difference. I am not saying that there are no problems about conversion or in making ships, aircraft or whatever biofuel-operable, but they are far less than is often thought. Above all, they are part of the research and development that is going on.

The United States Marine Corps said that when you do not need as much resupply for fuel, water and batteries, you can stay out longer, do the mission at greater distances and not put marines at risk. The other thing I mention here is that the United States Air Force certified biofuels for use in F15s, F16s and C17 cargo planes, so we are talking about very large cargo aircraft, including high-performance jets. They were all certified for the alternative fuels. The United States Army was anticipating, or has already achieved, that most of its ground vehicles, including Humvees, Abrams battle tanks and Apache helicopters, would be dual-fuel use by the end of last year. When you put that against the Answer I received on 16 January, you will see why I am concerned.

This is not just about climate change, which is important, and I hope that I do not need to spell it out in any more detail. What I want to talk about is security. Unless you think that gasoline supplies from the Middle East are entirely safe, we had better start thinking about where we get our fuels from. Again, it is no guarantee to rely on North Sea oil, or whatever. By making your aircraft, your fleets and your army units reliant on biofuels, as well as being able to use gasoline, you are in a much stronger position and able to cope with many of the changes taking place in the world. I emphasise the importance of that. Again, it is not as if it is not being done elsewhere. Airlines such as British Airways, Virgin, Air New Zealand and Lufthansa are all flying on biofuel mixes. When you fly in any of their aircraft you are now nearly always flying on a biofuel mix. One of the best examples we have in this country is in south-east London, where research is being done, initiated by British Airways. They are using fuel from household waste and other additives.

We can go on ignoring this issue but, when I went through the literature, I found that the research in this country is relatively limited compared to what is being done elsewhere in the world. One of the things I noticed was the visit of Rear Admiral Neil Morisetti RN to the United States. He is the UK’s climate and energy adviser, which I am sure the Minister will know about. He came back with the recommendation that the US and the UK should collaborate more closely on the development of strategic high-performance biofuel. In other words we know about this, and we know what other countries are doing—at least I hope the Minister and his department know what other countries are doing—but frankly we are not doing it ourselves.

That leaves us behind on climate change and particularly on security, and very much on the R&D initiative. Rolls-Royce was one of the companies cited as doing it, and there are smaller companies involved, but there is much that we can do in this country—particularly on algae, which I have mentioned before—which will enable us to keep up to speed on this. Frankly, we have fallen seriously behind. I say to the Minister that, if I get nothing else from this debate, I want some recognition from him that we will never get an Answer like that again. It was so depressing and so lacking in content. We really have to do very much better.

16:43

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for putting this debate down. When I saw it listed, I felt that it was rather like Groundhog Day, or déjà vu, because three months ago, or 31 March of this year, the noble Lord asked the Government whether they intended to increase the use of biofuels for the Armed Forces. I waited with interest to see what the noble Lord was going to bring up in the debate. I have not been disappointed, because it has certainly added to the knowledge that we need to have.

There is nothing wrong with using biofuels from food waste and crops which would not otherwise go into food production. However I am going to take a slightly different angle from the noble Lord. My concern is that I have heard nothing to suggest that the Ministry of Defence, or indeed the noble Lord, Lord Soley, cares at all about the harm to food production. I assume that this is considered to be a concern of Defra rather than the MoD. It must be the concern of somebody. The problem of this Government and earlier Administrations is the compartmentalisation of policies and decisions.

I suppose that I need to ask some direct questions of my noble friend the Minister. When the MoD makes use of biofuels, is any contact made with Defra or any other interested bodies as to whether their use has affected food crops? Has the use of biofuels increased the cost of food? A lot of research has been done on this issue.

[Lord Soley]

Perhaps I may intervene briefly to say that I am with the noble Lord all the way, but the next or new generation of biofuels really has very little impact on food production. The fuels are based on things like algae and so on.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

I will come on to the interesting point about algaes in a moment. In March, the Minister stated that the MoD uses biofuels for road transport, and the question essentially being asked by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, is whether biofuels have progressed beyond that end use. More specifically, will biofuels be used in the two new aircraft carriers, which will clearly consume vast amounts of fuel? Does the new F35B fighter use biofuels at all? I am trying to put some specifics on the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Soley.

On a positive note, the drive to produce biofuels that are suitable for aviation is starting to look promising. I am not sure that I agree with the totality of what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, said, but one of the state governments in Brazil has put in place a policy to stimulate the cultivation, extraction and processing of the native macaw palm, which is a potentially sustainable source. I would hope that this is something that R&D somewhere within the Government would be pursuing. Further, on the other side of the argument, can the Minister comment on the accusation made in 2013 that the EU missed an opportunity by failing to agree a cap on the use of biofuels? Can he also comment on studies which show that as land is dedicated to energy crops, land for growing food is simply taken from other areas, often forested places, which leads to substantial CO₂ emissions because the production of biofuels generates the emission of CO₂, thus drastically reducing their benefit?

Most military vehicles use diesel, as is the case in other countries, and of course biodiesel can be blended with diesel for general use in many vehicles, but sourcing is deeply problematic. The noble Lord, Lord Soley, used the example of the conflict in Afghanistan, which raises the question of how and where biofuels are created. It is all very well if they are produced in Afghanistan for use in that conflict, but bearing in mind that we are not looking to enter into another conflict like Afghanistan or another invasion of Iraq, how will we source these biofuels on location? I ask this because we are probably talking about smaller forces going into smaller conflicts so there is a question about whether these biofuels can be produced locally.

There are claims that certain wonder-biodiesel crops can be grown on a large scale on marginal land for biofuel without conflicting with existing crops. According to my research, I am afraid that these claims are unproven and they have not materialised in the marketplace.

I turn now to the interjection by the noble Lord, Lord Soley. In theory, biodiesel can be made from algae, but it need not necessarily be biodiesel. Biofuels have been used in aircraft on demonstration flights. However, in spite of decades of research, no large-scale production of such biofuels exists that I know of. Indeed, if anyone could make the production of biofuels from algae viable, they would probably be richer than Bill Gates. The noble Lord mentioned the so-called second generation biofuels made by a process of wood and straw fermentation, but so far they have failed to succeed on a large scale, despite strong European and American incentives. I could go on to discuss compressed biogas and so on, but perhaps this is not the time to do so.

My contribution to this debate is to sound a note of caution around the very interesting points that have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Soley. There is a downside, which is the impact on food production. That should be taken into account. This whole thing is aimed at the MoD and the aircraft and vessels used by the MoD, but the use of biofuels is not just military. There is a much wider session to be had, which any Government of any hue would need to look. In a small world, this is something the MoD needs to look at.

I have 10 minutes. I am sorry but I am well within my time—though I have no wish to exceed time if need be.

The noble Lord, Lord Soley, concentrates on the MoD and its use of biofuels, but this is a much wider subject. I would like any Government, this Government or any other future Administration, to look at how Defra and other government departments work with the MoD to see whether biofuels should be used. We already know that biofuels are part of the fuel we get from petrol pumps. There is a percentage of biofuels in petrol. Things are moving. I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Soley, says about the lack of R&D in the UK, but I do not believe that it is R&D specifically for the MoD; it is R&D for the Government. We need to have some joined-up thinking between government departments about whether it is a good thing, whether it is a good thing in certain places, whether it is reducing food production and whether it is the way forward. Just because our allies in the United States are using it does not necessarily convince me that it is the way forward, but it could be.

16:51

[Lord Rosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Soley for enabling us to debate this issue. He referred to climate change, security of fuel supplies and falling behind in research and development considerations as reasons for moving to biofuels. As my noble friend said, this is far from being the first time he has raised this question. He pursued it in an Oral Question just over three months ago when the Minister replied that,

“the Ministry of Defence uses biofuels for road transport where EU legislation obliges manufacturers to include a percentage of biofuels in the fuel they produce. The use of biofuels for marine and aviation use is governed by the requirements and approvals of the department’s equipment manufacturers. The Ministry of Defence is encouraging these manufacturers to work towards adopting biofuels in the future”.

I hope the Minister will be able to say some more today on exactly what form that encouragement from the Government is taking.

The answers given during discussion of the Oral Question at the end of March could be interpreted as meaning that the encouragement was pretty peripheral. The Minister said,

“the MoD uses biofuels for road transport where EU regulations oblige fuel manufacturers to include them, and only for that”.—[Official Report, 31/3/14; col. 742.]”

He also said that that use was limited and that the Ministry of Defence was a very small user of biofuels. Those are hardly answers that suggested that the ministry’s equipment manufacturers would be being encouraged very much in this direction.

Of course, biofuels are not the only means of reducing fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by the Ministry of Defence. The Minister has previously referred to more energy-efficient use of fuel, alternative technology or equipment, reducing activity levels, using alternative fuels and interoperability with our allies as other approaches to be adopted.

As my noble friend Lord Soley said, the United States Navy is looking to have by 2020 ships and aircraft using some 50% biofuels from algae rather than from farm produce, with its implications for food production; and the United States Air Force is flying some high-performance jets on 50% biofuels. Other countries, including Italy and the Netherlands, are going down this road.

The Minister has previously said that the performance of biofuels by the United States and other countries in their naval vessels and aircraft is,

“being shared through equipment manufacturers and international forums such as the Air and Space Interoperability Council”.

At the same, the Minister indicated that the,

“defence equipment and support fuel team regularly engages with manufacturers to understand the most recent research and how this might apply to the MoD’s fuel requirements in the future”.—[Official Report, 31/3/14; col. 742.]

I do not know, but the last point might include a reference to biofuel that does not use food and food products, but is generated from bacteria, using waste materials and is sometimes referred to as advanced biofuels. These do not take land out of agricultural use or impact on rainforests.

There is a target under the renewal energy directive, which requires EU countries to derive 10% of their transport energy from renewable sources by 2020. Can the Minister confirm whether the use of other forms of transport apart from road transport for military purposes is covered by the directive? I assume from his previous responses that the answer is no, but I should be grateful for confirmation of the position.

We appear to have a scenario of a Ministry of Defence watching the results of the experience of other countries in using biofuels in military ships and aircraft, and a defence equipment and support fuel team that is seeking to understand the most recent research and how it might apply to the Ministry of Defence fuel requirements in future. On top of that, we are told that the Ministry of Defence uses biofuels for road transport only in so far as there is a requirement arising from EU legislation and that for marine and aviation use the Ministry of Defence encourages manufacturers to work towards adopting biofuels in future. That does not present a picture of a Ministry of Defence that is exactly pushing the issue. Is that on grounds of cost or the impact on the efficiency of military operations? What is the attitude of the ministry’s equipment manufacturers towards using biofuels in future? What is their response to the encouragement from the Ministry of Defence, which the Minister told us just over three months ago they were receiving, and what form does that encouragement take? I hope that the Minister will be able to provide answers to these questions and other points raised in this short debate, not least by my noble friend Lord Soley.

16:57

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Astor of Hever) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for giving us the opportunity to debate what is an important issue, as he said. I have listened carefully to his speech and I will, of course, do my very best to address the points that he has raised. I may not have jotted down all his questions, but I have got one or two and I shall certainly write to him with the answers and make sure that I include all other noble Lords who have taken part in the debate.

Before I start, it would be helpful if I placed the issue of biofuels in its wider context. In 2011, the MoD published its sustainable development strategy, which provides direction on what defence must do to become increasingly sustainable during the period 2011 to 2030. The strategy recognised that sustainable development offered a number of benefits to defence, including one that is particularly pertinent to this debate. To quote directly from the strategy:

“Less reliance on fossil fuels in theatre will reduce the amount of fuel that has to be transported to the front line; a costly, risky and logistically resource-intensive activity that can undermine operational continuity”.

I think that the noble Lord made that point. In seeking to attain this benefit, the MoD has set the Armed Forces a target to reduce fossil fuel consumption for equipment and operations by 18% by 2020. I am sure that the noble Lord will welcome this, but I want to be clear that we will look to use the most appropriate opportunities to meet this reduction and that the use of biofuels may be only one option to meet that target. It would be short-sighted to concentrate our resources on only one possible energy solution.

As I have frequently said in this House, the Ministry of Defence already uses biofuels. They are used for road transport where EU legislation obliges manufacturers to include a percentage of biofuels in the fuel they produce. I think that was my original Answer to the noble Lord’s Oral Question. I add that the Defence Infrastructure Organisation is also looking at the application of biofuels in heating systems. Biofuels for marine and aviation use is a more complicated issue and is governed by the requirements and approvals of the Ministry of Defence’s equipment manufacturers.

The noble Lord has today and previously given a number of examples of what other countries are reported to be doing to increase the use of biofuels in both ships and aircraft. The results of the performance of these fuels are shared through equipment manufacturers and international forums such as the Air and Space Interoperability Council. The Ministry of Defence’s Defence Equipment and Support fuel team ensures that it stays up to date with this research, and I am not sure that the position in other countries, as described by the noble Lord, is quite as positive as he suggests. The use of algae-based fuel by the United States Air Force, for instance, is proving to be more difficult than originally envisaged, particularly with regard to quality control and the consequent risk to airworthiness. For this reason the USAF is proceeding with caution with the use of biofuels. Moreover, I understand that the USAF is now focusing its attention on synthetic fuel as the alternative fuel of choice.

The noble Lord mentioned an Italian ship. I will look into that as I am very interested in what he said, and I will write to him on that. There are also other well documented problems in using biofuels, such as the impact of biofuel production on agriculture and forestry, although I acknowledge that what have been termed “advanced biofuels”, such as those based on algae, do not compete with those activities.

The introduction of a new technology is never an easy ride; there will always be problems to overcome, and I do not want to give the impression that the MoD is dismissive or complacent about the potential benefits of biofuels: far from it. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, on behalf of the MoD, has a resilience research programme that is actively researching alternative fuels—that is, fuels derived partly or wholly from traditional or non-traditional sources—for use across the whole of the MoD, including ships, aircraft, generators and fuel depots.

This activity underlines our commitment to a sustainable development strategy in order to achieve a number of benefits for defence: utilising a varied energy supply base; reducing exposure to price instabilities; increasing operational freedom; and reducing defence’s impact on the natural environment. The potential use of biofuels is a part of this research programme. The noble Lord mentioned Admiral Morisetti’s visit to the United States and his recommendations. Again, I will look into that and write to the noble Lord.

Furthermore, I am pleased to report that in September this year we will create an MoD strategic fuel authority, which will be responsible for a fully co-ordinated approach to fuels assurance, governance, capability management, supply chain and requirements. It will provide a technical authority for defence fuels and engage with other government departments, industry, NATO and key allies. It will also identify research and development activities to support the extended use of alternative fuels by the MoD. I hope the noble Lord is happy to hear that. I can, of course, supply him with further information about what we are planning. I am sure that the Committee will welcome this initiative. I hope I have demonstrated the MoD’s clear commitment to researching the application of alternative fuels in the defence environment. The potential benefits are huge. It is crucial that the MoD stays at the forefront of these developments, and I am confident that it will.

I mentioned the noble Lord’s questions and undertook to answer them. My noble friend Lord Palmer asked whether the MoD had any contact with Defra or any interested body about whether the use of biofuels affects food crops. He asked if the use of biofuels increases the cost of food. I am aware of the concerns about using biofuels and the impact on food production. The MoD does not consult directly with Defra on this issue, but there are cross-government discussions on the use of biofuels and sustainability in general. The MoD engages with the Department of Energy and Climate Change on increasing renewables on the defence estate.

My noble friend asked whether the MoD uses biofuels other than for road transport. The MoD uses biofuels for road transport where EU regulations oblige fuel manufacturers to include them—and only for that. However, the Defence Equipment and Support fuel team regularly engages with manufacturers to understand the latest research and how it may apply to the MoD. The new defence strategic fuel authority will also identify research and development activities to support the extended use of alternative fuels by the Ministry of Defence.

My noble friend asked about the use of biofuels by the Joint Strike Fighter and in the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. There are no current plans to use biofuels in the Joint Strike Fighter or the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. Further research is being undertaken for their use in aircraft, learning from the US lead in this area and obtaining gearing from international collaboration via NATO working groups. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, in partnership with the DE&S defence airworthiness team and the Royal Navy’s 1710 Naval Air Squadron, is conducting materiels compatibility testing using synthetic fuel kindly supplied by the United States.

[Lord Soley]

The aircraft carriers will be with us for many decades. Is it not incumbent on us at this stage to do what other countries are doing and make them biofuel-capable or mixed fuel-capable? We are building two brand new aircraft carriers, so why are we not doing that?

[Lord Astor of Hever]

This is one of the areas that the organisation I mentioned will look into. Clearly the noble Lord raises a good point. It would be very unwise for us not to consider it down the road. The Armed Forces have a target to reduce fossil fuel consumption in equipment and operations by 18% by 2020.

My noble friend also asked if I can comment on studies showing that using land for energy crops is detrimental to food production and forestry. I am aware of the concerns about the use of biofuels on agriculture and forests but, as my noble friend said, this is really the responsibility of Defra. I shall need to consult government colleagues and will ensure that my noble friend receives a letter on this point. I will copy other noble Lords in on that.

My noble friend asked if the EU missed an opportunity in 2013 by failing to agree a cap on the use of biofuels. I shall again need to consult government colleagues and will ensure that my noble friend receives a letter on that point, too.

The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, asked several questions. I will have to write to him. One question was on what we are doing beyond road transport, but I cannot read the writing here. The Defence Science and Technology Laboratory has a resilience research programme that is actively researching alternative fuels for use across the whole of the MoD—in ships, aircraft, generators and fuel depots. I hope I have answered some of the questions I was asked. I look forward to writing and answering all the questions in full.

Trade Unions

Monday 7th July 2014 Grand Committee

Question for Short Debate

17:10

Asked by

[Lord Balfe]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the contribution of trade unions to the British economy.

[Lord Balfe (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have secured this debate, which I hope will enable the positive contribution of trade unionists to the British economy and the British way of life to be further recognised. I declare an interest, as I have been a TUC-affiliated trade union member since I left school at the age of 16. I would probably not be here today were it not for the encouragement and help that I had as a young trade unionist in getting from secondary modern school through university and into a professional career. Long before I was in the Labour Party, I was an active trade unionist. One thing that I learnt in my branch, incidentally, was that the Conservative Party was not the enemy. There was only one enemy, and that was the Trots—sorry, the Trotskyites, I should say, for Members on this side who are not familiar with internecine politics on the left.

Many people are surprised, but the average trade unionist today is a woman around 45 years of age who is in white collar employment and has never been on strike in her life. Len McCluskey, the general secretary of Unite, recently said at a press lunch in the other place that fewer than half of his members voted Labour. Much evidence collected by the Conservative Central Office shows that over 30% of trade unionists vote Conservative. I recall that after the 1983 election the general secretary of my own union, AUEW-TASS, told me that a majority of our members had voted Conservative. If you take account of all those who, like almost one-third of UK citizens, do not vote at all in general elections, it is no longer possible to typecast trade unionists as being indelibly wedded to any one particular party.

The noble Lord, Lord Monks, referred last week in a debate to the constructive way in which unions faced up to difficult decisions during the recession in order to preserve jobs and capacity. Noble Lords will also probably have heard of the scheme known as Union Learn, started by the last Labour Government and continued by this Government. This partnership between employers and unions currently has 3,636 Union Learn representatives, all active trade unionists and trained through the TUC, who supported 219,091 learners in 2013-14. Of these, 14% were learners on English and maths—basic literacy—25% on ICT courses and 29% on further professional development. What they had in common was that these were all of benefit to the employee and the employer, and were almost all undertaken in premises provided by the employer. Employers benefit from a literate and trained workforce, but often it is only the trade union that is close enough to the worker to motivate them to take part and to study.

I was interested to see a recent scheme inaugurated by the Skills Minister, Matt Hancock, launched in his Newmarket constituency by the National Association of Stable Staff. This is the first in the racing industry, not one that you normally think of as being trade union organised.

Pensions is another area where unions have played a valuable role through the commission headed by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, and in gaining acceptance for the new pension scheme being rolled out, which needs to be improved considerably. However, we are on the way.

Health and safety at work has been shown by a government study to be enhanced in unionised workplaces. A recent study identified a minimum saving of £181 million following a reduction in time lost due to occupational injuries and work-related illnesses. There is a long catalogue of good outcomes from union activity. I welcome the recent tentative moves by the TUC towards seeking places on company boards. We often rightly note the advantage that Germany has over us in manufacturing and industrial relations. Perhaps it is now time to look at the role of responsible trade unionism in Germany’s industrial and economic success and where it can be replicated here. I am particularly pleased that the TUC now seems to have changed its position on worker directors, or at least to be in the process of doing so.

We cannot have a debate without asking the Minister something or other. Therefore, will the Minister request his colleagues to stop the recent niggling attacks on minor but important areas of trade union rights, particularly in the Civil Service? I am sure many of us would agree that facility time should be clearly identified in departmental budgets, but I ask that recognition should also be given to the ways in which facility time frequently—indeed, generally—helps departments and public bodies to attain their wider objectives.

The deduction of union subscriptions is a long-standing concession, which incidentally was introduced when I was at work and was then opposed by the left on the ground that it would break the link between the subscriptions collector and the person on the floor. Of course, a huge amount of time was lost because we used to wander round during the afternoon and collect subs when we should have been working, so stopping subs collection at source will not necessarily save any time, although it might delight a few people who like going for a walk in the afternoon. This is now being withdrawn in some departments. Frankly, it would be far more sensible to assess what time is being lost. If the Government are really so hard up and wish to charge for collecting the money, I invite them to make out an economic case and sit down and discuss it with the unions and have a small deduction which, presumably, they would extend to things such as gym membership, the charge for which I understand is also collected. If this practice costs money, it should be addressed across the board and should not be a matter of prejudice in just one small area of life.

I firmly believe that we have to stop viewing unions as belonging to just one political family. They comprise bodies that do good for many people who are not in any political party at all. It was many years after I joined the union that I joined a political party. As I say, unions do a lot of good. There is clearly a need for responsibility in trade unionism and we can all point to the person who lets the side down, so to speak. However, we need to remember the huge number of people who keep Britain going and are legitimately members of trade unions—people such as pilots. Who thinks of airline pilots in this connection? However, BALPA is a very highly organised union. Who thinks of dieticians in hospitals in this connection? I recently hosted in this House a reception for the British Dietetic Association, which does an enormous amount of good work advising people in an important part of the health service. There are numerous other examples. Many unions feel that the Government could be slightly more helpful towards them. They appreciate the contact and the common bodies run by the different departments, but niggling issues such as that of facility time and stopping the deduction of subs do not make sense to us or to the unions concerned. They just add to the burden that has been put on them.

Finally, I would say to our Government that we have to get a level playing field on this. I always despair, frankly, when I hear people say, “Unions—Labour”. That is not the case; it is, “Unions—workers”. That is important. As Len McCluskey has demonstrated, trade union members, by joining, do not put themselves in a political box. That is probably not completely good news for the Opposition; but if they think about it, it should be good news because unions have a massive role to play in a successful Britain. They have a lot of useful and good things to say that people of all parties and none should be listening to. Certainly in government we should be listening to and regarding them as partners in the joint enterprise of making Britain economically strong and great. It is in that bipartisan sense that I move this Question for Short Debate.

17:20

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I must declare a current interest as president of the airline pilots’ union, to which the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, glowingly referred in his interesting remarks. It is nice to know that he retains his beliefs that encouraged me to vote for him on three separate occasions in his earlier political career. I wish him luck in his newish political party, in his evangelical campaign to persuade it that his views are desirable ones to follow. It will be an uphill task. I have just been speaking in proceedings on the Deregulation Bill and asking why unions are not included in a bit of deregulation. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, will remember there was a debate about assurers, in addition to scrutineers and certification officers, and the red tape in which unions are being wrapped. In the news this morning, we heard that quite a bit more could apparently be on the way as a result of a strike later this week.

Trade unions grew out of injustice. In the face of rapid employment and industrial change, individual workers without unique skills—not the stars but the ordinary—found themselves vulnerable to decisions by employers and managers, and were in danger of being treated as commodities to be acquired and disposed of as judged necessary. So the instinct to form a union was powerful. They were founded in every industrialised democracy in the world. Those two words are important—“industrialised” and “democracy”. In that way, the employer was under pressure to listen to workers and meet their concerns. The growth of unions was a feature of societies like our own, and we in this country led the way. It was an area of British leadership across the world that is much recognised among trade unions in the rest of the world. Their growth was encouraged by alliances with socialists and, in some countries, political parties founded their own unions. Socialists, and in some countries Catholics, were, in the main, instrumental in forming unions.

Today, when societies are less industrial and their economies more service-based, this has led some to question whether unions are relevant or appropriate. In fact, in some US states in the middle and the south you could say that unions were almost an endangered species. Unions are relevant in Britain; they are relevant in 38% of the FTSE top 50 companies, which have collective bargaining with trade unions. In UK manufacturing, to which the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, referred, unions cushioned employers through the recession of 2008-09 by helping to preserve jobs, very often at the expense of a fall in living standards. The carnage of employment, however, was nothing like as bad as we expected it to be, given the depth of that recession. It was not as bad, for example, as the less severe recession we experienced in the early 1990s.

The two relevant unions are not in manufacturing, but in services. The biggest employer of unionised labour in the country is Tesco. To this day, the big supermarkets, security companies and banks are unionised. Of course, they are relevant in public services. I should mention the strikes that are due to take place later this week to remind the Government that change should be negotiated, not imposed. It is important for public sector staff morale that unions should be recognised properly and dealt with in a respectful manner, not in the rather careless, take-it-or-leave-it, way that is being displayed at the moment.

Unions are relevant to all those in insecure, low-paid occupations and to people who are subject to zero-hour contracts. There has been an increase in self-employment, with 40% of the new jobs that have been created since 2010 being on a self-employed basis. We know that not all of them are budding entrepreneurs. Many people are taking self-employment because it is the only thing they can get, with the employer stepping neatly away from PAYE tax, national insurance contributions, pensions, employment rights and so on. Workers today are still vulnerable, just as they were in the early industrialised societies. It seems to me that although the social protections of the welfare state are much better, the instinct for unionisation remains great. I think that it should be public policy to encourage the renaissance of trade unions. Collective bargaining should be seen as a way of checking the excesses of people at the top and boosting the position of people at the bottom. It can narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots. The companies that are aware of their obligations to their workforces—unions tend to ensure that—are the ones which are more likely to do the right thing rather than the wrong thing. If we are going to tackle inequality in our society, which even the IMF has mentioned, stronger unions are a crucial part of that process.

Any new settlement must involve progressive and responsible trade unionism that is committed to high productivity, performance and long-termism. It must ensure that the benefits of growth are more fairly distributed than is the case at present. My watchwords are “co-operation”, “respect”, “professionalism” and treating people as you yourself would like to be treated. I look to the other side of the North Sea for exemplars, as did the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, in respect of worker directors in Germany. In terms of collective bargaining and the worker voice in how companies run themselves, as well as the approach to building skills over time and giving people ladders to climb, economies from Finland all the way round to Flanders seem to be able to achieve that. The crucial role played by trade unions in our society needs to be recognised properly, and I hope very much that this debate will be the start of something big. I hope that our evangelist on the other side of the Committee manages to take the hordes of the Conservative Party along the same path that he is treading.

17:28

[Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Monks. Unlike him, I welcome the tone of the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, to the debate. While I look forward to the Government’s response, it might help if I remind the Committee of one or two landmarks in the development of contemporary trade unionism.

I was proud to be a member of and then to lead a union whose general secretary in 1940 left his office in Transport House and walked into Downing Street to join the Churchill Government as the Minister of Labour. That general secretary was Ernest Bevin. So if we are talking about trade union contribution to the economy, we should pause here and pay tribute to the Bevin boys. I am pleased to say that it was a Labour Government under Prime Minister Brown that gave due recognition to the contribution that the Bevin boys made to the war effort. Ernest Bevin’s achievement on his return to Government in 1945 was a major contribution to the development of the United Nations as we know it today. But that was his political role. His industrial role as the then Foreign Secretary was to establish the International Labour Organization, based in Geneva. Lest we forget, as Foreign Secretary he was present when the State of Israel was born. As we speak, the Israeli trade union, Histadrut, remains a significant contributor to the development of that country.

It is to the trade unions’ contribution to our economy that the noble Lord’s question is directed. In my day, along with my noble friend Lord Monks and many others, we changed both the social and economic agenda of the workplace from politics to partnership. We developed an agenda for both social and economic change. We campaigned for partnership with employers and the wider community. We built an agenda for the workplace based on better health and safety, training and skills, investment in people, export and productivity. Together, we saw ourselves, certainly within the context of the TUC, as ambassadors for social change. Our agenda for social change was led by the pursuance of anti-discrimination laws, health and safety, employment protection, skills improvement and—above all—partnership at work.

The trade union agenda today is about investment. For example, I am proud of the contribution that workers make to the success of the Jaguar Land Rover partnership. I am proud of the contribution made by Bombardier, the train-building company in Derby—another great success. Frankly, anyone who asks the question about the trade union contribution really needs to look no further than at the partnerships that have developed. The days of industrial disputes are almost extinct within the context of day-to-day debate. Day in, day out, I know that management and unions sit down to discuss the issues and challenges of the day. These are productivity, training and skills, apprenticeships, investment and export opportunities. That is the modern, contemporary workplace agenda. What we need is support from government for that agenda. In today’s world, the company ambassadors include the trade unions. I spent more time in Japan seeking to persuade the Toyota motor company to come to Derby than any Cabinet Minister I know.

Yes, there are challenges ahead—zero-hour contracts, for example. I must ask the Government: what steps are being taken to give justice to the thousands of construction workers blacklisted by the Consulting Association? That is a must-have for social justice to be done. I feel a great sense of gratitude to have been supported by the trade union movement. Today, the trade union movement, with co-operation, is not the problem; it is very much part of the solution.

17:34

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to follow two such distinguished trade unionists, both of whom epitomise what my noble friend Lord Balfe was talking about in his opening speech. They epitomise responsible trade unionism. I cannot claim, like my noble friend Lord Balfe, ever to have been a member of the Labour Party, but I have always had a great respect for the history of the Labour Party and, in particular, for those Christian socialists who, in a dignified and responsible manner in the nineteenth century, gave the working man—it was mostly the working man in those days—a voice. I honour that, and I believe that our country has received an enormous contribution from those who have served in the Labour Party and in the trade union movement, although I rejoice in the fact—enunciated and underlined by my noble friend Lord Balfe—that one does not now talk of a trade unionist automatically being a member of a particular political party.

The underlying theme of this debate is partnership. We cannot have true and lasting prosperity in our country without a real and continuing partnership “from two sides of industry”. I do not like that phrase, I would rather say “from all of those who are committed to the commercial and industrial development of our great country”. I have been involved, for the last 12 or 13 years, with an award for responsible capitalism. It came out of the magazine First. Way back in the late 1990s, I had a series of discussions with the chairman of that company, Mr Rupert Goodman, and Lord Dahrendorf. We decided that we wished to challenge the captains of industry to emulate the Robert Owens and the Cadburys of the past and practise true responsible capitalism. Responsible capitalism means not only a commitment to a profitable enterprise—it clearly means that—but recognition of the needs and aspirations of those who work, and of the environment in which they work.

Way back in 2000, we were able to persuade the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, to present the first annual award for responsible capitalism. Year in and year out since then we have continued to do that. Sadly, since then, Lord Dahrendorf has died. He was one of the most truly remarkable men who have ever sat in your Lordships’ House. He was replaced as chairman of the panel of judges by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Woolf, the former Chief Justice, who had himself presented the awards in a previous year. I believe that it is incumbent on us all to do everything possible to encourage responsibility in all of those who work for the future of our great country. Whether they are those in positions of managerial authority, or those who are working with their hands as well as their heads, responsibility and partnership are surely the key words.

I have been fortunate enough in recent weeks to initiate two debates in your Lordships’ House. One was on the subject of craft apprenticeships, and the other was on citizenship. I want to see the day when every one of our young people leaving school goes through the sort of citizenship ceremony that those who are becoming British citizens and subjects go through as recognition of their responsibilities and their rights. I believe that the trade union movement can play a significant part in encouraging that sort of responsible citizenship because those responsibilities interact and work together.

I also believe that there is no group of organisations better able to promote true and proper craft apprenticeships than our trade unions. I see an expanding role for them in that context in the years ahead. I deplore the yah-boo politics that occasionally still disfigure the other place and paint people into different corners because if we do not work together in partnership in this country whatever our background, ethnicity or religious beliefs, we will not be able to prosper as we should and truly inherit the legacy of the past created by men and women who had responsibility and partnership as their watchwords.

One of the winners of the award for responsible capitalism was Sir Charlie Mayfield of the John Lewis Partnership. There is no better example of true responsibility and involving all those who have a role in the organisation concerned than the John Lewis Partnership. May that be a role model for us all in the years ahead. I have enormous confidence in the future of this country, but that confidence could so easily be undermined if we saw a resurgence of small-minded industrial cold war rhetoric which could do no one any good at all as we move through the 21st century.

I applaud my noble friend for introducing this subject. I apologise for my slightly random remarks. I do not write speeches, but I feel very passionate about this and I very much hope that those outside who read this debate will feel, as the noble Lord, Lord Monks, said, somewhat inspired by it.

17:42

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for introducing this debate and for the tone that he used. Like him, I joined a trade union before I joined the Labour Party. I am still a member of a trade union and always will be. I have been a member for more than 50 years. In fact, the union I was fortunate enough to join is more than 200 years old. Its originating members were deported to Australia for having the audacity to break the law to try to form a trade union. That is the DNA that ran through the union that I joined. The union has had a lot of changes.

I currently chair the employee share ownership scheme of NATS. It has been interesting to see how that has worked well within the company. At the time of the part-privatisation of the organisation in 2001, a shadow share price was established which I think was 20p. It was just before the bombing of the twin towers and the company was then trading almost illegally, with 126% gearing. Since then it has been interesting to see how we have substantially trade union-organised employees who are also shareholders in the company. It works well. The share price is now more than £4 a share; and those employees are benefiting from that. So, in the right structure and context, I support the employee share ownership schemes to which the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, referred. When we moved from free shares to part-free, part-buy shares, more than 80% of employees in the company bought shares. That is partnership working. The company has a policy of joint partnership working. That cannot be repeated enough because the company had its most successful financial year last year. Having been a totally nationalised company, it is now part government owned, part privately owned. It is held up worldwide as being an icon of professionalism and good quality. So the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, is absolutely right when he refers to the fact that trade unions are part of solving the economic issue, not part of the problem.

Every organisation and structure, I would dare say even the Conservative Party or any political party, has its own issues of one kind or another. I shall come back to those shortly. I referred to my original trade union links with the union of which I am still very proud to be a member, although it has been amalgamated almost out of existence: I am now a member of the same trade union as a number of noble Lords in this Room. When you look back at history—and the noble Lord, Lord Monks, rightly referred to the economic and social implications—you can see that trade unions are not just part of the economy but part of the overall quality of democracy within a nation. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, referred to Germany, in which trade union structures were set up by the TUC after the Second World War. It is very much part of that engine of success, on the boards of companies and elsewhere, so it is not even an issue.

The issue over trade unionism in Britain is like the issue of class and the great divide that we have—there is no need for it, and has not been a need for it. What we need in the country is the partnership work—and if there is one word on which we are all united in this debate, it is “partnership”. Look at Tata and the success that it has made—it is trade union organised. Look at BAE Systems, which is fully trade unionised. Some months ago, I attended a meeting in the House of Commons where the company and trade unions were alongside each other, talking about how important was the success of that company, the investment that had taken place and the skills. There is a very highly skilled requirement in the company, as there is in Tata and a number of other companies, Bombardier included, to which my noble friend referred. People were then arguing for the well-being of the company. Why? When I was a trade union official, I never took any satisfaction out of dealing with a company that was not making a profit. Profit is a good word; it is how it is used that matters, and how we concentrate what we are doing in the UK to build on our economic recovery.

