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Oral Answers to Questions
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
1. What steps she has taken to raise attainment among less affluent children at school.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
We have introduced the pupil premium, which supplies significant additional funding to schools for each disadvantaged pupil.
Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who has been a passionate advocate of higher standards in education for every single child in the country. Our reforms of the curriculum, of qualifications and of accountability, along with the drive to establish more good and outstanding schools, will continue.
Sir Andrew Stunell
I can report to the Minister that schools in my constituency are delighted with the pupil premium, and are particularly delighted that they have complete flexibility in relation to how they can best use it to improve the outcomes for children. May I urge the Minister not to be seduced or tempted by those who want more central prescription of how the pupil premium might be allocated in future?
Mr Laws
I will not be tempted or seduced. I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend that it is vital for us to continue to give schools the flexibility that will enable them to spend the money in the best evidence-based way. As my right hon. Friend will know, the Ofsted reports that were published last week show that schools are beginning to use it very effectively to narrow the gap.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
One of the ways in which the last Government sought to address this issue was the London Challenge, which, as the Minister will know, had a very positive impact on the achievement gap in London. What lessons does he think can be drawn from it for the rest of the country?
Mr Laws
There are certainly a great many lessons to be learnt from the London Challenge. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of reports which have been published over the last few months and which seek to draw those lessons. One lesson that I would draw is that it is important for us to provide the opportunities that the London Challenge helped to create for every part of the country, and not just for areas that have been selected by Ministers.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
Even if we believe the argument that faith schools improve attainment—which I do not, given the middle classes’ propensity to discover God shortly before their children’s schooling is due to begin—is segregation by faith a price worth paying by our society?
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I welcome the new Education Secretary to her job. I also welcome back the Schools Minister, who has made the greatest comeback since Lazarus. I am not sure why we need two Schools Ministers, one in the blue corner and one in the yellow corner, but perhaps that is the reason.
One suggestion for the Education Secretary that I have received is that she should change the locks at Sanctuary Buildings to ensure that the former Education Secretary and his adviser Dominic Cummings cannot sneak back in after dark. However, she could help less affluent pupils immediately if she reversed her predecessor’s political instruction to Ofqual to end the AS-level link, which research shows helps them to obtain good university places. Will she signal a fresh start by reversing that decision?
Mr Laws
There are no plans to go down the route that the hon. Gentleman has suggested. We, as a Government, believe passionately that the final years of education for young people should be years in which they focus not just on examinations, but on learning. The problem during the most recent period of Labour government was that, in the last four years of education, too much time was spent taking exams rather than learning new facts.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
2. What steps she is taking to reform the support available for children with special educational needs in (a) Peterborough and (b) England; and if she will make a statement.
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
7. What steps she is taking to support children with special educational needs.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
Our SEN and disability reforms are the largest for 30 years. They place children and families at the heart of a single, more integrated birth-to-25 system which focuses on improving outcomes for children and young people.
Last month we announced further substantial funding for local areas to deliver the reforms from this September: £45.2 million, on top of the £70 million that has already been provided this year. Peterborough’s total share is more than £500,000.
Mr Jackson
I pay tribute to John and Louise Ravenscroft of the charity Family Voice for their wonderful work in Peterborough. What assurance can the Minister give that parent carer forums will receive core funding from the Department for 2015-16 and beyond, so that they can continue their work in facilitating parent participation? Will he mandate local authorities to provide top-up funding beyond 2016?
Mr Timpson
We recognise the important role played by parent carer forums. We have therefore increased the funding for each forum from £10,000 to £15,000, which amounts to a total of more than £2 million for 2014-15. As my hon. Friend will appreciate, we have not yet made any decisions about funding beyond that time frame, but, in his customary manner, he has made a strong case for support for their continued work by citing the work of his constituents.
Daniel Kawczynski
I am very pleased with the additional £10.4 million in funding the Government are providing to Shropshire schools. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who has spearheaded the caucus on the funding issue. What further steps will the Government take to help parents with children with special educational needs? I still receive a lot of correspondence on the issue from constituents. I hope that, as the economy improves, more attention and focus can be brought to bear on the issue.
Mr Timpson
The reasons why my hon. Friend is receiving correspondence about the current SEN system are also why, under the Children and Families Act 2014, we are bringing in substantial changes to introduce, from September, a single SEN system that puts families at the centre of decision making right at the start when they require extra support. Over and above that, we are also providing an additional £30 million of new funding so that parents can have independent supporters to assist them in navigating themselves through the system, which, in the past, too many of them have found too difficult.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister is aware that there is a crisis up and down the country—whether in Peterborough or Huddersfield—as many schools do not have the capacity for early diagnosis and treatment. When will he ensure that there is such capacity in every school in our country?
Mr Timpson
The hon. Gentleman, as the former Chair of the Select Committee on Education—which I had the pleasure to serve on during his tenure—is acutely aware of the importance of early identification in our schools for a whole host of reasons. That is why the new code of practice that underpins the Children and Families Act 2014 makes it clear throughout that early identification must be at the centre of the work that schools do on behalf of their pupils. We are providing additional funding to support those endeavours—I will be happy to write to the hon. Gentleman with more details—but many of the decisions will be made at a local level and will be made far more transparent through the publication of a local offer in every council.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
18. Will my hon. Friend say what more specific support his Department is providing for parents who suspect their children may have dyslexia and be in need of such an assessment?
Mr Timpson
The number of children with dyslexia in this country has grown, so it is even more important that we recognise how we can support the many excellent organisations that are out there. That is why we are funding the Dyslexia-Specific Learning Difficulty Trust to the tune of £1.5 million over two years to help provide it with a range of special services so that it can increase the support available to children and young people with dyslexia. We are also funding the British Dyslexia Association’s primary literacy project, which is training over 3,000 teachers who have obtained specialist dyslexia qualifications. Ultimately, however, it is the changes we are introducing in our SEN reforms that will make a difference to families.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Let us hope that Peterborough can become a beacon of progress.
Many families will be greatly encouraged by the store the Minister places on the local offer as a means of driving up standards and improving services for children and young people with special needs and disabilities. If I were the Minister, I would organise an annual assessment of the local offer so that, across the country, we can see exactly what is working and what simply is not good enough. What will the Minister’s approach be?
Mr Timpson
As the Minister, I think I can do better than the suggestion the hon. Gentleman has made, and that is to have a constant review of the formulation and implementation of local offers. Of course every council will have to publish and review them, and to consult local families and young people so that they have an input into ensuring that the services they require are available when they need them. Ofsted also plays a role in trying to understand the impact of the reforms, and I am looking forward to seeing its response.
Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)
Many schools, such as St Paul’s in Withington, have an outstanding reputation for supporting statemented children, and therefore become a school of choice for many parents of SEN children, but do not receive the necessary resources. What can the Minister provide for such schools that end up with a higher than average number of children who have a statement?
Mr Timpson
It is important to remember that the amount of money being made available to schools for SEN children is the same this year as it was last year, and so this is about how we allocate those resources. In addition, those on statements will in future be on education, health and care plans, whereby there are additional duties, not just on schools, but on health providers, where schools sometimes complain that there is less co-operation and less endeavour to ensure that the required support is made available. That extra duty on the health providers is a big step forward, and people have been calling for it for a considerable time.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
22. In the light of those new EHC plans, will the Minister continue to ensure that specialist services such as speech and language therapy, and child and adolescent mental health services—CAMHS—are available in our communities?
Mr Timpson
I completely agree with my hon. Friend that those are key services for many families where there are children with SEN and disabilities. Through the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, we have made much more money available—£54 million, I believe—to provide better services. I also know that work is going on in the Department of Health to look more widely at the role of CAMHS, as we know that provision has been patchy for too long. Although there are good examples in places such as Liverpool, where it is functioning well, it is falling short in too many parts of the country. As I say, there are greater duties on health services to make sure that what is in an EHC plan is provided, but of course we need to ensure that that remains the case right across the board.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
3. What steps she is taking to make child care more affordable and improve the flexibility of child care provision.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
13. What steps she is taking to make child care more affordable and improve the flexibility of child care provision.
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
One of the greatest achievements of my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), was to put in place real reforms that ensure that all our young people—from the earliest age—have the opportunities to succeed. It is a privilege to follow him in this role.
We are the first Government to fund 15 hours a week of free child care for all three-year-olds and four-year-olds, and for disadvantaged two-year-olds. We have also taken action to give more choice to parents, including by creating childminder agencies and by supporting schools to open nurseries and offer 8 am to 6 pm provision.
Jonathan Ashworth
As a fellow Leicestershire MP, may I welcome the right hon. Lady to her promotion, which is well-deserved? I am sure she will know that in Leicester the cost of holiday child care has doubled since 2010, with parents paying about £50 more than they were. When is she going to get a grip of escalating child care costs?
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his kind sentiments. He will know that the National Day Nurseries Association published research last year showing that the cost of child care had stabilised and was starting to come down. I am sure that he would therefore support our proposals for tax-free child care, which would allow parents to build up credit in accounts, which they could then spend in holidays or in term time as they feel appropriate, in line with the needs of their family.
Mr Reed
In welcoming the Secretary of State to her post, may I say that I am afraid she gave a rather complacent response to my hon. Friend? This is not just about the affordability of child care; it is also about its availability, and the Government are failing on that, too. Figures from the Family and Childcare Trust show that the amount of holiday child care to help working parents has halved under this Government—for parents of disabled children the figure is even worse. Will she tell working parents in my constituency what real help this Government are going to give them, particularly as they face the reduction in summer holiday child care availability?
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. As a working parent, I sympathise with all working parents about the availability and affordability of child care. This Government take that extremely seriously. I have mentioned tax-free child care, but we have also introduced shared parental leave and we are increasing child care support under universal credit. It should also be noted that the latest figures show that there are about 100,000 more child care places than there were in 2009.
Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend to her post. As a fellow working mum, she will know that school holidays can be a particularly challenging time for families when it comes to child care. I am particularly interested in her views on how the Government are supporting families with older children, as they can find it especially difficult to find the right sort of support during the summer holidays.
Nicky Morgan
May I thank my right hon. Friend very much for her warm welcome? She is absolutely right to say that child care, which can be challenging at all times, can be particularly challenging during the holidays and especially when the six-week holiday period stretches out in front of families. The Government’s tax-free child care policy will extend to children up to the age of 12—it will extend up to the age of 17 for disabled children. That is why it is so very welcome and progress must be made on it—I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is doing that.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
May I reinforce the comments of the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth)? The whole House will consider my right hon. Friend’s promotion very well deserved.
On child care, am I correct in thinking that the Government will cover 85% of the child care costs of about 300,000 families receiving universal credit and are seeking to ensure that work always pays?
Nicky Morgan
I thank my right hon. Friend for his warm words. He is absolutely right to say that under the universal credit that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is introducing, families will be able to receive 85% support with their child care costs, up from 70% under the current working tax credit system?
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, welcome the new Secretary of State to her position today. May I take it from the fact that she is answering the questions that she is now the child care Minister as well as Secretary of State and that despite her expanding ministerial team she has taken on those responsibilities? I am all for flexi-working, but given the challenge our country faces with its child care system I hope that she can focus full time on this issue. As other Members have said, the Family and Childcare Trust and Netmums have shown that the cost and availability of holiday child care are damaging the economy, with 1 million working days lost because parents cannot find or afford holiday child care to fit their needs. What does the Secretary of State say to parents being forced to take time off this summer, during this Parliament, because they cannot get the summer child care they need?