The question that I pose in this private debate about how we work together in Britain—because it will not receive publicity—is how trade unions, companies and government can make sure that we have economic success, taking the leaf out of great competitors, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries. I see that even in America, which is not known for its pro-trade union line, trade unions are growing in strength. In Britain, too, a number of trade unions are growing in numbers. It is still an anachronism for an individual employee to be faced with a professional employer and to have to deal with that employer on their own behalf. Collectivism is important, whether it is a small company or a large one. It would be much more profitable for the nation—I do not mean just in money terms but in our economy and social well-being—if we concentrated on that. It is therefore with some deep concern, which I am sure is shared by the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, that I saw the clear briefing this weekend, and the reporting in the press today, in the FT and the other newspapers, that the Conservative Party intends to have in its manifesto certain requirements on trade unions with regard to strikes and pre-strike ballots. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that in his reply. The union that I came from never had a dispute without having a ballot—and that has to be the case. It is something that I have always agreed with; it was something which I was brought up with in my union.

It is reported that there will be a requirement for 50% of the employees covered to have voted. Just imagine how requiring that kind of level for elections would transpose itself to our democracy. That would be just unacceptable. It will be an adversarial debate. It has to be. Rather than the idea of almost going on to the front foot of aggression with the Government not wishing to negotiate and consult, partnership would serve our country better than having these kinds of briefings and leaks. This would be legislating for the small areas of industrial relations problems that still exist. I do not deny there are some. They might even be tiny and geographically placed for a number of reasons. Instead, concentrate on the nation as a whole. The nation as a whole has a darn good record in both this economic recovery, which my noble friend Lord Monks referred to, and the strike record. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for this debate. It might give one or two of us the courage to come back to this issue in the months ahead because it is a debate which needs to be aired. We are indebted to the noble Lord. I ask the Minister, who I know is a coalition Minister, to address those questions and put on record where the Conservative Party stands.

17:51

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, like other noble Lords who have spoken, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for putting this Question down for debate today. Like my noble friend Lord Monks, I voted for the noble Lord on many occasions when he was a Labour Member of the European Parliament, and I wish him well in his new endeavours in his new party.

I declare an interest as a member of the GMB and would remind the Committee that I have been a trade union member since I left school. I joined USDAW and the Co-op at around the same time—I do not know which one was first—when I started work in the retail sector. I am now the president of the Society of Chiropodists and Podiatrists, which is a very small specialist trade union working in the NHS.

I join my noble friend Lord Morris of Handsworth in his remarks about Ernest Bevin. I pay tribute to the Bevin boys and the role they played in the war effort.

This has been an interesting debate with a very experienced range of speakers. I was particularly pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, spoke because it is important that Members from the Government Benches should speak in these debates. He was right in his comments about partnership, and we all want to see that.

I think it is fair to say that the relationship between the Conservative Party and the trade unions has often been fraught. We can go back and look at the Governments led by William Pitt the Younger and the introduction of the Combination Acts in 1799 and 1800 and see that it is nothing new. The biggest recent change with respect to the relationship between the unions and the Government came in the 1980s and 1990s in the Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Trade unions were not viewed as allies or as organisations the Government could work with or wanted to work with. That is a matter of regret as unions have an important role to play in representing their members. They seek to improve terms and conditions through bargaining with employers, but they are also the biggest voluntary sector organisation in the country. They have 6.2 million members from all walks of life. They have an important role to play in civil society. They campaign for social justice at home and abroad. They have joined forces with a wide variety of organisations and have a proud record of achievements that have made our country a better place in which to live.

The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, made some points regarding which political parties trade union members support. Like any other group of people, support for particular political parties among trade union members will ebb and flow due to a range of circumstances, and trade union members will vote for all sorts of parties. Most trade unions are not affiliated to the Labour Party and never have been. Major changes to the relationship between affiliated unions and the party were agreed earlier this year. When the Minister replies, perhaps he will tell the Committee why the Government do not always see trade unions as organisations with which they can discuss things and work more closely. If it is because they see them as the arm of a political opponent, that is a most regrettable place to be and is incorrect, but it may explain some of the actions they have taken.

This Government, although it is a coalition, is a Conservative-led coalition. During the passage of the lobbying Bill in the previous Session, proposals were brought in which affected trade unions, as my noble friend Lord Monks said. They were supported by both coalition parties. Like my noble friends, I still struggle to see any difference they have made or any help they have given anybody. I am sorry to hear reports of further legislation in the pipeline, and I am sure the Minister will deal with that in his response.

As I have said, trade unions have a proud record of campaigning on a wide variety of issues. Let us take the area of health and safety. Where we have a unionised workforce the rate of injuries is much lower. That can be attributed to the management and safety reps sitting down together to deal with issues and find solutions. I recall going on a parliamentary visit to the Olympic Park just before the Games started. Sir John Armitt, who was then the chair of the Olympic Delivery Authority, proudly told us that health and safety was important to the authority, the companies and the unions involved, and indeed to the workforce. The worst accident on the entire site over the duration of the whole project had been one broken leg. Contrast that with the agriculture industry, which is not heavily unionised. People work in small groups on small farms. On average over the past 10 years, one person has been killed every single week as a direct result of their work. It is by far the most dangerous industry in the UK. Perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Popat, can tell the Committee what the Government intend to do to deal with health and safety in the agricultural sector.

My noble friend Lord Morris said that there are numerous examples of unions working together with employers to achieve the best for the business. I recall speaking last year to a senior manager in British Gas who told me that the company would not be as productive as it is without the support and help of GMB. The union is an integral part of the business. It has a direct interest in ensuring that the business succeeds because its members’ livelihoods depend on it. My noble friend Lady Dean made similar remarks, which I fully support. Let us look at the car manufacturing industry in the UK. It has been transformed, with thousands of jobs across many companies employing people who are building quality products. Many years ago I had the privilege of going to the Toyota plant in Burnaston with my noble friend Lord Prescott. It is an excellent example of unions and employers working together, and I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Morris for securing that inward investment into the UK.

The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, and other noble Lords mentioned the benefits of union learning and other training schemes. The trade unions have a proud record of supporting and assisting members by providing education for them. Trade unions have also been campaigning for better deals for part-time workers and were instrumental in setting up the Pension Protection Fund. The noble Lord, Lord Balfe, referred to the positive contribution trade unions have made to the provision of pensions for UK workers, and I strongly agree with that. I also agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, about facility time and the attacks on check-off. They are very silly and will benefit no one. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Popat, can respond to that, hopefully in a positive way. My noble friend Lord Monks talked about respect and treating other people as you would want to be treated yourself. It is really important that negotiations and discussions are always held in that way.

In conclusion, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for initiating this debate. I wish him well in his endeavours. Like my noble friend Lady Dean, I hope that this is the first of many debates on these issues. I think also that we would all agree that in the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, the noble Lord has a very welcome ally in the Conservative Party.

17:57

[Lord Popat (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Balfe for initiating this important debate. On listening to him, it is clear that he has a detailed knowledge of the operation and activities of trade unions, and of the impact they have on our economy. This is an interesting debate for me to respond to because we have reached a cross-party agreement in the Committee today on the important role played by the trade unions in terms of both the country and the economy. However, it is worth reminding ourselves that in 2013 the UK experienced its fastest growth since 2007 and it is currently the fastest growing major developed economy. While I am not implying that this can be attributed to trade unions, it is relevant to note that the union movement engaged positively during the recent economic downturn while also maintaining its traditions of fairness and equality.

My noble friend Lord Balfe opened the debate by talking about the positive contribution made by trade unions. A recent ONS business survey tells us that trade unions contributed £443 million in gross value added to the UK economy in 2012. I do not know about their working patterns or which parties members vote for, and I do not think that my office would have that information either. However, I will present some facts about trade unions that were prepared by the Department of Trade and Industry in 2007. Representation in the workplace reduces the dismissal rate by 5% to 10%, thus reducing annual redundancy costs by £107 million to £213 million. Representation reduces the voluntary exit rate in a workplace by 5% to 10%, saving employers between £72 million and £143 million a year.

The impact of workplace representatives in reducing dismissal rates also reduces the number of employment tribunal claims against workplaces, thereby providing annual savings to business and the Exchequer of between £22 million and £43 million. Health and safety representatives in the workplace reduce injury rates for employees by between 10% and 15%, providing overall annual economic benefits of between £136 million and £371 million, and reduce incidence of work-related illness by between 1% and 3%, providing an overall annual economic benefit of between £45 million and £207 million. The annual economic benefit of training and learning generated through trade union learning representatives was estimated at between £94 million and £156 million, due to increased productivity.

We can see from those figures the huge benefits that employers receive by having their members represented by trade unions. While it is unfortunate that no current data are available, and these data are now seven years old, they show the scale of the positive effect that trade unions have on our economy and how this debate is an excellent chance to remind us all of those facts. I am afraid that we do not have recent data on the impacts that I have mentioned. The industrial relations climate in the UK is generally positive; industrial action is at an historic low and has been relatively stable for more than 20 years.

I will now talk about the wider benefits of trade unions, which a number of noble Lords mentioned, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Morris. Noble Lords quite rightly said that the trade union movement is very relevant today. Trade unions play a role that is increasingly important to the public and to those young people who will form our future workforce. It is about making sure that business is a benefit to society and reflects the society we live in. My noble friend Lord Cormack mentioned responsibility and partnership. Unions help to maintain the debate about diversity in the workplace, about how disability should not be shunned and about how improving skills can make a real difference to the poor and vulnerable. All this makes our economy perform better for all our citizens. Quite rightly, the noble Lord, Lord Monks, mentioned the benefits of economic growth, which must be distributed while we are doing well in this country. Hence, we are looking at the minimum wage and have increased the rate above inflation in the past few years.

Trade union members also participate in the many voluntary roles that help create cohesive communities. Unions are also at the forefront of developing greener workplaces by working in co-operation with employers who want to make their enterprise environmentally and energy effective.

The Union Learning Fund, which is administered by Union Learn, the learning and skills organisation of the TUC, is an excellent example of how unions help their members and their employers. Union Learning Fund projects are primarily targeted at workers, many of whom have low skills, including literacy and numeracy needs—the very people who may be reluctant, or may not know how, to take advantage of the various development opportunities available to them. The history of unions providing learning for their members is a long one. Some colleges were established for the education of working people in the late 19th century, closely followed by the founding of the Workers’ Educational Association. The opening of the TUC training college after the Second World War gave a big boost to the training of trade union representatives.

I will now talk about trade union membership. It is interesting to note that permanent employees are more likely than those in temporary jobs to be union members in all categories of employment. Full-time employees are also more likely than those in part-time work to be union members, the only exceptions for full-time employees are among professional occupations and those employed in the wholesale and retail trades. It may also surprise noble Lords to hear that middle-income earners are more likely to be trade union members than either high or low-paid employees. About 39% of employees who earn between £500 and £999 per week are members of a trade union compared with 21% of employees earning £1,000 or more. The proportion of employees earning less than £250 who are trade union members is only about 14%. Employees in professional occupations are also more likely to be trade union members, and we know that the wage premium is higher for females who are trade union members at about 30%, compared with 7% for males.

I now move on to some of the tangible benefits that unions bring to the workplaces in our economy. This was again mentioned by my noble friend Lord Balfe. These benefits fall in three main areas: helping people participate in the labour market by ensuring fair standards of employment; resolution of workplace disputes, and helping deliver necessary changes in the workplace to enhance business performance. The noble Lords, Lord Morris and Lord Kennedy, and my noble friend Lord Balfe mentioned the important area of the health and safety environment. Unions health and safety representatives help reduce the number of accidents in the workplace, hence reducing the number of hours lost to accidents, and improve the working environment so that employees feel safer and happier, which in turn reduces the number of staff absences due to illness.

Unions also play a major role in establishing the business environment in the UK, especially when it comes to negotiations on EU legislation. An example of this is the TUC pursuit of the interests of UK working people through the European Trade Union Confederation, the social dialogue with European employers and the Economic and Social Committee, and through representations to the institutions of the EU—the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the British Government. Such actions give more confidence to people, especially if they are low skilled, to participate in the labour market. This is turn provides a greater pool of talent for business to choose from.

Equally, the role that unions play in resolving workplace disputes, be that at an individual or group level, is not to be underestimated. This is more than a reduction in industrial action that we have seen over the years; it is about being proactive and working in partnerships with employers to make sure that a business can change and adapt to customer needs, or respond to competition in the market in the most effective way. Recent figures show that 76% of union members resolve their issues before taking formal action via a tribunal, whereas this figure is 69% for non-union members. Trade union members’ claims are less likely to go through to tribunal than those of non-members, with 13% of members’ claims ending in a tribunal compared with 21% for non-members. The tribunal figures also show that only 28% of claims are from trade union members.

A number of issues have been raised which I shall deal with very briefly due to time constraints. My noble friend Lord Balfe referred to the deduction of union subscriptions from employees’ salaries. This is for employers and unions to agree. Some unions feel that direct debit is more favourable. The Government support unions’ right to collect the subscriptions as they see fit.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark]

I am sorry to interrupt but the Minister is not going to be able to respond to all the questions that I asked in the next couple of minutes. Therefore, will he respond to those he can and give a commitment to write to noble Lords on the points he will not be able to cover and place a copy of the letter in the Library of the House?

[Lord Popat]

I will certainly do that and place a copy in the Library. The noble Lord, Lord Morris, raised the very important issue of blacklisting trade unionists. The Government are clear that blacklisting is an unacceptable and illegal practice. We take any allegation of this practice very seriously. Indeed, the Secretary of State has asked anyone who has information about this practice still going on to get in touch with the relevant authorities. The Employment Relations Act 1999 (Blacklists) Regulations 2010 make it unlawful.

The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, asked whether the Government can work with the trade unions. Of course, we can work with the trade unions. The Government believe that trade unions have a key role to play in resolving workplace disputes. Representation in the workplace reduces voluntary exit by employees by about 5% to 10%, which helps business retain key skills. The noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, also asked about the health and safety performance of the agricultural sector. I have covered health and safety, but I do not have agriculture on my brief and I will have to write to the noble Lord.

The noble Baroness, Lady Dean, mentioned workers’ participation, and having share ownership schemes. I believe there are many companies that have share ownership schemes. This is up to individual companies and employees to agree upon. My brief does not say what government policy is on this, but I would be happy to write to the noble Baroness.

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde]

Will the Minister also kindly undertake to respond to my question about the plans which have been reported in the press on further trade union legislation? Would he kindly reply to me in writing if he does not have this information today?

[Lord Popat]

Certainly the noble Baroness is right. I read in the Times this morning about possible legislation. This is not the policy of the Government. It may the Conservative Party policy, but I do not know what its manifesto will be in 2015. I will certainly be writing to the noble Baroness.

[Lord Balfe]

Will the letter be sent to all of the Members who have participated in the debate, please?

[Lord Popat]

I will certainly do that and I will put a copy in the Library for other Peers to look at.

Committee adjourned at 6.11 pm.

House of Lords

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Monday, 7 July 2014.

14:30

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Truro.

Introduction: The Lord Bishop of Ely

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

14:29

Stephen David, Lord Bishop of Ely, was introduced between the Lord Bishop of Truro and the Lord Bishop of Chelmsford, took and subscribed the oath and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

House of Lords: Question Time

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

14:41

Asked by

[Baroness Sharples]

To ask the Leader of the House what plans he has to improve the conduct of question time in the House of Lords.

[The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Lord Hill of Oareford) (Con)]

My Lords, as a self-regulating House, we all have a responsibility to uphold our rules of conduct at question time. The rules on supplementary questions set out in the Companion could not be clearer: no reading and no statements of opinion. Supplementaries,

“should be short and confined to not more than two points”.

[Noble Lords]

Hear, hear.

[Baroness Sharples (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that reply. Does he agree that Standing Orders should be compulsory reading for anybody who enters the House? If questions were briefer, would it not allow more people to enter the fray?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree very much with my noble friend that brief questions are to be encouraged: brief questions tend to elicit brief answers. I think that it is incumbent on everyone in the House to make sure that they understand the rules set out in the Companion. I think that over time behaviour sometimes slips. This is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of those principles to which we all say, “Hear, hear,” but which we need to put into action.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that the Leader agrees that question time is both the best of this House and, sometimes, the worst. Does he also agree, as I think he does, that occasionally the transgressions come from the Dispatch Box? On statements of opinion, does he agree that from time to time opinion is expressed about the conduct of the Opposition, which is perhaps not always relevant to the Question being asked? Will he consider stressing to his colleagues how important these rules are?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I will certainly stress the rules to all Members of the House, both Front Bench and Back Bench.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that question time is primarily for Back-Benchers? Does he also agree that, unless it has become obvious that nobody else wants to ask a question, it is not appropriate to have two or even three consecutive questions from any Benches?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree that question time provides an important opportunity for Back-Benchers. Noble Lords may be interested to know that, so far this year, 370 Members of your Lordships’ House have asked an oral or a supplementary question. That is an encouragingly large number, although it sometimes feels as though certain Members of the House ask more than that number might suggest. The House at Oral Questions is generally pretty good at working out whose turn it is to ask a question, but I agree with my noble friend that none of us should make an assumption that we automatically have a right to ask a question or a flow of questions from one side of the House.

[Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Leader agree with me that it is a rule of this House that, if a question comes from the Government Benches, it should go around the House? That was certainly always the tradition when I first came here. When, as now, two parties are in government, there should be a question from the Government and then questions from around the other Benches—not a question from each bit of the Government.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I hope that noble Lords who are regular attenders would agree that the way in which questions move around the House works pretty well. It is worth pointing out that over 50% of noble Lords who are the most frequent askers of questions are from the Labour Benches.

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, surely there is one other issue: the jostling and bullying to ask a supplementary question, which is very undignified. Noble Lords who do not like that simply do not take part. People on all sides of the House feel that.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I certainly do not think that we should have jostling and bullying. Most of the time the House operates pretty well and noble Lords give way to other noble Lords and give them a chance. The House wants to hear from a wide range of people. However, I take the point. Sometimes we hear from some noble Lords more frequently than from others—they might all like to reflect on that. I had a thought that might help with that, which I would be happy to discuss with the Clerk of the Parliaments to see whether it is possible. If we could publish more frequently information on the frequency with which some Members ask questions, that might help us to draw the conclusion that we ought to share them out more widely.

[Lord Geddes (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that thus far the example set by the House on this Question is exemplary, in that not one word has been read?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree—and long may that continue.

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

Does the Minister share the concern that perhaps women Members of this House do not get their fair share of questions? However, I carried out a little survey in which I calculated the number of interventions by noble Baronesses and discovered that they asked proportionately rather more questions than one would expect from their number in the House.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

This House is full of all sorts of Members who are not shy of coming forward and I welcome that.

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)]

My Lords, in the absence of a Speaker, we are told by the Government—indeed, by both Governments—from the Front Bench that it is for individual Members of the House to police the House and all its proceedings. However, does that not just create resentment and embarrassment between colleagues? The system does not work.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I disagree with the noble Lord very strongly. The principle of self-regulation that we have in this House is worth fighting for and preserving as strongly as we possibly can—all of us. I would not wish on this House the example provided by the other place. A few years back the House looked at the question of whether we would prefer to have a system here that mirrored more closely that of the other House, with a Speaker. It voted fairly clearly, concluding that it preferred to stick with our current arrangements. However, it is incumbent on all of us who care about self-regulation to make sure that we do it. I do not accept the noble Lord’s characterisation that most of the time it does not work. I think that most of the time it works extremely well.

[Lord Avebury (LD)]

Does my noble friend agree that some of the worst offenders in asking non-questions are those who have been here longest and should know better? It might be useful for him to write to some of those offenders and point out that they are breaking the rules, so that they do not repeat that.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

It is incumbent on all the groups in the House to help to police this and, if they need to, to communicate to some of their members. The point that I make about publishing more information on the number of times people ask questions, and perhaps the number of words that they use, might help to shine a spotlight.

British Council: English Schools Abroad

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

14:50

Asked by

[Baroness Rawlings]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what guidance they have given to the British Council in respect of its staff serving on the governing bodies of English schools abroad; and why British embassies can no longer support schools and other bodies.

[Baroness Rawlings (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and in doing so declare an interest as chairman of the English College in Prague.

[The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have not provided guidance to the British Council regarding staff serving on governing bodies of English schools abroad. The FCO has not instructed its posts to cease support for schools or other bodies. British embassies’ association with local schools will have a historical basis dating from a time when it may not have been possible to open local English-language or British-style schools without such links.

[Baroness Rawlings]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and I am delighted with her response that there is no conflict of interest with English schools abroad. I will relay her Answer to the governing body. I fully understand the Government’s policy of saving taxpayers’ money. Can she reassure the House that the new government policy for only commercial entertainment will not be extended to British schools abroad, when more than a third of our 1,000 students attend British universities?

[Baroness Warsi]

I can confirm to my noble friend that specific guidance was issued by the British Council. I will send her a copy of that guidance, which clearly shows the British Council acted on its own legal advisers’ advice, rather than on any advice of the Government. On British embassies and high commissions abroad serving their communities, I assure my noble friend that a whole host of events are held at high commissions and embassies, many of them with civil society organisations, NGOs and communities. They certainly are not all commercially based.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, the Minister will recall that in this month last year her right honourable friend Hugo Swire announced a triennial review of the work of the British Council—admirable work, which it conducts all over the world. Can she tell us where that review now stands?

[Baroness Warsi]

The noble Lord is right: there is currently a triennial review. It is part of the wider review of non-departmental public bodies. The work of the review started in August or September last year and is still ongoing. Recommendations have been submitted to the Foreign Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary. In due course there will be a report.

[Lord Dholakia (LD)]

My Lords, due to the drop in the number of students from overseas coming to this country, many British universities are now setting up campuses abroad. Does the Minister agree that it would be wise to instruct the British Council and the British embassies to ensure that those universities are assisted in their presence so that more people can benefit from attending not only English schools, but the other universities that are there as well?

[Baroness Warsi]

I can assure my noble friend that overseas students are a key priority for the Government. Indeed, more than 6,000 British overseas schools provide the first cohort of overseas students. That is why we have a relationship with them. Indeed, many of our ambassadors and deputy ambassadors sit on the boards of many of these schools. The British Council does a tremendous amount of work promoting English and education. That is sometimes the first experience people overseas have of the educational opportunities available in the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Hooper (Con)]

My Lords, would my noble friend confirm further the excellent work that is done by the British Council in the field of education where British Council centres exist? Since the Foreign Office has done such wonderful work in reopening embassies in many parts of the world, will it consider reopening British Council centres that have been closed down in various parts of the world?

[Baroness Warsi]

I support my noble friend’s comments. The British Council is a global brand. It hugely strengthens the reputation of the United Kingdom and connects with people about the United Kingdom. It builds trust and awareness on a whole series of issues. I can tell my noble friend that the decision on the overall strategy direction and management of the British Council is taken by the council’s executive board of trustees, and this would be a decision that it would take. Of course, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office continues to support the British Council’s grant in aid, which for this year has been set at £153.5 million.

Scientific Research and Development

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

14:55

Asked by

[Baroness Wilcox]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to encourage greater investment in scientific research and development within the United Kingdom.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, the Government recognise that investment in science and research are key to long-term competitiveness and growth. Therefore, we have protected the ring-fenced science and research programme at £4.6 billion per year from 2011-12 to 2015-16. Furthermore, we have committed to providing £1.1 billion a year of science capital spending, increasing with inflation.

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Wilcox (Con)]

I thank the Minister for his helpful response to my rather stuttered Question. I am afraid that I got overtaken by what has happened thus far concerning what we should say and what we should and should not read. If I can remember to ask the question as I intended to, I want to know what the long-term framework for science and innovation is. We all agree that we ought to have advance notice and enough time for some of the bigger programmes to put their financing together but do the Government have anything planned in the long term for science and innovation?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My Lords, I would never accuse my noble friend of stuttering at all—her question is quite clear. The Government will define the future scope and scale of the UK’s science and innovation system to 2020 and beyond. Just to throw some light on this, in the Autumn Statement of 2014 some of the key questions will focus on business investment in R&D, research infrastructure, skills and talent, and the balance in funding between curiosity-driven and applied research. The strategy will define the scale and scope of the UK’s science and innovation system by 2020 and indeed beyond.

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, nowhere is there a greater need for government and industry to work together than in the development of new antibiotics. Industry is desperately in need of government support in this area. Do the Government have any plans to help with this?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As the noble Lord may be aware, the Government have a series of thematic priorities covering a range of things from agriculture and food to the built environment, the digital economy, energy, and health and care. Healthcare providers are also included in this, and these thematic priorities will formulate part of the strategy for 2014, to which I have alluded.

[Lord Taverne]

I apologise for my premature intervention. Are the Government aware—I am sure they are—that vice-chancellors are deeply concerned about the possibility of our exit from the European Union? This would have a devastating effect on scientific research and development in our universities.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The Government’s position is quite clear. The European Union has benefits and the Government wish to see a renegotiated Union—something that I think many noble Lords share. The Prime Minister has stood up for British interests. Universities are working closely with business and others, and the UK continues to be among the top in terms of research. Looking at some of the statistics, the UK has, for example, won 85 Nobel prizes for science and technology, and we plan that that should continue with the new strategy.

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

What plans do the Government have to help science-based companies to really scale up? Too often our brilliant scientists are bought before they have had a chance to contribute to the economy. I am thinking, for example, of DeepMind, our leading artificial intelligence company, which was bought by Google before it really had a chance to grow.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As ever, the noble Baroness speaks with great experience. The Government recognise the importance of business investment in R&D and we are looking to give this great encouragement. R&D tax credits are the single biggest form of government support for business investment in R&D and are available to all sectors. In 2011-12, the R&D tax credit scheme supported an estimated 73% of UK business. However, I agree with the concern aired by the noble Baroness. It is important that we keep the best and the brightest in Britain working for British companies.

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

Each government department had an independent scientific budget under the management of the scientist. That was a very important part of the Government’s research budget, but that budget seems to have disappeared. Can the Minister tell us what happened to it?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

It is important to recognise that the Government are currently consulting. I have already talked of the new strategy that will be outlined in the Autumn Statement and the consultations we have had. The strategy will be led by Sir Mark Walport who is the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser. It will draw on external experts both in government and outside, including those with experience of successfully commercialising science, and will identify what is best. What we deliver as a country is more important than what we deliver as individual departments.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

Does my noble friend recollect the very important statement he made in Grand Committee that nuclear research infrastructure would be part of the overall scientific infrastructure arrangements that he announced? Does he recognise that if infrastructure is to be protected, it is no use unless the running and operating expenses are given similar long-term assurances? Will they be within the arrangements that he described as taking us up to 2020 and beyond?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend has a good memory in reminding me of what I said in Grand Committee. He mentioned nuclear in Grand Committee and part of the thematic priorities within that are energy and how the challenges of a secure, affordable and sustainable energy sector can be maintained. The issues my noble friend raises about sustainability are primary in our thoughts.

[Lord Kakkar (CB)]

Given my interest as UK business ambassador for healthcare and life sciences, what assessment has been made of the life sciences strategy announced by Her Majesty’s Government in December 2011—in particular, its impact on inward investment for research and development for biomedical sciences in the United Kingdom?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

Inward investment remains an important part of this. As I said, the strategy and the different announcements that we have made will come together in the Autumn Statement in 2014. All disciplines, including what the noble Lord alluded to, will be included within that. The Government believe in prioritising and in ensuring that the UK is recognised as a centre of research excellence, and we will continue to attract through our new scientific strategy the best from the international field as well.

[Lord Harrison (Lab)]

Given that the Government are seeking to reduce the draft amending budget No. 3 of the European Union 2014 and the 2015 draft budget, how is it expected that investment in research and development will add to the growth agenda to which this Government have signed up?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The Government play a leading role and will continue to lead on the European front. Let me give the example of our investment in the space industry specifically. A large proportion of our investment in that industry is with our European partners and the European Space Agency. We continue to collaborate across a series of different fields.

[Lord Mawhinney (Con)]

My Lords, I return to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, about whether the Government had plans to help the development of antibiotics, the urgency of which is very great. My noble friend answered by saying that health and healthcare were part of the Government’s plan but he was not specific about antibiotics. I, along with others in this House, would like an answer to that question.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

A specific question requires a specific answer and I will write specifically to the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, and indeed, to my noble friend.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, in his initial response the Minister suggested that the Government were supporting the practice started by the previous Government of maintaining ring-fencing for a large science budget. Is it not a fact that when the Government came into power in 2010 they cut almost entirely the capital budget and restricted the revenue budgets to cash only, so we have lost about £500 million over that period?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The Government have made clear their priority for spending in this area and that is why both in my original Answer and the supplementary I also mentioned that since 2010 a further £1.5 billion of capital has been provided to science and research, along with more than £600 million of additional resources. This underlines the Government’s commitment to this important area for the country.

Legal Aid: Social Welfare Law

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Question

15:05

Asked by

[Lord Bach]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, 15 months after the coming into force of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, what is their assessment of the effect of the Act on the legal advice system in relation to social welfare law in England and Wales.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord Faulks) (Con)]

My Lords, we have made hard choices in reforming legal aid. However, we have retained it for the highest priority social welfare cases and we continue to spend an estimated £50 million per year on this area. Although the Act is relatively new, the reduction in legal aid for social welfare matters is broadly in line with expectations. We are monitoring the impact of legal aid reform and will conduct a post-implementation review within five years of implementation.

[Lord Bach (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for his Answer but he and the Government know that the effect on social welfare law advice has been devastating. In the year 2013-14 alone—this is from the Government’s own figures—there was an 80% fall in the number of social welfare law cases, including a figure of 45% in housing cases. These cuts affect the poorest and most vulnerable, including many disabled people, in our society. Are the Government to some extent ashamed of the removal of access to justice from hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens, all caused by deliberate coalition government policy?

[Lord Faulks]

The noble Lord mentioned housing. In fact, legal aid remains available for eviction and possession cases, housing disrepairs, where there is a serious risk to health or safety, homelessness assistance and all debt matters which may represent a threat to somebody’s home. As to the cuts in legal aid, they are concentrated on matters where the Government, after careful consideration, have decided that having a lawyer is not always the answer.

[Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my registered interest as a practising barrister. My noble friend’s department has in the past largely dismissed fears for the future availability of publicly-funded barristers, given the cuts in the scope of legal aid and in remuneration rates. Does my noble friend share my concern at the 38% drop in available tenancies in chambers over the year to 2011-12 and the long-term decline in the availability of pupilages, particularly in chambers doing legally-aided work? How can we reverse this trend?

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, that is a little way from social welfare law. Of course we need lawyers to represent those in every section of society in all sorts of fields. The fact remains that there is less for lawyers to do and inevitably there will be fewer lawyers to do it. It is important that the profession maintains high standards but I do not think that I can comment on numbers in particular chambers.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, getting back to social welfare law, the Minister will be aware of the report of the commission, which I had the honour to chair, on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law. One of the chief recommendations of that report was that the Government should develop a national strategy for advice and legal support in England and that there should be a Minister for advice and legal support within the MoJ with a cross-departmental brief to lead the development of such a strategy. Will the Government give serious consideration to the early implementation of that recommendation?

[Lord Faulks]

I am indeed aware of the noble Lord’s commission and its report on the future of advice and legal support on social welfare law. Indeed, I answered a debate on the subject on 25 February this year. As I told the House, we keep the position under review and are keen that there should be effective mechanisms to help individuals. However, it was made clear in the Cabinet Office review of the not-for-profit social welfare advice sector that while the Government accept the role they have in supporting the sector there is a need for the sector to adapt to the new funding realities. Indeed, that was very much acknowledged in the noble Lord’s report and during the course of contributions made in that debate.

[The Lord Bishop of Chelmsford]

My Lords, I, too, should like to make reference to the Low commission. The church, faith communities and charities are all too keenly aware of the impacts of some of the cuts in legal aid on the poorest communities in our country. Sometimes a professional lawyer is needed. Would the Minister still regard the proposals of the Low commission for a nationally resourced strategy to provide support and legal advice as an important priority?

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, as I said in response to the debate, it was a valuable contribution. The LASPO reforms were implemented only in April 2013; it is relatively early days. We are considering carefully the effects of these reforms. We have not ruled out the possibility of further changes but, at the moment, the various steps we are taking are helping to ensure that those who need representation are receiving it.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, with regard to DLA, is the Minister aware that if an appellant submits a paper hearing there is something like a 20% success rate, if the disabled person attends there is something like a 40% success rate at tribunal, but if they have legal advice, there is something like a 60% success rate? Does this not mean, in all fairness, that legal advice denied is justice denied?

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, I obviously cannot comment on individual cases. It may be that cases with lawyers proceed only if lawyers have advised that there are reasonable prospects of success. As to those cases which fail, I do not accept that the tribunals are not able to do justice in the absence of lawyers. Most of the tribunal members are extremely well trained. They are capable of eliciting the facts. Simply to say that there cannot be justice without lawyers is, with respect, simplistic.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Will my noble friend accept that those of us who supported these changes because of the large sums spent on legal aid in this country as compared with other countries would still be concerned to ensure that what we thought was going to happen is happening? Is he aware that many of us feel that rather than waiting five years before we have the kind of assessment which is surely necessary, as we are dealing with the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society, we really ought to look at this rather earlier?

[Lord Faulks]

My Lords, I share my noble friend’s concern, as do the Government. My answer was “within five years”, and I take note of what he says: that five years might be regarded as too long. Nevertheless, I am sure he would agree with me that we need time to assess these matters, particularly in view of the fact that before April 2013 there was a spike in the number of applications so as to take advantage of the old regime. It will take a little time to assess the true effects of the reform.

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Order of Consideration Motion

15:12

Moved by

[Lord Faulks]

That it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to which the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order:

Clauses 1 to 5, Schedule 1, Clause 6, Schedule 2, Clauses 7 to 17, Schedule 3, Clauses 18 to 26, Schedule 4, Clauses 27 to 29, Schedule 5, Clause 30, Schedule 6, Clauses 31 to 40, Schedule 7, Clauses 41 and 42, Schedule 8, Clauses 43 to 60, Schedule 9, Clause 61, Schedule 10, Clauses 62 to 71, Schedule 11, Clauses 72 to 78.

Motion agreed.

European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Partnership and Cooperation Agreement) (Iraq) Order 2014

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Partnership and Cooperation Agreement) (Mongolia) Order 2014

European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Partnership and Cooperation Agreement) (Philippines) Order 2014

European Union (Definition of Treaties) (Partnership and Cooperation Agreement) (Vietnam) Order 2014

Motions to Approve

15:13

Moved by

[Baroness Warsi]

That the draft orders laid before the House on 9 June be approved.

Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 1 July.

Motions agreed.

Legal Services Act 2007 (Approved Regulator) Order 2014

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Legal Services Act 2007 (Appeals from Licensing Authority Decisions) (Chartered Institute of Patent Attorneys and Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys) Order 2014

Legal Services Act 2007 (Appeals from Licensing Authority Decisions) (Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales) Order 2014

Motions to Approve

15:13

Moved by

[Lord Faulks]

That the draft orders laid before the House on 9 and 16 June be approved.

Relevant documents: 2nd and 3rd Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 1 July.

Motions agreed.

Political Parties, Elections and Referendums (Civil Sanctions) (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2014

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Motion to Approve

15:13

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the draft order laid before the House on 5 June be approved.

Relevant document: 2nd Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. Considered in Grand Committee on 1 July.

Motion agreed.

Deregulation Bill

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Second Reading

15:14

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this Bill contains important, sensible and proportionate measures to improve the regulatory regime in the UK in a wide range of areas. It is not a radical, wholesale overhaul of regulation. The coalition Government are not, of course, opposed to regulation. This Government believe in and will protect the sensible and necessary regulations that ensure that the safeguards are in place to protect people and the environment as well as to promote competition and economic growth.

However, if it is to protect the interests of consumers and the safety of the public effectively, regulation must be sensible and proportionate. In many areas in recent years, we have seen regulatory burdens grow out of all proportion, surpassing what is necessary and costing businesses and public services additional millions of pounds. The Government’s aim when coming into office was to reduce the administrative burden on business created by regulation, and to encourage enterprise, innovation and, most importantly, the creation of new jobs, which give this country long-term economic security.

In April 2011, the Prime Minister announced that this Government should be the first in modern history to leave office having reduced the overall burden of regulation rather than increased it. The one-in, one-out policy, and later the one-in, two-out policy were introduced as one of the major components of the Government’s strategy to achieve this aim, ensuring that the flow of new regulations is necessary, effective, justified and proportionate, in order to minimise unnecessary burdens on business.

The Red Tape Challenge was introduced in April 2011 to give business and the general public the opportunity to challenge the Government to get rid of unnecessarily burdensome regulations. More than 30,000 comments were crowdsourced online from individuals and businesses, harnessing the knowledge of those people faced with understanding and complying with these regulations. In the light of this public feedback, departmental policy leads presented a package of deregulatory proposals, which were then reviewed and challenged by Red Tape Challenge Ministers.

The intention was to reverse the default setting by asking departments to consider the legislation they are responsible for in a fundamentally different way. The starting point has been that regulation should be delivered in a non-regulatory way, unless there is good justification for the Government being involved. The Red Tape Challenge sought wide-ranging comment on a large number of regulations, from health and safety and environmental regulations, to housing and construction and insolvency law. The final report will be published towards the end of the Parliament, setting out the achievements made by the Red Tape Challenge and the one-in, two-out programmes in reducing the overall burden of regulation on business in this Parliament.

Looking to the future, legislation for new statutory deregulation targets was announced in the Queen’s Speech. This will require a target to be published for the removal of regulatory burdens in each parliamentary term, and for government to report transparently against that target. During the course of this Parliament, the Government have also invested a large amount of time in looking at how the agencies undertake the enforcement of these regulations, to ensure that they are measured and proportionate and not applied arbitrarily without thought to the impact on business.

The Deregulation Bill is thus a small but important part of the Government’s ongoing process of reducing the number of unjustifiable regulations. Much of what the Red Tape Challenge has done has been achieved by alterations to secondary legislation and administrative changes. However, during the course of the Red Tape Challenge process, many reforms were found that required primary legislation to fulfil. This Bill will create around £400 million in savings over 10 years and declutter the statute book of obsolete or confusing legislation. Those who have read all the way through to Schedule 20 will know that a number of 19th century statutes are repealed.

The Government believe that it is good housekeeping to review and tidy the statute book to make it easier for the users of the law. Several pieces of legislation were identified through the Red Tape Challenge as being no longer of practical use. The Government are using the opportunity of the Deregulation Bill to repeal those obsolete laws. This is in addition to the excellent work done by the Law Commission through its statutory law of repeal process, which principally focuses on repealing primary obsolete legislation.

The Bill was first published in draft and underwent pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, which reported in December 2013. I look forward to his contribution to this debate, as well as those of three other members of that committee: the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Naseby. The Joint Committee welcomed the concept of the Bill, saying it hoped that there would be more of the same sort in the future. The Joint Committee also suggested that the Bill could benefit from the addition of some more substantial items when it was introduced.

The Government accepted the primary recommendations of the Joint Committee and have added 30 new clauses to the Bill. The Bill was introduced to the other place in January of this year as a carryover Bill. It underwent extensive consideration in Committee and two days of debates on Report before being passed to this House.

Some of the key measures in the Bill are as follows. Clause 1 exempts self-employed people from Section 3(2) of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, except those who are on a list of high-hazard industries or activities, which will be set out in regulation. The proposed change emanates from a recommendation made by Professor Löfstedt in his review of health and safety and will exempt around 2 million self-employed people from the health and safety legislation that is unnecessary for the work activities they are undertaking.

Clause 2 removes the power from employment tribunals to make wider recommendations to employers in discrimination cases. These have been identified by businesses as a burden and are often surplus to requirements because businesses, keen to avoid further tribunals, often undertake the necessary actions without any such recommendations needing to be made.

Clauses 3 to 5 implement some of the key recommendations of the Richard review, simplifying what apprenticeships are and the process by which they are developed and awarded, and providing the legislative basis for a new payment system to route funding directly to employers so that they are more responsive to their needs.

Clauses 21 to 26 implement the recommendations of the independent stakeholder working group on unrecorded rights of way that require primary legislation. They are part of a carefully balanced package of reforms that is supported by the full range of interests on rights of way, from the Ramblers to the Country Land and Business Association. Some noble Lords may have seen the useful briefing from the Ramblers that reached my inbox this morning. It is a remarkable consensus around the particularly emotive and contentious but important issue of public rights of way.

The reforms will make the procedures for recording or changing rights of way more streamlined and flexible but will also give local authorities more scope to use their judgment in dealing with insubstantial or irrelevant applications and objections, and enable the development of locally negotiated solutions. They will help towards completion of the definitive map and statement by the cut-off date, in current legislation, of 2026. There are also provisions to enable the right to apply for an extinguishment or diversion to be extended to all landowners, while enabling any public funding expended in that process to be recovered in full where an application is solely in the landowner’s interest. The provisions fit broadly with the Government’s aim of reducing regulation, of smaller government and of giving more power to local authorities and local people to resolve disputes.

Clauses 29 to 34 relate to housing and development matters. These include: reinstating the original qualifying period of three years for right to buy; relaxing restrictions on Londoners to rent out their homes for less than three months at a time; introducing a regime of optional building requirements for local authorities to support the Government’s housing standards review; and a clause addressing an unexpected judgment related to tenancy deposits.

Clauses 35 to 40 remove some of the outdated burdens relating to transport legislation, bringing legislation into line with practice; for example, removing the requirement on local authorities to seek permission from the Secretary of State to establish, alter or remove zebra crossings. This section also includes measures limiting the use of CCTV when issuing parking fines by post and removes the automatic reopening of formal investigations of marine accidents when new evidence, however trivial, comes to light.

Clause 43 removes the criminal sanctions which currently apply when householders make mistakes presenting waste for collection. A civil penalty regime will exist instead when a householder fails to comply with requirements and this causes harm to the local amenity. The Government believe this to be a more proportionate course of action.

Clauses 45 to 48 change the nature of child trust funds to bring them into line with the arrangements of the much more widely used junior ISAs.

Clauses 52 to 59 make reasonable and rational alterations to the regulations around alcohol and entertainment which have been discussed on a number of occasions in this Chamber since I became a Member. These include sensible changes such as removing the requirement on community film clubs to obtain a licence to exhibit films, while maintaining all the regulations related to age-related restrictions; and creating a new light-touch form of authorisation under the Licensing Act 2003 for community groups and certain businesses to sell small amounts of alcohol. This section also commits the Government to undertake a review of the alternatives to criminal sanctions for non-payment of TV licences.

Clauses 79 to 81 make some changes to legislation to make it easier for users of law. These are the power to spell out dates in legislation, enacting part of the Government’s good law initiative by creating a power to combine different forms of subordinate legislation, and a power to use ambulatory references for international shipping instruments.

Clauses 83 to 86 create a statutory duty for non-economic regulators to consider economic growth when carrying out their functions. This duty will be supplementary to, and will not supplant, the regulators’ other statutory obligations. It will make them take economic growth into account as they exercise their regulatory functions. Guidance on this has just been published. I hope that a copy has reached the Opposition Front Bench. There is a copy available in the Library.

The wide-ranging nature of the Bill should emphasise the Government’s comprehensive consideration of all areas of regulation to ensure that regulation is proportionate and necessary. Most of the measures are relatively technical and not politically contentious. No doubt we shall be told in the course of Second Reading that some are considered contentious. As such, this is an important step towards relieving businesses, individuals and public sector organisations of unnecessary administrative burdens, freeing them up to pursue economic growth for Britain without excessive regulation. The Government look forward to the detailed and expert scrutiny that this House can offer. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.

15:28

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for introducing the Deregulation Bill today and look forward to the many speeches to come. With more than 30 noble Lords listed to speak, I am sure that every clause and schedule will get some attention as we start what I suspect will be a long job, stretching out, perhaps, until the end of the year. We intend to scrutinise very carefully this rather mixed bag that the Government have put before us. I am joined on the Front Bench for the majority of the Bill by my noble friends Lady Hayter and Lord Tunnicliffe, but others will have to come in with their expertise on areas of the Bill.

I join the Minister in thanking noble Lords who served on the Joint Committee on pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, particularly its chair, the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and my noble friend Lady Andrews. It has clearly improved considerably since its first publication. Indeed, we will hear reference in the debate to how much change there has been, since, as the Minister said, some 30 new clauses have been added since the Bill left the Commons. That suggests that, in some senses, the pre-legislative scrutiny could only have partial effect, sadly, since a lot of the Bill, almost 30%, has emerged since it finished its work.

Although the name of the Bill is the Deregulation Bill, it contains a number of measures which would properly be regarded as re-regulation. It might be helpful at some point if the Minister could explain precisely, perhaps by means of a chart—he is good at these things—what is deregulatory, what is re-regulatory and what is simply shifting burdens around the various places that have to undertake them. That would be helpful to us as we progress through the Bill.

I am sure that your Lordships’ House enjoyed the Minister’s attempt at making this Bill sound central to future economic growth. However, I hope that it will not come as too much of a surprise to him if I tell him that deregulating the sale of knitting yarns, freeing our children to buy their own chocolate liqueurs, decriminalising household waste and abolishing dog collars are not measures that are going to generate jobs or deliver prosperity. If your Lordships will forgive me for saying it, some of the clauses and schedules are barking mad.

People up and down the country are being hit by the cost of living crisis as their wages do not rise at the same rate as prices, yet instead of measures to stimulate the economy, the Government give us this Christmas tree Bill to end all Christmas tree Bills—forgetting, of course, that one of the few things that are not dealt with in it are Christmas trees.

All Governments have a duty to reduce unnecessary regulation at every opportunity, but unfortunately this Government’s approach to regulation is simplistic. Smart regulation underpins fair markets and can level the playing field for small firms and new entrants—the very people and businesses that create new jobs and prosperity. Smart regulation saves lives. For example, it is a matter of great pride for all of us that the 2012 Olympic infrastructure was built without the loss of one life. Regulation played a part in that. The men and women working on those construction sites knew the value of having clear health and safety regulations in place.

Smart regulation can help to drive innovation and growth. Yes, regulation is a concern for some businesses, but most sensible business people understand that rules are needed to protect people’s safety and rights, promote competition and prevent employers being undercut by those who do not play by the rules. As the Federation of Small Businesses has noted, the concerns of business are often more about how regulations are developed and introduced, how they are enforced, and the existence of duplication and overlapping rules that waste their time.

When in power, Labour sought to reduce regulation by introducing the Better Regulation Commission and an ongoing better regulation programme, and made a number of legislative changes to reduce the cost of regulation. Our programmes for simplifying regulation delivered £3 billion of savings to business per year. In contrast, the impact statement for the draft Bill estimated that it would save businesses and civil society a mere £10 million over 10 years, although the Minister has said that the figure is now £400 million over 10 years. Perhaps he could outline where the additional savings have come from. These figures underline that, while we all agree that unnecessary regulation can be a burden on business, a sensible approach to deregulation is about more than repealing one or two minor statutes.

By my count, the 86 clauses in, and 20 schedules to, the Bill cover at least 12 major Whitehall departments, and some measures apply to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are some proposals in this rag-tag hotchpotch of a Bill that are welcome and that we do not oppose. However, there are some rather disturbing proposals hidden beneath the knitting yarn and the piles of redundant dog collars which we will vigorously oppose.

There are fresh attacks on employment rights, with the removal of yet more powers from employment tribunals. Those are measures that the Government’s own impact assessment claims will have a negligible effect on businesses or may even cost them money. We will not support any new attacks on hard-working people.

I turn to the first part of the Bill. Exempting self-employed people in certain industries from health and safety regulations will simply create confusion about who is covered and who is not. The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health is opposed to that, calling it,

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

Even the Federation of Small Businesses, which supports the change in principle, says that there is a question mark over how effective this clause will be, as it crucially depends on how well drafted and extensive the “prescribed description” list is. We understand that the HSE will consult on this later this year, but I put it to the Minister that it will be impossible to proceed to scrutinise this clause if we do not know precisely what the prescribed list contains. The draft that we have seen raises more questions than it solves. I hope the Minister will ensure that we have a complete list by the time we get to the Committee stage.

As the Minister mentioned, the Bill will also remove employment tribunals’ power to make wider recommendations to employers who have been judged to have discriminated against someone unlawfully. Such recommendations are only advisory, but they promote good working practice. Why are the Government trying to limit the ability of tribunals to make observations which might help to drive up standards? What are they afraid of? The House of Commons Library considered the impact assessment for that measure and found that, despite the Minister labelling it deregulatory and counting it as an “out” under the Government’s arbitrary one-in, two-out system, business will incur a cost as a result of the removal of the power. What sort of Government proudly propose a deregulatory measure that actually costs businesses money?

Building on Labour’s progress in government, the Bill seeks to introduce a growth duty on regulators, as the Minister explained. This duty will compel them to “have regard” to the promotion of economic growth when carrying out their functions and to carry them out in a necessary and proportionate way. We support the aims behind this duty and clearly the additional principle that regulators should go about their business in a proportionate way. I received a letter from the noble Lord this morning together with some draft guidance. I thank him for that. But I have not had time to absorb it or check whether it covers our concern that the duty does not inhibit or contradict the primary function of any regulator, particularly those dealing with social issues and the EHRC.

We have concerns about other parts of the Bill. Housing is a critical part of the cost of living crisis for families up and down the country, so should there not be a coherent, long-term approach, rather than ad hoc tinkering? The number of homes built for social rent has fallen to just over 7,700, the lowest in 20 years—indeed, since records began—and a fall of 75% from 2009-10. At the same time, the Government have pledged to replace housing sold under the right to buy, but there is mounting evidence that they are failing to ensure that this actually happens. In light of this, why do the Government refuse to undertake a review of the effectiveness of the current right-to-buy system and the impact that their right-to-buy policy is having on the supply of affordable housing? What is the rationale for the change in planning requirements for offering short-term lets in London, which may have fire and personal safety implications?

The decriminalisation of waste will apparently reduce the regulatory burden on households, but it may increase the burden on local authorities, and particularly affect their ability to reach their recycling targets. We have been told, in a helpful note by the councils, that operating standard collection arrangements is crucial to helping councils and residents further increase recycling levels to meet EU targets. Why remove that power? The Deregulation Bill also removes the offence, punishable by a £1,000 fine, of not complying with prescribed arrangements for refuse collection and converts this to a £60 civil penalty. The current arrangements are used proportionately and principally as a deterrent by councils. The proposed civil fine will not serve as an effective deterrent and will undermine the work of councils to encourage and support residents to increase recycling rates. The new trigger for a penalty is that the resident’s behaviour is,

“detrimental to any amenities of the locality”.

That is a novel test, with no legal precedents to define it. It almost certainly would not allow a council to enforce, for example, recycling arrangements which may be needed to get best value for money from a waste collection contract.

Speaking of fines, we will want to discuss in some detail the thinking behind the Government’s proposals to decriminalise failure to pay the licence fee collected by the BBC. We agree that it makes sense to consider this issue in the round, but we want to be assured that the terms of reference for the review will be debated in both Houses of Parliament and that the results of the review will feed into the charter and licence fee discussions and not be separated from that process.

We will look closely at the measures in the Bill to deregulate taxis and public hire vehicles outside London. The Government’s proposed reforms to the taxi and minicab trade will enable people without a minicab licence to drive one when it is “off duty”, end annual checks on drivers’ licences, and allow minicab operators to subcontract bookings to other firms in other areas. There has been widespread criticism of the Government’s last-minute decision to insert these reforms into the Deregulation Bill. Campaigners, industry bodies and unions are also warning that these changes will have severe safety implications, as local councils do not have the powers to enforce the changes safely.

The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which campaigns for better personal safety, has raised concerns that enabling anyone to drive a licensed minicab will provide,

“greater opportunity for those intent on preying on women”.

The Local Government Association has said that,

“it is imperative that the Government withdraws these plans”

to ensure passenger safety. All this when we have now received the major review that the Law Commission has been carrying out since 2011 on taxi and private hire deregulation. The law as it stands—both in London and Plymouth with its bespoke legislation, and in the rest of England and Wales with its different legal framework—is built on the premise of broadly local trade in local areas and allows each local authority to regulate the taxi and private hire trade in its own area. Crucially, it gives local enforcement officers sufficient powers to enforce the existing law over the drivers, vehicles and operators in each respective area.

The report of the Law Commission, which specifically considered deregulatory measures, would set up new trading conditions, freeing private hire operators and drivers to work in a national environment, and for both taxis and the private hire industry to compete on a pricing basis that the public would understand. However, it also proposed making sufficient changes to the enforcement regime such that local authority enforcement officers, in particular, specially trained stopping officers, would have new powers to enforce the proposed legislation over vehicles, drivers or operators, regardless of whether they were registered in their licensing authority area or had come from outside.

We have a strange situation. The Bill’s proposals, which were introduced without proper consultation, will have to be repealed when DfT brings forward, as it intends to do, the Law Commission proposals. That begins to look more like a response to special pleading than a genuine attempt to deregulate. I thought that this was a deregulatory Bill, not a double regulation Bill.

The Bill contains a controversial blanket ban on the use of CCTV for parking offences, something that the LGA, the British Parking Association, cycling groups, head teachers and charities representing blind and disabled people have argued against, while businesses and motoring groups offered mixed responses, with some motoring groups calling the ban a retrograde step and some businesses stressing that CCTV could remain beneficial at particular times and on particular occasions.

We will be supporting the proposals in the Bill for public footpaths. The present system for recording public paths on definitive maps is not operating with the speed and efficiency needed to ensure that all the rights of way are properly recorded, which would give certainty to all.

Finally, as we are out walking, I come back to dogs. Noble Lords will be aware of the old filmmaking saw, which said that you should aim never to work with children or animals. I wonder whether that holds true for legislation too. I have a strong feeling that this part is going to cause an awful lot of trouble. At the moment, dogs must always be sold with a collar and tag. The Government announced in February 2013 that they were going to introduce micro-chipping for all dogs in April 2016. The provision in the Bill, however, will create an 18-month gap between when the Bill is passed and when those rules come in. The LGA opposes the clause on animal welfare grounds. If a dog becomes lost at present, anyone who finds it is able to read the information on its collar. Members of the public will not be able to read a microchip and determine where an animal belongs. That will make it harder for members of the public to contact owners when they come across a stray dog and increase the likelihood that people will deliver stray dogs to councils. That would constitute a new burden and would surely need to be fully funded. Is that another spending commitment in a time of austerity? That is yet another nonsensical policy in this rather disjointed Bill. The Government seem to have been caught out on an unworkable proposal permitting dogs to be sold without collars before their own compulsory micro-chipping requirements have been introduced.

Good regulation protects consumers’ and employees’ rights, ensures that our industries play their part in moving to a green and sustainable future, keeps citizens safe and saves lives. It is important that it is effective and enforceable. Challenges arise when ill-thought through regulation has unforeseen consequences or is interpreted bureaucratically and inflexibly. It is fair to say that the overall reaction to the Bill has been underwhelming—lukewarm at best. Ministers are delighted with it, but that is because it seems to be about removing burdens as much on Ministers as on business. By my count, half the proposals in the Bill will take away burdens from Ministers and the Government, and fewer than half will remove them from business.

Once again, the Government’s rhetoric extends far beyond their reach. When we get into Committee, and on Report, the Opposition will seek to remove or amend the iniquitous clauses in the Bill and to improve the others. We look forward to the journey.

15:42

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, it is strange having a Second Reading debate when the principles of the Bill seem fairly straightforward and the argument will all be over the detail of the matters to be deregulated, which are more properly dealt with in Committee

The Liberal Democrats believe that regulation plays a vital legislative function and can be hugely important in protecting people, businesses and other interests, but we are critical of overcentralisation in our national Government and we certainly accept the need, particularly when recovering from a deep and damaging recession, to look critically at regulations to simplify and eliminate those which are over-complex and outdated. We know, too, that many of the jobs coming in the recovery are being created in the SME sector and among the self-employed. That is critical to future competitiveness, flexibility and creativity in our economy. We supported the Red Tape Challenge and the one-in, one-out system for new regulations and the extension to the one-in, two-out policy. We accept that free markets do not simply happen; we need regulation to ensure fair competition and free markets. Much has to be done to simplify and reduce regulation as standardisation is increasingly achieved in the EU.

The Government having focused on deregulation, the Bill is an inevitable consequence. We may argue in this House over some of the detail, but the direction and objectives we strongly share. There are a number of measures that we welcome and have strongly supported. One of the great successes of the coalition, building on the foundations left by the previous Government, has been the growth in apprenticeships, with more than 2 million created in five years at a time of strong economic adversity. The Bill seeks to put in place the new framework for delivering apprenticeships proposed by the Richard review. The review proposed a new, simplified structure of apprenticeships and funding to give employers a greater say in their structure and content. This new approved apprenticeship scheme means that apprenticeships will be delivered to a recognised standard, with the Government funding their part of the training aspects through HMRC. The Secretary of State will have the power to amend the apprenticeship standard agreed with employers. Flexible, more efficient and simpler administration will mean that authorities and employers can concentrate on updating apprenticeships and improving standards. We strongly support this measure.

I also support the efforts to help local communities run functions in their communities without undue regulation. It is obviously long overdue for us to look at the alcohol rules for these events. I give credit to the Minister in the Home Office, Norman Baker, who has helped to push through some of these reforms in the Bill. The sale of limited alcohol at community events is to be deregulated. The exhibition of films in community premises not requiring a licence, as it does currently, may be a small measure but is clearly long overdue. The deregulation will encourage community participation and, indeed, promote our creative industries.

We also support the whole complex deregulation on rights of way. I expect the devil is in the detail. I suspect more differences will be revealed as we go on. However, we clearly needed to ease the process of recognising public rights of way and dealing with registering historic rights of way, which now seems to have the support of the principal stakeholders. Therefore, we support deregulation in this area.

There are, however, some matters that will need attention when we get to the detail. Health and safety has already been mentioned. With the growth of self-employment, we need to make sure that the new provisions excluding the self-employed, except those in dangerous occupations, do not simply create greater complexity rather than give a general commitment to good health and safety practice. We need to look at the detail of this and be convinced by it. On the right to buy, there is no great principle at stake in reducing the qualifying period from five to three years, although I think we probably would have preferred to see how the current measures stand up over time. However, we do not want to see social-needs housing simply become a way of finding an incentive to home ownership. The objective of that housing should be to serve social needs. The key issue is whether we will use the proceeds from the social housing sold to add to the housing stock, rather than diminish the social housing stock as we have done over the past 30 years, except in the past couple of years of this Government.

On the licence fee, clauses provide for an appropriate review of penalties for non-payment. We accept that it is a review but we are not necessarily being committed to how that will be done in the future. Ideally, it should be done at the same time as the charter review. The key should be to look at how any new system can improve on the current low level of evasion and reduce the £111 million cost of collection. The BBC cannot stop people using its services without paying the licence fee, unlike its competitors, such as Sky. We should be aware that if the BBC reverts to the utilities’ record of dealing with bad debt, it will lose £200 million of revenue.

We welcome the Government’s commitment to reducing and simplifying unnecessary regulation. It is needed to improve the country’s competitive advantage and that should be a preoccupation of all elements of government and, indeed, the country as a whole, particularly in relation to small businesses, which often hold the burden of regulation. This is one small step to grasp the need for simpler legislation, which does not hold back the creative and dynamic aspects of small businesses. Small steps will help but we will need many more.

15:49

[The Lord Bishop of Truro]

My Lords, I think that I need to begin with an apology. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for drawing our attention to matters relating to dog collars. I was not going to refer to them but I will make sure that one of my colleagues does when we get to Committee.

I have no more interest than any other Member of this House in regulation for its own sake. In fact the New Testament, on the principle that,

“where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”,

specifically warns people against submitting to unnecessary regulations in matters of religion. This is something on which I will comment when we get to York later this week for the meeting of the General Synod.

In the same spirit, I welcome many of the provisions in this very miscellaneous Bill. The exemption of members of the Sikh community from the requirement to wear safety helmets in carefully defined circumstances has been consistently asked for by that community—and since the Health and Safety Executive supports it, so do I. The additional test required from driving instructors with a disability is unnecessary: every applicant should be tested for their suitability to do the job on the same basis. Many other provisions update past legislation on the basis of change in technology or of circumstances. The fact that we can use more sophisticated and reliable equipment to test drivers for drink or drugs at the roadside, for example, is very welcome, and it is reasonable to permit healthcare professionals, for whom this sort of work is normal in other professional contexts, to carry out such tests.

I will comment on the closing of prisons, even though I am the bishop for a county in which there is not a single prison. The removal of the requirement for a statutory order to close a prison, when none is needed to open one, is logical enough. However, we should not let this pass without observing that closing a prison is not a trivial matter, in at least two respects. First, the present wave of prison closures is shutting long-standing smaller prisons with a strong track record of working constructively with offenders and building instead large establishments, whose physical fabric is doubtless much superior to the old buildings but whose effectiveness in actually reducing reoffending is, to say the least, unproven.

Secondly, closing prisons has a real and often negative effect on the communities in which the prisons are set. There are cities where the closure of a prison has not only cost jobs but worsened planning blight in that area. There are also rural communities that have been hard hit by short-notice closures.

Some would regard any relaxation of rules about alcohol as a bad thing. As has been commented already, the small revisions in this Bill to the licensing arrangements for the sale of alcohol at informal and irregular community occasions seem a prudent step, which will not catapult church halls irresistibly into the centre of the excesses of the night-time economy.

I also welcome the measures on rights of way. These will help to retain and protect indefinitely those rights of way that have existed for centuries but do not necessarily appear on the definitive map. I am much less enthusiastic, however, about the removal in Schedule 19 of a requirement to consult statutory bodies such as Natural England when proposing new by-laws, orders or regulations. No longer will there be a requirement to consult,

“bodies whose statutory functions include giving advice to Ministers on matters relating to environmental conservation”.

In total, there are 15 instances of the removal of the statutory duty to consult, but very few of these proposals relate to obsolete bodies or legislation.

There are two aspects of the Bill which may be moving deregulation in the wrong direction. First, as has been said, there is the removal from employment tribunals of the power to make “wider recommendations”. The task of the tribunal would be solely to respond to the situation of the particular person in front of it. If there were any evidence that tribunals had exceeded their natural remit by ranging over issues remote from the one brought to them, there might be cause for concern. There seems to be no such evidence.

If some injustice done to a particular employee is found not to be a one-off event but to be due to an element of unfairness built into a policy or practice of the organisation, the most economical way to deal with that is for the employment tribunal to point it out. For example, if an employee has a just complaint of direct discrimination, the tribunal may well deal with that as an isolated incident. If, however, the case is one of indirect discrimination, it is most likely that there is something wrong embedded in the way in which the organisation works. This clause would prevent the tribunal from making a sensible recommendation in such a case. It is unclear how such a point, made at an early stage by an employment tribunal, could amount to an illegitimate burden on a business when it may well remove the need for a more complex resolution of the problem further downstream.

Clauses 73 to 76 impose a duty on regulators to have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth. I have great respect for the judgment and experience of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, to whose report these proposals owe their origin, and his concern that regulatory functions should not place any unnecessary check on economic growth. Nevertheless, the integrity and independence of regulators is important. They come in many varieties, of course, but at least some of them stand for objective principles of justice, in many cases articulated in international law, and all of them must have regard to law. For many of them, also, their independence is important, so a Bill that gives Ministers the power to issue guidance on how regulatory functions can be exercised so as to promote economic growth looks like a prima facie compromising of independence.

Of course I am not suggesting that anyone in this House regards economic growth as good in all cases. A burgeoning industry in illegal drugs would be agreed by all not to be good—but what about, for example, growth in the alcohol industry or the tobacco industry? Judgments here would be more nuanced. Then there is the gambling industry. Current government policy tends to see the gambling industry primarily as an engine of economic growth. To place the Gambling Commission, for example, under a statutory duty of this kind is questionable. In general, the question of whether or to what extent a particular type of economic activity is a legitimate driver of economic growth is a moral one that should not just be subsumed under a catch-all principle that regulators should promote economic growth. The prevention of damaging or unjust economic activity, surely, is equally germane to their mission.

15:57

[Lord Fowler (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, who raised some important issues, not least his final point about gambling. My general position is that one of the most effective actions that any Government can take is to look at the regulations that are in force to see if they are relevant in the modern day. It may be that they were entirely sensible 20, 30 or 40 years previously when they were introduced, but the question is whether today they still have the same force. It is not only that they may have no relevance; it may be that they also hold back business development and, above all, prevent the development of services that are to the benefit of the public.

I will give three very short examples from my own experience. When I was Transport Secretary in 1979, we had an elaborate system for controlling the provision of coach services up and down the country. If I wanted to run a coach service from Birmingham to London, I had to go to the traffic commissioners and ask for permission. Invariably my application would be opposed by British Rail and the National Bus Company on the grounds that they already had services. Frequently the traffic commissioners would find for them. In other words, the decision rested with the commissioners, not with the travelling public. We abolished those restrictions and the result has been a very fast-developing coach service in this country, which has meant a tremendous addition in cheap coach travel, particularly for young people, up and down the land.

The second example is that when I was Health Secretary, we reviewed the regulations governing opticians. Competition was limited. It all seemed very much, frankly, to the benefit of the optician and not of the customer. Again, we deregulated, with the effect that today there is a very competitive market, which is also to the benefit of the public.

The third example is perhaps the best known: the abolition of the regulations and restrictions of the Dock Labour Scheme, about which my noble friend Lord Brabazon also knows a great deal. I do not doubt the original intention and justification, but the days of exploitation of labour had gone, and the trouble was that the regulations were standing in the way of port development and new employment opportunities. I remember going to Liverpool and being told—lectured, perhaps—on the need for me to direct sea traffic to the Mersey. This was self-evidently not something which it was in my power to do, but what we could do was to take away the restrictions. The result was that new business has developed in ports all round this country. We have seen an utter transformation of that industry.

I am, therefore, a great supporter of sensible deregulation—and, indeed, in one or two areas, which perhaps we can come to in Committee, I would go further. It encourages jobs when all too often regulation destroys them. As far as I can judge, the vast majority of the measures in this Christmas tree Bill—and I agree with that description—will be beneficial to the public. It is the interests of the consumer that must always be pre-eminent.

Having set out my belief, I have two questions. The first is on health and safety. I acknowledge that the Government have sought to be careful here, but I am concerned that too much of the public debate starts from the premise that health and safety legislation is almost by definition unnecessary. I dispute this. For many years I worked in the aggregates industry. In the 1930s quarries were notorious for their accident record. Even in the postwar years their record was not particularly good.

The irony was that, all too often, the injuries concerned people who were trying to help; they were trying to get into motion a machine that had stuck and were then drawn into it. What was needed was a culture of safety. To its great credit, the industry has taken giant steps to respond to that. When I was chairman of one company and then on the board of an international company, health and safety was the first issue on the agenda, before profits and the results of that particular month or quarter.

I think that, if we believe in wider share ownership for the benefit of staff, we should be in favour of measures to protect the safety of staff. The Government say that their measures will not harm safety. I say only that, in Committee—and I echo one or two points that have been made—we should be given more information on the self-employed occupations that will be excluded by this legislation.

My noble friend Lord Gardiner will not be in the least surprised that my second question concerns measures to decriminalise non-payment of the BBC licence fee. The most obvious question about that is, “What on earth is it doing in this Bill in the first place?”. We have a whole period of debate on the future of the licence fee and all the other broadcasting issues that go with the royal charter.

The Government’s reply is that we cannot wait, but when it comes to the future of the BBC Trust, virtually everybody agrees that it is a completely outdated and, dare I say it—well, “useless” may be putting it a bit high, but it is certainly an outdated body.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Did the noble Lord say “useless”?

[Lord Fowler]

Yes; I said “useless”. We are told that we cannot consider that, and that we will go ahead with the appointment of a new chairman for a body which, self-evidently, has the executioner’s axe hanging over it.

The process of change here is not beyond criticism. We set up a review of an unspecified nature, and then, depending on the review—the result of which, obviously, we know nothing whatever about—we delegate to the Secretary of State the power to change the law, not by primary legislation but by regulation. However well intentioned this clause may be, I do not believe that giants of the past such as Enoch Powell or Michael Foot would have approved of it as a measure and as a way of developing legislation in this House.

Therefore, self-evidently, there is much to discuss in Committee. Indeed, you might say that the Bill provides the whole justification for this House, because we have the time to do that while quite clearly the other House does not. As I said, I strongly approve of the direction of travel of the Bill, but I also register that the detail deserves careful scrutiny and debate.

16:06

[Lord Rooker]

My Lords, I was very pleased to chair the Joint Committee on the draft Bill between October and December last year, because I was coming to the end of my four years on the Food Standards Agency, so I had not done much committee work in the House. I volunteered to do the job that nobody else wanted to do, and that was the one that came up. However, I must record that in my view and that of members of the committee, the Joint Committee received the most exceptional support from the clerks in both Houses, and we let their respective bosses know about that at the end of our deliberations.

By and large, I am pleased with the Government’s response to the report. The Joint Committee ceased to exist once it had reported on 16 December last year, so I only speak for myself on the Bill. Ministers removed and amended material, and carried out further consultations as recommended by the Joint Committee. The key removal was of the massive Henry VIII clause, which was described as an outstanding example of its type, and which would have caused your Lordships’ House much waste of time. The lawyers and the constitutionalists would have loved it, but it would have been a complete and utter waste of time. It is not there any more. It was a bit cheeky that it was in the Bill in the first place; Ministers and civil servants need to be on notice not to try to bypass Parliament again in the way they tried in the draft Bill. I do not say that out of any romantic attachment to the House of Commons, as the Minister patronisingly implied the previous time I spoke, but because that is not a good way to do legislation. That is the fact of the matter with Henry VIII clauses.

I will refer to just a handful of matters in this Christmas tree Bill. It is true that, unlike most Bills, the Long Title allows Members to hang any subject they like on this one. If the House of Commons was full of campaigning Members of Parliament at the present time, they could have had a field day on economic, social and constitutional issues that could have lasted for months and months. However, it would be quite wrong for this House to do that, because we are unelected, and I will not give examples of the kinds of issues, because it will only give noble Lords ideas. I would have liked to have done some of that myself, but the opportunity was not taken by the elected House, so the chance has been lost.

The Joint Committee concentrated on areas we had submissions on—several hundred of them, although half were on the rights of way issue, which is a separate issue. Our view was that if that was amended in any way and dealt with again, it should be a separate Defra Bill. We think the package in the Bill should be maintained, because it is an agreed one, which is important.