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Lady for her warm words. She will be aware, as a fellow working mum, that women are excellent at multi-tasking. Of course, as Secretary of State for Education, I am interested in child care and the whole range of issues that my Department will be dealing with as well as my brief as Minister for Women and Equalities. I look forward to continuing these debates with the hon. Lady, as does the Minister who will be taking on the specific responsibility for child care. She is absolutely right that the holiday costs are very important and that is why we have increased the number of free hours of child care available as well as introducing tax-free child care, shared parental leave and policies on flexible working, all of which I am sure she welcomes.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
4. What steps she is taking to support school governors.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
We recognise the vital role that governors play in our schools. We have increased funding to the National College for Teaching and Leadership to expand and develop training programmes for chairs, governors and clerks and to increase the numbers of national leaders of governance.
Ms Stuart
In Birmingham, Ofsted found that governors “asserted inappropriate influence” to
“alter the character and ethos of schools”.
Sir Michael Wilshaw also found that local government structures and accountability are too weak and need to be strengthened. How does the Minister suggest that an authority such as Birmingham should respond to the need to have a coherent approach to its governors when it faces a totally fragmented structure?
Mr Laws
We certainly need to learn the lessons not just for Birmingham but for the wider school system of the events that have been reported on over the past few weeks. I should say to the hon. Lady that the Department expects to publish Peter Clarke’s report tomorrow and, with your permission, Mr Speaker, the Secretary of State intends to make a statement to the House on how we intend to respond both to the Clarke report and to Ian Kershaw’s report.
Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)
A school funding revolution is taking place in Northumberland as the fairer funding consultation will lead to an increase in April 2015 of up to 7.2%. That is also a revolution for our governors, who, under the previous Government, were often consulted but always ignored. Will the Minister take this forward and ensure that we have fairer funding for all?
Mr Laws
As my hon. Friend ingeniously points out, the funding reforms we are making will certainly help governors and teachers in schools. As a result of his campaigning and that of many other hon. Members we are introducing the fairer funding system next year. When we consulted on this, Northumberland was initially going to benefit to the tune of £10.6 million. I can say that the final settlement is that Northumberland will receive £12 million more to ensure that it is funded fairly in the future.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
23. The Minister said that he felt we should learn the wider lessons of the Birmingham inquiry, not just those about Birmingham schools. Peter Clarke is reported to have described a system of “benign neglect” in the Department for Education. Does the Minister agree that the way to deal with that benign neglect is to introduce a proper system of local oversight?
Mr Laws
As the hon. Gentleman will understand, we are not going to comment today on leaked reports. Tomorrow the Secretary of State will be in a position to set out very clearly the way in which we intend to respond to both reports, but I would say to the hon. Gentleman gently that all those engaged in the education debate have something to learn from this. Birmingham local authority did not cover itself in glory in all aspects of these issues either.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Governors across North Wiltshire who run some of the best schools in the land do an outstandingly good job, but many of them tell me that they are overburdened by rules, regulations, bureaucracy and the forms they have to fill out for central Government. Is there a way that they could be freed from some of these responsibilities so that they can take a much more strategic overview of the direction of the school and spend less time bogged down in bureaucracy?
Mr Laws
My hon. Friend is exactly right that the Government want to reduce all aspects of bureaucracy in the school system. We want to make sure that governors are not overburdened with bureaucracy but are armed with the vital information that will allow them to do their job properly and to have more effective governing bodies, which can play a vital role in school improvement.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that schools such as Priory Lane primary in my constituency, where the governing body wants to take the school forward by academising, should be given a choice of at least two academy sponsors to find the appropriate fit to take the school community forward?
Mr Laws
We always pay due regard to the views of individual schools and governing bodies, but it is vital that when we academise schools that have been failing in the past, the Department discharges its responsibility to select the sponsor which we believe will be most effective.
Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)
5. What recent assessment she has made of the performance of free schools; and if she will make a statement.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
14. What recent assessment she has made of the performance of free schools; and if she will make a statement.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
Based on Ofsted inspections of free schools undertaken so far, the majority of free schools are performing well. They are also more likely to be rated outstanding than other state-funded schools.
Mary Macleod
My constituency is one of the fastest- growing boroughs in London. We currently have one free school, which is performing well, according to parents. School places are my biggest local issue. Will my hon. Friend meet me to discuss this and see whether we can prioritise the creation of more new free schools in Brentford and Isleworth?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend is, I know, closely involved with all the schools in Brentford and Isleworth and is active in helping to identify sites for new free schools. I would welcome the opportunity to visit that one free school she refers to—I think it is the Nishkam school in Isleworth—and to join her in meeting her constituents who want to establish new free schools in response to parental demand. That is what the free schools programme is all about—new schools set up in response to local parental demand, delivering strong discipline and high academic standards.
Charlie Elphicke
The Minister will be aware that free schools are very popular with parents and achieve results that outperform many maintained schools. In view of that, would he consider supporting a new free school in Deal in my constituency?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend is right. There are currently 174 free schools up and running, of which 40% have already had a section 5 Ofsted inspection, in addition to their pre-opening inspection. Of those, 24% are graded outstanding, which is a staggering achievement for a school that has been open for just four or five terms. This represents a higher proportion than other schools. Some 71% of free schools are graded good or outstanding. We would certainly welcome an application for a new free school in Deal if there is evidence of a need for more good school places.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
May I, too, welcome the Minister back to the Dispatch Box? I would be interested to have his assessment over a coffee some time of his old boss versus his new boss.
As the Minister will be aware, Ofsted said that at one school, children’s reading ability had regressed, and of another school that
“too many pupils are in danger of leaving the school without being able to read and write properly.”
This was Ofsted’s report on two free schools. What early warning systems exist to spot problems in free schools before they become entrenched, and how many free schools are currently under investigation by the Education Funding Agency?
Mr Speaker
That is enough material for at least one Adjournment debate, and possibly two. I have a feeling the hon. Gentleman will be putting in his applications before very long.
Mr Gibb
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his warm welcome. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) said to me on Wednesday, “It just shows that you can boil cabbage twice.” [Interruption.] I think it was meant kindly.
The Government are committed to eliminating illiteracy. We have introduced the phonic check and we are determined to raise reading standards right across the school system, but free schools and academies are taking action more swiftly than local authority schools to tackle failure in those schools.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
The Government’s policy on free schools is in free fall. Given that local authorities have no formal powers under the Government’s education policy, what will the Government do to ensure strong local oversight at local authority level to ensure that the debacle that has been played out in Birmingham is not repeated elsewhere?
Mr Gibb
The evidence is that in those small number of examples where free schools have not succeeded, action is taken more swiftly than in local authority schools. There is evidence that many local authority schools languish in special measures year after year. That is not what is happening with the academies and free schools programme.
Mr Mark Hoban (Fareham) (Con)
21. I commend my hon. Friend on his return to the Front Bench. Free schools and academies are rightly popular with parents and many of them, such as Cams Hill in my constituency, turn children away. Will he consider giving academies and free schools the power to borrow to expand so that more parents have a choice of places for their children?
Mr Gibb
That is more an issue for the Treasury than for this policy. We are seeing more and more free schools coming on line, and they are popular. We already have 157 free schools in the pipeline, about 80 will be opening this September, and I am convinced that they will all be very successful.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I also congratulate the Minister. If he has been boiled twice, I wonder what happened to the other vegetables.
I am a firm supporter of free schools. As the Minister knows, the first Sikh free school will open in September this year. I congratulate the Secretary of State, whose constituency of Loughborough is a fast 10 minutes away from Leicester, on her appointment. Will the Minister ask her to come along in September and open our new free school for the Sikh community?
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
6. What assessment she has made of the effects on performance of sixth-form colleges of funding changes since 2010.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
10. What assessment she has made of the effects on performance for sixth-form colleges of funding changes since 2010.
The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)
Although sixth-form colleges have had to make a contribution to our efforts to deal with the massive budget deficit left by the previous Government, the number of students in sixth-form colleges attaining level 3 qualifications by age 19 has increased by almost 8% since 2010.
Paul Blomfield
The Minister will know that recent figures show that academies have access to 35% more funding per student than sixth-form colleges, yet sixth-form colleges still have to pay VAT, insurance and capital costs, diverting money away from teaching and learning. As the Minister settles into his new job, what will he do to secure fairness in education for all young people?
Nick Boles
Fairness is exactly what we are trying to achieve, and we want a system whereby students receive the same level of backing for their studies regardless of the institution to which they go. Despite the previous Government having had 13 years to sort out the unfairness of the school funding system, we inherited a system that was byzantine in its complexity, and it is taking us some time to work it out.
Julie Hilling
A number of sixth-form providers across Bolton have contacted me to say that the funding regulations for sixth-form colleges mean that they are under pressure to place students on additional courses to meet the minimum hour requirement, which is detrimental to those students who succeed better when they are focused on just three subjects. Will the Minister look again at the regulations that are pressurising students to follow educational pathways that are not in their best interests?
Nick Boles
I am happy to look into any question that the hon. Lady raises, because she is a great expert in this area. I do not recognise the charge, but I am happy to look into it if she would like to send me more information.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
The Minister is right to remind the Opposition that they had 13 years to put right the anomaly, but we have had four years. What is the justification for continuing for another year a funding formula under which sixth-form students at an 11-to-18 school have two thirds more funding than if they go to a sixth-form college?
Nick Boles
The great Sir Bob—my hon. Friend—is of course so experienced in the House that he knows he has attacked Ministers for withdrawing funding from one institution too quickly, and I am sure that he has argued for damping mechanisms for any sudden effects of changes in the funding formula. There is always a balance to be struck between ensuring that the funding is fair and ensuring that no institution has the rug pulled from under it. It is a balance that we are determined to achieve.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
Notwithstanding the undoubted unfairness of their funding arrangements, sixth-form colleges are the most successful institutions in our education system, with regard to both the quality of education provided and value for money. When will the Government take steps to increase the number of sixth-form colleges across the country, and would the Minister care to visit the superb Luton sixth-form college in my constituency to find out how good they really are?
Nick Boles
I am happy to take up any invitation; as the former planning Minister, I do not get so many. I will simply say that there are more places in sixth-form colleges this year than there were in 2010. Despite the funding constraints and the need to make some difficult choices, this Government are backing sixth-form colleges.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
8. What recent assessment she has made of the effectiveness of work-related learning in schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
Work-related learning helps young people to become better prepared for employment and develop the skills that employers say are important. The new technical awards for 14 to 16-year-olds are one example of how young people can learn the practical skills needed for the workplace. Our revised statutory guidance on careers advice, effective from September, will strengthen the requirement for schools to build links with employers to give students an insight into a broad range of careers.
Chris Evans
I welcome the Minister to his new post. I listened to what he just said and cannot disagree with any of it. Even the CBI says that 52% of respondents to a recent survey say that schools must teach pupils about work-based skills. Therefore, can he tell the House why the Government have seen fit to abolish year 10 work experience?
Mr Gyimah
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman says that there is not much we can disagree about. We removed the duty in order to allow schools the freedom and autonomy to decide how they provide work-related learning at key stage 4. We are focusing on high-quality and meaningful work experience post-16 so that students can acquire the skills and experience that employers demand. Following the introduction of our 16-to-19 study programme in traineeships in 2013, work experience is now an important element of post-16 education.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
19. I welcome the Minister to his new post. Does he agree that the measure introduced by the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill to ensure that we properly track students from school into work will be of great benefit in work experience and in ensuring that students get into the right jobs?