There should be two procedures to assist our scrutiny as the Bill comes to this House. They are not new; I raised them before the previous general election. First, we should have a list of subjects that have been added to the Bill after pre-legislative scrutiny and which therefore have not been subject to pre-legislative scrutiny, and confirmation that they have been consulted on. I do not think anything should be added to the Bill that has not had a consultation. It is quite right to add things after pre-legislative scrutiny, but they have to be consulted on. Secondly, a list of areas should be set out where the Commons, under the timetable of the Bill, has not done its work. It has not discussed much of the Bill. The draft Bill had 65 clauses; it now has 91. The draft Bill had 132 pages; it now has 204. As I said, I have no problem with extra subjects being added—I know at least one which I fully support that will be added by the Government and which has been subject to consultation. That is a key element.

Although this is not dealt with in the Bill, the Joint Committee had views on the use and abuse of the Law Commission, from which we took evidence. It was crystal clear that there was massive tension between the Law Commission and Ministers in the Cabinet Office. The plain fact is that Ministers in general take no interest at all in the Law Commission’s trawl tidying up Bills every three years. As such, the departments do not take any interest. For example, when the Law Commission did its trawl of departments in 2011, the legislation listed as being “no longer of practical use” in Schedule 20—originally Schedule 16—could have been offered up by the departments. Not a single subject in that schedule was offered by the departments because of uninterested Ministers and lazy Permanent Secretaries. However, in this case it is the result of Cabinet Office Ministers saying to their colleagues in other departments, “We want three or four subjects that are no longer of use and we want them in a Bill”. When Ministers do that for colleagues, the department then takes an interest because the Ministers are interested. We then end up with Schedule 20. That is not a good way to deal with legislation.

It appeared as though there was an attempt to bypass the Law Commission. I do not say that in a critical way, but that is what it looked like. I plead guilty, by the way, because I have been there, so I know what happens; there is some guilt there. The Law Commission has been doing this work for 60 years, and there is only one occasion when it recommend abolishing a subject that it later turned out was still in use. It has a good track record on this; both Houses trust the Law Commission. Can the Minister confirm whether the issues in Schedule 20 have been checked again?

I will briefly mention two or three points from the Bill. I strongly support non-economic regulators having to take growth into account. I accept there will be problems regarding the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, but the growth duty must complement and not override the regulator’s existing duties. That is what we were informed would be the case. At all times it is essential that consumer and public confidence is maintained in the relevant regulator.

I used an example in the committee from when I was at the Food Standards Agency—before the Bill saw the light of day. We constantly pointed out that we regulated on the basis of risk, not size. However, we had no problem embracing a growth duty, simply because the meat industry cannot export to Russia and China, for example, where requirements on abattoirs are greater than in the EU, unless the FSA has regulated and can sign off those businesses. We encouraged growth because we ensured those businesses conformed to the rules and requirements of, for example, the Russian Government. That was an important element. At another time we said no to the idea of stopping regulating kitchens in village halls. Kitchens in village halls can kill people if they are dirty, just as kitchens in large hotels can. It is not a question of size, but of risk. It can therefore be adequately embraced by non-economic regulators.

There are two or three other changes. I am coming to the end of my speech and I will be brief. We did not take any evidence on the clause on marine accident investigations. We ought to look at that a bit more closely as it goes through this House. We should look at removing the automatic duty to reorder a hearing in the light of new evidence. The cases of the “Gaul”, which sank in 1975 and was discovered in 1997, and the MV “Derbyshire”, which sank in 1980 and was found in 1994, are both highly relevant.

I shall not say much about health and safety, although we took a lot of evidence on it. Like the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, I had an interest in this. My maiden speech in the other place 40 years ago was on industrial safety. All my experience had been in manufacturing industry, with people doing things wrong, guards not working and so on. I realise that that is not necessarily covered here but it is the culture that is important. I remember that I sat as a member of the Standing Committee on the health and safety Bill which resulted from the work of the Robens committee. Industry in this country had a disastrous record on safety in general. It has vastly improved over the years and we do not want to turn the clock back.

I do not think that the Government have got the legislation right on insolvency practitioners. Clearly there was a massive difference in the evidence from Ministers and from the insolvency profession. I do not think that the Bill should be left as it is, with three choices. In most cases, practitioners told us that they cannot work out what kind of case it will be until they start working on it. It might look like a private case but, at the same time, it might also be corporate. Therefore, there is a real problem and it will lead to confusion. This needs to be cleared up. I think that the Government have got it wrong here.

The Government have also been stubborn in Clause 61 in abolishing the powers of the Senior President of Tribunals to report on standards. Frankly, I think that tribunal standards ought to be reported on by the senior president so that Parliament knows whether the tribunals are up to the job. That work is not burdensome. Likewise, as has already been referred to, the Government have persisted in getting rid of the power of employment tribunals to make wider recommendations. I think that that is a mistake and that it ought to be looked at again.

As for the new material, the Government have only themselves to blame here. I am not complaining about the new material, but we have to do our job properly. This legislation will affect millions of people in their daily lives in very diffuse ways that cannot be pinned down because it is not just one piece of legislation that is relevant here. As we have heard, a massive amount will affect at least a dozen departments.

This House has to be given the opportunity and the time to do its job, particularly on the clauses not dealt with by the House of Commons due to the timetabling of legislation. That is not a complaint; it is the reality and it is what we are here for. We are a revising Chamber—we are not here to start this Bill—and this will be a really good test of whether we do our job properly. Whether we are elected or unelected does not make any difference.

16:17

[Lord Tope (LD)]

My Lords, I very much echo the closing comments of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I begin by declaring my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. That is quite a substantial interest for this Bill because local authorities are the regulatory authority responsible for implementing many of these and other regulations. They have people with the detailed knowledge and experience on the ground of how well the regulations work or, as it quite often the case, how they do not work. Therefore, it is a significant interest and I suspect that it is going to take up a considerable amount of time in the months ahead.

Until May this year, I also had the huge pleasure of serving as a representative of European Union regional and local government on a European Commission body with the rather grand title of the High Level Group of Independent Stakeholders on Administrative Burdens. It was intended to deal with the never-ending task of trying to reduce the regulatory burdens imposed by the European Union. I learnt quite a lot of things there but I learnt two in particular as we went from, first, the Better Regulation programme to Smart Regulation and, in my closing months, to Regulatory Fitness, known as REFIT. First, I learnt that, as the Minister said in his introduction, better regulation most certainly does not mean no regulation; it means appropriate regulation that is fit for purpose—and a purpose that is both necessary and proportionate. The other thing that I learnt was that somewhere there was always someone who thought that those regulations were necessary. Those people are still there and they still think that the regulations are necessary. There is always a reason for having regulations and there are always some people who think that they are good and necessary.

In the time available, I simply want to highlight just one or two causes of concern in the Bill. Overall, I certainly join my noble friend Lord Stoneham in welcoming the Bill. I know from my work in Brussels that the Red Tape Challenge—one in, one out and, even more particularly, the one-in, two-out process of the UK Government—was very much admired in the European Union. We spoke on it quite often and had presentations from the UK Government on its effectiveness. There were even attempts to try to introduce it to the European Commission, which was sometimes just a little less enthusiastic in its support.

I come from the point of view of welcoming the direction and intention of this Bill—there are many parts that we will certainly welcome—but, inevitably in debate and in Committee, we talk about those things on which we are less happy and rather more concerned. The ones that I particularly want to highlight in the few minutes available today start with Clauses 9, 10 and 11 and concerns over private hire measures. Here, I shall quote from a letter from the police and crime commissioner for Dorset to my honourable friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, who unfortunately received it just after the Bill left the House of Commons. The commissioner was alerted to the provisions by the police and crime commissioner for Greater Manchester and feels that,

“an unintended consequence of these measures is to potentially increase the risk of crime and incidents, such as serious assaults and thefts, following a night out”.

We can go into more detail on that in Committee, but he seeks support in lobbying for the removal of these clauses and,

“instead, for the introduction of a dedicated Taxi Bill along the lines proposed by the Law Commission. Their draft bill has been written after extensive research and consultation and would give the opportunity for much better scrutiny of major reforms of an important industry”.

I understand that it is now rather too late in this Parliament to be introducing such a substantive Bill as a draft taxi Bill, but I hope that the Minister will say in his reply why the Government have chosen not to do that and have instead introduced measures that at least two police and crime commissioners—and many others, I am sure—feel are deeply unsatisfactory and worrying.

The next clause about which I am concerned is Clause 34—I speak as one who, until May, had been a London councillor for 40 years—on the short-term use of London accommodation. I ask the Minister: who was consulted by the Government before they introduced that clause? I ask that in particular because the clause is opposed quite strongly by London Councils, the body representing all 32 London boroughs and the City of London. It is opposed quite strongly by Westminster City Council, arguably the one that will be most affected by these provisions. Reflecting on the financial incentives for engaging in short-term letting, it makes the point that in 2005 the rent that could be charged for a short-term let property was 273% higher than comparable rents for private sector rental properties. It is understandably very concerned about that. It is not only the London local authorities that are concerned about the provisions in this clause. I have had representations from the Bed and Breakfast Association and the British Hospitality Association. They are all concerned about the effect that this clause, if implemented as it stands, will have on the letting property market in London. This will need much more careful consideration in Committee.

In my last two minutes, I turn to two clauses that concern me: Clause 38 on parking and Clause 43 and Schedule 11 on waste collection. Anyone who has been a councillor for any length of time knows that the two subjects you never, ever touch within a year of an election are parking and waste collection. Why on earth are the Government interfering in these matters within a year of a general election? Despite that foolishness, I have to ask again about those two core activities—the core business of local authorities. Minister after Minister in all parties will say that it is local people who know best and that one size does not fit all. Why are the Government now trying to interfere and to regulate—never mind within a year of a general election—in these matters that are essential to local government?

My 40 years as a local councillor were spent representing a controlled parking zone in a town centre area vital to the local economy. We all know that one size does not fit all. That was in the London Borough of Sutton. It has a different regime from the Royal Borough of Kingston next door, or the London Borough of Croydon next door or indeed the London Borough of Wandsworth, which I know the Minister knows particularly well. Why are the Government interfering? What is the justification for this? We will go into it in very much more detail in Committee. However, as I think has been mentioned, the consultation from the Department for Transport on parking received a lot of responses, almost all of them hostile. On the issue of the CCTV ban, which this clause covers, six of the eight organisations responding—from the British Parking Association to cycling and disability groups—were strongly opposed to the Government’s proposed ban. Only two had a mixed reaction, one of which was from the motoring organisations, so even they were not unanimously agreed on the ban. We still do not know exactly what the exemptions are. It is difficult in this area to distinguish between what are actually government proposals and what has come from the Friday afternoon press release from the Secretary of State, preparatory presumably to his Friday evening in the pub, where most of these utterings seem rather better fitted than to legislation.

Waste collection again is causing considerable concern to local authorities, not least the likely increased cost and complexity of introducing these additional regulations. As has been said, this is a big deregulation Bill. I thought that the clue might be in the name. In fact we are proposing to introduce more regulation, which will make carrying out the essential task of waste collection more complex and more expensive. I know that my noble friend the Minister is, if anything, an even stronger localist than I am. I look forward in his closing speech to his justification for why these measures meet the test of proportionality and necessity.

16:27

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, will comment on a small number of proposals in this Deregulation Bill and touch on two issues that are not in the Bill but are relevant to it. The first issue is the concern expressed by some other noble Lords who have contributed to the debate—Clause 1, which aims to limit the general duty on the self-employed to comply with the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. Only those who are definitely picked out would be covered by the Act in future if the Bill goes through.

As the noble Lords, Lord Fowler and Lord Rooker, have made clear, this is a pretty big change to the existing provisions and is a genuflection to those who consistently sneer at the health and safety culture, which may have its ludicrous moments from time to time but generally has served this country well. If you look at international league tables on, say, skills, health and safety, industrial relations or productivity, the one that Britain comes top in now is good health and safety. On the others we are languishing in a lower position than is comfortable. Therefore, this is an area of excellence and I pay tribute to all those who have done a good job in making it like that. It seems to me now that to give the self-employed the impression that they are going to be outside the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act is a big error. A process of prescription would no doubt be controversial, rather costly and protracted. Different sectors will argue like mad about whether they should be in the scope of the Act. I think that more red tape rather than less is being introduced.

I am not alone in thinking that this prescribing will be onerous, so the effect of Clause 1 will, I think, be to remove most of the self-employed from the general duty under the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. I know other figures have been given but it is going to be quite a process arguing whether you are in or out. It will be confusing to the average self-employed worker who is thinking, “Am I covered, am I not covered?” and will be referred no doubt to a lawyer and to the subsections in a particular piece of legislation. I recognise that this was recommended by the majority of the Löfstedt review of health and safety regulation, but the subsequent consultation by the Health and Safety Executive has shown many to be against it, arguing that confusion and possibly increased risk will result.

The present system covers everybody. At least it is straightforward; it works. The message is, “Don’t take risks with other people’s health and safety—or, indeed, your own”. Under the Bill, will that change? Will the impression be different? It could well be, and many will not bother to take it quite so seriously as they did in the past. Worse, people who control a workplace with many self-employed people—often bogus self-employed; they are doing the same jobs as employees—will tend to think that they have no duty of care and guess that they are exempt from the law. The most dangerous industries, such as agriculture and construction, have a high proportion of the self-employed. The confusion from this clause in those sectors could cause complacency and poor practice. The Government have today published a consultation on health and safety, proposing that construction becomes a prescribed industry, but the exact borders of that are not clear. I understand that already a lot of questions are being raised about it.

On self-employment in general, the fatality rate per 100,000 is already twice that of employees. Self-employment is rising quickly in this country: 9%—330,000—since 2008, while 40% of the new jobs that have been created since 2010 are self-employed. Going freelance has been very much the fashion, or maybe the only option, for many. The increase has been marked in all sorts of occupations that you do not associate with self-employment or freelance working: admin, secretarial work, sales and customer service and, perhaps more traditionally, personal service occupations. It would be naive to think that all these people were budding entrepreneurs. Many of them are the bogus self-employed, relieving an employer of his obligations under PAYE, national insurance, pensions and employment law, with many of the workers concerned thinking that they are going to get a tax advantage out of being self-employed. This measure could be a further incentive to go self-employed, or to be forced to give up employee status. It is wrong and it could be dangerous. It is encouraging to see Members of the House on all sides raising questions about this. I hope that the Government will consider these representations seriously.

There is a complete change with my next concern. Clauses 10 and 12 on private hire cars and taxis were touched on by my noble friend Lord Stevenson. The purpose is to reduce the effects of the current rules that apply to taxis and private hire. I will not go into detail, but there will be more unlicensed and less controlled private hire and taxi drivers flooding the streets than before if this goes through. The risk, particularly to women travelling in cabs and taxis at night, is being highlighted by the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the Local Government Association, Unite, the GMB and RMT, the main unions concerned with workers in this area. I ask the Government to take this threat, particularly to women, very seriously indeed.

The role of the local authority licensing body becomes much more difficult under these provisions. In a sense, one risk of deregulation is that you merely move the pinch point somewhere else. Licensing these people, and being responsible to a degree for what goes wrong in this area, will become a new industry if we are not careful. It would be a real problem.

I mentioned that I wanted to talk about a couple of things that are not in the Bill. I can do that very briefly. I was looking for the deregulation of trade unions. After all, as Members of the House will know, we are awash with scrutineers and assurers. The lobbying Bill added £500,000 to the costs of the average large trade union just recently. We are swamped with regulation. The fact that a strike is scheduled for later this week seems to have prompted the Conservative Benches to suggest all kinds of new regulations in relation to strikes, as if a law every two years on trade unions, when the Conservatives were in power, was not enough. I think that it would have been a very good idea to apply the Deregulation Bill to trade unions, but that does not seem to have crowded on to, at least, the Conservative Party’s agenda. I want to encourage them, in a genuine spirit of helpfulness, to go down that road. I do not even have to be consulted too much about it, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, suggested, if a new clause comes in.

On the second area, I am pleased to see that the Bill does not propose to make further changes to the Sunday trading rules. A big lobby has been pressing for provisions in the Bill and I am pleased to say that the Government, so far, have not accepted them. Long may that continue.

16:36

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, I had the privilege of serving on the Bill committee under the superb chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. I should also like to pay tribute to the clerks who backed us up. They did a superb job on a very tight schedule—we were given the best part of just over 12 weeks. The Government set us the target of reporting by Christmas. We stuck to that target and I think we did as good a job as any committee could hope to do in that time span. We recognised that this is a very important part of the Government’s programme. I pay tribute to the Ministers who gave evidence to us. I commiserate with the Minister who will take the Bill through in all its detail, but it is a very important part of the Government’s legislation and one that I greatly welcome.

However, something changed en route and it appears that, in reality, we looked at only two-thirds of the Bill at best. As someone who has been Chairman of Ways and Means in the other place, the situation jars with me when colleagues from all sides have worked extremely hard to take evidence, to listen to it, to reflect on and question it, and have proposed to the Government of the day that certain changes should be made. In fairness, the Government respond very positively in almost all areas to the committee’s evidence and recommendations. However, we then discover in Committee that a number of new clauses appear on the horizon, which get a fairly peremptory examination. Even more surprising, we discover on Report that new clauses appear in the Bill.

I must say to my noble friend on the Front Bench that, in all conscience, the Government are not being fair to the public, who justifiably want to give their voice on clauses that come forward, and I do not think the Government are being fair to Parliament as a whole. Inevitably, I suspect, that will mean that the Committee stage will take rather longer here than it otherwise would. Looking back on the previous Session, I seem to remember that we had to break early because there was no work to be done. The same applied at the other end. So I question why, when we had a perfectly good, succinct, tight Bill, the decision was taken to add other bits. Was it that certain departments of state were a bit slothful in coming forward or was it that Ministers got a little too enthusiastic? In future, I hope that there will be an annual Bill that is tightly drawn. As the noble Lord said in his introductory comments, it is the deregulatory dimension that we all want in Parliament, rather than the repositioning of existing legislation. I hope that can be really tightly drawn and stuck to. That way, across government as a whole, we would be doing the public a great service.

I will just mention three other areas. First, in the Law Commission, there is a body to review laws that are out of date. We took evidence and, frankly, we were somewhat aghast at how long it took to do its job. Parliament, particularly Ministers, should be putting pressure on the Law Commission to move faster. The Law Commission said to us that it did not have the resources to do it. If it is beneficial to the public, particularly the public purse, Ministers and the Law Commission need to sit down and find a way of making what is called the SLRs work better. We said in our original report that there should be an annual SLR Bill. I do not need an answer today—my colleagues and I would like the answer in writing—but my question is: have there been consultations with the Law Commission and, if so, what were the results of those deliberations?

Secondly, we received evidence from BALPPA, which regulates the leisure park industry in our seaside towns up and down the country. It gears up its programme of events, et cetera, to the school holidays. We questioned the association quite deeply because the Bill proposes that we should deregulate school terms. I am a grandfather, and there must be other grandfathers here, and fathers. Honestly, what we really want is predictability. If you have a boy and a girl, you want to know that they and their friends will be on holiday at the same time. I hope that we can have another look at that. Certainly, if you look at the evidence from the USA, where they deregulated around Labor Day, absolute chaos flowed and it adversely affected the tourism industries. I ask the Minister: has there been any economic assessment of the impact of deregulating school holidays on tourism jobs in the seaside areas? I think that is important.

My third point concerns the economic growth duty, which I spoke about at some length in the committee. I believe it is absolutely fundamental that every department of state thinks about the economic impact of what it does. That applies to the whole lot. We had what I would call some howls of protest from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, saying that we would be interfering with its role in life; in particular, it might be struck off the list in Europe. I totally fail to see how it would interfere with any of the human rights bodies if we—society—asked them to reflect at length on the impact of anything they do, propose or criticise. That is what we recommended in our report and it seems entirely justifiable from society’s point of view.

16:43

[Baroness Andrews (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, had the privilege of serving on the Select Committee under the energetic leadership of my noble friend Lord Rooker. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Naseby. I agree with much of what he says but there are a few things that I will take issue with.

The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, who is not in his place, put forward some very impressive examples of effective regulation but I think he would agree with me—and picking up what the Minister said—that what we have in the Bill is one of those exercises that Ministers and officials across Whitehall absolutely dread. The call to arms went out from the Cabinet Office: “Something more must be done about regulation so it is your job to find more examples of regulation and bring them forward”. At a long stretch, many departments did bring things forward, so amid the many useful things in the Bill—the Select Committee commended the Bill in many respects—we have a real mishmash of odd initiatives, ranging from fire, fuel and farriers to the defence of the grey squirrel and much else, as we have already seen. As the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, very eloquently put it, the Bill has proved an irresistible magnet for all manner of things which the committee never had a chance to look at and which the House will want to debate. These measures were shoved in without warning, consultation or thought for the implications for public safety and security, as my noble friend Lord Monks said. I am sure that this will be followed up by many noble Lords.

We make it very clear in our support for the Bill that we are in full support of proportionate regulation to enable enterprise of all sorts to flourish—who could not be? The Bill, however, suffers from being, in large part, opportunistic. Indeed, there are elements of the Bill, as we explored in our debate, about the cavalier treatment of Parliament itself. The Bill will benefit from close scrutiny from your Lordships. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has already discussed the extraordinary Clause 51 in the draft Bill which would have given Ministers carte blanche to declare, by order, that certain legislation could be removed,

“if the Minister considers that it is no longer of practical use”.

Our evidence found that neither officials nor Ministers could tell us what on earth that clause actually meant, let alone what it would do; so, very sensibly, Ministers decided to throw it out. My only surprise was that the reason they gave was that there was no public appetite for it. I should have thought that that was the least reason, frankly.

A lot of fun went out of the committee when we lost that clause, but we still became very involved with the sorts of issues raised, for example, by the noble Lord, Lord Tope, about the Bill’s title and whether the Bill was, indeed, deregulatory in every respect. Decriminalisation as regards household waste, for example, is hardly deregulatory in a conventional sense. Likewise, we have examples in which the burden of regulation is simply shifted from one agency to another, as in some of the education clauses. My prime concern in this respect is in relation to the new duties that are created. I have to part company, sadly, with the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, over the duty to promote growth in Clause 83. This, in a Bill which aims at decluttering, is a massive piece of new clutter.

I am grateful to the Minister for circulating the draft guidance, but can he tell us in the wind-up, in fewer words than Ministers tried to tell us in the Joint Committee, how, by creating a new duty, the Government are minimising the burden on public bodies? We do not need to be told in statute how important growth is, so why on earth is this in the Bill at all? Many regulatory bodies work within a remit that presumes and encourages growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has already pointed out. The regulator I know best, English Heritage, conducts its primary work of conservation within the balance of priorities established, after long debate, around sustainable growth as set out in the National Planning Policy Framework.

The committee has been assured, and the House was assured this afternoon, that the clause will not confuse or override existing requirements. However, where are the safeguards that regulators will not be hauled up to account for their lack of success or lack of sincerity in promoting growth? The draft guidance, which I was grateful to see, in fact leaves it to the regulators to decide for themselves where the balance lies. It states:

“The growth duty does not automatically take precedence over or supplant existing duties held by regulators—Section 2”.

What does “not automatically” mean in this context? In their response to the committee the Government said:

“The final guidance will be published at an early stage to support Parliamentary passage of the Deregulation Bill”.

Can we have an assurance that this will be available before Committee stage in the autumn?

In short, there is a real concern that this clause could cause genuine mischief. It could be used to pressurise bodies and distort their proper functions as well as creating additional burdens to demonstrate compliance. That is not just the non-economic regulators, which have a particular problem, but the economic regulators as well. The clue as to how the Government think it will work is what the Minister said in another place—that in the last resort a business will use judicial review. I am astonished by that. Not only is it a totally inappropriate expectation to build into the legislative process, it completely sidesteps the Government’s plans to emasculate judicial review that we in this House discussed only last week. Frankly, I would much rather all this be in the Bill, where we could see it with some security. I appeal to the Minister not to use this crude definition of growth but to go back to the tried and tested definition of sustainable growth, which has been worked out in practice and is so much more consistent and sensible. Otherwise we will be into short-term improvisations regarding the nature of growth, and that would be really dangerous.

Clause 1 has already been raised as a cause of concern around the House. Our committee had several witnesses who described the changes as unnecessary, unhelpful and unwise. I know that the prescribed list has been published, but it is vague in parts, and it is not clear whether some trades are in or out. There is another aspect which exercises me: the clause requires the prescribed list to be set out by negative resolution. This is for a change which will have a major impact on safety at work. When that was challenged, the Minister gave us the reason for not using an affirmative order—that the increase in parliamentary time that would be required was not considered appropriate. We see many inadequate explanations for inadequate parliamentary scrutiny, but that is one of the worst.

Another set of policy issues flares up around the housing clauses. First, we have the reduction from five years to three years in the qualifying period for the right to buy. In all logic, given the housing crisis in this country, it is bizarre to reduce the permanent housing stock any more. Evidence from the LGA suggests that for every seven local authority homes lost, only one new one has been built. Will the Minister give a commitment to publish the impact statement before Committee? We have wasted an opportunity here to enable councils to fill the housing gap. The Bill could have allowed for the full retention of receipts by local authorities and been the vehicle to remove the housing borrowing cap.

We have in Clause 32 a useful and almost welcome new provision to create new powers for the Secretary of State to include optional requirements in building regulations. That means that, for the first time, new homes can be built which are flexible and adaptable for people growing old and people with disabilities. However, it is optional. It needs to be a requirement, not least because the only place where this is happening is in London—our thanks are due, first, to Mr Livingstone and then to Mr Johnson. If the requirement is optional, it will deter other local authorities from following the very good lead set by London.

There is much that we will return to in the Bill. There is no doubt that it has been cobbled together, and there is the sound of barrels being scraped in many clauses. However, there are useful things in it, too. I look forward to a more forensic examination in Committee.

16:52

[Lord Mackay of Drumadoon (CB)]

My Lords, the two clauses in the Bill that I want to touch on briefly, Clauses 18 and 61, have caused the Law Society of Scotland some concern over their possible implication and consequences. It wishes these concerns to be raised at this stage of the Bill, but it may be necessary or appropriate to return to them in Committee.

Clause 18 seeks to alter the regime for insolvency practitioners by introducing a new regime of partial authorisation for an insolvency practitioner. Such a partial authorisation would entitle an individual to act in insolvency related only to companies or another individual to act in insolvency related to individuals. Full authorisation would be reserved for someone who was authorised to act in relation to companies, individuals and insolvent partnerships.

The Law Society of Scotland understands that, in England, the law relating to the insolvency of corporate bodies is separate from that relating to the insolvency of individuals. It is therefore easier to understand why one might want to split up the authority to act into a partial authorisation. On the other hand, in Scotland there is no such separation between the law applicable to corporate work and the law applicable to individuals. The Law Society’s concern is that many of the statutory instruments that are currently required to be followed by insolvency practitioners in Scotland could not be confined within a partial authorisation, as proposed in Clause 18.

It might be asked why the Law Society should be concerned about this, because the obvious solution might be that everyone in Scotland wishing to be an insolvency practitioner should just apply for full authorisation. However, it seems perfectly commendable that the Law Society’s concern should be drawn to the Government’s attention, to see whether this clause requires examination in a little more detail at later stages.

The other clause that has given rise to concern is Clause 61. This provides that Section 15A of the Social Security Act 1998, which deals with the functions of the Senior President of Tribunals, should be amended to omit the provisions that require preparing and publishing an annual report on standards of decision-making in certain decisions made by the Secretary of State, against which an appeal lies to the First-tier Tribunal. In other words, the Senior President of Tribunals has publicly to make an annual report on the view taken about the standards of decision-making, in certain decisions made by the Secretary of State and his or her staff.

The Explanatory Notes to the Bill state that arrangements have been put in place to compensate for consequences of removing this statutory duty on the Senior President of Tribunals. They go on to state:

“Alternative and more direct methods for providing feedback from the judiciary to the Secretary of State have in practice been developed”,

and been effective. Speaking as a judge for a number of years, I was unaware of any alternative and more direct method for providing feedback to the Secretary of State, other than issuing a judgment or opinion once a case was decided. Again, I suggest, the Law Society commendably considers that these alternative methods should be specified at this stage, before the Bill goes much further.

I do not expect the Minister to be in a position to comment in detail on these matters. The first is quite complicated and I have advised the Law Society that we should write to the Minister’s department for this to be considered fully. If there then has to be a debate on it at a later stage, all those taking part can be properly informed about the issues and arguments, one way or another.

16:58

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I will focus on Clause 52 and Schedule 16, which the Government introduced late in May, after the draft Bill had been considered by my noble friend Lord Rooker and his committee. I will take a somewhat different line from previous contributors who have spoken favourably about Clause 52. This clause deals with selling alcohol at community events and ancillary licences. Part of this Bill includes the community and ancillary seller’s notice, which means that those whose core business is not selling alcohol or providing regulated entertainment can sidestep regulations to sell alcohol as part of a wider business contract.

What we have here is not really a deregulation but a new form of alcohol licensing—in a sense, a do-it-yourself application form of licensing—which we have not seen before. It will remove barriers currently faced by certain businesses such as hairdressers and tanning salons, and make it simpler and cheaper to obtain a new community and ancillary seller’s notice. It will make it much harder for local licensing officers to object to them. Overall, it will mean even easier access to alcohol. It means alcohol being available in a whole new range of settings with very little oversight of its sale and consumption.

That is all within the context of the worrying rising series of health harms. One person is killed every hour these days by alcohol. Annually, 1.2 million people are admitted to hospital due to alcohol-related causes. Liver disease is the only major disease against which we have not been making progress over the past 10 years. Rates in people under 30 suffering from the condition have increased by 112%. Of course, alcohol is a factor in almost half of all violent crimes committed.

The intention to launch ancillary licences was first promised in the Government’s alcohol strategy, published back in March 2012. However, the strategy also promised a minimum unit price of 45p per unit and a public health licensing objective. Both those measures—I put this very kindly indeed—have yet to materialise. Had we had them, they could have acted as controls and safeguards to make sure that the ancillary licence policy would not lead to increased consumption and increased strain on public services. Regrettably, we have not had them.

A range of organisations has raised opposition to Clause 52 and the accompanying schedule. Among them is the Alcohol Health Alliance, the British Medical Association, Alcohol Concern and the Institute of Alcohol Studies, which recently stated:

“At a time when alcohol-related hospital admissions and deaths are on the rise, we need to ask: is it sensible to encourage people to drink more?”.

Perhaps even more important is the impact that the legislation could have in normalising alcohol as a must-have for almost every occasion. That is the important issue that the House needs to address: the changing culture which the Bill presents.

So far, the community aspect has principally been addressed. When the Government have said that the Bill is mainly about community changes, they have prayed in aid the Women’s Institute which, they claim, has been asking for the change to be introduced. I find it somewhat baffling, and I suspect that the Women’s Institute may find it somewhat baffling, that it is being offered licences for community events that start at seven o’clock in the morning, because that is what the licences will offer. I think that the WI is being used as a Trojan horse. It may not fully understand the rest of the legislation which is proposed along with the community aspect. Perhaps even the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham of Droxford, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, who have spoken favourably for the change, have not looked at the ancillary side of the legislation

The legislation will offer the opportunity for alcohol to be sold, for the first time, by small businesses—the so-called ancillary sellers. That could take place on a very wide scale indeed. That is where the growth is likely to take place, not with community events. It is the prize that the drinks industry has been looking for. It will be getting the quid pro quo offered to them in the 2012 alcohol strategy for swallowing minimum unit pricing and public health criteria being introduced into licensing considerations. However, they have managed, through the pressures they put on the Government, to see and avoid those being introduced so far. Instead they are now benefiting from the ancillary licences.

I regret that when my party dealt with this in the Commons, while raising objections and generally being concerned, it did not push the issue to a Division. I am hoping that on reflection, having looked at the evidence a little more carefully, it may be willing to change its mind on that further down the line as we come to deal with the clauses. I just do not believe that this change is going to be limited to what the Government describe as bed-and-breakfast businesses. After all, how many bed-and-breakfast businesses are going to offer alcohol for sale at seven o’clock in the morning? There are some crazy contradictions within this policy.

I think that instead we are going to see instead a wide-scale application for the licences to go into a whole range of areas where hitherto we have never seen alcohol on sale. Most certainly hairdressers will apply to offer and sell alcohol, and health establishments, such as tanning shops, will do the same. There is nothing, so far as we can see, that would prevent sandwich bars starting to offer alcohol with sandwiches; nothing to stop cafes moving in that direction; nothing to stop coffee shops—and even more.

When I addressed this topic during the debate on the Queen’s Speech, I asked the Government whether I had got it right or wrong. I have had no replies so far, nor have any of the other advocates opposed to this been able to establish just where the licences will end and to whom they will be limited. I look to the Minister to see whether he can produce more evidence of where it is likely to go. I think it is wrong to leave this for the consultation period after the Act has gone through, and then put forward regulations, which we cannot change, because by then the culture change will be well and truly under way. That, I believe, is not what this House wants.

17:07

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to take part in this important debate. I declare an interest as a previous chairman, and now a vice-president, of the Local Government Association. I welcome the Government’s objective to bring forward legislation that will reduce any burdens on local government and business in our communities. Removing red tape is an important issue for local government, especially because of the vast statutory duties that local government is responsible for. I believe that there are other aspects recommended by the Local Government Association that will help councils deal with these burdens further, but there are other elements in the Bill that need further consultation with local authorities.

Having looked through the Bill, I would welcome clarity on whether the Government have consulted with the Local Government Association, particularly on Clauses 10 and 12 on private licensing vehicle reforms and Clause 38 on parking, and what response they received from the LGA. I note that the Government wish to deregulate private hire vehicles to help families, but I wonder whether councils have been fully engaged with these proposals. Others this afternoon have also raised their concerns on this clause. The noble Lord, Lord Monks, has already mentioned women travelling in private hire cars. As a female, regular user of private hire vehicles, Clause 10 raises concerns for me on safety and whether the person driving the vehicle has been properly vetted. Will the Minister ensure that the Department for Transport, if it has not done so already, meets with the Local Government Association to discuss these reforms?

Similarly, I understand that many councils have raised concerns about the Government’s proposals to ban the use of CCTV for parking enforcement. At this point, I must declare an interest as I am a member of an advisory board for the Marston Group Ltd. I know that councils are concerned about these proposals as they could prevent them using CCTV for parking enforcement, particularly outside schools, at bus stops, and on clearways. In particular, we must ensure that children are protected from irresponsible parking outside schools. As I understand it, the Bill allows the Secretary of State to exempt certain places from a ban but if the Bill takes effect before the guidance is in force, it may be impossible to enforce parking restrictions which will be referred to within the guidance. It would be helpful if the Minister could agree to meet with the LGA on this very important issue.

Councils have been at the forefront of recycling over the past decade, with recycling rates rising from 13%, 10 years ago, to 43% today. Clause 43 aims to deregulate the criminal penalties for people who consistently refuse to deal with their household waste properly. These proposals may have wider unintended consequences and an impact on those individuals, their neighbours and the wider community. I am sure that the Minister will congratulate councils on their efforts in increasing recycling rates over the years and on some of the incentivising schemes that they now have in place to encourage recycling. Will my noble friend look seriously at the potential implications for local communities of these proposals? I am sure he would agree that we do not want recycling rates to decrease as a result of councils having the inability, as the last resort, to enforce the law when they need to.

I draw two additional aspects to the attention of my noble friend, on local authorities’ licensing arrangements and statutory notices. First, will he look closely at the excellent proposals being put forward to assist councils with cutting red tape from local business through the Local Government Association’s document on rewiring licensing? As he is probably aware, local government must issue more than 150 licences. The LGA’s proposals would reduce unnecessary bureaucracy by allowing small businesses to apply for a single licence, rather than the complex layers of licensing currently in place. I ask my noble friend to look closely at the rewiring licensing document and commit to undertaking a review of all local authority licensing regulations, and how they may be simplified as part of this Bill.

Secondly, statutory notice requirements which date from the early 1970s are burdensome on councils; their publication process has not moved with the times. The Bill deals with elderly legislation and reforms it for modern-day use. Will the Minister look at whether it could be used in a similar fashion to update these requirements? Councils are spending £26 million a year on advertisements when councils in England are facing a huge funding gap between March 2014 and the end of 2015-16. Such adverts could be published in a digital form at much less cost. Publication is very important but the medium used to do so must be modernised.

The Bill provides great opportunities to support local councils and small businesses, which I support, but I hope that my noble friend will note the concerns of local government and consult with where necessary.

17:13

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to make just two points in relation to the Bill, as some others that I might have made have already been covered adequately by Members of this House. My first concerns Clauses 21 to 27 and Schedule 7 on public rights of way. I welcome the briefings from the Open Spaces Society and the Ramblers, which I am sure many of us have received. They are basically in support of these clauses, whose purpose is to speed up, streamline and simplify the process for getting the official maps of public paths up to date. At the moment, many of them are not. It is urgent because there is now a cut-off date of 1 January 2026—that seems a long way ahead but we might get there very quickly—which means that if the process has not been completed, any pre-1949 unrecorded routes will be extinguished. That will be damaging for the rights of walkers, riders, cyclists and carriage drivers. I should say that I am a very keen hill walker myself, so I feel close to this issue. These clauses came from Natural England’s stakeholder working group on unrecorded public rights of way, so they represent a consensus by representing the public path users’ body, the landowners, the occupiers and the local authorities. That is a pretty impressive consensus, so I hope that these clauses will go through unamended and unaltered because they represent something very important.

My second point is quite different, and it is really a sin of omission. It concerns Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. It is essentially a provision that adversely affects the commercial television companies—that is, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. I should say that I used to be chair of the All-Party Group on ITV and am now the vice-chairman, and I have had very helpful briefings from some of the broadcasters.

To repeal Section 73 would be a clear deregulatory measure. Many representations have been made to the Government, who seem to say two things in reply. The first is that there is ongoing litigation between the public service broadcasters and TV catch-up. This has been going on for some years. In fact it has been going on for such a long time that it is getting to the stage of being like Jarndyce and Jarndyce. In any case, it is not appropriate to wait for ever for litigation that is so prolonged. That is not right. Secondly, Oliver Letwin, a Minister at the Cabinet Office, has said that this Bill is not the right vehicle for such change. My goodness me, those of us who have been around for a long time know that, time and again, Governments have two excuses for opposing things: either an amendment is technically defective—well, I am not amending anything yet—or the Bill is not an appropriate vehicle for such a change. That has been a standard excuse from Governments over the years. Oliver Letwin, after saying that the issue is rather complicated so the Bill is not appropriate, then does the other usual thing, which is to pass the buck. He says, “Try DCMS”. We have now tried the Cabinet Office, DCMS and BIS. Government departments seem to be passing this issue from one to the other. I shall argue in a moment that it is a clear deregulatory measure and that the buck should not be passed any longer—particularly because if nothing happens now, we will be stuck until after the election and heaven knows how long it will take.

Originally, Section 73 had a purpose, but that has gone. The passage of time has eroded it. Indeed, the Bill says that other measures have become obsolete with the passage of time. British television is at the heart of British creative industry. It is vibrant and dynamic and it has great content and global reach. The way in which Section 73 works undermines investment in our commercial television sector and is quite an outdated measure. There is no longer a level playing field. What happens is that what are called third party aggregators, often large companies, take the content for free without payments to those who have created it. That seems quite wrong. The simple fact is that Section 73 is an historic measure, designed effectively to deliver a subsidy from public service broadcasters to encourage cable rollout in the 1980s. That is a long time ago now.

Section 73 prevents public service broadcasters having any form of negotiation for the supply of PSB channels to the cable platform in the UK. There is not even a commercial opportunity for them to negotiate. It is perverse that, for example, PSBs subsidise Virgin Media, which is owned by Liberty Global, a multimillion-pound global TV distribution platform. We have British television companies, some of which are doing fairly well but which are not that affluent, subsidising an enormous global player. If Section 73 were to be repealed, that at least would enable some form of commercial arrangement to be reached on cable transmission but within the overall Communications Act framework. That framework includes the “must offer” obligation of PSB channels to key platforms such as cable and satellite, subject to the agreement of terms.

British television content is the envy of the world and its continued success depends on its ability to get a return on investment. I am in the Labour Party and I am talking about business and so on. This Bill provides an important opportunity to repeal Section 73. I urge the Government not to miss the opportunity to consider amending the Bill to repeal the section. I do not know what we are waiting for. It is not as complicated as the Cabinet Office says. It is fairly straightforward. There has been so much discussion and negotiation. I think we ought to get on with it. It would be best if the Government brought forward their own amendment. I hope the Minister will agree to that, but, if not, I would like the Government at least to accept a Back-Bench amendment on this issue.

17:19

[Lord Sharkey (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, had the privilege of being a member of the Joint Committee that scrutinised the Bill in draft form. As it turns out, it was very much in draft form. As many noble Lords have said, the Bill is significantly different from the draft Bill. It is inevitable that such a Christmas tree of a Bill will grow as it progresses, but that fact raises significant questions about the role of pre-legislative scrutiny.

When the draft Bill came to us, it was 240 pages long. It was described by Ken Clarke as,

“a slight mountain of a Bill”.

It covered 10 ministerial departments and four agencies. It made changes to more than 70 underlying Acts. Some of these Acts made changes to previous Acts. The committee was given 12 weeks to scrutinise all this. We thought this was inadequate, and we said so. We would have pressed the point more strongly had we known that the Bill was to be carried over. We found this out only when Oliver Letwin, in evidence to us, mentioned it in passing. This seems entirely unsatisfactory. Perhaps when the Minister replies he could commit to a more open discussion with pre-legislative scrutiny committees in future on the question of the time necessary for thorough scrutiny. As it was, with this Bill we had no choice but to restrict ourselves to certain areas and to leave others entirely unscrutinised.

I also ask the Minister to think about helping the process of scrutiny in another way. In a complex Bill such as this, it would help greatly for references to underlying legislation to be given a hypertext link. That is a lot easier than having 70 other Bills open before you. It would have helped your Lordships’ House to have those hyperlinks in the text of the Bill. Could I trust the Minister to commit to doing that well before Committee, which I understand will start after Recess?

As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has mentioned, the original draft of the Bill proposed giving Henry VIII powers to disapply legislation. The Joint Committee recommended that these powers be removed. I am very glad that the Government have agreed to do that. In the course of our inquiry into these and similar proposals in the Bill, however, it seemed to us that, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, has also said, there was an unhelpful tension between the Government and the Law Commission. The draft Bill contains a schedule containing legislation to be disapplied by order. The Government removed the order power but retained the schedule. It is now Schedule 20 to the Bill. This schedule repeals parts of 28 separate Acts. These range from the Nuclear Industry (Finance) Act 1977 through the Breeding of Dogs Act 1973 to the Town Police Clauses Act 1847. Clause 82, which asserts that all this legislation is no longer of any practical use, will repeal about 119 clauses. Some of these clauses are whole Acts themselves.

Does anyone seriously believe that Parliament will subject these 119 clauses to close scrutiny—or, indeed, any scrutiny at all—as the Bill passes through its stages? The Joint Committee’s report found that the Law Commission was better placed to give detailed scrutiny to this kind of allegedly obsolete statute. We stated:

“The skills, research and consultation needed to ensure that Parliament, external organisations and the public can be satisfied that a piece of legislation is genuinely obsolete strongly suggest that the Law Commissions are better placed to conduct that work than Government departments. Added to which, the independence of the Law Commissions from Government and their track record since 1965 reinforce the trust that Parliament places in the Law Commissions”.

This is a key point. Whom should we trust to say that legislation is obsolete and may be safely repealed—government departments or the Law Commission? I am in no doubt that the answer should be the Law Commissions. We recommended that Schedule 20 items be referred to the Law Commission for a safety check. We acknowledged that, to meet the growing demand, the Law Commission would need additional resource. We also agreed with the Law Commission’s own proposals for more frequent and responsive SLR Bills. We recommended that the Government consider making such Bills annual, as my noble friend Lord Naseby said.

The Government did not sound very enthusiastic about any of this in their response. They disagreed with our recommendation to give more resource to the Law Commissions—and did not give a convincing reason why—and so the mass repeal proposed in Clause 81 and Schedule 20 remains part of the Bill. I suspect that we will discuss that further as the Bill progresses. The case for subjecting all those proposed repeals to the Law Commission for a safety check remains very strong, as does the case for an annual SLR Bill.

However, there are other controversial matters in the Bill; I will point to just some of those that were investigated by the Joint Committee. We were concerned about the level of consultation undertaken by the Government in preparation for this very complex and wide-ranging Bill. The original Bill had 61 relevant clauses in it, excluding recitations, titles and so on. Only 10 of those clauses were subject to formal consultation, a further 18 had had some kind of consultation under the Red Tape Challenge scheme, and the rest had no formal consultation at all. That raised two questions: was that an appropriate level of consultation, and was it appropriate to rely on the Red Tape Challenge as a means of consultation?

The Joint Committee concluded that in some cases consultation had been insufficient. We were also alarmed by Oliver Letwin’s assertion that pre-legislative scrutiny was part of the Government’s consultation process. It is not. The Government should not rely—as they apparently were—on Parliament to consult on their behalf, but should undertake proper consultation themselves. I wonder whether inclusion in the Red Tape Challenge amounts to proper consultation. It is not clear that it should, and I would be interested to hear the Minister speak to the robustness of the Red Tape Challenge process. In the event, the Government agreed to remove certain clauses pending further consultation and, in particular, to consult further—which is important—on the authorisation of insolvency practitioners.

The committee welcomed the Government’s reasons, when it came to it, for proposing a duty on regulators to have regard in broad terms to “economic growth”. We discussed at some length with our witnesses and among ourselves the question of measuring or judging the success of that requirement. That was an important consideration; we need to be able to assess the effect of any piece of legislation. However, we acknowledged that with the growth objective, that would be difficult. We understood the difficulties involved in attempts to quantify. Nevertheless, we thought that the Government should consider by what criteria the impact of the duty could be demonstrated, and welcomed the Minister’s commitment to reflect further. I am not sure that the further reflection—if that is what it was—in the Government’s response to our report was terribly helpful. It was all rather vague and woolly. That is an important and unresolved issue, to which I expect to return at a later stage.

Also unresolved is the consequence of the application of the growth duty to the EHRC. The commission spoke to us about the,

“intrinsic incompatibility between the growth duty and the duty to promote and protect human rights”.

That incompatibility would risk the “A” status of the commission and the British candidacy on the UN Human Rights Council. The JCHR agreed with this assessment. In their response to our report the Government recognised the need to avoid jeopardising the international standing of the EHRC. They said that they would consider this issue further with the EHRC before finalising the list of regulators to whom the growth duty will apply. In the helpful draft guidance notes I received from the Minister this morning, there was no list and no mention of the issue in the covering letter. Can the Minister tell the House what progress is being made in discussion of whether that growth duty will apply to the EHRC?

There are also some other committee recommendations where the Government response seems to require further discussion. I refer in particular to Clause 2, which removes the employment tribunal’s power to make wider recommendations, to Clause 43, which deals with household waste decriminalisation, and to Clause 70, which deals with gangmasters. I am sure that the list of clauses your Lordships will want to discuss in detail will be much longer than that, and I look forward to those discussions.

The purpose of the Bill is a very good one. It is a very welcome Bill and contains good things. The provisions for apprenticeships and their funding in Clauses 3, 4 and 5 are especially welcome, as is the whole part on “Alcohol and entertainment”. This grew from one rather lonely clause in the draft Bill on the exhibition of films in community premises to the larger-scale liberalisation for local community events.

That part also contains, in Clauses 59 and 60, provisions for review of the penalties for non-payment of the BBC licence fee and powers to decriminalise such non-payment. I welcome the opportunity that gives us to discuss how to balance protection of the BBC’s revenue with the importance of not sending people to prison for non-payment of the licence fee. However, I would have welcomed it even more had we been discussing this in the context of charter renewal.

Finally, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for his outstanding chairmanship of our Joint Committee. I would like to thank our truly excellent clerks, Christine Salmon Percival and Geraldine Alexander, for their invaluable work.

17:30

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, as we have heard in this debate, everyone agrees it is right to remove unnecessary regulatory and legislative burdens from individuals, civil society, businesses and public sector organisations. However, this hotchpotch of measures is not proportionate in some areas and will not promote growth or jobs. There are two specific areas of the Bill that I want to focus on in my contribution today, both of which, if carried, will put at risk workers’ and consumers’ safety. These relate to the clauses on health and safety and the last-minute proposals thrown in at the end of the Committee stage in the other place on taxis and private hire vehicles.

Regulations that protect the health and safety of workers are not red tape: ask the many people injured in the construction industry or the families of those killed. Nor are the regulations that help women decide on the safest way home or to work red tape. The health and safety proposals will have a negligible impact on self-employed people but will create confusion, as we have heard in the debate, where there has been clarity for the past 40 years. At best, the Government believe this clause may save self-employed people 37p each per year. As the Minister said, the Health and Safety Executive has only today published a consultation on the list of self-employed people who will continue to be covered by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. It is 60 pages long, so I have not been through it thoroughly, but it is beyond me how any self-employed joiner is expected to know whether they are involved in,

“construction work (within the meaning given in regulation 2(1) of the Construction (Design and Management) Regulation 2007)”.

The same is true of most others. It is a recipe for confusion and the only people who will benefit will be consultants and possibly undertakers.

The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health is also worried that this exemption could cause growth in bogus self-employment and poor health and safety standards—a problem highlighted so well by my noble friend Lady Donaghy’s report in 2009. The institution believes the current requirements for the self-employed are not onerous and make good business sense. Exemption would give the wrong message and may encourage the unscrupulous to gamble with people’s safety and health.

Turning to the other area, taxis and minicabs are not just for the well-off. At certain parts of the day they are the only form of public transport available. For elderly and disabled people taxis and minicabs are often their only option throughout the day. Safety organisations, police and crime commissioners, licensing officers, councils and industry bodies warn that the Government’s proposed reforms will have severe safety implications. People without a minicab licence will be allowed to drive one when it is “off duty”, threatening to put vulnerable passengers, such as women, at increased risk of rogue minicab drivers. Mandatory annual licence checks, which help councils ensure drivers are fit and proper, will end. Minicab operators will be allowed to subcontract bookings to firms in other areas, meaning that someone getting into a minicab cannot be sure it is from the firm they booked with. Ask a person with disabilities whether that is right.

The Government cannot rely completely on the Law Commission for this regulation. Its final report, published in May, recommended significant new enforcement powers and safeguards for local authorities in conjunction with these measures. As my noble friend Lord Stevenson said, local licensing officers do not have the powers to ensure these changes can be enforced safety.

Ministers in the other place said these measures work in London but Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police work together for on-street enforcement in the capital, which has significant problems with unlicensed operators. Between 200 and 250 cases of sexual assault concerning unlicensed minicabs are reported across London every year. It is conservatively estimated that five times that number go unreported. The recent protests we have seen outside the House over Uber and the questions it raises on the impact of new technologies on the trade underline why the Government’s piecemeal reforms will not work. We need to consider regulation and enforcement of the licensed taxi and private hire trades comprehensively. These piecemeal measures are wrong. Deregulation will have wider consequences, including for people with disabilities’ access to taxis and minicabs, and the production of black cabs, which is still an important part of the UK automotive sector.

The Government need to stop and listen. Listen to the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which campaigns for better personal safety and expressed concerns that enabling anyone to drive a licensed minicab will provide,

“greater opportunity for those intent on preying on women”.

Listen to the Local Government Association, which says that,

“it is imperative that the Government withdraws these plans”,

to ensure passenger safety. Listen to the group of 15 cross-party police and crime commissioners from across the United Kingdom who have written to the Government to oppose these measures. If Ministers continue to refuse to listen, I am confident from listening to the contributions in today’s debate that noble Lords across this House will stand up for the travelling public and refuse to endorse the Government’s rushed and risky proposals.

17:38

[The Earl of Lytton (CB)]

My Lords, I am afraid I have a fistful of declarations of interest to make, not only as a vice-president of the LGA, but as a landowner, a member of the CLA, a landlord, a practising chartered surveyor, chairman of the Rights of Way Review Committee and, of course, due to my involvement with parish and town councils. I am afraid I do not speak for any of those other interests.

Much of the Bill is welcome. Anything that calls itself deregulation is a start—in particular, I briefly point to the issues of dealing with short-term lets and the health and safety of self-employed trades—always provided it produces net reductions in burdens and does not just shift them around or create other problems in their wake. I am sure other noble Lords will relate to that.

I wish to follow the example of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, and refer to Clauses 21 to 27 on the matter of rights of way. I agree that they represent the essence of what the stakeholders working group agreed to. I particularly pay tribute to the way the disparate interests involved with that sought to find common ground. I think that should be applauded. However, it had quite a narrow remit, and many issues of current management and usage of the rights of way system remain unaddressed. I hope that the Minister will confirm that these remain in focus and that the Bill, when it has been ticked off, does not just become a means for ignoring the ongoing need to do something.

I think we all agree that the rights of way system in this country is a thing of glory and great value culturally, economically and socially. It more than merits better treatment, with an even-handed and objective approach as befits a national treasure. At present, it is deprived of resources, a primary cause of the delays in recording historic rights and of procuring necessary change along the way. This risks leaving many stakeholders inherently dissatisfied, if not irate, and the current day-to-day management and administration suffers.

Therefore, I hope that we will not settle the issue of unrecorded rights of way after 2026 only to open up, as we approach that date, some other area of contention that we have not thought of. The Bill deals with some aspects but not with others. I hope that the Minister can reassure me about the intentions for the rest, as I have said. I accept that the rights of way network is very large and often incoherent. Its statutory basis is complex and the coalition inherits a legacy of many past Administrations doing too little or nothing, with occasionally some expensive and ill-targeted legislation on the way.

I am a landowner within the Exmoor National Park. I know how useful it is to both users and landowners to have a focused, resourced and authoritative body such as a national park authority to deal with issues of network coherence and management. Such bodies have proved effective in defusing negativity and removing obstructive stances by just process, expertise and reasoned dialogue. We need more of that.

Therefore, the key to all this is resources for rights of way, which outside of national parks, as I have suggested, have been decimated. If that deepened voluntary dialogue between stakeholders, I would welcome that as a slightly back-handed compliment. The administrative machinery that underpins any necessary change is essential, and access to the countryside on urban fringes is no less important than access across rural broads or remote uplands or along the coast.

Despite the limited claims of the Bill, which I support, I hope that the Minister will confirm that the Government are apprised of the hugely beneficial opportunities offered by investment in a national rights of way system, not least its eventual rationalisation, making it fit for the 21st century and less of a bone of contention.

Child Abuse

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Statement

17:43

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach) (Con)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement made in the House of Commons earlier this afternoon by my right honourable friend Theresa May, the Home Secretary.

“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a Statement about the sexual abuse of children, allegations that evidence of the sexual abuse of children was suppressed by people in positions of power, and the Government’s intended response.

In my Statement today I want to address two important public concerns: first, that in the 1980s the Home Office failed to act on allegations of child sex abuse; and, secondly, that public bodies and other important institutions have failed to take seriously their duty of care towards children. As I do so, I want to set three important principles. First, we will do everything we can to allow the full investigation of child abuse and the prosecution of its perpetrators, and we will do nothing to jeopardise those aims. Secondly, where possible, the Government will adopt a presumption of maximum transparency. Thirdly, we will make sure that wherever individuals and institutions have failed to protect children from harm, we will expose these failures and learn the lessons.

Concern that the Home Office failed to act on allegations of child abuse in the 1980s relates mainly to information provided to the department by the late Geoffrey Dickens, a Member of this House between 1979 and 1995. As the House will be aware, in February 2013, in response to a Parliamentary Question from the honourable Member for West Bromwich East, the Permanent Secretary of the Home Office, Mark Sedwill, commissioned an investigation by an independent expert into information the Home Office received in relation to child abuse allegations, including information provided by Mr Dickens. In order to be confident that the investigation would review all relevant information, the investigation reviewed all relevant papers available relating to child abuse between 1979 and 1999.

The investigation reported last year and its executive summary was published on 1 August 2013. It concluded there was no single ‘Dickens Dossier’ but there had been letters from Mr Dickens to several Home Secretaries over several years that contained allegations of sexual offences against children. Copies of the letters had not been kept, but the investigator found evidence that the information Mr Dickens had provided had been considered and matters requiring investigation had been referred to the police.

In total, the investigator found 13 items of information about alleged child abuse. The police already knew about nine of those items, and the remaining four were passed by the Home Office to the police immediately. The investigation found that 114 potentially relevant files were not available. These are presumed—by the Home Office and the investigator—destroyed, missing or not found, although the investigator made clear that he found no evidence to suggest that the files had been removed or destroyed inappropriately. The investigation found no record of specific allegations by Mr Dickens of child sex abuse by prominent public figures.

Upon completion of the investigation, the Home Office passed the full text of its interim report and final report, along with accompanying information and material, to the police for them to consider as part of their ongoing criminal investigations. As Mark Sedwill has said, the investigator recorded that he had unrestricted access to Home Office records and he received full co-operation from Home Office officials. The investigator was satisfied that the Home Office passed all credible information about child abuse in the time period—from Mr Dickens and elsewhere—to the police so they could be investigated properly.

I believe that the Permanent Secretary did the right things in listening to the allegations made by the honourable Member for West Bromwich East and ordering an independent investigation. I am confident that the work he commissioned was carried out in good faith. But I know that, with allegations as serious as these, the public needs to have complete confidence in the integrity of the investigation’s findings.

So I can tell the House that I have today appointed Peter Wanless, the chief executive of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, to lead a review not just of the investigation commissioned by Mark Sedwill but also of how the police and prosecutors handled any related information that was handed to them. Peter Wanless will be supported in his work by an appropriate senior legal figure, who will be appointed by the Permanent Secretary. Where the findings of the review relate to the Director of Public Prosecutions, it will report to the Attorney-General as well as to me.

I will ask the review team to advise my officials on what redactions to the full investigation report might be needed in order that, in the interests of transparency, it can be published without jeopardising any future criminal investigations or trials. I expect the review to conclude within eight to 10 weeks, and I will place a copy of its terms of reference in the House Library today.

In addition to the allegations made by Geoffrey Dickens, there have also been allegations relating to an organisation called the Paedophile Information Exchange, a paedophile campaign group that was disbanded in 1984. In response to another query from the honourable Member for West Bromwich East, the Permanent Secretary commissioned another independent investigation in January this year into whether the Home Office had ever directly or indirectly funded PIE. That investigation concluded that the Home Office had not done so, and I will place a copy of the investigation’s findings in the House Library today. But, again, in order to ensure complete public confidence in this work, I have also asked Peter Wanless to look at this investigation as part of his review.

I now turn to public concern that a variety of public bodies and other important institutions have failed to take seriously their duty of care towards children. In recent years, we have seen appalling cases of organised and persistent child sex abuse. This includes abuse by celebrities, such as Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris, as well as the systematic abuse of vulnerable girls in Derby, Rochdale, Oxford, and other towns and cities. Some of these cases have exposed a failure by public bodies to take their duty of care seriously, and some have shown that the organisations responsible for protecting children from abuse, including the police, social services and schools have failed to work together properly.

That is why, in April 2013, the Government established the national group to tackle sexual violence against children and vulnerable people, which is led by my honourable friend the Minister for Crime Prevention. This cross-government group was established to learn the lessons from some of the cases that I have mentioned and the resulting reviews and inquiries. As a result of its work, we now have better guidance for the police and prosecutors, new powers for the police to get information from hotels that are used for child sexual exploitation, and better identification of children at risk of exploitation through the use of local multiagency safeguarding hubs. In the normal course of its work the group will publish further proposals to protect children from abuse.

I know that in recent months many Members of the House, from all parties, have campaigned for an independent, overarching inquiry into historical allegations of child abuse. In my correspondence with the seven Members of Parliament who wrote to me about the campaign—the honourable Members for Birmingham Yardley, Brighton Pavilion, East Worthing and Shoreham, Richmond Park, Rochdale, Wells, and West Bromwich East—I made clear that the Government did not rule out such an inquiry.

I can now tell the House that the Government will establish an independent inquiry panel of experts in the law and child protection to consider whether public bodies and other non-state institutions have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse. The inquiry panel will be chaired by an appropriately senior and experienced figure. It will begin its work as soon as possible after the appointment of the chairman and other members of the panel. Given the scope of its work, it is not likely to report before the general election, but I will make sure that it provides an update on its progress to Parliament before May next year. I will report back to the House when the inquiry panel chairman has been appointed and the full terms of reference have been agreed.

It will, like the inquiries into Hillsborough and the murder of Daniel Morgan, be a non-statutory panel inquiry. This means that it can begin its work sooner; and because the basis of its early work will be a review of documentary evidence rather than interviews with witnesses who might themselves still be subject to criminal investigations, it will be less likely to prejudice those investigations. But I want to be clear that the inquiry panel will have access to all the government papers, reviews and reports that it needs. Subject to the constraints imposed by any criminal investigations, it will be free to call witnesses from organisations in the public sector, private sector and wider civil society. I want to make it clear that if the inquiry panel chairman deems it necessary, the Government are prepared to convert it into a full public inquiry in line with the Inquiries Act.

I began my Statement by saying that I wanted to address the dual concern that in the past the Home Office failed to act on information it received and, more broadly, that public bodies and other institutions have failed to protect children from sexual abuse. I believe that the measures that I have announced today address those concerns. I also said that I wanted the work we are doing to reflect three principles: that our priority must be the prosecution of the people behind these disgusting crimes; that wherever possible and consistent with the need to prosecute, we will adopt a presumption of maximum transparency; and that where there has been a failure to protect children from abuse, we will expose it and learn from it. I believe that the measures announced today reflect those important principles, and I commend this Statement to the House”.

My Lords, that concludes the Statement.

17:57

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Home Secretary’s Statement, which we welcome. There is a lot at stake today. Child abuse, particularly child sexual abuse, is an abhorrent crime that devastates its victims. There has been mounting distress and revulsion at the avalanche of allegations, arrests, charges and convictions that we have seen to date. The clear evidence is that abused children have had their pleas for help and reports of crimes dismissed. The fact that no action was taken must be fully investigated. Even when the abuse is historic, the trauma continues into the future. The truth may be painful and distressing, but nothing less will do.

We have rightly been angered and we have demanded action when there has been evidence of abuse and potential cover-ups. That has now been brought to the Government. It is truly shocking, as the Minister said, that allegations are being made that the Home Office not only failed to investigate evidence that was brought to it, but that crucial documents were lost and others may have been destroyed. The Minister will, I am sure, understand the concerns already expressed of a deliberate attempt to cover up crimes and to protect perpetrators.

The 2013 review that has now come to light was clearly inadequate. It was not announced to Parliament and it was not revealed that more than 100 related files had gone missing. The Minister will recall from previous debates that we called for a much wider, overarching inquiry. Indeed, I raised this with Ministers in your Lordships’ House on both 6 November and 14 November 2012 in debates on child abuse. At that time Ministers rejected those calls, but today’s announcement is a step further towards that and we welcome it.

I would like some clarification on the new process, both of the review and of the inquiry panel. Both have to be thorough investigations. Peter Wanless is highly regarded and, alongside his personal integrity and expertise, he brings the reputation and trust of the NSPCC. Nothing matters more now than reaching the truth, because only through the truth can we achieve justice and support for victims and provide stronger and better child protection now and for the future. I want to ask the Minister a few questions. What legal expertise and support will be provided to Mr Wanless? He will no doubt want to talk to those who have been victims themselves, so will professional support be made available when he does so? There have been reports that police officers have felt unable to provide information as they had signed gagging clauses. Will the Wanless—the Minister calls it a review—inquiry be able to override any such clause where criminality is suspected? Will the inquiry be able to obtain information from individual civil servants, whether in work or retired, and from any government agency or its employees? What powers will the Wanless inquiry have to compel witnesses to provide evidence? Will it be given access to any and all papers, notes and minutes of meetings from government and government agencies? The inquiry cannot just be given the information that it asks for; it needs to have the freedom to investigate and to search for information that it might not yet know is available.

The Minister will understand the serious concerns regarding the apparent mystery of the disappearing Dickens file or files that were handed to the then Home Secretary. What records and notes were kept of those initial meetings? Was the 2013 review able to identify whether any investigation or action followed from those meetings? Can the Minister confirm whether the Home Secretary has been advised of the identities of the private office staff and senior civil servants who were aware of the documentation and asked to review its contents and whether they were involved in the 2013 review? Can he confirm that they will be asked to co-operate with the Wanless inquiry? Will that 2013 review—inadequate as I think it is recognised now that it was—be published? When were the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister told that the files were missing or destroyed? Finally, can the Minister confirm that there will be no hiding place from justice for those who have committed child sex abuse crimes or have been involved in destroying or hiding evidence? Will a further Statement be made on the terms and references of the inquiry panel once the appointments are in place? At this stage there are more questions than answers and I hope that the Minister will agree to keep Parliament informed as this process proceeds.

Action has to be taken to deal with the past, but equally important are the lessons that we learn for the future. The Minister will know our concerns about the Government’s changes to the vetting and barring system. The system is designed to protect children, but we believe that the Government have weakened it. Is he aware that the number of people barred from working with children as a result of committing sexual offences against children has fallen by 75% in the past three years? Can the Minister assure me that the Government will, in the light of increasing evidence that perpetrators of child sex abuse have evaded justice for many years, reconsider the changes that they have made to this legislation?

We welcome the two investigations. I hope that, given the importance of the issues, the Minster will be able to answer my questions today, but if he is unable to do so I hope that he can write with answers to those specific points.

18:03

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her comments and indeed her support. I suspect that the whole House will be pleased to have heard the Statement made by the Home Secretary today and will recognise that it is a determined attempt to find out what lies at the bottom of the issues that the inquiries and the reviews will be addressing. I hope that noble Lords will be reassured by the comments in the Statement about the review made almost immediately on the Permanent Secretary’s arrival in the Home Office.

I disagree with the noble Baroness. I do not think that the review was inadequate. It was a very important inquiry. It has shown us some truths about where we are within the Home Office on that issue. It has also given us encouragement to set up a further review that goes across all the reviews across government. Perhaps I should concentrate on the questions that the noble Baroness asked me in that regard. She asked whether Peter Wanless—he is a superb choice for the job and I am very pleased that he has agreed to take it on—will have professional support. He will have high-quality legal support in the work that he is given. He will have a team that will enable him to get to the bottom of this. This is not going to be a half-baked job. It is going to be a thorough job delivering within eight to 10 weeks, we hope, a review of the situation.

As I said in the Statement, there will be total access to Home Office papers and staff and to government agencies to enable Peter Wanless to get a thorough view of the situation. It is not the inquiry; it is a review of where we are and what we know already. The inquiry is another thing, which I will perhaps come on to. As I said, we will be able to see all documents. The terms of reference will be placed in the House Library so that noble Lords can see them.

I think that it is important to see the Wanless review in connection with the inquiry, which is a much more far-reaching affair, designed to discover the extent to which government and non-government departments, the police and other authorities have failed in their task of protecting children and why this has happened. I hope that the noble Baroness will understand that that may well be a much longer process, but there is a commitment to come back to this House before the election with a Statement as to where we are on that issue. The noble Baroness will know that I will always co-operate in trying to provide information to the House on any subject of this nature. I have not been able to answer some of the inquiries that the noble Baroness made, but I am very happy to do so and will make sure that a copy of the answers is placed in the Library for other noble Lords to see.

18:07

[Lord Fowler (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will welcome the reviews, not least because, I suspect, questions on the destruction of files go much wider than the Home Office. My experience of three government departments is that Ministers are never consulted in or out of office on such destruction. My suspicion is that decisions on destruction are taken at a fairly junior level and that at times the whole system can be fairly chaotic. May I ask my noble friend whether one of the aims will be to ensure that we have a system that is fit for purpose and applies to all departments in Whitehall and where decisions on destruction are taken at an appropriately senior level?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I agree with my noble friend. I know that he speaks from considerable experience of government in this respect. There are in fact guidelines in place. New guidelines were brought in in the late 1990s to deal with the destruction of files. I imagine that one of the outcomes of all this business will be to determine how come 114 files are missing. At this stage we do not know whether the files are significant. Mark Sedwill was of the view that they were not. I think that the House would be entitled to ask what the titles of the files were. We do not know what they were. My noble friend is quite right to draw attention to the fact that we will learn lessons here that could well be important in other aspects of government. Tragic and uncalled-for events teach us lessons about how we deal with things in the future. I hope that we learn from this episode.

[The Lord Bishop of Truro]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement. The church is keen to be involved in any such overarching inquiry. A question was asked in the other place about whether the church is involved in this matter. Is the Minister aware that my friend the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury wrote to the Home Secretary some weeks ago asking for an inquiry such as this? The church is very willing to be involved. In a situation such as this—in which, inevitably and sadly, people involved in various authorities at a high level would be related to other authorities and institutions—it is crucial that such an inquiry is allowed to go wherever it needs to go. The church and other organisations and institutions should explicitly be involved in this matter. Perhaps I may add as chairman of the Children’s Society that we would be keen to stress that the voice of children and young people should be always in the centre of one’s thoughts on any matters such as this. If any matters come to light through this inquiry that need to be directed to the police, that will, one hopes, happen and they will be dealt with swiftly and decisively.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I pay tribute to the role of the church in the care of children. I am sure that the Home Secretary will note the offer of involvement in the review and these inquiries. I am delighted that the right reverend Prelate has raised this issue. The involvement of church activists in the national group to tackle sexual violence against children and vulnerable people is an important start.

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, by far the most harrowing constituency surgery meetings I ever attended were those where representations were received from victims of historic child abuse. People were haunted by that abuse 40 or 50 years later. One of the most difficult days I had as First Minister of Scotland was when I had to issue from the Chamber of the Scottish Parliament a formal apology to those victims on behalf of the Government and people of Scotland. However, there is still no independent inquiry into historic child abuse in Scotland. I warmly welcome what the Government have announced today which, I presume, at this stage covers England and Wales. Victims and perpetrators will have crossed borders over the past decades. What discussions could take place to ensure that any review at this stage or future inquiry will cover those victims and perpetrators across the whole UK?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

We know that these are devolved matters in some areas. As the former leader of the Scottish Parliament, the noble Lord will know that Scotland is affected as much of the United Kingdom has been by these matters. We have inquiries going on in Northern Ireland and north Wales. In so far as it is not a devolved matter, the inquiry will indeed embrace the entire United Kingdom, but it is about England initially. However, I am sure that we can all learn from each other’s experiences. If there is a willingness to accept, across the United Kingdom, that information should be exchanged between the Governments and Assemblies in other parts of the United Kingdom and the inquiry, I am sure that that will be made clear.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, that I have received a comment about gagging and whether people will be prevented because they have signed a commitment not to talk about matters. I make it clear that this is to be a wide-ranging review. It will have access to all papers and reports, as I have said, and, subject to the constraints of criminal investigations, it will be free to call witnesses. We have made it clear that if the inquiry panel deems it necessary, the Government are prepared to convert it into a free inquiry. It will have considerable powers.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the Statement, particularly the independent inquiry. Indeed, I added my voice to those who were calling for such an inquiry during my debate in your Lordships’ House on 26 June.