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
I, too, welcome the Secretary of State and her new Ministers to their posts. The UK Commission for Employment and Skills has found that young people who have four or more work experience activities during their education are five times less likely to fall into the category of NEET—not in education, employment or training—in later life, yet work experience placements have declined by 15% on this Government’s watch. Will the Secretary of State reverse her predecessor’s decision to abolish work experience?
Mr Gyimah
The hon. Lady forgot to mention that we currently have the lowest ever level of NEETs, thanks to this Government’s long-term economic plan. As I said in response to the hon. Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans), many education providers already have excellent links with employers, as the CBI says, and what they want to see is organisations such as the National Careers Service, Jobcentre Plus, local enterprise partnerships and education business partnerships offering support to schools. That is how we will get our young people into work.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
9. What assessment she has made of the effect on admission numbers for sixth-form colleges of funding changes since 2010.
The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)
In case it was not clear the first time, let me explain that despite a fall in the population of 16 to 19-year-olds, sixth-form colleges have been allocated 2% more places in 2014-15 than in 2010-11.
Ian Lucas
My question is different from the one that the Minister answered earlier, so it would be helpful if he addressed himself to it specifically. The Sixth Form Colleges Association tells us that £100 million has been taken out of sixth-form colleges since 2010, and we have also heard about the disparity they face in connection with VAT. Why are this Government treating sixth-form colleges so badly?
Nick Boles
I do not want to be pernickety, but the hon. Gentleman’s question reads as follows:
“What assessment she has made of the effect on admissions numbers for sixth-form colleges of funding changes”.
The answer is that the funding changes have produced an increase in admission numbers to sixth-form colleges.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
May I ask the Minister to turn his mind from the general to the specific—namely, City College Coventry, which trains about 50% of 16 to 18-year-olds in Coventry and which, for the year 2015, is receiving an 18% cut? Will he look at that specifically and perhaps come with me to visit the college?
Nick Boles
I would be happy to look at the particular financial situation of the college in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and to see how the damping mechanism that is in place is working in that case.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
11. What progress has been made on the traineeships programme; and if she will make a statement.
The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)
The Government launched traineeships last August to help 16 to 23-year-olds to develop the skills and vital experience they need to get an apprenticeship or a sustainable job. Some 7,400 young people have already started a traineeship.
Rehman Chishti
I welcome the Minister to his new post, and I know he will do an outstanding job. What commitment have the Government received from major national employers to offer traineeships to young people that will also help to benefit the 640 NEETs in Medway, which covers my constituency?
Nick Boles
I am delighted to be able to tell my hon. Friend that Virgin Media, Jaguar Land Rover, Siemens, the BBC, National Grid and Barclays, to name just a few, are committed to setting up and offering traineeships. I will certainly be happy to look into seeing whether any of those could be available to his constituents in the Medway area.
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
We now have a raft of opportunities for young people—traineeships, apprenticeships, sixth-form colleges, further education colleges—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] That is not to say that they are all something that Government Members should claim credit for. Does that not underline the importance of good, transparent, independent careers advice from a young age—from 14? Would the Minister be willing to come to speak to constituents of mine who have expressed to me very strongly their desire for access to face-to-face careers advice at an early stage so they can make the right choices in life?
Nick Boles
The National Careers Service does provide face-to-face meetings for up to 1 million young people, but I am of course happy to meet the hon. Lady and her constituents. We recognised that not all schools were doing exactly what we expected of them. That is why we produced new guidance on making sure that schools are doing what is required of them in offering young people a choice of opportunities, not just within the school but among all other institutions, to take their education forward.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
12. What progress she has made on introducing the technical baccalaureate.
The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)
This feels a little like machine gun fire, but I am always happy to take bullets from the hon. Lady. The technical baccalaureate will be available in all schools and colleges from this September. Students will need to pass one or more tech levels and a maths qualification, such as AS maths or the new core maths qualifications, and to undertake an extended project.
Lyn Brown
I will do my best with the bullets. When the Leader of the Opposition announced the “tech bac” at the Labour party conference in 2012, the Tories briefed that it would leave thousands of young people unemployable. How many young people does the Minister predict will be taking up the Government’s “tech bac” from September 2014, and how many of them does he think will be unemployable?
Nick Boles
The reason we are in government and the hon. Lady is not is that we are very good at taking ideas that are not yet perfect and making them perfect, which is exactly what we have done with the idea of a “tech bac”. I am very hopeful that about 25% of young people will take up the opportunity of a “tech bac”. The key thing is what is in it—that the qualifications that make it up are themselves demanding. That is what we are ensuring.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
15. What steps she is taking to improve the quality of child care.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
As the new Minister for child care, let me state clearly that the Government’s position is that high-quality child care has a powerful impact on children’s development and educational attainment, and is a driver of social mobility. That is why we are driving up standards through a stronger inspection framework and focusing local authority support on weaker providers, improving the skills and status of the work force and investing £50 million through a new early-years pupil premium, which will benefit 170,000 three and four-year-olds from low-income families. Finally, we are providing 20% of disadvantaged two-year-olds with access to high-quality provision, rising to 40% in September.
Barbara Keeley
As well as congratulating the new Education Secretary and her team on their new roles, may I say that I hope they will ensure that their Department pays the London living wage to all who work there, like some other Departments?
Early intervention grants to Salford have been cut by 50% since 2010 and, overall, Salford city council has had £100 million cut from its budgets. The situation now threatens the existence of our excellent Sure Start centres. How will those savage budget cuts contribute to the quality of child care and to the continuation of our Sure Start centres?
Mr Gyimah
This Government are increasing the amount of money invested in early intervention in child care to the tune of £5 billion. As I said in my previous answer, we have also introduced a new early-years pupil premium, which will help 170,000 three and four-year-olds, and we are extending the offer of free child care from 20% to 40% of the most disadvantaged two-year-olds. That is what I call supporting quality child care.
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
16. What steps she is taking to improve the oversight of schools at a local level.
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
From September 2014, eight regional school commissioners, supported by head teacher boards, will ensure more local oversight of academies and free schools by highly respected local practitioners and leading sector representatives. We have also strengthened the guidance for local authorities on intervening in maintained schools, as well as ensuring that Ofsted inspections use a risk-based approach, with more frequent inspection for those performing least well. The chief inspector has the power to inspect any school at any time where he has concerns.
Shabana Mahmood
On Birmingham schools and the Trojan horse affair, will the Secretary of State recognise that improving oversight of schools in Birmingham will require support, trust and confidence from the local communities affected, and will she acknowledge the damage done to that task by the leaking of the Clarke report, which shows, at the very least, that oversight in her own Department could do with some improvement as well?
Nicky Morgan
I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. I look forward to working with not only the local community, but local Members of Parliament, who will be critical in getting to the bottom of exactly what has happened. There is absolutely no place for extremist views in our schools, and I will say more about that tomorrow.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will shortly make a statement on flight MH17, but let me pay tribute in particular to Ben Pocock, a student at Loughborough university who lost his life along with the hundreds of other innocent victims.
I also pay tribute to the achievements of my predecessor as Secretary of State for Education. I believe that he will be remembered as one of the great reforming Secretaries of State for Education. Let me be absolutely clear that I share with him a total commitment to creating an education system that enables young people, regardless of their background, to unlock every ounce of their potential.
Henry Smith
I join my right hon. Friend in sending our condolences to the family of the MH17 victim from Loughborough university. I also warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend on her appointment as Secretary of State for Education. Will she join me in congratulating students from Oriel high school, Hazelwick school and Holy Trinity school in my constituency who recently won awards at the STEMfest, which I launched for the third year in my constituency, and does she agree that it is important that we encourage young people to consider science, technology, engineering and maths subjects?
Nicky Morgan
I thank my hon. Friend and congratulate those schools in Crawley that took part in STEMfest and my hon. Friend, who is an excellent constituency Member of Parliament, on his continuing support for that valuable event. Such events provide students with an insight to future STEM careers and the importance of STEM to the UK economy. I hope those students who took part will be inspired to continue to study STEM subjects in the next stage of their education and beyond.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
May I welcome the right hon. Lady to her new post? I also pay tribute to her predecessor. He was a man full of ideas; they just happened to be the wrong ones, which is why he had to go. After no change on AS-levels, work experience or free schools, will the Secretary of State explain to the House why she is also continuing with the flawed and unpopular policy of increasing the number of unqualified teachers in our schools? When will she make the break and put the interests of parents and pupils above those of Tory party ideology?
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Gentleman very much indeed for his warm words. He started off so well, but the theatrics were typical of somebody who took part in the Cambridge Footlights when he was there. I am not going to take lessons from the hon. Gentleman—oh, no! Wait a minute. He does give lessons, as an unqualified teacher, doesn’t he?
Tristram Hunt
No change there, so let me try another question. The Government’s rushed curriculum changes risk undermining faith in the examination system, causing confusion for parents and pupils. Ofqual has already warned of greater than normal turbulence in examination results this summer. Is the Secretary of State fully satisfied that her Government’s changes will not compromise fairness and consistency as pupils receive their results in August?
Nicky Morgan
I would like to answer that question with a one-word answer: yes. I am not going to take lessons from the hon. Gentleman, because under this Government there are 250,000 fewer pupils in under- performing schools and 800,000 more pupils in schools that are rated good and outstanding. That is the legacy of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), which I intend to build on.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
T5. Only one of the six secondary schools on the Isle of Wight, Christ the King, has been judged good by Ofsted. It is massively oversubscribed. Two new schools will open next term, but what is being done to encourage the remaining schools to become good or even excellent schools?
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that educational standards on the Isle of Wight are unacceptably low. That is why, in July 2013, the previous Secretary of State issued a direction notice to Isle of Wight council to improve standards. My hon. Friend will know that Hampshire is now the island’s strategic partner, and that it is making good progress with the schools on the island. However, the Department for Education and all its Ministers will be keeping a close eye on the island to ensure that standards continue to improve.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
T2. The Government’s own figures show that there are nearly 600 fewer children’s centres than there were at the time of the last election. According to the charity 4Children, a further 100 children’s centres are under threat of imminent closure as a result of cuts by this Government. Will the new Minister take the necessary action to halt the decline in the number of children’s centres and to remove the threat to services that are relied on by so many families and children?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
We want to see a strong network of children’s centres in place across the country, offering families access to a wide range of local, flexible services. In fact, a recent survey showed that, under this Government, a record number of parents—more than 1 million—were now using children’s centres, and that the centres were reaching more than 90% of families in need. I guess that listening to the views of families is what is important here.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
T8. I welcome the Government’s positive approach in creating a fairer funding formula for schools. That will mean that pupils in Macclesfield will be receiving a £125 cash boost. Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that a fairer funding formula will continue to be a strong focus under this Government?
Mr Laws
I can promise my hon. Friend that a fairer funding formula will be delivered in 2015-16. His own area will receive an additional £5.7 million. This is the biggest move towards fair funding across England in a decade, and it is long overdue. It should have taken place under the previous Government, and it will take place under this one.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
T3. I was glad to read in the newspapers that the Minister had finally abandoned plans to allow firms such as G4S to run child protection services, but then I looked more closely and discovered that he now intends to allow those firms to set up not-for-profit subsidiaries that would run those services anyway. That would mean that the same firm could place a child into a care home and run that care home, and not be inspected by Ofsted. How on earth can the Minister think that that would be good for children?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
I think the hon. Lady should talk to those on her Front Bench, as well as to her colleagues in the previous Labour Government who started this whole process by legislating on social work practices. We have been clear, following the consultation, that there will be non-profit organisations running children’s services but also that the same levels of accountability and oversight will apply as a consequence. She needs to look carefully at the detail and talk to her Front Benchers about what their position is.
Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)
Schools across Norfolk will every day serve an extra 21,000 free school meals to infant-aged children from September. Will the Minister join me in thanking head teachers and schools in my constituency that have worked hard to ensure that these meals are delivered, and will he update the House on how many schools are going to fulfil the policy?
Mr Laws
I would like to thank head teachers, governing bodies and local authorities right across the country that are now delivering the policy. It is one of the most important social reforms introduced by our Government. It will raise attainment, raise the quality of food eaten in schools and help with household budgets. The vast majority of schools are on track to deliver it successfully in September, and we continue to work with the small minority that have further work to do.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
T4. Many parents across Leicester, and I dare say across Loughborough too, do not think it unreasonable to expect teachers to be qualified. Why does the right hon. Lady disagree with them?
Nicky Morgan
I think the hon. Gentleman ought to ask his own shadow Education Secretary, who himself has been teaching unqualified. Government Members believe that head teachers are the best people to know about the qualifications of those who teach children. We want to look at the outcomes, not to be obsessed always with the structures and the people.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is a national scandal that under the previous Government an estimated 350,000 young people a year were studying for post-16 qualifications that offered no route into stable employment or higher education?
The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This Government have got rid of 3,000 poor-quality qualifications allowed in by the previous Government who, in doing so, debased the currency of qualifications and led young people up the garden path with no real prospect of getting a job at the end of it.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
T7. The Government’s flagship education policy—free schools— looks like it is fast becoming their greatest liability. When will the Department set out how it will encourage applications from areas with forecasts of high or severe need for additional school places, working with local authorities where appropriate? Will the Secretary of State give a commitment today to a timetable for that to happen, or is she content with business as usual?
Nicky Morgan
I thank the hon. Gentleman very much for his question, but the plain fact is that two thirds of free schools have so far been judged good or outstanding. The tremendous policy of free schools is supported by parents, and we will continue with them.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
State boarding schools are the hidden jewel in the crown of the state education system. It would benefit the taxpayer greatly if more service personnel’s children went to state boarding schools, rather than to independent schools. Will the new Secretary of State work with the Secretary of State for Defence to allow greater capital funding for state boarding schools to enable them to expand to take more service personnel’s children?
Nicky Morgan
Two of my Ministers will speak to the relevant organisation later today. The Secretary of State for Defence is on the Front Bench, and I will certainly be happy to talk to him further about that.
Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Local authorities have warned of a £20 million shortfall in capital for the introduction of universal free school meals. What cuts does the Minister expect schools to make to deliver on this Government imperative?
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
Minutes of a meeting of governors at the Duke of York’s Royal Military school held on 26 November last year note that the Ministry of Defence, the school’s sponsor “were not keen” to be involved with military academies due to “reputational risk”. Will the Secretary of State elaborate on what that reputational risk comprises, say whether it applies to all military schools sponsored by the Ministry of Defence and enlighten the House about what discussions have taken place between her Department and the Ministry of Defence?
Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab)
The current problems in Birmingham academies and my experiences of Byrchall high in my constituency lead me to believe that the last Secretary of State left academy schools completely unaccountable. Will the new Secretary of State take action and change the regulations to force head teachers, at the least, to give a written response to MPs’ inquiries?
Nicky Morgan
I expect all schools to work closely with their Members of Parliament. I will talk more about this matter tomorrow when I make a statement about the Clarke report. It is not true to say that academies are not subject to oversight. They are subject to more oversight from the Department for Education and the Education Funding Agency than maintained schools.
Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)
The Secretary of State’s predecessor was not radical enough on free schools. Will she take this opportunity to state unequivocally her support for free schools, and will she bring forward new ideas for a more rapid expansion of free schools across the country?
Nicky Morgan
It is always exciting to be tempted to be more radical. My commitment to free schools is absolutely undimmed. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend and Members from all parts of the House to get more free schools up and running.
Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that I have worked for five months to uncover problems at Park View school. The leader of Birmingham city council has apologised for the city’s role in the historic failures. Will she apologise to my constituents for what Peter Clarke has called the “benign neglect” of Park View since it became an academy two years ago, and will she respond positively to my letter of last week, which called for a new joint director of school standards in Birmingham so that this never happens again?
Nicky Morgan
The right hon. Gentleman will have heard my earlier answers in which I said that these matters will be discussed more fully tomorrow on publication of the Clarke report. I pay tribute to the work that the right hon. Gentleman has done. I have his letter and will respond to it.
Restoration of the Mainline Platforms at Carnforth Railway Station
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I wish to present two petitions. The first has been signed by more than 5,000 people and declares that the petitioners support Peter Yates, MBE, and the people of Carnforth in their campaign.
The Petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the Petitioners support David Morris MP's campaign to support the reinstatement of the platforms at Carnforth Station on the West Coast Mainline.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to put pressure on Lancashire County Council to approve funding for a feasibility study to allow the platforms to be re-instated.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001375]
Train Services at Silverdale Train Station
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
The second petition has over 300 signatures.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that there should be more train services stopping at Silverdale rail station. The Petitioners believe that the trains to Barrow and to Manchester Airport that pass through Silverdale should all stop at the station.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take steps to support Silverdale station in any further franchise applications in the area.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001374]
Youth Centres in Cleethorpes
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of petitioners from the Haverstoe and Croft Baker wards in Cleethorpes and the wider area of north-east Lincolnshire, who are greatly concerned at proposals from North East Lincolnshire council to close youth centres in the borough and, in the jargon, to reconfigure the council’s youth services. Four of the centres are in the neighbouring constituency of Great Grimsby, but of the two in the Cleethorpes constituency, one has acceptable alternative provision but the centre known as “Trin” in Trinity road, Cleethorpes, is greatly valued by local youngsters. I have visited it on a number of occasions and on one of those occasions was accompanied by the Humberside police commissioner, Matthew Grove, who, like me, was extremely supportive of the work done there by the youth leader Cazzie Adams and her team. The petitioners believe the proposals are “unfair to young people” and
could lead to an increase in antisocial behaviour
and the loss of “up to 24 jobs”. They urge the council
to urgently reconsider their decision to close
the youth centres.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The Humble Petition of the people of North East Lincolnshire,
Sheweth,
That the proposal of North East Lincolnshire Council to close youth centres in the Borough is unfair to young people who would be forced out onto the streets, which could lead to an increase in antisocial behaviour, and to the staff with up to 24 jobs being lost.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges North East Lincolnshire Council to urgently reconsider their decision to close the aforementioned youth centres.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.]
[P001373]
Ukraine (Flight MH17) and Gaza
(10 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
This is the first time that the House has met since the tragic loss of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 last Thursday, and I think that it is right to make a statement about that and the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza.
Flight MH17 was travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down by a surface-to-air missile over eastern Ukraine. All 298 people on board were killed. That includes 10 of our own citizens, as many as 80 children, and victims from nine other countries, including 193 Dutch citizens. It also includes members of an Australian family who lost relatives on Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 earlier this year. From Adelaide to Amsterdam, from Kuala Lumpur to Newcastle, we are seeing heart-wrenching scenes of grief as communities come together to remember their loved ones. I am sure that the whole House will join me in sending our deepest condolences to the friends and families of everyone affected. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
Alongside sympathy for the victims, there is anger. There is anger that this could happen at all; there is anger that the murder of innocent men, women and children has been compounded by sickening reports of looting of victims’ possessions and interference with the evidence; and there is rightly anger that a conflict that could have been curtailed by Moscow has instead been fomented by Moscow. That has to change now.
In the past few days, I have spoken to Presidents Obama and Hollande, Chancellor Merkel, and the Prime Ministers of the Netherlands, Malaysia, Poland and Australia. We are all agreed on what must happen. First, those with influence on the separatists must ensure that they allow the bodies of the victims to be repatriated and provide uninhibited access to the crash site to enable a proper international investigation of what happened to flight MH17. Secondly, President Putin must use his influence to end the conflict in Ukraine by halting supplies and training for the separatists. Thirdly, we must establish proper long-term relationships between Ukraine and Russia; between Ukraine and the European Union; and, above all, between Russia and the European Union, NATO and the wider west. Let me take each of those points in turn.
The first priority remains ensuring that there is proper access to the crash site to repatriate the bodies and investigate what happened. The UK has sent air accident investigators and a police-led victim identification team to help the international effort. The Ukrainian Ministry of Emergency Situations has searched an area of 32 sq km around the crash site and recovered 272 bodies. The work has been made more difficult by the presence of armed separatists. The bodies sitting on a refrigerated train have still not been allowed to leave. The pictures of victims’ personal belongings being gone through are a further sickening violation of the tragic scene. It is welcome that international experts have been able to visit the site, but this should not have taken four days, and even now they are still not getting the unimpeded access that they need.
I spoke to President Putin last night and made it clear that there can be no more bluster or obfuscation. We expect him to help right now by using his influence with the pro-Russian separatists to secure full access for international investigators, and to support the repatriation of the bodies by handing them over to the appropriate authorities and ensuring that they are treated with dignity. Families want information and answers, and we must make sure that they get them. The UK and Australia have tabled a joint resolution at the United Nations Security Council demanding proper access in support of a credible international investigation, and we expect that resolution to be voted on this evening.
Secondly, I also made it clear to President Putin that we expect Russia to end its support for the separatists and their attempts to further destabilise Ukraine. No one is saying that President Putin intended flight MH17 to be shot down—it is unlikely that even the separatists wanted this to happen—but we should be absolutely clear about what caused this terrible tragedy to happen. The context for this tragedy is Russia’s attempt to destabilise a sovereign state, violate its territorial integrity, and arm and train thuggish militias.
Over the past month there has been an increasing amount of heavy weaponry crossing the border from Russia to separatist fighters in Ukraine, and there is evidence that Russia has been providing training to separatist fighters at a facility in south-west Russia, including training on air defence systems. Seconds before flight MH17 dropped out of contact, a surface-to-air missile launch was detected from a separatist-controlled area in south-eastern Ukraine. According to expert analysis, an SA-11 is the most likely missile type. In an intercepted conversation, a known separatist leader was overheard claiming that a separatist faction had downed an aircraft. Another separatist leader claimed on Twitter at about the same time to have shot down an aircraft, while a video on social media over the weekend showed an SA-11 missile system, missing at least one missile, travelling back towards Russia. Those who argue that the Ukrainians could be responsible need to explain all this. In addition, there is no evidence that Ukrainian forces have fired a single surface-to-air missile during the conflict, and no Ukrainian air defence systems appear to have been within range of the crash. By contrast, pro-Russian separatist fighters have downed more than a dozen Ukrainian aircraft over the past few months, including two transport aircraft, so the picture is becoming clearer and the weight of evidence is pointing in one direction: MH17 was shot down by an SA-11 missile fired by separatists.
Thirdly, this is a defining moment for Russia. The world is watching, and President Putin faces a clear choice in how he decides to respond to this appalling tragedy. I hope that he will use this moment to find a path out of this festering and dangerous crisis by ending Russia’s support for the separatists, but if he does not change his approach to Ukraine in that way, Europe and the West must fundamentally change our approach to Russia.
Those of us in Europe should not need to be reminded of the consequences of turning a blind eye when big countries bully smaller countries. We should not shrink from standing up for the principles that govern conduct between independent nations in Europe, and that ultimately keep the peace on our continent. For too long there has been a reluctance on the part of too many European countries to face up to the implications of what is happening in eastern Ukraine. It is time to make our power, influence and resources felt.