There is no reason why such an inquiry should in any way interfere with the work of the police as long as the panel has available to it people from the police and the prosecuting authorities who know what is going on and which inquiries are actually under way. I ask my noble friend whether such people with up-to-date knowledge of what is being looked into and may be looked into in the future will be attached to the panel so that it can avoid straying into areas that might prevent perpetrators being prosecuted in the future. That is very important.

I ask my friend whether the inquiry will focus more on learning lessons than pointing fingers. It is the role of the police and the prosecuting authorities to point fingers and to bring perpetrators to justice, but they are not in the position, as the panel will be, to learn overall lessons. I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, said about victims. They need to be at the heart of this. We need to be sure that they can be heard and will have support in order to be heard.

Finally, what will be the scope of the recommendations that the panel will be able to make? Clearly, it will be making recommendations on changes of practice. Will it also be able to make recommendations on changes in legislation? What will be the procedure for the Government to respond to those recommendations in the fullness of time?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I will start on that final point. There will be no limit on what the inquiry will be able to tell us all about what it finds. That is the whole point of it. My noble friend assumed too much when she said that it would not be pointing fingers. I think it will point fingers, and it should do so if it feels that areas of government have failed, either now or in the past. The panel needs to be able to tell us that, and it is right and proper that it should do so.

Of course it is important that people who have been subjected to child abuse feel that this inquiry is about what has happened to them. However, the principal thing that I would urge them to do is to go and tell the police what has happened to them. It is for the police to bring justice to these incidents. We are trying here to learn the mechanisms whereby we can have that framework and whether that is possible or easy to do.

My noble friend asked about the constitution of the panel. I cannot give information on that. No doubt the panel will be constructed to provide the right sort of expertise. We do not want the panel to be so inhibited by the situation regarding criminal prosecutions that it fails to do its work properly. It will have a proper legal basis for making inquiries so that prosecutions, if necessary, can follow from what it discovers.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the two inquiries that the Home Secretary has announced are of course welcome. Does the Minister recognise that an eight-week review into an existing review into whether the Home Office handled things properly and a more wide-ranging inquiry into whether public and other bodies have carried out their duty of care will not address the central, corrosive concern that is all over today’s newspapers, which is that it is not just about celebrities who have managed to get away with child abuse over many decades, but about people in power—Members of your Lordships’ House, Members of the other place and former Members of the other place? How will these processes address and restore the confidence that people in power are not being allowed to get away with things?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The inquiry will be entirely independent and able to make whatever recommendations it makes without fear or favour. I would not be supportive, and I do not think this House would be, of anything that smacked of a cover up. This is about finding the truth and making the truth evident. If people have done wrong in the past, that will be revealed by the inquiry. The review is designed to check that all aspects of the review conducted by Mark Sedwill, in the first instance, and the review into the Paedophile Information Exchange were properly conducted and whether there were any failures in the Home Office. I should say that the inquiry that Mark Sedwill set up found no evidence of wrongdoing by prominent figures. However, that is not to say that it will not be discovered; that is a matter for the inquiry to find out when it comes to it.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Does my noble friend accept that he has had huge support from every side of the House for what is a really important decision by the Home Secretary? Does he also accept that the whole House would want to thank Mr Wanless for taking on what will be an extremely unpleasant job? That is true of anyone who is going to take part in the inquiry and we ought to appreciate that. I hope he will also accept that anyone with information of any kind is duty bound to give that information in whichever of these arrangements is appropriate. Does he further accept that those without information are also duty bound not to talk to the public in ways which suggest that they seem to have, or pretend to have, or sometimes claim to have information which they do not have? The issue here is too serious for it to be a matter of innuendo. This is a matter of finding the truth. Those who have information should give it; those who do not should shut up.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I agree with that, but I think we are right to have embarked on this difficult exercise. I think nothing less would satisfy public opinion. We need to get to the bottom of what is going on. We need to be satisfied in ourselves that we have done all we can do to make sure that child abuse does not flourish in any institutions with which we are associated. I agree totally with what my noble friend has just said, but I think the Home Secretary has provided us with the opportunity to get to the bottom of it all.

[Lord Warner (Lab)]

My Lords, although I welcome this inquiry, I ask the Minister to take back to the Home Office the issue of children’s homes. I carried out an inquiry for the noble Baroness, Lady Bottomley, when she was Health Secretary. Children’s homes have often been a pivotal point for vulnerable children being exploited by people in authority and power. The inquiry will be a good opportunity to explore this area very seriously as we know from previous inquiries that this has been a source of children who can be abused. We need to make sure that things are improving and are now a lot better than they were in the 1980s and early 1990s.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am sure that this matter will be considered by the inquiry. I have no doubt that one of the most unpleasant things about child abuse is that it is often the most vulnerable who are subjected to it.

[Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)]

My Lords, I too welcome this Statement by the Home Secretary and thank the Minister for repeating it here. One of the names mentioned regularly in the press in recent days is that of the late Cyril Smith MP. Can I assure the Minister that no complaint—or even rumour—of misbehaviour on his part when a Member of the House of Commons ever reached the Liberal Party? If, indeed, he was one of those named in the 1980s by Geoffrey Dickens MP, I find it odd that he never relayed that information to the Liberal Party. However, what is important is that the short, sharp Wanless review must reassure the public that, if politicians were guilty of molesting children, they will be revealed just like anybody else and there will be no cover up.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I obviously will not talk about any individual cases and I hope that noble Lords will understand why I will not do so. The whole point of the exercise is that there should be no hiding place.

[Lord Clinton-Davis (Lab)]

If any doubt affecting complete public confidence arises in the future, will Parliament be informed immediately? That is most important.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I think I can take it from the sentiments of the House and from the support that the Home Secretary’s Statement received in this House that if I felt the House needed to be informed I would not hesitate to seek the opportunity to do so.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I speak as leader of a local authority which has premises which have been the continuing subject of police investigations, with which, obviously, the authority is co-operating and has co-operated. I welcome the Statement and agree with many of the things that have been said in this House. Fundamentally, my noble friend has said that the police investigations will not be prejudiced. At one point he said that they were less likely to be prejudiced. Can we be assured that the investigations in train will not lack for resources at any point and will not be suspended and will be pursued relentlessly in every case where they are currently underway? People want to see perpetrators brought to justice.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I agree with my noble friend in those comments.

Deregulation Bill

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Second Reading (Continued)

18:28

[Lord Brabazon of Tara (Con)]

My Lords, returning to the Deregulation Bill, I dare say that not every noble Lord will wish to hear my speech. I do not blame them. I will leave a moment or two for the House to settle down.

This Bill has been described by the Minister as a wide-ranging measure. Other noble Lords have described it as a Christmas tree. I have heard most of the speeches on the Bill so far and they have ranged over a very large number of topics. However, there is one little gem hidden away in the Bill on page 203—out of 204 pages. Paragraph 40 of Schedule 20 states:

“Omit section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996”.

I had the honour to chair the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which reported a year or so ago. One of our recommendations in paragraph 170 was,

“the repeal of section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996. The anomalies it creates are more damaging than the mischief it was intended to cure. There is no persuasive argument for granting either House a power of waiver or for restricting such a power to defamation cases alone. A wider power of waiver would create uncertainty, and have the potential to undermine the fundamental constitutional principle of freedom of speech in Parliament”.

The Government told us:

“There are clearly problems with Section 13 of the Defamation Act. It is at odds with the principle that freedom of speech is a privilege of the House, not just individual members and it can create an imbalance where one party to proceedings can choose to use the parliamentary record but the other cannot”.

The Government went on to say:

“However, the Government is not aware of any instances in which anyone has used the power of waiver and as such it would not appear to be a pressing priority to repeal Section 13”.

However, I am very pleased that three of my Commons colleagues managed to table an amendment to put this into the Bill. It was accepted—indeed, I think the Government added their name to it—and is therefore now in the Bill.

I do not suppose that a great number of your Lordships have actually got as far as paragraph 40 of Schedule 20—perhaps I should not say that—although I did hear that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, at least got to the preceding paragraph about dog collars, so he must have jolly nearly got there anyway, on which I congratulate him.

Anyway, the amendment was successful and is now part of the Bill. I congratulate the Government on that and I hope the Bill will get a smooth passage through its remaining stages.

18:31

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

My Lords, this is even more of a pot pourri of a Bill than the previous regulatory Bill in which I participated in your Lordships’ House. However, there are some continuing themes concerning equalities, a lack of thought about people who need to be considered because of their vulnerabilities, and the fact that regulation is often the way in which public bodies and businesses ensure that protection and fairness.

I will be speaking about three matters. Clauses 83 to 86 concern regulators having regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth. Clause 2 concerns tribunals’ power to make wider recommendations in discrimination cases—I think we have been here before. I will be looking at Clauses 10 to 12, as other noble Lords have, concerning the safety of vulnerable groups in the taxi licensing regime; I will not stray into the detail of licensing. Finally, I wish to speak about clauses that are not yet in the Bill but which I hope the Government might bring forward in their own amendments, which would assist the growth and development of co-operative schools.

I will speak about co-operative schools first. Given that the Bill is supposed to be about removing barriers and creating a level playing field for enterprises, and that this Government are to be commended for their support for co-operatives and mutuals, I suggest that this matter is absolutely at the heart of that support. I am aware that the Government have been holding discussions about amendments on this matter and I hope that we might see a positive outcome.

The matter concerns adding two additional clauses to the Bill. The first would remove a clause from the Education and Inspections Act 2006 which is a barrier to enabling nursery schools to become full members of trusts—or, indeed, academies. This would help to provide a vehicle for parental and family engagement in early years. The second would amend the School Organisation (Requirements as to Foundations) (England) Regulations 2007, to ensure that schools are able to establish themselves as industrial and provident societies, should it be desirable, and bringing co-operative schools in line with other types of co-operative organisations.

Despite an all-party commitment to co-operatives and mutuals in the public sector, co-operative schools have had to work around existing legislation because no provision is made in the relevant Education Acts for schools to be established as industrial and provident societies as currently defined in the 1965 Act. My proposed new clause seeks to amend this and ensure that any future legislation provides a level playing field and a more understandable legal framework. I hope the Minister will agree that these new clauses would be a good addition to his Bill.

Clauses 83 provides that while exercising their regulatory function, regulators must,

“have regard to the desirability of promoting economic growth”,

and must,

“in particular, consider the importance for the promotion of economic growth”,

of ensuring that any regulatory action they take is necessary and proportionate. At Second Reading, Oliver Letwin, the Minister for Government Policy, described this as,

“probably the single most important clause in the Bill”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/14; col. 37.]

We need to pay it particular attention, I suggest. Clause 84 would enable a Minister to specify in a statutory instrument which regulatory functions would be subject to this duty; in some cases it might not apply to all the regulator’s functions. Clause 85 would give power for a Minister to issue guidance on how,

“regulatory functions may be exercised so as to promote economic growth”,

and how regulators subject to the duty could demonstrate that they were complying with it. Regulators subject to the economic growth duty would have a duty to regard any guidance. We saw the draft guidance an hour or so before the debate started, and I will return to that in a moment.

I understand that the background to these provisions is the post-implementation review of the Regulators’ Compliance Code, and the independent report of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, No Stone Unturned in Pursuit of Growth, which recommended that the Government should impose such an obligation on regulators,

“to take proper account of the economic consequences of their actions”.

The Government ran a consultation on this in 2013, which maintained that a growth duty would,

“enable regulators to respond more comprehensively to the challenge of stripping back burdens to the minimum necessary and proactively supporting growth”.

The Government stated that,

“the duty needs to be imposed via primary legislation to provide the legal foundation needed”.

On these Benches, we share the concerns that have been expressed by the Joint Committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Rooker, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which have consistently expressed concerns about the implications of applying the economic growth duty to the EHRC. The Joint Committee believed that the duty in Clause 85 to have regard to ministerial guidance,

“raises serious questions about the EHRC’s independence”,

because of the implications of the proposed growth duty for the UK’s compliance with the United Nations’ Paris principles if the duty applies to national human rights institutions such as the EHRC. They are supposed to be independent organisations which decide which human rights and equalities issues to address. The Joint Committee on Human Rights said:

“Applying the economic growth duty to the EHRC poses a significant risk to the EHRC’s independence”,

and that this should not be pursued in the way that the Government are doing.

The chair of the EHRC, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, was asked whether applying the growth duty to the EHRC might undermine the Paris principles on the independence of the commission. She said:

“We have tended to agree with this Committee that, prima facie, it would indeed threaten the A-status”,

of the EHRC as an international equality and human rights body. She continued:

“Therefore, it would be proposed that we come under the duty with respect to very specific functions. The debate between us and government at this stage is over how specific it would have to be and whether it is worth the candle when you get to that degree of specificity”.

I think she is probably correct.

I looked at the draft guidance that we received before the debate to see if I could find some comfort from it. Actually, I think it created more smoke than elucidation. What we have to do in Committee—as I intend to—is consider what might happen were this duty to be applied under particular circumstances. So we need to look at, for example, maternity leave where companies have been found wanting and the cost of putting that right, and whether that could be balanced against the economic growth duty.

I will be seeking, as I think other noble Lords will, to look at the proposal to remove the power of employment tribunals under the Equality Act to make wider recommendations in discrimination cases. This is an important power. It is not one that we should throw away. Most companies, when they lose, apply the tribunal’s recommendations to all their employees, but not all do. Surely those employees deserve the same protection as others, so we will be seeking to remove that from the Bill. We will also be asking the Government what the evidence is that this needs to be done because we do not think that the evidence is there any more than it was the first time the Government tried to do this.

Finally, on taxi licensing, we oppose the Government’s proposal to reform taxi minicab law because it will put passengers at risk. My honourable friends in the Commons opposed this when it was inserted late in the Committee stage. We believe that these targets to cut red tape are rushed and risky, poorly drafted and badly consulted on. Where they have been consulted on, safety organisations, the police and industry bodies are warning that the Government’s proposed reforms could have very severe safety implications. These include the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which campaigns for better personal safety and has raised concerns that enabling anyone to drive a licensed minicab will provide greater opportunities for those who are intent on preying on women.

18:40

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, I praise the golden words to be found in paragraph 40 of Schedule 20 to the Bill:

“Omit section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996 (which allows an individual litigant in defamation cases to waive the ban in Article IX of the Bill of Rights on proceedings in Parliament being impeached or questioned in court)”.

As the noble Lord said, this was the view of the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege, which he chaired so ably. We are very much indebted to the members of that committee in another place who pushed this matter forward so skilfully, but it was the view not only of our committee, but of the committee chaired by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, in 1999. What it does is effectively to resolve the ambiguities created by the Neil Hamilton case of 1996. We are indebted to the Government for finally grasping this nettle and I offer my support to this part of the Bill.

However I register a caveat. In the debate occasioned by the Second Reading of the proposed legislation of the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, on this topic on 27 June, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, made an important point. I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lester, who has played a major role in bringing about the change envisaged in the Bill. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, made a point that must be reflected on, even by those who are extremely enthusiastically in favour of this change, when he said that,

“the question is whether it is right that a Member of Parliament can be defamed by people in respect of something that he or she has said or done in Parliament and that, if that happens, he or she has no remedy”.—[Official Report, 27/6/2014; col. 1522.]

There is a problem here. In my view, the balance is right. The principle of parliamentary privilege cannot be, as it were, individualised. That was the problem with the situation we had from 1996 to the present. It must be placed at the level of Parliament as a whole if it is to be understood and respected by the public. None the less, a difficulty is created. I draw the parties’ attention to the duty of care that they will have, particularly to new Members, in the next Parliament. It is related also to another piece of legislation, which is in the Queen’s Speech, for recall. In both these cases, if they get it wrong the consequences for a new MP could be really dramatic. That is the way we are going.

There is a sense that Parliament understands that the public expects higher standards from Members of Parliament than they do from other public servants and Parliament is trying, through these measures, to address public concerns about honesty in our public life. The impulse that is leading Parliament to act in this way is entirely reasonable, but it does mean that Parliament has a duty to ensure that new Members understand the ways in which legislation is changing. There are vulnerabilities now that did not exist in the past and prices to be paid if we get these things wrong.

It is perfectly reasonable to argue that IPSA has effectively resolved the issue of expenses—that the recent issues have been historical ones that go back to before the time of the new IPSA regime. However, anybody who believes that issues around lobbying, or even cash for questions, have disappeared and are issues of the 1990s simply has not been reading the newspapers in the past three or four years. Therefore, it is all the more important that the induction programme for new MPs should help with these questions.

At the beginning of the previous Parliament, the Hansard Society put on an induction programme that was poorly attended. The ethics section was particularly poorly attended. The parties must have a major role here. They should encourage new Members in the new Parliament, explain where public opinion is and explain the ways in which legislation is changing. They should also explain, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, pointed out on Friday 27 June in this Chamber, that Members now have a vulnerability they did not have before: they do not have the protection that they previously had over what they say in the Chamber. These are important matters and it is the responsibility of Parliament, and particularly the responsibility of the parties, to take them on board.

I welcome this new legislation. It is absolutely correct in principle but there is a caveat: there is a responsibility on the political parties that are pushing the legislation through to make sure that newly elected Members know exactly where they stand and where the law now stands. It is not, in this matter, where it has stood since 1996.

18:46

[Lord Davies of Oldham (Lab)]

My Lords, I speak from the Back Benches because we have two excellent Front-Benchers who are concerned with the Bill. I find that my usual blissful state of either opening on legislation or winding up has now been reduced to a middle position in the debate, where everything I want to say has already been said and, if I make a mistake, there are enough people behind me to call me out. So it is with a degree of nervousness that I make a few short comments on the Bill.

We have serious reservations about the three main transport areas of the Bill. Those concerned with the regulation of taxis and minicabs, particularly the deregulation of minicabs, which my noble friend Lady Thornton identified a moment ago, raise serious risks for the public. We should recognise that people, particularly women, book minicabs for the security of the service being offered. That is being blown apart by the Bill. The cab firm could pass on the telephone call and engage another company. The person who has booked the cab will not have that surety, and it has the potential to let rogue drivers exploit the looseness in the Bill. There have been a few examples in recent years of dreadful things being carried out in cabs.

The Bill needs to be amended in that area. We should recognise that the black cab trade is worried about this situation. It is always worried about minicab competition and so it should be—minicab competition has the right to present a challenge—but we know that new technology, such as the Uber technology that is a source of great concern at present, is creating a situation whereby anybody can call a minicab at any time and minicabs will not suffer from the restrictions forced on them in the past. The black cab trade is central to safe, secure and proper transport in some of our cities, particularly London, and is admired all over the world, in all the world’s great cities. We should take threats to that seriously.

The second area we are concerned about is the banning of CCTV for parking enforcement. I have great sympathy with the Government in seeking to tackle a problem whereby the citizen receives a fine through the post, not having been aware that a charge has been laid, to which they have to make immediate return. We do not seem to have tackled this issue thoroughly or properly. On 10 June, the Government said that they had not reached a decision; on 17 June an amendment was made to the Bill in another place and was immediately translated into the Bill by a government majority.

There are real risks to road safety. There are risks at schools. There are risks in bus lanes, where drivers will chance it if they think they will not be surveyed. There are risks at bus stops. There are risks at yellow boxes on junctions. They are a good idea and have eased congestion, but a good idea is destroyed if one driver chances it and sits in that box and blocks the traffic. If the Government are open to persuasion that there should be exemptions to ending closed circuit TV prosecutions in these areas, those exemptions should be in the Bill and we will seek to achieve that.

The measure in the Bill on maritime accident investigation seems to us a miserable and mean little gesture on the part of the Government. The House will know that the most significant case in recent years involved the MV “Derbyshire”, which was lost in the South China Sea a few years ago with everybody on board—all 42 crew and two wives travelling—lost. There was always the suggestion, while nothing could be proved, that somebody had blundered and that the accident had occurred because seamanship was deficient. When the wreck was eventually identified, it became clear that the circumstances in which the vessel went down were nothing to do with error on the part of the crew or with their seamanship. The case was reopened thanks to great efforts by my noble friend Lord Prescott, who was Minister at the time and who had a long history with the seamen, and great pressure from the National Union of Seamen, which, together with international forces that came in to help, funded a great deal of the investigation. It is now suggested in the Bill that the Secretary of State should not be bothered to reopen such investigations except in specific circumstances.

Sea accidents are such that we should treat them with the greatest seriousness. We surely cannot have a Bill in which they are taken lightly. My noble friend Lord Rooker, in his excellent speech, identified this issue as one that did not add to the quality of the Bill. At least I have kept to time.

18:53

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury (Con)]

My Lords, I was very pleased that, in introducing the Bill, the Minister reminded us that one of its main purposes was to create jobs and enterprise. That was echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who hoped that the Bill would stimulate the economy. My noble friend Lord Fowler told us quite rightly that it was important that restrictions and regulations that were brought in some time ago to meet the circumstances of the time should be looked at again, as the world has changed. That brings me neatly to the one point that I want to make today, which is about Sunday trading.

It is now 20 years since the Sunday Trading Act became law and, of course, the world has changed considerably since then. Sundays are now a huge family day, with great sporting events—people go to football in a way that never happened on such a scale previously—concerts and cultural activities. It is a fantastic opportunity for families to get together. The Government recognised this two years ago during the Olympics. They recognised that, in the new world, the current restrictions were not appropriate, so they relaxed the Sunday trading laws for eight consecutive weekends. They knew that people and their families wanted to shop at a time of their choosing and not at a time laid down by officialdom and red tape.

Sunday trading was mentioned in passing by the noble Lord, Lord Monks, who is not in his place. I say to him that there has been one other major development in today’s world, which is the number of people who work right through the week on different days and at strange hours. They do so because they want to meet the needs of their customers. In particular, there are those in the public sector, the public servants on whom we all rely, who have to provide 24/7 service to their customers, patients and so on. Should not those public servants be on the receiving end of similar flexibility on a Sunday as well?

There has been another change since the Act came in 20 years ago, which is 24-hour online shopping. I think that younger people find the idea very quaint that people should not be allowed to shop between certain hours on a Sunday.

Under the current law, shops of more than 3,000 square feet can open only for restricted hours on a Sunday. Smaller shops do not have restricted hours. As a result, the big supermarket chains have been opening their own small stores of less than 3,000 square feet and then charging in them significantly more than in their larger supermarkets. Surveys show that, in some of these supermarket “mini” or “local” stores, prices are on average 10% higher. Customers rightly see that as something of a rip-off.

[Lord Rooker]

The noble Lord gives an excellent example. About six months ago, I did a shopping survey in the town where I live, Ludlow. I bought identical products in One Stop, which does not label itself as Tesco but is wholly owned by it, and in the Tesco supermarket in the town. All the products went to the food bank afterwards. The noble Lord is absolutely right: there is a 10% difference in price. A small store can open from 6 am to 11 pm because it is not governed by the Sunday trading laws, but there is definitely a premium to be paid in those small stores owned by the supermarkets.

[Lord Sherbourne of Didsbury]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that comment, which is reinforced by surveys that show exactly the same thing: prices are on average 10% higher. That is a rip-off in my view.

An anomaly in the current law is the way in which garden centres have been caught up in these restrictions—I do not think that that was ever the intention—because their products are spread over a larger area than 3,000 square feet. Garden centres are a big part of family outings.

I am not asking the Minister for much. This is a very large Bill, with more than 200 pages, so I am sure that it would not be impossible for him to add perhaps one extra page.

19:05

[Lord Hussain (LD)]

My Lords, I want to address the provisions relating to taxis and private hire vehicles. We choose to use taxi operators that we trust. If I ask my children to use a taxi at an odd time, I tell them which taxi rank to use, because that is the one that I have confidence in and which I trust. The proposal to allow taxis to subcontract to other operators will mean that it will not be possible for anybody to have their choice. We are going to take the choice away from people about which operator they want to use. We change operators from time to time when we are not satisfied with a particular company, but if this Bill is approved, we will have no control over who will come. It may well be a company that you have left because you were not satisfied with it. If you ring company A, company B may turn up, and you may not necessarily want to use it. Therefore, we need to think again about this particular aspect of the Bill allowing subcontracting to other firms.

Regarding the provision allowing a driver without a PHV licence to drive a licensed PHV when it is not being used for private hire, I know many people in the taxi trade. Many of my family are in the trade and I know that by allowing taxis to be used by others, some of them may benefit. In some cases, spouses may want to use the car when it is not being used for taxiing purposes, but they cannot at the moment because the law does not allow them to do so. In that case, it would be helpful to allow other family members to use those vehicles for other purposes—for family purposes—when they are off duty.

However, I have been strongly lobbied by many companies and unions, particularly Unite, GMB and RMT, which have put some valid points forward. There is a higher risk that those cars could be used as taxis by rogue drivers. They could be made available to those who are not necessarily taxi drivers and have not taken their tests. By allowing this to happen, we could compromise public safety. However, it may well help if we allowed named drivers to use those vehicles instead of any driver. In that case, at least we would know that the people who use those vehicles will be known to family members. Therefore, I hope that the Minister will give some consideration to this and perhaps have named drivers, instead of any person, driving those vehicles when they are not being used for taxiing purposes.

19:04

[Baroness Turner of Camden (Lab)]

My Lords, this is an extraordinary Bill, covering almost every aspect of life. I shall concentrate on aspects of particular concern to me. Others have done the same and I am interested to hear what they say. Why do we have regulation? Surely it is because we live in a competitive environment and need to protect the interests of others who would otherwise risk being damaged. If we change the regulations, we have to be very careful that in so doing we do not damage other people who would otherwise be vulnerable.

As we know, the Bill begins with a clause on health and safety at work. It proposes to include a general duty on the self-employed to others involved in the undertaking, but not particularly to employees. There is a reference to the construction industry, in which quite a number of self-employed people are involved, but I am more concerned about the general duty to employees as a whole. In the last Session, the Government introduced a change to the legislation, making it more difficult for employees to sue for compensation in the event of injury—or even death—at work. In this House, we opposed that change, but the Government defeated our amendment in the House of Commons. What is proposed in this Bill does not assist ordinary employees very much, although it may be relevant to self-employment, but in Committee we will have to return once again to the issue of ordinary employees who are still at risk, as far as certain undertakings are concerned.

We then have a reference to employment tribunals: a change to the Equality Act so that a tribunal will not be able to make recommendations wider than the actual case under decision. Like other noble Lords, I do not see why this is necessary. No reason at all has been given for this change and it should be opposed in Committee. I certainly intend to do so.

Clauses 3 and 4 relate to English apprenticeships. It is said that the funding proposals will encourage individuals to do approved English apprenticeships or to work afterwards. I hope that this is so and that there are arrangements for suitable funding. This is extremely important. It is an aspect that, again, we should look at in more detail when it is before us in Committee.

There is then a list of recommendations dealing with taxis and private car hire. As someone who uses car hire frequently because of disability, I am interested in ensuring that the drivers are safe and mostly good in their driving—and they seem to be. Driving in London is crowded and often expensive and the Bill will obviously make no difference to that, but is it really a good idea to allow people who are not licensed to drive private hire cars? I do not think so and neither do a number of noble Lords who have already spoken in the debate. It was noted that women could be at risk, particularly going home late at night. I hope that this is something that shall look at with great scrutiny in Committee.

The Bill refers to housing, in particular what is known as the right to buy. A clause reduces the qualifying period for people who wish to buy their social housing from five to three years. There is no doubt that this provision was popular with many people, who were thus able to acquire property that they would not have been able to afford on the private market. However, many of us were critical at the time, because no replacement was made of the social housing that disappeared as a result of the right to buy. It therefore does not seem right in the present circumstances to make it easier for people to buy local authority housing when there is still such a shortage of social housing. I think that everybody agrees that there is a terrible shortage of social housing and there should be concentration on that.

As far as the final schedule, Schedule 20, is concerned, there is a set of proposals for legislation to be removed. It is proposed that legislation that is no longer of practical use should be removed. That includes legislation on formerly nationalised industries that have been privatised. Obviously, legislation is no longer required for such industries, especially ones such as mining and steel.

There was a TV programme recently, “Benefits Britain”, dealing with areas where, once, steel provided employment for the whole community—no longer. The people were feeling hopeless, left without employment. The Bill has nothing to say about that. There is a reference earlier in the Bill to a sustainable community strategy to be undertaken by local authorities, but the Bill does not recommend that that should continue. It is clearly necessary that there should be some development to provide alternative work in areas that have been rendered into that situation, providing no employment and no support for the local people.

There are a number of other issues in the Bill to which I shall not refer because many noble Lords have dealt with them this afternoon. It is clear that a number of issues are matters for further scrutiny and could be rendered more acceptable to some of us if they were amended. We will pursue that when the Bill is before us in Committee.

19:11

[Lord Grade of Yarmouth (Con)]

My Lords, by my calculation, I am the 25th cab on the rank today—licensed or unlicensed, I am not sure.

The Bill is indeed a weighty tome, a very heavy volume. In a previous life, I might have been tempted to put it on one side and wait for the film, but even if it is made at Pinewood, I do not think that would be appropriate.

I should like to refer to two or three matters. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, referred to Clause 34, about short-term use of London accommodation. This being a deregulation Bill, that caught my eye because I was trying to understand why London was separate from the rest of the country in respect of legislation of this kind, whether this was regulation or deregulation, and whether there are homogeneous rules across all London boroughs. That is a source of great confusion to me in a deregulation Bill. It would be very interesting to know, at a time when housing is in such short supply, particularly in Greater London, whether there is cause for reregulation of some kind and why we cannot just be consistent with the rest of the home nations.

The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, with whom I have had many an agreeable conversation over the years on matters of broadcasting, raised the issue of Section 73 of the Copyright Act 1988. That is not in the Bill. The noble Lord eloquently described the anomaly that it has created. Opportunities in the legislative timetable of Parliament to put right things that have gone horribly wrong are very rare, and this is one of those things, at a time when the creative industries in this country are so important to economic growth. The Bill is about growth. The growth of investment in British television product is leaking a lot of value as a result of the 1988 Act, which was designed to create greater competition in the fledgling cable market. The cable market is hardly fledgling now; it is dwarfing the public service broadcasters in this country. It has attracted Liberty, one of the world’s biggest media companies, to own Virgin Media in this country. It appears that the commercial public service broadcasters are now leaking value as a result of Section 73, and this is absolutely the appropriate time in the parliamentary timetable to redress that and ensure that funds are flowing into British production, as they should. I look forward to participating in debates on amendments to that effect.

Clauses 59 and 60 relate to the BBC. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Fowler is not in his place, but it is probably just as well, because an argument about the BBC Trust would detain your Lordships far too long, and we can take that offline. As my headmaster used to say, “See me afterwards”.

It is of course right that the Government should consult and consider whether it is possible to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee. However, Clause 60 seems to anticipate charter review—a point made by many noble Lords—which is worrying. We do not know what the funding future of the BBC will be, we do not know what the governance structure will be, and so on: that is all part of a process to come immediately after the election, if it has not started already.

Also, the power of the Secretary of State in Clause 60 could in unscrupulous hands be used in future as a stick to beat the BBC and, perhaps, challenge its independence or even threaten it. I am not saying that the present Secretary of State would have any such thoughts, but it is a worrying trend. I hope that the BBC clauses will get a good debate. I hope that we can get reassurance from my noble friends on the Front Bench that implementation will await the outcome of charter review. It makes no sense at all to put the cart before the horse.

In summary, as I said, I am hugely supportive of a deregulation Bill of this weight. As your Lordships will know, this House is a repository of some of the greatest expertise in the land on a million different subjects. They are all contained in the Bill, and I wish those on our Front Bench all the very best in steering it through.

19:16

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I think I start from that point. I have a whole range of comments on the Bill, which start with Clause 1, relating to the self-employed being excluded from health and safety duties, and end on page 202. As a vice-president of the LGA, I know that one of its anxieties has been about the provisions on the breeding of dogs on the last but one page of the Bill.

However, as comments have been made on most of those points, I will start by being a bit more general, philosophical and procedural. Although the Government do not exactly look like Bourbons, they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The coalition started this Parliament by bringing into this House a Public Bodies Bill which managed, in all parts of the economy and society, to alienate large chunks of civic society. We had representations, and the Government had to drop a major part of the Bill. Thanks to my noble friend Lord Rooker and his committee, one of the worst parts of the original draft of this Bill has been jettisoned this time, because we had pre-legislative scrutiny. Having a portmanteau Bill such as this is exactly the wrong way to go about modernising our regulation.

I am in favour of better regulation; I am not necessarily in favour of deregulation. The best way to deal with our legislative inheritance and what is needed for modern society is to take each area of regulation, look at it every two or three years, and ask what is still relevant, what is cost-effective, what is working, what is absolutely redundant and what is counterproductive. Each area needs to be looked at as a consistent whole. The way not to do it is for the Cabinet Office to write round to the rest of Whitehall saying, “Can we have 24 clauses that we need to delete so that we can get rid of them all in one Bill in the last Session of this Parliament?”, but that seems to be what it has done.

The one area in which the Government have taken a more coherent, comprehensive approach from full consultation is rights of way. I told the Minister that they were very sensible to do that. I was the Minister who brought in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act; it was a pretty torrid time in this House, I can tell you, with all sorts of different interests, but we have a package which is largely agreed. I agree with other speakers that that may not be the end of the story, and I warn the Minister that there will be attempts to unravel or add to it, but that is the way we should approach each of those areas. Instead, we have piecemeal bits of legislation that we are going to cross out. Some of them are utterly redundant, and I am absolutely in favour of crossing them off the statute book—there are still bits in Norman French that we ought to be deleting from the statute book. These need to go. We have a process for doing that; we have a Law Commission, which is proposing how we get rid of redundant statutory provision. It also, incidentally, has good ideas on how we consolidate legislation. Having got that machine, somehow we never find enough parliamentary time to implement its recommendations; the next Parliament needs to look at how we can do that better.

There are some areas that I will comment on specifically but I think the Government and future Governments have to reflect on the way we deal with this. The better regulation approach—I see the noble Lord, Lord Curry, just coming in—was looking on behalf of the whole of government at different areas. Rather than this piecemeal, portmanteau Bill, perhaps we should have followed procedure a bit more closely. Having got that off my chest, I will comment on one or two aspects of the Bill.

I follow my noble friend Lord Davies in relation to the transport provisions and, in particular, CCTV. This is populism gone mad. If we cannot enforce parking restrictions, we not only endanger the safety of road users and pedestrians but also provide no parking space for motorists. If people can continue to park in restricted areas with impunity, there will be no parking space for the vast majority. By adopting the Jeremy Clarkson interpretation of the motorists’ interests, the Government have gone down exactly the wrong road. Just as the taxi provisions are not in the interests of the users of taxis, these parking provisions are not in the interests of the vast majority of motorists; our towns will get clogged up and there will be more accidents.

On housing, the right to buy is perhaps the most obvious aspect of my general contention. The right to buy has been hugely contentious. I do not oppose the principle of right to buy. However, in the present housing crisis, it is very important that any exercise of the right to buy is put in the context of what is available in social housing, and affordable housing generally. We have one provision in relation to eligibility for right to buy. The right to buy was very good for those people who would never be able to afford their own house or who were too old to get a mortgage. That does not mean people who have been in social housing for only three years. The right to buy is for people who have been tenants for a large proportion of their life and deserve a chance to get on the housing ladder. At the same time—tomorrow, I think—in the Moses Room we are dealing with the change in the right to buy provisions relating to the discount. Therefore, we have two changes in different parts of the House in relation to one subject that needs to be seen in a wider context. The right to buy ought to be a local decision. The provision, eligibility and discounts for the right to buy are not suitable for national legislation, but should address the housing market in the locality. In any case, it is an example of something that needs to be seen in the round.

Clause 83 relates to putting another requirement on all non-economic regulators. Most legislation on regulation over the past 15 years has inserted the provision on economic and non-economic regulators that they should have regard to sustainable development. Quite often the previous Government, in their initial years, were slightly resistant to that, but they were persuaded by the sensible arguments of the Liberal Democrats by and large, to put those provisions in. That meant one had to look after the economics, the environmental effect and the social effect. Obviously the main focus for any individual regulator was one or other of those three corners, but they all had regard to all three. This seems to have an override, even for areas such as human rights and environmental controls that should not be overridden by short-term economic considerations. There is a real danger in that.

The world and his wife will be agitated about various aspects of the Bill. Some of it—probably most of it—is very sensible and I can support it. However, I wish the Government would not go down this road. When one gets to almost the very final page, there is an interesting provision relating to the deletion of offences by people who fly kites. I am in total agreement with that because it is a grave inhibition on the work of the House.

19:25

[Lord Greenway (CB)]

My Lords, I shall not be tempted to follow the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Oldham and Lord Rooker, into discussing Clause 40 regarding marine accident investigations. We will have plenty of time for that in Committee. I will confine my remarks to Clause 81, which seeks to amend the Merchant Shipping Act 1995 in relation to the implementation of international maritime conventions, which emerged from the International Maritime Organisation just across the river on the Albert Embankment. Currently in this country these are implemented through a mix of primary and secondary legislation. This has led to a very complex regulatory system that is confusing, time consuming—statutory instruments can take just as long as primary legislation to go through both Houses—and resource intensive. It also results in delay that can often be to the detriment of British shipping. For instance, our ships can be challenged during control inspections in foreign ports for not being up to scratch with the latest convention when those changes have not been incorporated into UK law. Conversely, we are not able to challenge foreign ships when they transgress in our own ports on the latest changes for the very same reason.

The new clause will permit any change in maritime conventions to which the UK is a party to be automatically incorporated into UK law by the use of dynamic ambulatory references. I am not a lawyer—I am sure a lawyer would understand that—but it is very much a speeding-up process. What are the advantages? First, it will simplify the whole process and level out the playing field for both UK and international shipping. Secondly, it will remove the lengthy process of having to issue a new statutory instrument every time a change is made to a maritime convention, and it will do away with the risk of gold-plating legislation, something that we are rather prone to in this country. Thirdly, it will improve the reputation of the UK abroad, where we are deemed to be rather slow and out of date in adopting new international maritime standards in law.

UK shipping was reinvigorated by the introduction of the tonnage tax in 2000. Since then, the UK-owned fleet has increased almost threefold and the UK-registered fleet, albeit from a very low base, by more than six times. Shipping is still important to this country. The shipping, ports and maritime sectors between them contribute £31.7 billion to UK GDP and support more than 500,000 jobs. Shipping is a highly competitive business and anything that can be done to help, as in this instance with the new clause, is very much to be welcomed.

19:28

[Lord Macdonald of Tradeston (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope to persuade the Government to consider an amendment to the Deregulation Bill. I declare an interest having formerly worked in independent television for 30 years. Like my noble friend Lord Dubs and the noble Lord, Lord Grade, who spoke earlier, my concern is that the content of our public service broadcasters—BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five—is increasingly being retransmitted without payment by cable and online streaming companies. These companies package public service broadcasting content on their platforms and can then place their own unregulated adverts around it. With personal video recorders now encouraging the time-shifting of programmes, and capable of storing hundreds of hours of high-quality drama, popular entertainment and, of course, sporting events, these personal video recorders are major revenue drivers for pay-TV platforms.

The issue of retransmission is rising up the policy agenda worldwide. In the United States, the steady decline of television advertising revenue is being offset by the income that broadcasters get from retransmission revenue: $2.36 billion in 2012. That may explain why US TV is increasingly producing so many successful drama series, while our advertising-funded PSB channels struggle to maintain their output of quality popular programming, with their share of advertising revenue in decline.

We can debate whether we still have the best TV in the world, but what is indisputable is that sales of programmes and formats provide very valuable income for the UK’s creative sector. ITV’s “Downton Abbey”, for instance, sells in 250 territories with an estimated 100 million viewers in China alone. Reformatted, “Strictly Come Dancing” can be seen in 50 countries, and “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” in more than 100. However, in these times of disruptive technologies and increasing commercial competition across the media, our public service broadcasters should not be subsidising international media conglomerates such as Liberty Global, which now owns Virgin Media.

Our PSBs do not get paid by those who retransmit their output because of the now redundant Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. As the noble Lord, Lord Grade, said, this legislation was originally intended to encourage the rollout of cable in the United Kingdom—but the world has moved on in the past 26 years. We now have a highly competitive pay-TV market in satellite, cable and, increasingly, online. Section 73, designed to boost cable coverage by allowing retransmission of UK public service channels at no cost, has now become the unintended loophole for commercial online platforms to stream PSB programming without permission or payment. These companies do not reinvest their online profits in the UK creative content that makes their services so attractive. Indeed, they divert money from the UK production sector because of Section 73, which could be repealed by an amendment to this Bill.

The personal video recorders—the so-called PVRs—used by customers on cable or online platforms can store, as I said, hundreds of hours of PSB-produced drama or entertainment. For instance, ITV’s “Downton Abbey” is time-shifted by almost half of cabled homes, using their TiVo PVRs, but most viewers then fast forward through the recorded advertising breaks, which means that ITV gets paid less by its advertisers. Given the importance the Government attach to our creative industries, they should surely be more purposive towards the timely removal of Section 73 in this fast-changing digital world.

They may be inhibited by ongoing litigation between PSBs and one of the many online streaming services, which has been going on for some four years already, as my noble friend Lord Dubs said, but that kind of litigation need not be an excuse for inaction. My advice is that the Interpretation Act 1978 speaks to this very issue. It provides that where an Act repeals an enactment, the repeal does not affect any investigation, legal proceedings or remedy. The irony is that the copyright Act of 1988, which includes Section 73, itself came into force despite related ongoing legislation at that time.

The Government promised, more than a year ago, that they would consult on Section 73 in the current review of the Communications Act. That has not happened. However, do they not agree that the Communications Act 2003 superseded Section 73 by making a “must offer” provision that ensured PSBs must offer their content to platforms,

“subject to the agreement of terms”?

That is the crucial difference, since it means that PSBs can enter into commercial negotiations with each platform, as they do with BSkyB; in contrast, Section 73 prevents this from happening by allowing the retransmission of PSB content without any payment in recognition of the value that it represents.

The Bill is designed to remove burdensome regulation. Section 73 clearly meets that criterion. Supporting its removal by subsequent amendment to the Bill will help to ensure that our public service broadcasters can continue to produce and commission quality programming made here in the UK.

19:34

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, I start prepared in principle to cheer on its way any Bill labelled a Deregulation Bill. Mind you, it has come out this afternoon, if one did not realise it from reading the Bill, that much in it is not exactly deregulation but reregulation and so on. One of the worst features of modern life is the multiplicity of regulations. I do not mean that regulation itself is bad. Of course not; we all realise that regulation is essential in very large parts of life. The problem, particularly for a small business, for example, is on the one hand the multiplicity of regulations and on the other the fact that they are constantly changing. This changing factor is part of the difficulty, which is a problem when it comes to a Deregulation Bill.

I have been arguing in favour of deregulation for a long time—over 40 years or so of parliamentary life—but so have a lot of other people. The previous Government, as well as the present one, have given a lot of attention to it. Yet throughout that time, and for that matter before, regulations have been and still are breeding like weeds in a garden. While I welcome the Bill in general, I have some reflections on Second Reading about deregulation and the complications of regulation itself.

I do not think that I am the only Member of this House who believes that one problem with our modern legislative drafting habits is that every Bill, even this one, is littered with statutory instruments—even though the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and his colleagues have succeeded very well in getting the Henry VIII one removed from this Bill. Yet statutory instruments flow through the Moses Room like the waters of the sea when Moses first arrived on its banks—except that there seems to be no way of stemming the tide, as he did when he parted those waters. Moreover, they are only the statutory instruments that require debate by your Lordships’ House. They are affirmative instruments, for the most part, but businesses have to take account of many negative instruments as well.

I am contemplating moving a new version of Dunning’s famous Motion of 1780, which would say that “The number of statutory instruments has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished”. How far we will get, I am not sure—and I emphasise “diminished” rather than abolished. For the record, I do not blame the proliferation of statutory instruments on the parliamentary draftsmen; I think that the blame lies within the various departments. Legislation is insufficiently prepared, so the details of a Bill have to be filled in after enactment. For some details, that is entirely in order, but too many are left to be filled in in that way. I pay tribute in passing to the existence and work of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and I look forward to its report on delegated powers memoranda, which it is currently working on.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, my noble friend Lord Naseby and others, I am a supporter of the work of the Law Commission in this field of deregulation, particularly on cancelling parts of the law that are no longer required. I also think that it is better placed than Parliament to look at areas of the law, and to suggest improvements and parts that should be done away with. I am sympathetic to the idea of annual SLR Bills—an idea that should certainly be considered further by government.

I recognise, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, did just now, the difficulty of finding legislative time for Law Commission Bills in general. I am also sympathetic to the idea that my noble friend Lady Eaton drew our attention to: namely, the Local Government Association proposals for rewiring licences in that field. My noble friend knows much more about it than I do, but I have read something about it in the past and I have seen an account of it, about which I can say only that it looked good to me.

I reflect on my experience of deregulation as a Minister. Sometimes, of course, efforts to simplify have exactly the opposite effect. For example, when I was at the Treasury, along with Customs and Excise we went to great efforts to make VAT easier for small businesses instead of having a sharp cut-off between those who were not involved and those who were fully enmeshed. Several alternative schemes were introduced for VAT for small businesses, but the danger then was that you needed knowledgeable advice about which scheme you ought to go to for your particular circumstances in business and how it was going to move over the next few years, in order to know which scheme to choose. The schemes were good and worth while, but deciding which one to use gave you another complicated headache.

I know what a difficult business deregulation inevitably is. I have every sympathy with my noble friends on the Front Bench as we look forward to the Committee stage of the Bill—which, as we have heard today, is going to be of some length and complexity, to put it no stronger. This has been frequently described as a Christmas tree of a Bill, but I think that Christmas is going to be a long time coming as far as my colleagues are concerned. However, the Second Reading of the Bill is the time to congratulate the Government on tackling the subject vigorously and to wish them the best of good fortune in the debates to come.

19:42

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley. He will not need reminding that it was Moses who created the first 10 regulations.

My mother used to say, “Say something positive first, dear”, so this is my positive bit. I welcome the proposal in Clause 70 to clarify the role of the Director of Public Prosecutions under the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. Anything that strengthens the arm of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority’s work is to be welcomed. I believe firmly that its remit should be extended to cover the construction industry, as it is an area that is crying out for some protection for exploited workers. However, today I shall concentrate on two areas: Clause 1 on health and safety for the self-employed, and Clause 34 on short lets in London, which have already been referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Grade, and a noble Lord who is not in his place.

I will deal with the short lets in London first. If this measure is passed, and I profoundly hope that it is not, the unintended consequences will be detrimental to rich and poor alike. This is a strange gloss on the Prime Minister’s slogan that “We’re all in this together”. Take a settled residential block north of the river. All the residents are comfortably off, with security provided 24 hours a day. If this legislation is enacted, the sub-letters and online letting companies will march in. The premiums are such that you can make three times as much income as you can from ordinary longer-term lettings. Even if we disregard the diminution in housing stock in London, which is already at crisis point, the health tourists would move in and out with their families, treating the place like a hotel and an A&E department combined.

If you are really unlucky, the prostitutes and housing benefit fraudsters will move in, while at best it will become a temporary residence for overseas businessmen and their families, who are often no respecters of other people’s property or peace of mind. The residents will experience an increase in unauthorised rubbish dumping—and flooding, if they live in flats below the temporary residence. By the way, it will be virtually impossible for the fire authorities to keep track of this. The nature of the residential block will change and there will be nothing that the majority of residents can do about it. They in turn will be tempted to move in order to escape the disruption when temporary letting becomes the norm in that block of flats. To my knowledge, this is already happening at the margins.

As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, the British Hospitality Association, the Bed and Breakfast Association and many others have sent submissions about this clause. Westminster City Council has provided an excellent briefing as well. That council has done a sterling job in fending off the marauders. Yes, I am praising a Conservative council. All those bodies are saying the same thing: the proposed change will pave the way for largely unregulated short-term online rental companies to operate more freely in London and remove the main mechanism by which regulators currently have the chance to ensure the safety of the public. The largest of these online companies, Airbnb, has over 23,000 premises in the UK for paying guests—premises which do not comply with government guidelines on fire safety.

Other cities in the world are striving to adopt the same controls that we are about to throw away. Paris, New York and Singapore have experienced housing inflation and anti-social behaviour in residential neighbourhoods. Westminster City Council has dealt with 7,362 enforcement cases in the past 15 years, equating to nearly seven years’ housing supply. In fact, this proposal is so unpopular, I think it must have been cooked up at the same dinner party as employee share ownership and the abolition of 100 year-old health and safety legislation on strict liability.

I turn to the proposal in Clause 1 to exempt the self-employed from health and safety law if they are not on a prescribed list. The Government claim that they are following a recommendation by Professor Lofstedt, but that is only partially true. The professor must be rather bruised by his encounters with this Government. He makes a recommendation that is circled about with conditions and caution, and it is snatched by this Government like a hungry child wanting a liqueur chocolate—of course, they will be able to have liqueur chocolate fairly soon. Professor Lofstedt indicated that any exemption should be for those,

“whose work activities pose no potential risk of harm to others”.

The Minister for Government Policy, Oliver Letwin, said that,

“about two thirds of the people in the country who are self-employed will no longer be covered by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/14; col. 41.]

That really gives the game away, doesn’t it? It is a sad day when we mark the 40th anniversary of that Act in this way.

It is also regrettable that the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health was dismissed by the Solicitor-General as an organisation of “consultants”. I know that IOSH has written to correct this but it should be remembered that it has a royal charter and 44,000 members worldwide and is recognised by the ILO. It is a distinguished and knowledgeable organisation and is severely concerned by this clause. It deserves to be listened to.

The current draft of prescribed activities, produced very late in the day, includes construction, which I know a bit about. I am not reassured. I make it clear that I am not referring to the large construction companies, which are seized of the business case for a healthy and safe building site. It is the refurbishment industry, which is notorious for recruiting underskilled workers and for accidents. What happens if an employer informs his workers, who may be bogus self-employed, that, “This is not a building site so we’re exempt”? They are desperate for work and will take what they are given. Will the Government make it clear what is and what is not a building site? Is scaffolding around a house or a trench dug in the garden to be covered by the word “construction”? Are self- employed plumbers, electricians and carpenters covered in domestic housing? If not, how will the householder be alerted?

It is estimated that 90% of construction workers in London are self-employed or bogus self-employed. There is a worrying proportion of cowboys operating in London: small operators who know that there is a slim chance that they will be inspected by the HSE and who will exempt themselves from the prescribed list with little or no comeback, so there is an increased risk premium in London for workers and the public.

I remind the House that we kill 50 construction workers a year in accidents at work, let alone serious injuries and the scandal of unreported accidents. In addition, 32 construction workers die every week of lung-related diseases, and that figure is going up, not down. If three-quarters of the self-employed are to be exempt, as Oliver Letwin says, this must include some construction and allied workers.

The current Health and Safety at Work etc. Act is simple and easily understood. Everyone knows where they stand. Creating a prescribed list will cause confusion and encourage the cowboys.

19:50

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, having seen successive deregulation units created and then relabelled within government over the past 25 years, I can see that it is clear that, more than previous Governments, the coalition has got to grips with the deregulation agenda. I therefore welcome many aspects of the Bill and in particular the further cuts in red tape in the Licensing Act regulation, particularly those relating to community events.

There are, however, differing views as to what is sensible deregulation to ease a regulatory burden and what should be retained to protect the consumer, keep a market open or protect an individual right. I hope, therefore, that the Government will prove as flexible as they were in response to pre-legislative scrutiny.

There are a number of issues about the content of the Bill. As we have heard from many noble Lords, if the BBC is to continue to be financed by the licence fee, it is important that we retain a system that is successful in maintaining the current low levels of evasion and of collection costs. At the very least, the Government should review, under Clauses 59 and 60, the appropriate penalties for non-payment of the licence fee, which should be considered as part of the total review of the BBC charter and licence fee funding.

As we have also heard, Clause 34 involves amendments to Section 25 of the Greater London Council (General Powers) Acts 1973 and 1983, which require that London residential property owners and tenants seek planning approval prior to using residential property to sell accommodation on a night-by-night basis. We have heard also that many of us have seen the brief from Westminster City Council. This makes a devastating case against the proposal. We are in the middle of a major shortage of housing accommodation in London at a time of strongly rising population. This would lead to an unsustainable loss of permanent residential accommodation.

Existing provisions ensure that whole blocks of flats are not blighted by hotel-type use year round. I hope that the Government listen to the very council that would be most affected. We must keep London as a place to live, not just to visit. As the British Hospitality Association says, and as we also heard today, cities such as Paris, New York and Singapore have enacted measures recently to control the surge in commercial use of residential properties. Have the Government carried out an impact assessment on these proposals?

Another area where there seems to have been no economic impact assessment is the provisions of Clause 51 and Schedule 15. These provisions potentially mean not only that the summer holidays could be a great deal shorter but also that each of 25,000 schools in England could have its own holiday arrangements, causing confusion for parents, teachers, pupils and industry. This could, not least, have a major impact on the UK hospitality and tourism industry, which employs 3 million people, many of them in seaside areas. We have heard the reference to BALPPA, which represents British leisure parks and attractions. It says, in its brief:

“Shifting term times would be devastating for those that rely on seasonal trade which cannot be recouped elsewhere”.

It points out that, where similar schemes have been introduced in the US, the evidence clearly shows that moving school holidays reduces tourism spending, and that this is not made up elsewhere.

Coming to the omissions rather than commissions, and with all due deference to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who is not in his place, I have some ideas for additions to the Bill. We have the issue of busking. The Mayor of London has rightly been fulsome about the place of busking in London life. In the Bill we should explicitly remove Part 5 of the London Local Authorities Act 2000, which provides for busking licensing schemes at individual London councils’ discretion. We should also remove Section 54(14) of the Metropolitan Police Act 1839, which was recently used against buskers in Leicester Square.

As I explained to the House, the King’s Parade, the winners of the mayor’s busking competition, were interrupted by the police mid-song as they performed in Leicester Square and informed that they were in breach of Section 54 of the archaic 1839 Metropolitan Police Act. They were bundled into a van by eight officers and held at Paddington police station for more than six hours. This 174-year-old piece of legislation, which also—I think the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, would be pleased by this—prohibits kite flying, sleigh riding and doorbell ringing, was used to justify the arrest.

There are more than adequate powers under separate legislation to deal with noise nuisance and anti-social behaviour. For example, there is the Environmental Protection Act 1990 or the Control of Pollution Act 1974. There are also powers to make by-laws available to local authorities with respect to street nuisance. Camden, under the London Local Authorities Act, has banned street music at any time, amplified or unamplified, except through a special busking licence. Camden’s approach runs completely counter to the arguments heard and accepted by government and Parliament during the Live Music Act debates.

We have also heard that another potential missed opportunity is the inclusion of provisions to repeal Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. We have heard eloquent speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Dubs, Lord Grade and Lord Macdonald on this subject. It is quite clear that Section 73 of the CDPA is an outdated copyright exception that allows cable operators to retransmit PSB channels without permission or payment to broadcasters or to the people who created the content. We have heard why it was introduced. Cable is now a highly effective and well resourced competitor to Sky and Freeview. Pay TV platforms are able to make money from PSB content while benefiting from a regulatory regime under which no payment goes back to the public service broadcaster or to any content creator.

As we have head, reform is even more urgent as a result of personal video recorders—PVRs. These enable consumers to record programmes and avoid watching advertisements. PVRs are revenue-earning and customer-retention devices, yet none of the value that the pay TV platforms derive from them reaches those who help to create the content on which they depend. Section 73 now simply represents a subsidy from the PSBs to cable operators. Section 73 is also being relied on by online service providers, such as TVCatchup, to make money from the PSB channels by retransmitting them while selling their own advertising around PSB content.

The Government have said that they must wait for the end of current litigation with TVCatchup, but there are no legal reasons that would prevent them supporting any amendment to the Deregulation Bill. Indeed, ongoing litigation is not affected by a change of law, as set out in the Interpretation Act 1978. The UK is not alone in reviewing this issue. In the US, News Corporation—yes, News Corporation—has led the charge in favour of fees. I urge the Government to consider using the Bill to promote growth in the creative industries by including a clause to repeal Section 73.

Finally, we need an urgent review of noise abatement legislation to cater for the situation where a venue with a very good record and no complaints is subject to a complaint or potential complaint from a new occupier or developer. Venues are closing with great rapidity as a result of this inappropriate use of noise legislation. We need to act fast. I look forward to my noble friend’s reply.

19:58

[Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak on housing and, like my noble friends, against the folly of Clause 1 and its changes to the Health and Safety at Work Act. Clause 29 reduces the qualifying period for the right to buy from five to three years. We know that this is part of what the Government have labelled “reinvigorating the right to buy”. It has been accompanied by secondary legislation that increased the maximum percentage discount for houses sold to 70%, and increased the cash cap to £75,000—£100,000 in London—which in future is to be uprated by CPI.

We want to see people enabled to purchase a home, and we support the right to buy. However, housing is in crisis in this country, and especially affordable housing. Last year the Government built the lowest number of homes for social rent for more than 20 years and since records began. Section 106 agreements have been watered down, the capital budget for affordable housing has been cut by 60%, and the affordable rent model is anything but affordable. If recent reports are true, the Government are in panic over the prospect of yet a further fall in housebuilding as the general election looms. The Government’s favourite scapegoat to blame is the planning system, but can the Minister confirm that some 9,000 sites with full planning permission have not yet started building?

Therefore we will press the Government on their declared replacement policy. The formulation which they adopt is that they would use the receipts from additional—note, not all—right to buy sales to replace every additional home sold. We will wish to probe in Committee exactly what that means and how it would work in practice. It does not appear to cover sales under the preserved right to buy, which is to the detriment of the finances of housing associations.

We can see the merit of rationalising technical housing standards and their inclusion in the main building regulations, albeit with scope to deal with local circumstances. The Minister will be aware of the briefing from Leonard Cheshire which welcomes proposals to incorporate lifetime homes standards into building regulations, but expresses concern that they will potentially be optional. We will wish to be reassured that this is not the case.

We should be proud of our health and safety system in the UK. Over 40 years it has helped save countless lives and protected many from injury and ill health. Since this Government came to office there have been three reviews of its scope and operations — that of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, of Professor Lofstedt, and the triennial review. Each in its way has concluded that the system and the HSE is fit for purpose and doing an effective job.

We oppose Clause 1 not on ideological grounds, nor because our instinct is to resist any weakening of health and safety requirements, and nor because we believe that there is still a lingering antipathy to its cause in some higher reaches of government. We oppose it because whatever minor benefits the clause might bring are more than outweighed by the confusion and uncertainty it will engender.

The position at present is very clear. Under Section 3(2) of the 1974 Act every self-employed person is required to conduct their undertaking to ensure that,

“so far as is reasonably practicable … he and other persons … are not thereby exposed to risks to their health or safety”.

What could be fairer or more decent than that? Yet the Bill will restrict the requirement to those engaged in prescribed undertakings expressed by the Minister in another place to be “high-risk” activities. Notwithstanding that there is only a draft list of prescribed undertakings thus far—although an HSE consultation with a list commenced just today—Oliver Letwin proclaimed in another place that I think about two-thirds of people who are self-employed will no longer be covered by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. Why is that something to be proud of?

The Government, as my noble friend Lady Donaghy said, point to Professor Lofstedt as the reason for doing that, but that was not his recommendation. He recommended that an exemption should apply to those self-employed who have no employees and who pose no potential risk of harm to others. Even then, he acknowledged:

“The actual burden that the regulations currently place upon these self-employed may not be particularly significant”.

That point was reinforced by evidence from IOSH to the Public Bill Committee, where Richard Jones made clear:

“To our mind, the proposed exempted group … is not overly burdened by health and safety at the moment”.—[Official Report, Commons, Public Bill Committee, 25/2/14; col. 5.]

As the TUC points out, there is no need to make any change, because anyone who is self- employed but does not pose a risk to themselves or others cannot be prosecuted. They have no need to do a written risk assessment.

The HSE was clear that the best basis for any exemption should be to allow it only to those who would not be expected to put others at risk at any point in the normal course of their work and only if they did not work in certain prescribed industries. Paragraph 18 of the 2013 impact assessment states that,

“we explored the possibility of being wholly prescriptive and making a comprehensive list of the occupations, industries, or combinations thereof that would be covered by the exemption … However, discussion with sector experts within HSE made it clear that within occupations and industries there are many exceptions and atypical cases. Relying exclusively on such an approach would therefore risk unintended consequences”.

What is the huge burden that offending legislation imposes on the self-employed, and which holds back the advance of entrepreneurial zeal? The HSE’s original assessment was that the risk assessment would take—15 minutes a year. Annual savings for the new and existing self-employed would be about £500,000 a year—in aggregate, that is—but there would be upfront familiarisation costs of nearly £2 million. All of that, therefore, for the self-employed to save a quarter of an hour a year and on average less than 50p. The figures for today’s updated assessment tell the same story.

However, the proposition for exemption now in the Bill has greater health and safety risks. The HSE made it clear that some of the occupations proposed to be exempt have injury rates statistically higher than the average for all occupations. These, it said, include motor mechanics, furniture manufacturers, animal care occupations, metalworking, and maintenance fitters. That is a deeply flawed and dangerous position for the Government to take.

First, in framing the exemption using a prescribed list approach, we know that some who operate in risky businesses in a risky way will fall within the exemption. Secondly, even if the exemption could be phrased in a narrower way, the estimated savings are tiny. The prospect of exemption for some will provide another spur to the encouragement for individuals to declare a self-employed status—bogus or otherwise.

There is scope for huge confusion about whether someone will be exempt or not, particularly among the self-employed, who might typically get their information through informal channels and in circumstances when Ministers are talking up the scale and scope of exemptions. There could be confusion for those who take on an employee for part of a year, or whose activities are partly within a prescribed undertaking and partly outside. I hope that the Government will reflect and draw back from Clause 1.

20:07

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will flag up a couple of points in the gap which will need further attention as we go through the Bill.

There is a dearth of accessible housing in the UK. As a result, one in six disabled people and more than half of disabled children live in accommodation that is not suitable for their needs. The need for disabled-friendly housing will only grow as the population ages, and providing good housing can reduce the need for care. The Government’s proposal to incorporate lifetime homes and wheelchair-accessible standards into building regulations is therefore most welcome. However, I am concerned that those standards will be only optional and concerned at the suggestion that planning authorities will be able to adopt them only where they can satisfy a rigorous needs test and show that they are strictly necessary and justifiable, not just desirable.

The GLA has committed to all new buildings matching lifetime homes standards and to 10% of all new homes being built to wheelchair-accessible standards. I would like to see the approach taken by successive mayors in London rolled out across the UK and I believe that the Bill should be encouraging that. Instead, I am concerned that it could actively discourage authorities from taking that positive approach if they are required to jump through too many bureaucratic hoops. I therefore seek the Minister’s assurance that the Government accept that the level of evidence gathered by the GLA is sufficiently rigorous to support the introduction of lifetime homes and wheelchair-accessible standards. I would also like to see an exemption from the community infrastructure levy for fully wheelchair-accessible housing and a reduction for that which meets the lifetime homes standard.

I turn to my second point. The Bill includes provisions on parking. Clause 38 amends the Road Traffic Act to prevent local authorities from issuing penalty charge notices through the post and using CCTV for parking enforcement in particular circumstances. I was glad to see that the Opposition have some reservations about this. The clause was inserted following a government consultation on local authority parking strategies. The Government acknowledged that a common theme in responses to the consultation was the need for a uniform approach to pavement parking, but this has not been followed up in the Bill. That is a major omission. Pavement parking is dangerous for pedestrians, especially parents with pushchairs, wheelchair users and other disabled people, including blind and partially sighted people, who may be forced out into the road where they cannot see oncoming traffic. Pavements are not designed to take the weight of vehicles and they cause pavements to crack and the tarmac surface to subside. This is also a hazard to pedestrians, who may trip on broken pavements, and particularly to blind and partially sighted people, who cannot observe the damage. It is also expensive. Local authorities paid more than £1 billion on repairing kerbs, pavements and walkways between 2006 and 2010; £106 million was also paid in compensation claims to people tripping and falling on broken pavements during the same five-year period.

Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, with the support of at least a dozen other organisations, is calling for laws across the UK prohibiting pavement parking unless specifically permitted, such as have been in place in Greater London since 1974. Local authorities report that existing measures are insufficient. In a recent YouGov survey, 78% of councillors supported a national law with flexibility for local authorities to make exemptions. The Transport Select Committee described the current system as unduly complex and difficult for motorists to understand. A Private Member’s Bill with cross-party support has been presented in the other place by Martin Horwood MP. There is considerable support for a law of this type, and I very much hope that the Government will give it serious consideration.

20:12

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate, which—a bit like this Christmas tree of a Bill—has been like a Christmas party, with people calling in to raise concerns, including about inadequate consultation, last-minute clauses and lack of evidence, which leads us to query whether this Bill is more about dogma than good governance. Why do the Government speak with a forked tongue—more red tape for charities and unions under the lobby Bill, as my noble friend Lord Monks reminded us; more red tape for trading standards officers under the consumer Bill; and an attack on localism in this Bill, despite the Localism Act passed in the Session before last? None of us likes red tape—unless it is around those presents under the Christmas tree—but it is worth remembering that regulation is brought in for pretty good reasons, such as to safeguard children or the public, or, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, to ensure that the interests of the consumer are pre-eminent. Whether we are introducing or abolishing regulation, it is always worth asking who it helps and whether it is worth the candle.

Like the Consumer Rights Bill, which we debated last week, I like the title of this Bill, as indeed I think does the noble Lord, Lord Cope. It is the content that leaves me a bit queasy, for the reasons that we have heard today. As the 35th speaker, there is nothing new for me to say, but I think that one or two themes have emerged. The first is the absence of evidence for some of these changes. The second is the inadequate consultation that took place, particularly with local authorities over both alcohol and minicab licensing, or with the taxi industry over the clauses that put the safety of passengers at risk. Indeed, there seems to be a lack of consideration for consumers, just six days after the Second Reading of the Consumer Rights Bill.

I start with Clause 1. Apart from the points elaborated by my noble friends Lady Andrews, Lady Donaghy, Lord Monks, Lord Collins, Lord Whitty, Lord McKenzie and Lord Rooker, as well as the noble Lords, Lord Stoneham and Lord Fowler, I wonder how the Bill provides for the interests of those, mostly the elderly, whose hairdresser visits them at home; those who are passengers of self-employed drivers; and myriad others who are protected by the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. That legislation places duties on the self-employed to ensure that they do not expose themselves or others, including non-employees, to health and safety risks. That includes customers, clients, visitors and the public. Who asked those people whether they wanted to lose such protection?

Similarly with taxis and minicabs, serious concerns have been raised by my noble friends Lord Monks, Lord Whitty, Lord Collins, Lord Davies of Oldham, Lady Turner and Lady Thornton, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and the noble Lords, Lord Tope and Lord Hussain. Like everyone on the government and opposition Benches—not, I have to say, the Bishops’ or the Cross Benches—I have visited Brighton many times for the wonderful delights of party conferences. We arrive at the station and jump into those very familiar Brighton and Hove cabs, and we know that we are going to be safe. We know that they have been tested for safety and that their drivers have been tested for competence, insurance and trustworthiness. Brighton and Hove, by way of example, now worries that ending annual relicensing will diminish its effectiveness as a regulator, while having out-of-area cabs on its streets—over which the authority has no control—will pose a risk to customers. As my noble friends have already said, it will be women who will be the most vulnerable to illegal pick-ups by unlicensed drivers in minicabs or even from licensed drivers, who will no longer be checked annually. So just who asked for this measure, introduced with minimal consultation? It was certainly not women or passengers, nor, as we have heard, the Suzy Lamplugh Trust or crime commissioners.

As for banning CCTV for parking, this comes from the same Government who brought in the Localism Act but now decide to dictate to local authorities how they can enforce, or not enforce, parking as they think best, and despite six of the eight consultation responses opposing a CCTV ban. As the noble Lord, Lord Tope, said, it is, after all, local government that knows its area best. In my own borough of Camden, more than 85% of CCTV enforcements cover major junctions, bus stops, pedestrian crossings and no-waiting areas. In a busy urban area these are key to keeping traffic moving and for safety, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and my noble friends Lord Davies of Oldham and Lord Whitty said.

On alcohol licensing, my noble friend Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, outlined the worry that the new ancillary licences might allow virtually any business, when serving drink is not its primary purpose, to sell alcohol. Health groups fear that this could lead to virtually unlimited alcohol premises. Who demanded this? Why were local authorities, health bodies and others not properly consulted? What research was undertaken on any downside, including any impact on the emergency and ancillary services? Why is there no requirement to make public health a licensing condition? Why is there no minimum price legislation? And why piecemeal changes rather than making this part of a proper strategy, which the Government had laid out in 2012 but seem to have abandoned, to tackle the million crimes linked to alcohol, let alone the cost to our health service?

Turning to insolvency practitioners, here the Government, I think, have got it wrong with their suggested regime of partial authorisation for insolvency practitioners, as my noble friend Lord Rooker, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said. Splitting the regulation of this tiny profession into two—for company and for individual insolvencies—would particularly harm small firms, two-thirds of which do both corporate and personal insolvency work, just at the same time as the Government’s small business Bill is meant to be helping small businesses.

Furthermore, it would require the development, delivery and oversight of new, additional systems of exams and qualifications. It would also allow some insolvency practitioners to undertake corporate bankruptcies, which almost always also affect the status of the individuals involved, with no qualification over the needs of the latter. In Committee, we will seek to ensure that this does not become the case. Regulation is usually for the consumers, the community or the vulnerable, as my noble friend Lady Turner said. It used to be the Tories who argued that the City was overregulated, and look where that led us.

More locally, as a cyclist—albeit not today in lycra cycling from Cambridge and across Westminster Bridge—I take great comfort from knowing that lorries on our roads are not overloaded, that their tyre pressures are checked, that their drivers are qualified, that their insurance is in place, that their fumes are not excessive and that their brakes work. All of that, of course, is as a result of regulation. However, that does not seem to be enough for this Government. They now want all regulators to include the growth duty, including, I presume, the Health and Safety Executive, the Information Commissioner, the Gambling Commission, the Charity Commission, the Electoral Commission, the Health and Care Professions Council, Monitor, the Legal Services Board and Ofsted—soon to be headed, we gather, by a Tory donor if the papers are to be believed. All those will now have the growth duty. It will be essential that the economic growth strategy does not trump the principal objective of those regulators, because that surely is the protection of the public interest.

Will the Government heed the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Truro, my noble friends Lady Andrews and Lady Thornton, the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, the ICC, the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bengarve, and indeed the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which said:

“Applying the economic growth duty to the EHRC poses a significant risk to the EHRC’s independence”,

because it would be compelled take directions from the Secretary of State? Has dogma trumped common sense and good governance? Anyway, is this really deregulatory, as my noble friend Lady Andrews asked?

There are other issues on which we will await with interest the response of the Government, including the proposal from my noble friend Lord Macdonald to amend the copyright Act 1988 in relation to broadcasting. That attracted the support of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and my noble friend Lord Dubs, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Grade.