Over the weekend I agreed with Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande that we should push our partners in the European Union to consider a new range of hard-hitting economic sanctions against Russia. We should take the first step at the Foreign Ministers meeting in Brussels tomorrow, and if Russia does not change course, then we must be clear that Europe must keep increasing the pressure. Russia cannot expect to continue enjoying access to European markets, European capital and European knowledge and technical expertise while she fuels conflict in one of Europe’s neighbours. We must do what is necessary to stand up to Russia and put an end to the conflict in Ukraine before any more innocent lives are lost.
Let me now turn to the ongoing crisis in Israel and Gaza. The crisis was triggered by Hamas raining hundreds of rockets on Israeli cities, indiscriminately targeting civilians in contravention of all humanitarian law and norms. In the last fortnight, Hamas has fired 1,850 rockets at Israeli cities. This unprecedented barrage continues to this moment, with Hamas rejecting all proposals for a ceasefire, including those put forward by the Egyptian Government.
I have been clear throughout this crisis that Israel has the right to defend itself. Those criticising Israel’s response must ask themselves how they would expect their own Government to react if hundreds of rockets were raining down on British cities today. But I share the grave concern of many in the international community about the heavy toll of civilian casualties. The figures are very disturbing. More than 500 people have now reportedly been killed in Gaza, and over 3,000 injured. The UN estimates that over 83,000 people have been displaced so far. Israel has also faced loss of life, with 18 soldiers and two civilians killed, including 13 soldiers yesterday alone.
I spoke to Prime Minister Netanyahu again about this crisis last night. I repeated our recognition of Israel’s right to take proportionate action to defend itself, and our condemnation of Hamas’s refusal to end its rocket attacks, despite all international efforts to broker a ceasefire. But I urged him do everything to avoid civilian casualties, to exercise restraint, and to help find ways to bring this situation to an end. Prime Minister Netanyahu made it clear that Israel had been ready to accept each of these ceasefire proposals and had unilaterally implemented a temporary ceasefire in the hope that Hamas would follow suit.
My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has spoken to President Abbas to welcome his support for a ceasefire and underline our wish to see the Palestinian Authority back in Gaza. The United Nations Security Council met in a special session last night and issued a call for an immediate ceasefire. The Council expressed serious concern about rising casualties, and called for respect for international humanitarian law and the protection of civilians. We strongly endorse that call. It is vital that Hamas recognises the need to enter into serious negotiations to end this crisis. In particular, we urge Hamas to engage with the ceasefire proposals put forward by the Egyptian Government. It is only by securing a ceasefire that the space can be created to address the underlying issues and return to the long and painstaking task of building the lasting and secure peace that we all want to see, and I commend this statement to the House.
Ms Harriet Harman (Camberwell and Peckham) (Lab)
I thank the Prime Minister for his statement and advance sight of it.
The shooting down of MH17 over the skies of Ukraine was a tragedy that shocked the world. On behalf of the Leader of the Opposition, who is visiting Washington, I join the Prime Minister in expressing our heartfelt and deepest sympathy to the relatives of those who have lost their lives. All of us have been outraged by the images of the site left open for anyone to trample over, and the way that the bodies of the deceased have been handled with what looks like casual indifference. We have all been horrified, but what must it be like for the families of the deceased to see that?
Those families face not only grief and loss, but multiple practical issues. Will the Prime Minister identify a senior Minister to co-ordinate support for them? That role was performed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Dame Tessa Jowell) after 9/11, 7/7 and the tsunami. Will he ensure that his Government do everything they can to enable the international community to help secure the site, repatriate the bodies, and gather the evidence that shows who is responsible? Does he agree that as soon as the investigation of the disaster is complete, there should be an emergency meeting of European Heads of Government to consider what further steps should be taken? It appears that international civil aviation regulators imposed no restrictions on crossing that part of eastern Ukraine. In the light of the attack on flight MH17, is there now specific travel advice for British citizens planning to go abroad?
As the Prime Minister set out in his statement, evidence is growing that this was not simply a tragedy but a terrible crime. Surely this is a moment of reckoning for Europe. This is the moment for a strong and determined EU to step up to its responsibilities and confront the Russian actions. Europe must show its sorrow, but it must also show its strength. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to seek a toughening of EU sanctions against Russia at tomorrow’s EU Council meeting. Will he tell the House what measures he wants to be considered? Will he support decisive steps to extend sanctions not just against specific individuals but against Russian commercial organisations, to dissuade President Putin from the supply of arms and the support for separatists that he is now providing across the Russian border?
Turning to the horror that is unfolding in Gaza, it is intolerable to see the harrowing images of hospitals overwhelmed, mortuaries overflowing and parents devastated as they cradle their dying children. Yesterday the world stood witness to the most bloodstained day. Since the start of this conflict, 20 Israelis have been killed, 18 of whom were soldiers. More than 500 Palestinians have been killed, including countless children—innocent young children whose short lives have been ended in the most brutal and horrific of circumstances.
We cannot reduce this conflict to a ledger of casualties, but we must acknowledge the scale of suffering in Gaza, because the life of a Palestinian child is worth every bit as much as that of an Israeli child. Every death of a Palestinian child will fuel the hatred, embolden Israel’s enemies and recruit more supporters to terrorist groups such as Hamas. We stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, but this escalation will not bring Israel lasting security.
Does the Prime Minister agree with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that we must continue to press for an immediate ceasefire, an immediate end to the Israeli military operation in Gaza, and an end to the rocket fire by Hamas; that all sides must respect international humanitarian law; and that Israel must exercise maximum restraint?
What is the Prime Minister’s view of the report suggesting that Israel is using flechette shells? Does he agree that the only way to avoid the cycle of violence and perpetual insecurity in the region is to address the root causes of the conflict and that there must be an immediate return to the negotiating table and talks on a two-state solution? As Ban Ki-moon said:
“Israelis, but also Palestinians, need to feel a sense of security. Palestinians, but also Israelis, need to see a horizon of hope.”
The Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for her response and also for her condolences for those who have lost loved ones. She is absolutely right to say that what has happened over the skies of Ukraine is a deeply human tragedy; that is how we should see it first and foremost. Our thoughts should be with the victims and their families and on the need to get the bodies off the site and to have that site properly dealt with. That is our first priority. She asked a number of specific questions and made some specific points. On the consular work that is being done, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), is leading on that. In time, I will want to discuss directly with the victims’ families how best we can take care of all their needs and concerns.
The right hon. and learned Lady asked whether there should be an EU Heads of State/Heads of Government European Council emergency meeting. I certainly do not rule it out, but, in the first instance, we should task our Foreign Ministers, who are meeting on Tuesday night, to set out the tough measures that are necessary to show that Europe is heading on a different path. Then she asked about the travel advice to UK citizens. Of course, Eurocontrol is the organisation that sets the parameters for where aeroplanes can and cannot fly, whereas we give advice about individual countries to which people should and should not travel, and that information is regularly updated on the Foreign Office website.
The right hon. and learned Lady is absolutely right to say that this is a moment of reckoning for Europe, and I very much hope that the European Council will not be found wanting. She asked specifically about the steps that should be taken. As she knows, we have the tier 2 sanctions, some of which have already been put in place, but there is more that can be done, such as naming individuals and increasing the number of asset freezes and travel bans. I suggested at the European Council last week that that number should be broadened to include the cronies and oligarchs around President Putin and other leaders, even if there is not a direct link between them and Crimea and Ukraine. I made some progress on that on Wednesday night, and I hope to make some more progress. It is time to start to go into the tier 3 sanctions. For instance, future military sales from any country in Europe should not be going ahead. We have already stopped them from Britain. A number of other suggestions were made about airlines and banks, particularly those connected with Crimea, which have not yet been acted on, so there is a whole set of things that needs to be put in train with a very clear message.
On Gaza, the right hon. and learned Lady is absolutely right that we cannot look at the situation in terms of a ledger of casualties. Again, this is a deeply human tragedy. Anyone seeing those pictures in Gaza of the children running across the beach before their young lives are snuffed out—as a father of three, I cannot help but be incredibly moved by that. What is happening in Gaza is absolutely heartbreaking. We have to be clear, though, about how this could most quickly be brought to an end: that is for Hamas to stop the rocket attacks on Israel. If it stops those, all the other things that we need—the end of the Israeli operation, and the ceasefire—would be in place.
Again, I agree with the right hon. and learned Lady on the root causes. We need to make progress with the two-state solution. That is not going to happen while we do not have a ceasefire and while Hamas is subjecting Israel to rocket attacks. That is the root cause of this, and that is the thing that needs to change and change quickly in order to bring peace to the middle east.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
Will the Prime Minister acknowledge that since visa controls and asset freezes have been introduced, President Putin has illegally annexed Crimea and sent in his special forces and so-called volunteers to fight with the insurgents to try to further dismember Ukraine? He has now been responsible for the missile launcher that brought down the international civil airliner. Is it not time to acknowledge that asset freezes and visa controls are useless as a way of influencing his policy, and that the only measures that will influence him are those that go for his Achilles heel? It is not just the United Kingdom but Europe, the United States and as many other countries as are willing to take part that should introduce financial, banking and widespread economic sanctions.
The Prime Minister
I think my right hon. and learned Friend, who speaks with great experience, is right. The point I would make is that there have been occasions when the relatively modest measures taken so far have had an effect on the Russian stock market, the Russian currency, Russian investment and Russian growth. Those issues have had an effect, but it is quite clear that we need to do more and we need to it rapidly.
Mr Peter Hain (Neath) (Lab)
Surely friends of Israel, like the Prime Minister and I, have a duty at this time to speak the truth. These attacks, despite the horrendous rocket assaults on Israel and the extremism of Hamas, are not “disproportionate”; in any other conflict they would be described as war crimes. That is the truth. The problem also is that there is no end in sight to this. What will happen, a moderate Palestinian leadership having been replaced by Hamas through the failure to succeed in negotiations, is that Hamas, as the respected former Israeli Government adviser Daniel Levy has suggested, could soon be replaced by ISIS in Gaza. We have to start, as the west, speaking the truth, acting and persuading the Israeli Government to negotiate seriously.
The Prime Minister
As a friend of Israel—the right hon. Gentleman said that he is one too—I think we should always speak the truth, and I always have done with Israel, for instance in the case of illegal settlements. But I think another element of the truth is that if Hamas stopped the rocket attacks on Israel, the Israeli operation in Gaza would end and there would be a ceasefire. The point that the Israeli Prime Minister makes, which I think is a legitimate one, is that there have been a number of occasions when he has unilaterally declared or agreed to a ceasefire, but Hamas will not follow suit. I absolutely agree that we need to speak the truth, but the truth must start with an end to these attacks.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that within the next few days negotiations should be concluded between the member states of the European Union on a proper sharing of the economic burden that will fall on our own economies from economic sanctions? Does he also agree that if this outrageous behaviour is not met with truly effective sanctions, the west faces very grave problems in the next few years from Russian behaviour across the rest of central and eastern Europe, including the Balkan states and the Baltic states inside the Union itself?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. and learned Friend makes two extremely good points. First, we have to make sure that when tier 3 sanctions come—and they should come—they cover areas such as financial services, defence and energy. That will affect different countries in different ways, but we need to ensure that we are all effectively sharing in the burden. Britain has been clear that we are willing to do that. The second point he makes is that those who argue that the effect of sanctions will be to damage our own economies are missing the bigger point, which is that our economic future is bound up with our economic security. We will lose that diplomatic and economic security if we do not confront the fact that one country in Europe is now being destabilised by Russia, and if we let this happen, others will follow.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
I am sure the Prime Minister will join me in sending his deepest condolences to the family of Richard Mayne, who lost his life in this appalling tragedy, who live in my constituency.
Europe must send a far stronger message to Russia about what has happened and its responsibility for putting it right, so will the Prime Minister say how other European leaders have responded to his proposals for additional sanctions and how likely they are to agree them?
The Prime Minister
First, I join the hon. Lady in sending our condolences to Richard Mayne’s family and friends for their loss.
On what other European leaders have said, we discussed Ukraine and sanctions last week, but I believe that, since then, things have changed and things need to change. On what I agreed with Chancellor Merkel and President Hollande, there is now a willingness to consider a package of sanctions that includes important measures in what I have called the third tier of sanctions, and obviously the Dutch Prime Minister, having suffered this huge loss to his country, will want to engage directly in this debate as well. It will not be easy, because we will have to agree everything together in the European Council, but I think the whole world can see what happens when there is a Russian leader who has been fomenting unrest in another country and potentially supplying the weapons that could have brought down this plane. It is a toxic mixture that has led to this tragedy, and if we do not do something, it could happen again.
Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
My right hon. Friend asks what the reaction should be here, were we to be subject to such rocket attacks as those sustained by Israel. As a Member of Parliament, I would ask—indeed, demand—that our Government respond in a proportionate way, consistent with international law and with proper regard for the safety of innocent men, women and children. With all the sophisticated military technology at its disposal, can Israel really protect itself only by the kind of operations that the Secretary-General of the United Nations has called “atrocious”?
The Prime Minister
Of course, we would urge every country to act in a way that is proportionate and consistent with international law. We believe in those norms of international law and uphold them ourselves, but it is worth putting ourselves for a minute in the shoes of the Israeli people who have suffered these rocket attacks and who quite sensibly ask their Government to take action to try to prevent them in the future.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman condemn outright the Israeli massacre over the weekend at Shujai’iya of 67 Palestinian innocents whom Netanyahu has obscenely described as “telegenically dead”, together with the four innocent people killed today by the Israeli direct hit on the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades’ hospital? Will he also increase the Government’s valuable aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency? Some 67,000 Palestinians have fled to its refuge centres, but they are running out of water and money to feed them. While in no way condoning the actions of Hamas, I ask him to point out to Netanyahu, on the evidence of the two previous Israeli attacks on Gaza, that he can kill, but he cannot win.
The Prime Minister
First, I say to the right hon. Gentleman that we are increasing our funding for UNRWA to the tune of £2 million, as the International Development Secretary made clear this morning, and, as he knows, we are a significant donor to the Palestinian Authority and the humanitarian causes that need to be supported in the Palestinian Territories, and will continue to be. We do not support the idea that it is acceptable to have civilian casualties, and we would condemn the deliberate targeting of civilians—it is contrary to international law—but I repeat what I have already said: we have urged the Israelis to demonstrate restraint, to avoid civilian casualties and to find ways to bring this to an end, but the fastest way this can come to an end is for Hamas to stop firing rockets.
Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)
The crisis in Ukraine not only exposes the brutality and malign intent of the Putin regime but is a test of the west’s moral fibre, following our inadequate response to the Estonian cyber-attack, Ukrainian gas being cut off, the invasion of Georgia and, most recently, our unwillingness to deal with the use of chemical weapons in Syria. Germany, France and Italy are responsible for 90% of defence exports to Russia. What discussions has my right hon. Friend had with the leaders of those three counties and in particular with President Hollande about the €1.2 billion export order of Mistral vessels to Russia? It is not just future export orders that must be stopped, but current ones.
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that this is a test of Europe’s fibre—of proving that we can stand up to these threats and do so in a way that is consistent, firm and predictable. That is what needs to happen, so that Russia knows what the result of these types of actions will be. On the issue of defence equipment, we already unilaterally said—as did the US—that we would not sell further arms to Russia; we believe other European countries should do the same. Frankly, in this country it would be unthinkable to fulfil an order like the one outstanding that the French have, but we need to put the pressure on with all our partners to say that we cannot go on doing business as usual with a country when it is behaving in this way.
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)
The Ukrainian separatists have managed to acquire heavy weapons, armour, missile systems and, now, refrigerated trains. They are, beyond argument, an extension of the Kremlin’s power and policy. A gesture strategy simply will not do; we need economic disentanglement, we need effective sanctions and we need, in the face of this kind of regime, to re-examine our security policy, along with that of our allies. Does the Prime Minister not agree?
The Prime Minister
First, I do agree with the right hon. Gentleman that so much of what we see in eastern Ukraine is actually being controlled remotely or at one remove by the Kremlin. I think there is growing evidence for that, and we should be clear that this is not simply a home-grown resistance movement. There are Russian personnel, there is Russian backing, there are Russian weapons systems, and despite repeated requests that the border be properly closed, that has not happened.
I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman as well that we need to take a tough, clear and predictable approach. We have got to explain to Russia that it cannot expect a normal relationship with the EU, Britain or the US if it continues to behave in this way, so what is required, as he says, is a tough, clear and predictable response. In examining our own security, that is something quite rightly done in the strategic defence and security review.
Mr Alan Duncan (Rutland and Melton) (Con)
Sanctions have a justifiable purpose when they successfully target the right people, but they often have unintended consequences and penalise those for whom they were not intended. Given the lack of any judicial or parliamentary process to oversee sanctions, will the Prime Minister establish a focal point in Government to which those who think they have been unfairly hit by them can turn to seek urgent redress for their grievance?
The Prime Minister
The purpose of the sanctions we have put in place so far is not simply to target the right people, although that of course has been part of the aim, but, quite deliberately, to have the broader effect of demonstrating to the Russians that when it comes to the economy, energy and these things, Russia needs the EU and America more than the EU and America need Russia. Yes, of course there will sometimes be some collateral damage to people who suffer because of sanctions, but in this case the only way to bring home to the Russians that their approach is damaging for them is for them to see that the Russian economy will suffer as a result.
Glenda Jackson (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
May I thank the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for so cogently expressing the grief and anger, which I believe is shared across the House—indeed, across the whole country—over the appalling events in Ukraine? They are quite right to stress that the primary concern is the immediate, unimpeded access to the site and the treatment of the bodies with dignity and humanity. Is there any timeline on this desire? If sanctions do not work, will the international community examine the possibility of criminal charges being brought against those who are responsible?
The Prime Minister
I think the hon. Lady is right to say that the primary concern relates to the dignity of the victims and securing the site, and ensuring that everything possible is done to handle that properly. Time is running out. Daily temperatures in eastern Ukraine are now exceeding 30 degrees, so things need to be done very quickly. The pressure is already on, and progress is being made—international experts are now on the site—but problems such as the train not being able to move have not yet been solved.
I believe that we should think of sanctions not only in the context of securing a proper international investigation, but much more in the context of the longer-term problem, which is Russian involvement in the destabilisation of Ukraine. That is, if you like, the cause that led to this dreadful chain of events. Criminal sanctions should not be ruled out. If we believe all that we are being told about what has happened, this was a crime.
Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Russians will laugh at us unless the European Union, this country, NATO and the wider world do not use their resources, power and influence properly, and show evidence of their real determination? If they do not, the Russians will step into the vacuum, to our great disadvantage.
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. During debates on these matters in the European Union, it is often the countries that have the most to lose from economic sanctions that are the strongest supporters of them. The leaders of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Romania speak very passionately about the issue, even though their countries will suffer, because they are aware of the consequences of not standing up to a bully. In our EU debates, it tends to be Britain that backs those countries in favour of tough action, and I hope that we shall be able to make more progress in the future than we have made up to now.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
The Prime Minister said that the most recent bloodshed in Gaza and Israel had started with the Hamas rocket attacks. I deplore those attacks, but does the Prime Minister not accept that they are not happening in a vacuum, but are a consequence of the ongoing Israeli occupation and siege of Gaza? Given that this is the latest in a long line of Israeli breaches of international law, does he recognise the growing movement that is calling for an embargo on all military co-operation with Israel?
The Prime Minister
I do not think that we should in any way seek to justify or explain away rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel. [Interruption.] That is, I am afraid, rather what it sounded like. We must be absolutely clear about the fact that we condemn those rocket attacks, and must make it clear that if they stopped there would be a ceasefire, and we could then make progress.
Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
Yesterday I was in contact with the director of the International Commission on Missing Persons, the excellent international body supported by the United Kingdom Government which has done such fine work in the Balkans and Iraq to identify the victims of violence. It has been asked by the Ukrainians to go and help to identify victims of the Ukrainian air crash. Will my right hon. Friend impress on the authorities that have custody of the bodies that it is a matter not just of dignity, but of identification? You cannot repatriate until you identify. Will he give every support to the ICMP in terms of the representations that must be made to enable it to do its vital work on behalf of the families who so desperately want to have their loved ones back?
The Prime Minister
I will certainly look very closely at what my right hon. Friend has suggested. As he knows, we have police victim identification teams that are going out to Ukraine, and they will be able to help. The work that they and other international experts do is absolutely vital.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Putin’s is a barbarous and a murdering regime—we have known that for a long time. We know what happened to Anna Politkovskaya, to Alexander Litvinenko—in this country—and to Sergei Magnitsky, who worked for a British company in Russia. Let me ask the Prime Minister this, for the seventh time in this Parliament: will he please make it absolutely clear that, as the House agreed unanimously on 7 March 2012, those who were involved in the murder of Sergei Magnitsky and in the corruption that he unveiled are not welcome in this country?
The Prime Minister
I will look very closely at what the hon. Gentleman has said and the names he has mentioned. Perhaps I can write to him about it.
Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)
I welcome the Prime Minister’s determination that Russia must cease its support for the separatists, but surely, as my right hon. Friends have said, the time for empty threats is over. Surely all civilised Governments, not just European Union members, must now combine to adopt really effective sanctions in order to make it clear to Mr Putin that he can no longer pursue his lawless banditry with impunity.
May I also ask, on a technical note, whether the Prime Minister can tell us anything about the location of the black boxes, and whether the air accidents investigation branch, which is based in Farnborough in my constituency, has had access to them yet?
The Prime Minister
The answer on the black boxes is that we have seen the reports that they have been taken away by separatists and we have not seen anything to contradict that. They certainly have not yet been seen by air accidents investigation branch members from the United Kingdom. As for what else my hon. Friend says, I agree with him: a tough, predictable and clear response is required.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
What representations has the Prime Minister ever made to the Government of Israel concerning its illegal settlements, its occupation of the west bank and the siege of Gaza, which has gone on for a long time and has led to 70% unemployment? Does he not think that the current crisis and the carnage in Gaza is caused essentially by the failure of Israel ever to recognise the rights, needs or justice of the Palestinian people, and does he not think it is time Britain did something about it, such as by doing that?
The Prime Minister
To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question specifically, I have repeatedly made references—including in speeches and television appearances, including in Israel—to illegal settlements and illegal occupation. I remember, on my first visit to Israel, in East Jerusalem referring to it as occupied East Jerusalem, and I was quite surprised when one of the Foreign Office officials said it is very refreshing to have someone who is as clear about that, because the then Government were not always clear about it when they were asked the question.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
My right hon. Friend rightly emphasised the needs of the victims and their families. Does he accept that sometimes media reporting can be insensitive and can create greater bereavement and distress as a result, and will he urge the media to try to do whatever they can to make sure the situation is not made worse by the reporting?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. Having watched some of this absolutely harrowing coverage, there are moments when it is clear that people are leafing through personal belongings and suitcases in a way that is completely inappropriate. It has mostly been the separatists who have been doing that, but there have been occasions, I think, when mistakes have been made by members of the press. People have to understand that this is effectively a murder scene, but also a scene where there are people’s loved ones, whom they are desperately worried about and want to know whether they will be able to be brought home, and people should behave in an appropriate way.