In the light of comments by the noble Lords, Lord Fowler, Lord Grade, Lord Stoneham, Lord Sharkey and Lord Clement-Jones, we also seek reassurance from the Minister that no decision on decriminalising BBC licence non-payment will be taken prior to the review of the royal charter.

We also look forward to the Minister’s response to other issues raised by my noble friends Lady Donaghy, Lady Turner, Lady Andrews, Lord Whitty, Lord Davies, Lord McKenzie and Lord Rooker and the noble Lords, Lord Stoneham, Lord Grade and Lord Clement-Jones, on a range of issues, such as right to buy, London short lets, gangmasters, maritime investigations and even school holidays.

Despite the words of the noble Lord, Lord Sherbourne, there is no demand from consumers for a relaxation of the settled position on Sunday trading. Let us leave well alone something that balances family shopping preferences with workers’ rights, the interests of corner shops and the legitimate expectations of churchgoers.

Like the noble Lords, Lord Bew and Lord Brabazon, I welcome paragraph 40 in Part 8 of Schedule 20—and yes, I did read it. It repeals sections of the Defamation Act 1996, as would have been the case with the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, to which we gave a Second Reading on 27 June, but which now will not be needed in the light of this legislation.

I turn finally to knitting yarns. Perhaps I see myself as une tricoteuse at la Place de la Révolution, or Place de la Concorde as it is now, watching the guillotine fall on the supposed red tape. But this is no revolution. It is a slightly tacky hotchpotch of a Bill, conceived for effect and designed by committee. We will bless the bits that do no harm and welcome the few that help, but we will seek to amend those that pose risks to workers, consumers and to the public at large.

20:25

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest of which the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, in his opening speech reminded me. My wife was a member of the previous Government’s Better Regulation Commission from 2006 to 2008. She reminds me that after the change of Prime Minister the previous Labour Government abolished it.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded us that what the House of Lords does best, and what is indeed becoming our core role, is to examine the details of legislation placed before us. We can all agree that this Bill has a wealth of detail. Those who got all the way through to Schedule 20 understand that fully and thus we shall have lots to explore at the Committee stage. It is evident from today’s debate that there is particular concern over Clause 1 and Clauses 10 to 12. Many other clauses and parts of schedules have been warmly welcomed. Some have been queried, with much more information requested, and there will indeed be much to explore in Committee which will start when we return in October. I note what is being said about generous time being needed for that stage.

Between now and then the Government, as always, are open to consult off the Floor, with all those who wish to do so, including the Local Government Association, although not within this Bill taking on the whole universe of local licensing, which the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, perhaps suggested. The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, requested hyperlinks to previous legislation. In informal consultations the other day, the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, asked for a Keeling schedule for the entire Bill. We have noted both of those requests and will see what we can do. The noble Lord, Lord Tope, talked about the distinction between better regulation, smart regulation and fit regulation. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and others said, there is a difference between deregulation and re-regulation.

One of the things we have learnt over the past few years is that there is a constant need for adjustment and adaptation in regulation. We need to look constantly at what is no longer necessary, even as we look at what is now needed. We need a great deal more regulation of the internet, for example. If the noble Lord, Lord Maxton, were here, he would have linked the transformation of broadcasting with that of the transformation of the taxi market by things like Uber and the transformation of short-term lets by the arrival of Airbnb. These are all new phenomena that technology has pushed on us in what one of the contributors remarked as being this fast-changing digital world.

I note, however, that excessive regulation does sink economies. It was not until the crash of the Greek economy and finances that we discovered just how amazingly overregulated the Greek economy was and how much that held it back. I remember as a student the beginnings of the deregulation of the British economy by that nowadays underestimated politician, Edward Heath, in his deregulation of the retail market. The growth agenda is important and we always have to look at it in making sure that old regulations go even as new regulations are sometimes needed.

Underlying some of our discussions there have been suspicions of a hidden agenda: whether or not the health and safety culture is threatened—I wish to assure noble Lords that it is not; whether the BBC is about to be undermined; whether the proposals on marine accidents are really an attempt to get away from marine accident investigations. Again, I can assure noble Lords that they are not. We will come back to those issues in detail in Committee.

A number of other issues have been raised that are not currently within the Bill. The noble Lords, Lord Dubs, Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Grade and Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, referred to the issue of retransmission revenues. I listened with interest to some of this. I think I have received nearly a dozen communications from Virgin Media in Saltaire over the past 12 months. Since it put cable through Saltaire it is extremely keen for us all to subscribe and is sending me some extremely generously printed brochures almost every month.

I take the point that public service broadcasters should not be subsidising commercial enterprises. We are of course willing to talk to others about how and within what framework we address Section 73 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, although the Government may be reluctant to concede that that fits appropriately within this Bill.

I noted in Schedule 20 that anyone who keeps a pigsty is part of what we are now repealing. I am just old enough as a small boy to have visited farms where they still had pigsties and indeed once visited a farm where they were in the action of killing a pig. That is part of the thing that no longer takes place and therefore we no longer need it.

We also touched on busking and Sunday trading. I share the feeling of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, that it is probably quite a good thing that we are not tackling Sunday trading as well as everything else on this occasion. Perhaps the next Government will wish to reopen that immediately.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, asked where the figures for savings from the Bill came from. Officials have prepared a summary table of the Bill and I am very happy to share this with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, following the debate and to put it in the Library for all noble Lords. It is part of the Red Tape Challenge. Many of these are estimates but we are fairly confident that they are not too imprecise.

Clause 1, the health and safety clause, has clearly set a number of concerns running. The prescribed list of high-hazard activities is now being consulted on. The consultation went out today and is available online. It will run for 12 weeks which means that it will be completed by the Committee stage and the regulators will thus be able to issue at least some guidance towards that by the time we are in Committee. The new regulations will use definitions of health and safety already present in law, which means that we are not changing the context of health and safety. In answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, I am informed that Professor Löfstedt wrote to the Commons committee in support of the clause as drafted. We will both investigate further to see who is quoting Professor Löfstedt more directly.

On the question on whether the number of self-employed workers is growing because of the expansion of bogus self-employed contracts, the Government are taking parallel action in other forums to stop the use of such bogus contracts. For example, in this year’s Finance Bill, the Government introduced changes to the agency tax rules to put a stop to the growing use of those requirements. This is not intended to allow any expansion in that area. We are looking at professional people who work at home and do not employ others. That is the category from which we hope to lift unnecessary regulations.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and other noble Lords raised the question of tribunals. There is no evidence to suggest that the wider recommendations prevent reoffence. That is why the Government decided to remove this burden. In one very clear recent case involving the Metropolitan Police and a diplomatic protection officer, the tribunal made no wider recommendations but the Metropolitan Police has made it clear that it recognises that there are wider concerns. I do not think this is such a difficult issue. There is some evidence, which was presented to the Government in the consultation, that this involved additional cost for smaller employers and did not produce great benefit for others.

A lot was said about taxis and private hire vehicles and I am sure that we will have an impassioned debate on this issue in Committee. We are conscious that there is a range of concerns including, as a number of noble Lords have said, questions of safety. The question of the use of private hire vehicles by others when they are off-duty clearly needs to be examined. However, we have looked at the Law Commission recommendations and are satisfied that taking these measures forward neither undermines the Law Commission review nor necessarily means that we will not take the Law Commission proposals into account at a later stage when it produces its Bill.

Parking has also raised a lot of issues for many noble Lords, with the question of CCTV and parking fines. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, that we have not considered the risks of removing the use of CCTV as we are not talking about doing that. There were a number of questions about how CCTV is used at a local level, on which all of us have slightly different and ambivalent views. Again, we will come back to that in detail in Committee.

On short-term lets, as someone who had never really thought about this problem previously, I listened with interest. I live close to Wimbledon where, every year, a number of well-off local people seem to let out their houses for two weeks at a time for remarkably large sums. I have to admit that the Wallaces had considered whether we should go away for two weeks. My wife, however, said no, because she actually likes going to Wimbledon herself rather than sitting and watching it on TV. There are some important issues about, first, what is now happening; secondly, why the regulations in London are different from those in the rest of the country; thirdly, how far the evolution of short-term letting through the internet is beginning to change the situation anyway; and fourthly, therefore, how we respond to that.

On the right to buy, we recognise worries about whether there is an underlying agenda and how this will affect the future provision of social housing. A problem we all face with social housing is that the previous Government did not build enough social housing and this Government have so far, disappointingly, not been able to build as much social housing as we would like. Part of what is required under the Bill is that councils which sell houses use the money to build new social housing as part of the deal.

On optional building regulations, Clause 32 will not amend standards related to safety. It will allow for certain requirements to be adapted locally, but will provide for the range of what standards are permissible to be set nationally. I am happy to discuss this further with the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, and others as part of the consultation between now and Committee stage.

[Lord Rooker]

The Minister referred to 12 weeks earlier. We are going to have at least 12 weeks between Second Reading and the start of Committee stage. That is very unusual. I can see at least 800 or 900 amendments. If events take their course, they will not be tabled until 10 October. Would it not be a good idea for the staff of the House, and the Minister’s own staff who are providing those responses, if we were able to table amendments from, say, 1 September rather than have to put them all in on the day we come back, which would not be conducive to having a decent debate on the Bill? It is a bit unusual, but we are in unusual times. We can do it if we decide to do so. Perhaps the Minister could take some advice and come back on that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

That is a very constructive suggestion. I will take it away and we will discuss it.

On short-term lets in London, I am told that the question was included in the consultation issued in February last year on a review of the property conditions of the private rented sector. Nearly 100 responses were received and the Government will publish their response shortly.

One of the happy surprises I have in facing this Bill is that my initial feeling that the rights of way clauses of the Bill would be the most difficult turns out not to be the case. The Ramblers, the Country Land and Business Association and others have written to me to say that they are united in asking for no further amendments to this part. I hope that we can all hold to that. It is remarkably unusual to find a situation in which all those involved in a deeply contentious area, which has been contentious for a very long time, have come to an agreement and are asking us to put it into law. Let us see how far we can get on that following their consensus.

The noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, and others asked about the TV licensing review. As a matter of course, I can tell him that the terms of reference will be laid in the Libraries of both Houses and the review itself must begin within three months of the Bill receiving Royal Assent.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That was not the main purpose of most of the comments, which was to allow for a discussion of the terms of reference of that review on the Floor of the Chamber. Simply to place them in the Libraries is not sufficient. Will the noble Lord reconsider that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am told that the Government are currently committed to putting the terms of reference to both Houses at a later stage. I think that the noble Lord is asking for an early consultation. Again, let us talk off the Floor and see how far we get on that. My noble friend Lord Gardiner speaks for the DCMS and it may therefore be particularly appropriate that he would speak on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe, was particularly concerned about the potential growth of alcohol consumption. I hope that in Committee we will be able to reassure him about what is proposed in these measures, which I recall have been discussed in terms of local arrangements allowing local communities to have events with fewer hoops to jump through in what I am told are community and ancillary sellers notices. The intention is strongly that this will be limited to a small part of any business that is allowed to do so. We do not see hairdressers offering gin and tonics to those who come to have their hair cut, which I think was almost what the noble Lord was suggesting, and other matters of that sort. Again, we will explore that further in Committee.

The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, had concerns about the repeal of the duty of the Senior President of Tribunals to report. I am told that, since the duty to report was introduced in 2007, other and more effective feedback mechanisms have been introduced—the production of a report by the Senior President of Tribunals no longer represents the most effective way of providing feedback. What the tribunals now do is to introduce summary reasons in employment support allowance appeals, starting initially on four sites. These summary reports have been found to be more useful than what was done before. Again, I am happy to talk further if that helps.

I have taken a lot of time and I have not talked about the closure of small prisons or the whole relationship between the Law Commission and this Bill. It is perhaps time for a short debate on the future role of the Law Commission as there is quite a lot of interest in that.

Before I close, I will talk about the question of the growth duty and in particular the EHRC, because I know there is a lot of concern about that. We are considering the question of how far the growth duty extends to non-economic regulators. Again, that is something that we will discuss further. We look forward to a lively and lengthy Committee stage. I congratulate all those who have read the entire Bill all the way through to the end of Schedule 20. I beg to move.

Bill read a second time.

Health: Polypill

Monday 7th July 2014 Lords Chamber

Question for Short Debate

20:44

Asked by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they will take to encourage the use of the polypill by the National Health Service.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am very grateful for this opportunity to put some probing questions to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, and perhaps ask for his help with something that I am rather puzzled about. I detect a less than enthusiastic response from the medical and health establishment to the development and potential of what is being called the polypill. Perhaps the noble Earl will share the reasons for it and helpfully suggest a way forward for some more constructive engagement on the issue, if that is at all possible.

As we know, strokes and heart disease remain a major public health problem. Across the population as a whole, the chance of having a heart attack or cerebrovascular accident rises as people get older, and age is the single most important predictor of future cardiovascular disease. But we know now—there is robust evidence—that the consumption of fixed-dose polypills containing effective combinations of low-cost off-patent statins and blood pressure medicines can safely cut the rate of unwanted vascular events by 70% or more in otherwise untreated subjects, whatever the initial combined level of their blood cholesterol and other disease risk factors. The use of such a preventive technology across the general population, with access determined by age alone, would prevent the need for much more costly and inefficient risk-testing, and maximise the health gains. Clearly, it is aimed at people in their 50s and 60s who would not at the moment meet any treatment threshold.

The use of the polypill focuses on primary prevention, whereas the majority of current medical activity is focused on secondary prevention. Of course, if a first heart attack or stroke is prevented, there is no second one to prevent. My understanding is that if people take this daily from the age of 50, one in three people would benefit and would gain an extra eight years of life without heart attack or stroke—similar to the benefit achieved by stopping smoking in middle age.

I suppose that the polypill can be thought of as a form of drug-based vaccination that reduces vascular disease rates. However, unlike the situation with vaccines, there is no threshold level of use needed to ensure herd immunity—the higher proportion of healthy people taking the polypill, the greater the benefits—but no one needs to be encouraged against their personal judgment to take it if they do not wish to do so.

An article in the BMJ in April, which contained research news, said:

“Inconsistencies in the design of studies investigating the potential of polypills to prevent cardiovascular disease make the impact of these pills difficult to prove, a systematic review by the Cochrane Collaboration has found. However, the reviewers are confident that polypills do have a role in protecting large populations against cardiovascular disease”.

One would have thought that there would then be a great rush of enthusiasm by the NHS and indeed the medical and health sector generally to use the polypill. But as far as I can see, we have had mostly silence and in some cases downright hostility. There has clearly been difficulty making a polypill with a licence for the primary presentation of cardiovascular disease, and pharmaceutical companies see little commercial advantage because the components of the polypill are all generic. I understand that they are also put off by the uncertainty and cost of obtaining regulatory approval.

I wonder whether we are seeing here a parallel to the statin debate, which, as a lay person, I have found utterly confusing. I pick up the sense among some sections of the medical profession, particularly the public health profession—and I stand here as president of the Royal Society for Public Health—that pills are not really virtuous. It feels as though there is a puritanical approach which suggests that healthy living is the only appropriate policy to adopt in the prevention of stroke and heart disease. I also suspect that doctors fear the workload implication of this kind of medication when it comes out. Perhaps they also fear losing control. In a sense, the use of polypills could be seen as the public very much taking ownership of their own health.

There is no evidence that the use of polypills would lead to increased vascular disease risk-taking. I understand that the available studies imply that health-promoting behaviours tend to be positively correlated with one another, as might be the case with health-damaging behaviours. As with vaccines, the introduction of a general polypill prevention programme within the NHS would probably require a positive, proactive approach, possibly in the form of some government/private partnership.

I was interested in the Government’s approach to antibiotics last week. Clearly, the current mechanisms—the factors that lead pharmaceutical companies to make major investments—were simply not going to produce the goods and the Government felt that they had to step in. Will the Minister consider whether his department might at least play a somewhat more active role in this debate than it has done hitherto? Would he, at the very least, be prepared either to convene a study or an objective, independent review of the potential of the polypill? Would he, at the very least, be prepared to meet me and colleagues to discuss whether there is a way to take this forward?

I am puzzled that, on the face of it, the polypill could lead to a major reduction in the number of heart attacks and strokes that occur in this country, yet the combined efforts of the medical, health and pharmaceutical establishments seem to want to look the other way. Why?

20:52

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, the name polypills is slightly unfortunate. When I heard about this, I immediately drew parallels with polyclinics, keeping it in the health arena, at least; but one of my adult children wondered whether this was veterinary medication for our avian friends. The principle, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has outlined—I thank him very much for securing this debate—is that the polypill combines four medicines into one; three to lower blood pressure and one to lower cholesterol. Personally, I prefer the name that they have used in Australia and New Zealand, SPACE: single pill to avert cardiovascular events. It seems a neater acronym and explains much more simply what it does.

I thank the Library for its very helpful research pack, not least because it references the proposal that all over-50s should take it. This is some of the research referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. Some even suggest that those over 35 who have an at-risk profile might consider taking it every day. Indeed, Dr David Wald at Queen Mary University of London, after his trial, says that 28% of people will benefit by avoiding or delaying heart attacks. However the QMUL studies trial was only 84 patients; perhaps I should say “people”, since it was targeting people who were not yet unwell. Those results show that the blood pressure of around 12% of participants was reduced and 39% had reduction in cholesterol. All this is good, but to have a drug compulsory—because that is how it would be seen, even if it were voluntary—for anyone over 50 seems to me a fairly low benefit ratio.

The papers also describe a cost of “only 50p per day”. This sounds relatively cheap, but it is £15 per month or £180 per year. Even more than that, Dr Wald suggests that it could be sold over the counter and not as a prescription-only medicine. I do not know what the current rate is, but the per-patient allocation for medication in the NHS is not large, and anything over £100 starts to raise eyebrows. The pill would therefore be a substantial burden on the pharmaceutical bill, especially if it was to be used for the entire population over 50 rather than for those who need it.

Even if we accept that there is a good reason to give four tablets in one for healthy people, other considerations still need to be aired. The first is side-effects. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, referred to statins —I suspect that we all know somebody who is on them—the side-effects of which can range from memory loss, muscle problems, polyneuropathy, acidosis, anaemia, cataracts, immune depression and pancreatic and liver disease. Even if you are lucky enough not to have a response to a single one of those drugs, mixtures of drugs may well have combination side-effects. I know from my own area of rheumatology that some people react badly when a mixture of drugs is taken, and they are instructed to take certain drugs in the morning and others in the evening to avoid such contraindications.

I am slightly unhappy about the reference made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to the polypill being parallel to vaccination. I would much rather that people who were thought to be at risk, which could well be anyone over 50, went down the public health route and were asked to consider lifestyle changes, including stopping smoking, looking at their diet, having their cholesterol tested regularly and, most importantly, undertaking some activity. A lot of publicity was given two or three weeks ago to evidence showing that, for the population over 50, you do not have suddenly to become a Tour de France cyclist or a marathon runner and that steady walking that raises your exertion level a bit every day will do the trick.

I therefore wonder whether this “wonder drug” is not trying to solve too much in one easy go, but I am not alone. In an article that appeared in the Daily Telegraph on 19 July 2012, Dr Margaret McCartney, a Glasgow GP, was reported as saying that more evidence was needed before a mass programme was embarked on and:

“The history of medicine is rich with ideas that sounded great but either didn’t prove effective—or worse, did harm”.

Natasha Stewart, a senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, was reported as saying:

“Research into polypills is encouraging, but there are still many questions to answer before this ‘wonder drug’ is prescribed … However interesting this potential new pill is, medicines are not a substitute for living a healthy lifestyle”.

The polypill sounds very enticing, but I am concerned about it for three reasons. First, it is already being described as a wonder drug long before extensive research and careful monitoring of side-effects, including those caused by combining four into one, have been done. As I said earlier, many people are already under strict instructions not to mix certain drugs because they interact. Secondly, the cost at 50 pence a day is not insignificant. To prescribe the pill for a large number of people who will not need it in the longer run seems futile. Like Public Health England, I would much rather see proper medical assessment MoTs being given at 35 and 50, so that people becoming more at risk can be given lifestyle change advice, have regular tests on cholesterol and other things that will indicate whether they are at risk, and can consider whether their level of activity is appropriate. My final concern is that, if the polypill is made available across the counter and not on prescription, some—perhaps many—may think that the pill alone will protect them without their looking at their own lifestyle issues.

Having been pretty depressing about all this, I want to end on a positive note. If further research at a statistically significant level can demonstrate the benefit of the pill, and if the Medicine and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is satisfied with its efficacy, quality and safety, then, yes, I would welcome it, but there is too little for us to go out and be utterly positive about at the moment.

20:59

[Lord Turnberg (Lab)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hunt for introducing this debate. It is pretty obvious that he, like me, has been briefed by Sir Nick Wald—and I suspect that the noble Earl may have heard a little from him too—so if what I say sounds a little familiar, I hope he will forgive me. Heart attacks and strokes remain among the biggest killers, despite the improvements in mortality rates in recent years. We know many of the risk factors—smoking, alcohol, obesity, salt and lack of exercise—and we must not be distracted, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, says, from dealing with these public health issues. They are not mutually exclusive, of course.

We know that we should do more to detect and treat high blood pressure and raised blood cholesterol levels, but there is one important risk factor that we can do little about. That is age. There is a straight-line relationship between age and the incidence of heart attacks and stroke. The older you are, the higher the risk. The most striking thing about this is that about half of those getting one of these killers do not have one or other of the conventional risk factors—they have normal cholesterol and normal blood pressure. They come as a surprise in people thought to be fit, and it is in these unsuspected and unsuspecting individuals where the polypill may play a role.

The rationale for the polypill relies on a number of basic principles and here I rely specifically on Sir Nick Wald’s briefing, so what I say, as I pointed out, may not be entirely novel. First, we know that using drugs to lower a raised serum LDL cholesterol reduces the rate of heart attacks, and lowering the raised blood pressure reduces the incidence of strokes, but the intriguing observation is that the same drugs reduce even normal levels of cholesterol or blood pressure to a similar proportion as in those with raised values.

Furthermore—and here is the nub of the argument—lowering even normal levels reduces the risk of heart attacks and stroke. For example, Nick Wald calculates that a fall in blood pressure of 10 millimetres of mercury reduces the risk of stroke by about 60% and reducing serum LDL by 1 millimole per litre lowers the risk of coronary artery disease by 40%. The fact is that there does not appear to be a lower limit below which reducing blood pressure or cholesterol is not effective in reducing risk.

The second principle is that you can achieve as good or better effect in reducing blood pressure from a combination of two or more hypotensive drugs given in half or lower doses than a single drug given in a normal dose, and in this way markedly reduce the incidence of side effects. You get the same impact on blood pressure with many fewer side effects from a combination of half doses.

Therefore, combining these pieces of evidence—risk increasing with age, lowering risk factors even when they are seemingly in the normal range, and combining low doses of drugs to reduce side effects—leads to a conclusion that points to a need to give polypills as a preventive measure to those at risk, namely all the population over the age of 55, say, regardless of their conventional risk profile. Indeed, if they have other more obvious risk factors they are likely to be treated for them by one means or another already. It is the unsuspecting population where a polypill is most likely to be effective. In these, it lowers cholesterol and blood pressure as well as risk.

Nick Wald has suggested that one in three individuals taking a polypill containing small doses of simvastatin, losartan, amlodipine and hydrochlorothiazide would live an extra eight years than they would have done without the pill. It could reasonably be concluded that we should be giving everyone over 55 a polypill of this type, and it would help those harbouring unsuspected coronary artery disease or strokes. If this were a preventive programme like vaccination, as my noble friend suggested, we probably would not hesitate, but of course it is not a one-off, single shot like a vaccine. It is to be taken life long, every day, as a prophylactic treatment, more like the contraceptive pill to prevent pregnancy, although of course for rather longer.

So many issues would have to be overcome, and a number of critics of the mass medication that such a programme would entail have to be answered. There is the question of regulation. Although all the constituents of the pill have been through all the regulators and are in fact well out of patent, the MHRA and MEA may well need convincing that the combinations do not need further appraisal and approval. There is the question of side-effects. Although doses are low, there are undoubted side-effects with all the constituents of the pill, even in the low doses used here. They may well become significant when trying to reach whole populations.

Some say that we are already an overmedicalised society and we do not need yet more pills for everyone. I am not sure that that is a terribly good argument, because we rely quite heavily for our longevity on many of the medicines we take. I am one of the few, it seems, who is on simvastatin without side-effects, out of a huge population who are similar to me. In any case, no one is forced to take drugs if they do not want to. Nevertheless, those are views that we cannot easily dismiss and are to be taken seriously.

We come to the question of whether the polypill should be available for prescription on the NHS or simply over the counter at pharmacists. It is probably very cheap, and the economic value of preventing those diseases is a strong argument for prescription. It would at least allow us to get a clear angle on the number and incidence of side-effects, which free availability would not. It would allow doctors the opportunity to assess their patients for other preventable risk factors at the same time, which we have to do something about. On the other hand, an approach in which people simply decide whether to buy the pill over the counter is certainly more libertarian, but would probably not make a great impact on the epidemiology of those diseases, nor on the health of the nation.

There are certainly interesting debates to be had, and I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for starting us off on this topic.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. One issue raised earlier was about the dosage and combining those dosages in relation to particular side-effects. It was only 12 months ago, I think, that NICE advised against giving particular doses of simvastatin together with a modifier. When doses are given separately, you can take the evidence and change them. When they are combined in a polypill, that goes out of the window and you are left with all the elements at the dosages that have been agreed. Is that not an argument for retaining the current position of giving separate dosages rather than combining them all?

[Lord Turnberg]

Those are very good points. The doses used in polypills are very low, in fact—20 milligrams of simvastatin, when the normal dose is 40 to 80 milligrams. The other drugs in the polypill are half doses. The point is that, if you have raised LDL cholesterol or raised blood pressure, you should certainly be on the treatments; they have been shown to be effective. It is people who do not have raised cholesterol or raised blood pressure who we are aiming to treat—or to prevent their diseases—so it is a different situation. The point about safety is important. It is clear that we need and should have proper clinical trials of those doses, but the impact of such doses, from what we know about them in this combination, is that they are likely to be safe in the vast majority of cases. What we do not know is the number who will get side-effects.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My noble friend, and other noble Lords, mentioned the importance of clinical trials, which I am sure is absolutely right. Is not the problem here that in fact no pharmaceutical company will conduct a clinical trial because all the drugs used in combination in the polypill are off-patent, so there can be no protection of that research by any company taking it forward? So there is, if you like, a block here, although people can see the potential benefits. Rightly, noble Lords are asking for clinical research, but there is no possibility of that happening unless the Government take a hand themselves, which is why the debate on antibiotics is interesting. They are completely separate subjects, but the Government had to step in there because, at the moment, the market simply cannot respond to the issue.

[Lord Turnberg]

I agree entirely. I think that it will be difficult for the drug firms themselves to conduct trials because these are generics and they are manufactured by a number of companies. The only way forward, I suspect, if we are to have a clinical trial, is through NHS funding—that sort of trial. My final remark is that I very much look forward to the noble Earl’s response.

21:10

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, perhaps I might say a few words since we have a little time in hand. I am very interested in the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, because preventing cardiac disease is something that we should be considering for the future. Indeed, I think we are all agreed on that. However, I can see many of the problems. I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, that we have to be careful that people, especially young people, do not think that this is a sort of panacea—especially with obesity and the danger of diabetes, for example—and that by taking this magic pill we will somehow put off the moment. That would be dangerous. However, I can see that with more research—this is where I agree absolutely with the noble Baroness—this is something that we should keep an eye on. I am very grateful for the debate, which I found extremely interesting.

21:10

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, perhaps in the time we have I might make a very short intervention because I agree with my noble friend in her analysis. I feel that there is a real issue not simply with the polypill but with the research, which needs to take place where there are combinations of drugs being given anyhow. You can give a combination of drugs without having serious clinical research and that is okay, but if you combine them into a single dose, you need a complete clinical trial. That issue has to be addressed.

21:13

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for giving us the opportunity to debate a particularly interesting subject and for having elicited a number of very well informed speeches. In calling for this debate, he has done the House a considerable service by enabling noble Lords, including myself, to bring ourselves up to date on what progress has been made in the development of the polypill concept. As has been said, heart attacks and strokes are major health issues in the western world and a growing issue in the developing world. Reducing mortality for people with cardiovascular disease and improving their outcomes is a key priority for the Government. We have made it clear, through the NHS and public health outcome frameworks and the Government’s mandate to NHS England, that we want to see action taken across the health system to reduce avoidable premature mortality from cardiovascular disease.

The 2013 call to action on premature mortality set out the Government’s ambition for England to be among the best in Europe in tackling the leading causes of early death, including cardiovascular disease. In April this year, we published Living Well for Longer, which brings together what the health and care system will do to meet this challenge.

There has been a great deal of interest in the polypill and its potential for reducing the risk of heart disease over the years. It may surprise some noble Lords that the concept was first introduced into the scientific and public domain as far back as 2003. It was proposed in an article in the British Medical Journal by two people whose names have been mentioned already, Professors Nicholas Wald and Malcolm Law of the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine. Using mathematical modelling, they estimated that a polypill comprising a statin, aspirin, a combination of three blood pressure lowering drugs and folic acid, could reduce heart disease events by 88% and stroke by 80%. Their article concluded that their proposed polypill could,

“largely prevent heart attacks and stroke if taken by everyone aged 55 and older and everyone with existing cardiovascular disease.”

Although the effectiveness of the combined drug and any possible side-effects had yet to be evidenced though patient trials, this captured the imagination of the public health research community, particularly for the prevention of non-communicable diseases such as cardiovascular disease.

Essentially, the polypill is a combination of multiple medicines which aims to prevent or reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease: that is, strokes and heart attacks. Each of the constituent medicines is either at the current recommended dose or at lower doses. The premise is that these combinations should be used in preference to using the same medicines separately. In practice, the polypill can refer to either the fixed-dose combination medicine to reduce cardiovascular risk, patented as the polypill, or any other fixed-dose combination medicine, such as the red heart pill. However, any discussion of polypills is complicated by the huge range of drugs which might be included in any combination.

Polypill active ingredients are licensed separately as medicines and well established in their own right; their use together in fixed combination is what is novel. Just like any other medicine, any application for a marketing authorisation for a polypill needs to be supported by data demonstrating that its quality, safety and efficacy are satisfactory and that the risk-to-benefit profile is favourable for the proposed treatment before such an authorisation or licence can be granted.

My noble friend Lady Brinton drew attention to the side-effects of polypills and statins. She was absolutely right to do so. My information is that the evidence is not yet there on the side-effects of the polypill. Patient safety must of course be paramount in that context.

No polypills are currently licensed for use in the UK for the prevention of heart attack or stroke. I understand that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has provided scientific advice to a number of sponsors and companies for combination products of this type. However, no application has yet been made to the licensing authorities. In the event that a marketing authorisation proposal is submitted, the data supporting any claims for benefit in the stated patient population, together with any evidence of adverse events, will be carefully reviewed. Only if the overall balance of benefits versus risks is favourable will a marketing authorisation be granted.

Without a marketing authorisation, as the noble Lord will know, doctors can prescribe an unlicensed medicine under their own professional responsibility. That addresses one question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, as to whether it is in theory available on the NHS. The answer would be yes, in those circumstances, but any national action to promote the use of a drug that is not licensed is out of the question, as I am sure he is aware. I understand that there are several clinical trials of polypill products in progress in various countries and it will be interesting to see the results.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, questioned whether it was the fear of additional workload that was deterring doctors in the context of the polypill. My information is that the evidence on that front is as yet unavailable one way or the other, as regards the primary prevention setting, but that clinical studies are now under way. Indeed, I have in front of me the details of three polypill phase 3 clinical trials which had either completed or were close to completion as of May 2014. I can let the noble Lord have details of those trials if he would like me to do so.

The noble Lord, Lord Turnberg, raised the possibility that the polypill could be prescribed to those people who do not fall into the risk group. That is, of course, the primary prevention group. I am advised, though, that as age advances, the risk of side-effects also increases proportionally. I suggest that before embarking on a course of this nature, we would need evidence that the polypill influences benefit more than risk. We therefore come back to the issue of clinical trials in order to demonstrate that.

Having said that, to answer another of the noble Lord’s questions, I accept that the polypill could be more convenient for some patients and could help them to adhere to their medicines. Whether it would prove cost-effective is something that NICE might in due course consider.

I know that not everyone is convinced by the polypill. There are, for instance, concerns about the medicalisation of otherwise healthy people. Even by its proponents it is seen as secondary to other forms of prevention. Professor Wald himself is quoted as saying:

“This is not the solution for primary prevention … Primary prevention requires education of the public. As a priority this is much more important than any polypill”.

There is a range of population-based interventions that could be put in place to reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease. Each has its pros and cons and may be suitable for some patients and in different circumstances. We know that many premature deaths and illnesses could be avoided by improving lifestyles. The Government’s public health programme includes national ambitions to reduce smoking, obesity, physical inactivity and the harmful use of alcohol—all with appropriate metrics included in the public health outcomes framework.

In addition, through the NHS Health Check programme people between the ages of 40 and 74 are offered a range of tests that include measuring their cholesterol and blood pressure levels. The check has been designed primarily to help healthcare professionals identify cardiovascular risk in the adult population earlier so that steps can be taken to reduce it, but it is worth emphasising that it is also targeted at a range of other conditions.

All 152 local authorities are now offering the NHS Health Check programme, which is a significant milestone in the programme’s evolution. In 2013-14 a total of 2.8 million people—almost 20% of the eligible population—were offered an NHS health check, and just over 1.4 million of them received one, giving a take-up rate of 50%. This is the greatest number of NHS health checks offered and accepted in one year since the programme began.

[Lord Turnberg]

That is all extremely credible. However, the polypill is aimed at those who have passed the health check with flying colours—that is, they have normal cholesterol and blood pressure, do not smoke and are not overweight. It is with this group of individuals, who are not suspected of having the liability to develop a heart attack or stroke, where it seems to have its place.

[Earl Howe]

Again, that is the primary prevention group, and the point that I was seeking to convey earlier was that we would need evidence that the benefit-to-risk ratio was sufficiently positive before proceeding down that course. That is not to say that it is not, but there is work to be done to prove it.

In March 2013 the Cardiovascular Disease Outcomes Strategy was published. This set out possible actions within the current legislative framework, systems architecture and financial settlement to deliver improved outcomes for people with CVD. It set out a framework for 10 actions that would make a real difference in improving outcomes for patients and their families. While I could expatiate on that subject, I am told that my time is drawing to a close, so suffice it to say that I hope that noble Lords have found today’s debate as interesting as I have.

The polypill is certainly an interesting concept. It may be that this type of approach would be more suitable in developing countries, where the real epidemics of cardiovascular disease are building up and where clinical trials are taking place, rather than in a more sophisticated healthcare system such as ours, where prevention and tailored therapy are more the norm. Time will tell.

On the issue of market failure, which was introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I am not convinced that the same arguments apply to the polypill as apply to antimicrobials. For one thing, there are a number of clinical trials of polypills in progress, as I mentioned, and the MHRA has provided scientific advice to a number of companies, so clearly there is commercial interest out there. We do, however, welcome any technologies that contribute to providing the best treatment for people with cardiovascular disease.

In answer to the main question of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, of whether the Government will consider playing a more active role in this debate, I would certainly be interested in looking at the noble Lord’s proposals in more detail and would be happy to discuss the matter with him at a suitable moment. With that, I thank him once again for introducing this extremely interesting topic for our consideration.

House adjourned at 9.26 pm.