Frank Dobson (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
While Israel is rightly claiming its right of self-defence under international law, we cannot have international law for the Israelis and another international law for the Palestinians. When is Britain, and more importantly the United States, going to bring pressure to bear to get the Israelis to comply with international law, to end the blockade of Gaza and the settlements on the west bank?
The Prime Minister
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that international law should apply to everybody, and in what we say to the Israelis we stress the fact that, although they have a right to self-defence, in order to be legal self-defence has to be carried out in a way that is proportionate, and that is why we have been urging restraint. So we are very clear: international law applies to all sides.
Hugh Robertson (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
I commend the Prime Minister for the Government’s response thus far and wish him well in his talks with the European leaders in the days and weeks ahead. During those talks, will he remind other European leaders that Russia, as well as its activities in Ukraine, remains the largest supplier of arms to the Assad regime, and that some of those arms have been passed to extremist groups and thereby threaten our, and other European nations’ national interests and citizens?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, and we should keep reminding other European leaders of that point. What this is all about in the end is Europe’s continued security, on which our prosperity depends, and sometimes we have to take action that can be painful and difficult in the short term in order to deliver the longer-term security and prosperity we want.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I entirely accept the Prime Minister’s sincerity in condemning what happened to Palestinian civilians over the weekend, but if what did occur—100 killed yesterday, so many more injured; as he said himself, four young lads playing hide and seek last week slaughtered by Israeli shelling—are not war crimes, what are war crimes?
The Prime Minister
What is certainly a war crime is launching unprovoked missile attacks on to the sovereign territory of another country—I think we should be very clear about that. It is absolutely a crime against international law and we should be very clear about it. But we should be equally clear, as we are, that Israel, in acting in self-defence, must do so within international law.
Sir Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
In Gaza, much has been made of what is and is not “proportionate”. The argument is being made that it should be an eye for an eye, but in international law the correct definition is that the response should be proportionate “to the threat”. Does my right hon. Friend agree that Israel has no alternative but to go to find who is firing the missiles at it and to stop them?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend, with his experience as Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, is right to quote that important definition of international law—that is the correct position. That is why Israel, understandably, feels under pressure to try to stop the missile attacks that have brought this situation about.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
On 9 July, in evidence to the Select Committee on Defence, the then Secretary of State for Defence—he is now Foreign Secretary—was asked whether he thought that events in Ukraine meant we ought fundamentally to reconsider our strategic defence approaches. He said:
“I think it is important not to overstate the extent to which what has happened in Ukraine has come as a surprise to us.”
He also said it was a bit like what happened in Georgia. We did not think that was accurate on 9 July and it certainly is not accurate now, and the Prime Minister, in his response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth), said we should wait for the next defence review—that is not good enough.
The Prime Minister
What I say to the hon. Lady is that we have the fifth largest budget defence budget in the world, and we have altered our spending so that our defence forces are more flexible, more deployable and more useful for the needs we have today. When we look at the challenge with Ukraine, we see that nobody is talking about deploying military assets into Ukraine; what we are talking about is using Europe’s combined financial resources and power to inflict on Russia an approach that means it has to change its course. It is actually political will that is required, rather than an immediate strategic defence review.
Mr Keith Simpson (Broadland) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has led the charge in trying to get our European friends to increase sanctions against Russia, but can he tell the House what actually influences Putin? Many people looking from the outside will feel that we are unable to change his behaviour, at least in the short term.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I think the only thing that will influence Russia’s strategic thinking about Ukraine is a sense that the rest of the world is actually going to team up and put in place sanctions that will damage Russia’s economy. As I said, in the end Russia needs Europe and America more than America and Europe need Russia, and we need to make the balance in that relationship show in order to change Russia’s thinking. It is not acceptable to destabilise Ukraine and instead the Russians should be seeking a civilised relationship with Ukraine. That is what we have to make them think about, and it is going to take tough action.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
May I, too, commend the Prime Minister for the efforts he has made over the weekend? May I also urge him to see the relatives of the British victims as quickly as possible, as they must be not only grief stricken but totally bewildered about what is happening? The key thing is not to leave Ukraine on its own. Are we prepared to share any intelligence information with the Ukrainian Government to help them with this terrible threat to their security?
The Prime Minister
First, I agree with what the right hon. Gentleman says about the victims, and I certainly am available to have a meeting with their families and talk to them about all the concerns they have. Immediately, the concerns are the consular issues that need to be dealt with, and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Mark Simmonds), is doing that.
The right hon. Gentleman’s other question was about sharing intelligence, and we have already done that with the Ukrainian Government. Lots of countries have information about what happened. Russia, specifically, will have a lot of information about what happened. As I said to Putin on the telephone last night, he should make that information available, in the same way as the Americans and others have made that information available. He could probably put beyond doubt, if he wanted to, what actually happened over the skies of eastern Ukraine, and I urge him to do so.
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)
If the gangsters in the Kremlin and their sock puppets in the Russian media do not understand the enormity of bringing down a civil aeroplane on an international route, should we not at least consider whether Russian commercial carriers are any more welcome in sovereign airspace in the civilised world?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an interesting suggestion. All these issues need to be considered in the context of bringing together what Europe can do collectively to send the clearest possible message to Russia.
Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the outrage in Ukraine call for a speedy review of the international rules on the safety of flying over conflict zones? Does the much-needed call for a ceasefire in Gaza include a call for the end of Hamas’s terror tunnels and does the Prime Minister agree that they, too, are a war crime?
The Prime Minister
I strongly agree with what the hon. Lady has just said about Hamas, as I mentioned a few moments ago. In terms of the rules governing which airline should fly on which routes, I have asked the Secretary of State for Transport to consider the issue carefully. Eurocontrol is the organisation that sets out the parameters for European flights and obviously airlines themselves have to choose whether to continue with those flights. We are going to look very carefully at whether more needs to be done in this area.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Even if the Prime Minister will not accept the call from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) for some reappraisal of the defence strategy after these terrible events, will he not accept that the national security strategy was written some four years ago, before Iraq, before Syria, before these events and before Ukraine? Surely it is now time for a fundamental reappraisal of our position in the world.
The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend that the important thing about a national security strategy and a strategic defence and security review is that they should be regularly refreshed. That is why we are planning to do that next year. We start with the strategy and then move on to what that actually means in practice, but I do not think that we should do this every time a new event takes place. We should have a proper process for setting out these things and that is what we will do.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)
For the avoidance of doubt, will the Prime Minister agree that the targeting of civilians or wilful disregard for the lives of civilians is a crime, whether those civilians are flying in a civilian aircraft, sheltering in their homes in south Israel or sheltering in their homes in Gaza? Is he aware that Israel has a history of using UK-supplied arms and components in contravention of the EU consolidated criteria? Would he consider Israel’s use of British-supplied arms or components in Gaza today to be in contravention of those criteria, is he asking Israel whether they are or whether they are not and what answer is he getting?
The Prime Minister
First, let me agree with the hon. Gentleman that the deliberate targeting of civilians is illegal. It is illegal whoever is doing it and we do not support it on any basis, so I would agree with him about that. As for the European Union rules to which he refers, we always ensure that we comply with them.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that the unspeakable events in eastern Ukraine tell us that Putin’s Russia is now as big a threat to democratic values as Islamist terrorism? Does he also agree that unless we in the west have collectively a much stronger response than we have had so far, we are in danger of drifting into another cold war with fighting conducted by proxy armies, which would blight the economic and social progress of a generation? Will he commit the British Government to doing as much as possible in the coming months to avoid that terrible prospect?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend speaks clearly and sensibly about this. We must recognise the scale of the threat that Russia’s actions in Ukraine represent. When one sits in the European Council and listens to the testimony of the Baltic states or countries such as Romania, with their concerns about what is happening in Transnistria, one can see that if we do not act on this occasion firmly, clearly and consistently, while totally changing the approach we have taken, there will be other such problems to come.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
What is the Government’s assessment of the reports that the Israelis are using illegal white phosphorus as part of their illegal campaign in Gaza? Will he condemn the use of any chemical weapons in Gaza, as he has been so quick to do on other occasions?
The Prime Minister
I would certainly condemn the use of chemical weapons, whoever is using them. I have not seen reports or any evidence of the use of the weapons to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but I shall look very closely at the points that he makes.
Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
After the immediate practical considerations in Ukraine, the thoughts of many of the families and other countries will turn to justice. Can the Prime Minister say what can be done to identify the individuals who perpetrated this atrocity and where he thinks the jurisdiction will lie? Will it be with the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice or elsewhere?
The Prime Minister
It should be possible, if every country produces the evidence that it has, to piece together exactly what happened. From the information so far made available, we know the height of the plane and the trajectory and starting point, approximately, of the missile, and the evidential picture, as I described, is building all the time. But if the Russians were to make available all the information that they surely have, it would be much easier to have a very clear picture. On where this could be justiciable, we are looking very closely at that. My right hon. Friend may well be right that the International Criminal Court could come into play.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
The Prime Minister is right that what is needed in Gaza is an urgent ceasefire. It has to come, obviously, from both sides. In his judgment, who would have the most influence on both Israel and Hamas to get such a ceasefire, and does he still see a role for the former Prime Minister?
The Prime Minister
The only proposal on the table currently is the Egyptian proposal for a ceasefire and a process. We have said that we back that, the Israelis are willing to back that, and we need Hamas to back that as well. Everyone who can should bring their pressure to bear. All those countries that have a relationship with Hamas—of course, we do not because it does not recognise Israel’s right to exist and it believes in violence—should bring that pressure to bear.
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
One of the people tragically lost on flight MH17 was Glenn Thomas, a British national who worked for the World Health Organisation and who was known to a number of us in this House through his work with our all-party parliamentary groups, including the group on global tuberculosis. His loss was a great shock to us. Will my right hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to his work and to those who were travelling to the world AIDS conference? Do not the values of the World Health Organisation and that conference, the values of internationalism and respect for human rights, stand in stark contrast to the disregard for such values shown by Russia, the aggressor?
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I certainly join him in paying tribute to Glenn Thomas and in sending our condolences to his family and friends. The World Health Organisation and specifically the work that has been done on diseases such as TB, malaria and AIDS has been staggeringly successful and it is a beacon for what we can achieve if we spend aid moneys wisely and sensibly and work together as a global community. My right hon. Friend is right—what a contrast between that lifesaving effort and the brutality of what we have seen on our television screens.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
Events over the weekend have been horrendous. What is going on in Gaza is atrocious. Our thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives on flight MH17 in Ukraine. One of my constituents, John Alder, was on that flight. Along with Liam Sweeney from Newcastle, John was going to see Newcastle United play in a pre-season tournament in New Zealand. John was an extraordinary man because of the sort of football supporter he was. He went to see every game that Newcastle played—no matter where it was in the world—but he lost his life in that dreadful disaster. Newcastle and Sunderland supporters have united in paying tribute to those lads and in raising funds for charities and for a funeral service. Can we get their bodies home, please, Mr Prime Minister?
The Prime Minister
We are doing everything we can, with international partners, to try and make that happen. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is right to pay tribute to John Alder, Liam Sweeney and all those who lost their lives. It is heartbreaking—the families that have been ripped apart and the lives that have been snuffed out due to this appalling tragedy. We have to think very carefully—the deputy Leader of the Opposition raised this issue—about how best we can talk to the families and hear about how they want to commemorate and remember their loved ones. That was done with great sensitivity following 7/7 and we must make sure we do the same on this occasion.
Mr Andrew Robathan (South Leicestershire) (Con)
Under the good stewardship of my right hon. Friend, and my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), we brought the astonishing, appalling chaos of the Ministry of Defence finances under control and they are now on an even keel. Notwithstanding what the Prime Minister said to our hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), does he not feel that a sign of our determination to the increasingly bellicose and aggressive Putin, and to the situation in Syria and Iraq and a lamentably long list of other places around the world, might be to now reconsider opening the strategic defence and security review and perhaps spending more on defence rather than less?
The Prime Minister
First, I thank my right hon. Friend for his service in the Ministry of Defence and in the Northern Ireland Office. Because of the work that he and others have done, we now face a situation in which the defence budget is not being cut. Having sorted out the black hole in the defence budget, we now have the launch of the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, the biggest ship ever delivered to the Royal Navy, with the Type 45 destroyers, the hunter-killer submarines, the A400Ms and the joint strike fighters all to arrive. So we have a drumbeat of superb, deployable, high-tech, world-beating equipment so that we can ensure that our country is safe long into the future. There is a proper time to consider whether the events that we see today fundamentally change the strategy and the laydown that we need, and we will do that at the right time.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
A year ago, the House took a decision not to intervene militarily in Syria, and that was quickly followed by a similar decision by the United States. These decisions were both coloured by a reaction to long military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. If the Prime Minister is right that the shooting down of this airliner was the responsibility of Russian-backed separatists armed by Russia, how will he ensure a robust response in the light of that mood, that affects both politics and political decision-making, which shows that we have not lost our ability to act or our willingness to stand up for what we believe in?
The Prime Minister
I agree with the sentiment behind what the right hon. Gentleman said absolutely. It is true that Britain is war weary after Iraq and Afghanistan. I still believe that if the challenge came along where we were asked to serve alongside others to protect our national interests, this House and the country would answer the call. But in this case we are not talking about military intervention; we are talking about, with our partners and with like-minded countries, using our economic and financial muscle in the world to demonstrate what I have said, which is that Russia needs European markets far more than we need Russian markets, and we need to make that strength show. But we will only do it, as he says, with an exercise of political will.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
Last week, when the then Foreign Secretary made a statement on Gaza, the death toll of Palestinian children in the conflict since 2000 stood at 1,430. Today it is reported at 1,472. When democracies depart from the rule of law, they give legal and moral authority to our enemies. Israel is in consistent and, today, grievous breach of the Geneva conventions. What is my right hon. Friend doing to bring Israel back within the rule of law?
The Prime Minister
As I said earlier, I spoke to the Israeli Prime Minister last night, and while I said that we believe in Israel’s right to defend itself, we believe that it needs to exercise restraint, to avoid civilian casualties and to find ways of bringing this to a close. But the best way to bring this to a close is the fastest way, and that is for the rocket attacks to stop.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
The revelation to waiting cameras of the previous advice to the Government about the possible effect of sanctions against Russia on the City of London, gave the dreadful impression that the UK, too, was just following its own narrow interests, when, frankly, London would be much better off without much of that tainted Russian money. After this latest abominable act, is it not time for much harsher financial sanctions against Russia, including the denial of use at all levels of international payment systems in London, Frankfurt, Paris, New York and all across the world?
The Prime Minister
These are all things that can be looked at as we look at tier 3 sanctions. But when it comes to Britain’s negotiation within the EU over these issues, although, as the hon. Gentleman says, there are a lot of Russian money and Russian businesses in Britain, Britain is not the back marker in arguing for tougher sanctions; we are usually in the vanguard, with the Poles and Baltic states, arguing that we need to give a strong, clear and predictable lead on these issues. It is not those interests that are holding us back.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
May I echo the Prime Minister’s sympathy for the victims of Flight MH17, and indeed for the even greater number who have died and continue to die in Gaza? He emphasised the movement of heavy equipment from Russia into Ukraine, and indeed there is evidence of rocket launchers being hastily moved back into Russia the day after the crash. As a signatory to the Budapest memorandum, what can this country do to offer more advice or practical assistance of some kind to the Government of Ukraine to help them at least secure their frontier with Russia?
The Prime Minister
We certainly work closely with the Ukrainian Government and have a strong relationship with them, and I have spoken with President Poroshenko in recent days. In terms of securing the border, I think that the person who could make the biggest difference is President Putin, because at the moment it is being used as a porous border to smuggle weapons and people into Ukraine to destabilise the country. It is the Russians who could stop that happening if they wanted to.
Mr Speaker
Order. As we are fortunate to have the Prime Minister with us, and as the summer recess is approaching, which means this might be the last occasion upon which he is with us before the House rises, I am keen to accommodate the interest of colleagues, but if I am to have any serious chance of doing so, I will require brevity. Perhaps the textbook example can be provided by the author of “How to be a Backbencher”, Mr Paul Flynn.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Will the Prime Minister use the Newport NATO summit to galvanise the new-found unity of NATO states to act strongly against the belligerence of Putin?
The Prime Minister
It is good that the NATO summit will be held in Newport. I think that the opportunity to demonstrate the unity of NATO, and indeed its original purpose, which was to provide collective security, could not have come at a better time.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend recognise that the utility of military force, and of having enough of it, is not what one might wish to deploy in combat now, but what one has available to shape the global strategic environment, which many would rightly say is what we lack today?
The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend that it is what we have available—what is deployable—that counts, but I disagree with the suggestion that we do not have the sort of capability we need. When it came to providing additional air policing for the Baltic states, who was able to step up to the plate? It was Britain, because we have the relevant fighter aircraft and other aircraft. When it came to the conflict in Libya, who had the right capabilities for deploying the Typhoon, air-to-air refuelling and the other surveillance aircraft? I am not saying that everything is perfect, but by getting rid of mainland European battle tanks and bases in Germany and replacing them with deployable assets that can be used in modern conflict, I think that we have made some progress.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Prime Minister agree with Secretary of State Kerry that Israel is not doing enough to minimise civilian casualties? Will he also be clear with the House about whether he believes that Israel’s current strategy is proportionate?
The Prime Minister
I certainly agree with what John Kerry has been saying to the Israelis about the importance of reducing civilian casualties, exercising restraint and bringing an end to the conflict.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
Realistically, we have ruled out military action over the Ukraine crisis, but one possible military option in response to Putin’s continuing fermentation of conflict in eastern Ukraine would be for NATO to position ground forces in the Baltic republics or Poland. Is that a response that Her Majesty’s Government might consider and support in the North Atlantic Council of NATO?
The Prime Minister
What we have done, and what we will continue to do, is ensure that NATO acts together, for instance with the Baltic air policing task that British forces are carrying out. When the Russians see NATO troops in Latvia, Hungary or Poland—President Obama has said this, and I think that it is a sensible thing to say—it is important that they see the troops of the different NATO nationalities. I think that is absolutely right.
Mark Hendrick (Preston) (Lab/Co-op)
Benjamin Netanyahu said on TV over the weekend that the US, the UK and others supported Israeli action in Gaza. Given that the Prime Minister said in his statement today that the indiscriminate targeting of men, women and children is a war crime, why does he not condemn Israeli actions, rather than just making excuses for them, as he has done today?
The Prime Minister
I do not accept what the hon. Gentleman has said. It is important that the first thing we do is condemn the indiscriminate rocket attacks from Hamas from Gaza into Israel, without provocation, that have brought this situation about.
Mr John Whittingdale (Maldon) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the appalling incident in Ukraine is the consequence of a war that has been raging for many months and that had already led to the loss of hundreds of lives? As well as now imposing the toughest possible sanctions on President Putin and Russia, if it is shown that they continue to support the separatists, will he consider what additional support he can give to President Poroshenko to restore the authority of the Ukrainian Administration throughout the whole of the country?
The Prime Minister
I agree with my hon. Friend. The most important thing we can do with regard to Ukraine is to help its economy recover and to make sure it has the assistance to restructure and be a successful, prosperous democracy. That is the best thing we can do. The association agreement signed between the EU and Ukraine is very important in that regard.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Prime Minister has talked today about the importance of political will. He also said that he spoke to several EU leaders over the weekend. In those conversations, did he talk to them about the situation in Gaza and what further pressure can be brought to bear to bring about a ceasefire to end this ceaseless violence?
The Prime Minister
Yes, I have had conversations with others about the situation with Israel and Gaza. Indeed, we discussed it at the European Council last Wednesday. The European Council conclusions, which are in the Library of the House of Commons, are very clear about what needs to happen.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Some journalists have recently criticised both the concept of soft power and its application by Britain. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the right type of sanctions would not be soft and their consequences would be strongly felt in Russia? Does he think that if there was not the necessary collective resolve in the EU, a coalition of the willing might be able to achieve something important?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Sanctions are not soft if they are well targeted—they can hit an economy quite hard. The danger of trying to find a coalition of the willing rather than working including through the institutions of the European Union is that some of these areas are governed by European Union procedures and we need to get the agreement of everyone in order to make these sanctions count.
Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister stand by his words of 2010 that the blockaded Gaza
“must not be allowed to remain a prison camp”?
Does he believe that the killing of 500 people and the displacing of 83,000 people is a proportionate response to the attacks he has mentioned? May I appeal to him to show courage and international leadership and to act as an honest broker to help bring an end to this conflict and humanitarian catastrophe?
The Prime Minister
The point the hon. Lady makes by reading out the remarks that I made is that I have a consistent record, yes, of defending Israel’s right to defend itself, but also of speaking out when I think that wrong things are being done. I am doing everything I can to help bring this conflict to an end. The most important thing, as I said, is for Hamas to accept the ceasefires that Israel has been prepared to accept.
Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)
On Gaza, what evidence has the Prime Minister seen that Hamas has been using women and children as human shields in order to turn public opinion and to win the air war—the broadcast air war?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend raises an important accusation that has been made by many. I do not have the expertise or information to be able to confirm exactly what Hamas’s tactics are, but certainly the accusation is made by many that it is indifferent to the loss of Palestinian life. I think that is demonstrated by its continuing to fire rockets even when ceasefires have been suggested or, indeed, implemented by the Israelis. That is the cruellest point of all. When the Israelis have adopted a ceasefire, why does not Hamas follow suit?
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
I agree with the Prime Minister about the need to stop the rockets from Gaza. However, does he not understand and, indeed, share the widespread revulsion at the apparent disregard for human life in the current military action in Gaza? Surely the Secretary-General of the United Nations is right that this action must now stop.
The Prime Minister
We all want the action to stop, and the best way for it to stop is for the rocket attacks to stop. For anyone watching this as a parent, you cannot help but feel huge, heartbreaking concern for the loss of life. But, as I just said, when there are ceasefires called by the Israelis, we have to ask ourselves, if Hamas cares about preventing civilian casualties, why does it not accept the ceasefire and act on it.
Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)
The Prime Minister is right to condemn Russia, but he was less than even-handed when it came to Israel. As he has ducked the questions asked by the right hon. Member for Neath (Mr Hain) and the hon. Members for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) and for Preston (Mark Hendrick), will he now confirm that the disproportionate action of Israel’s political and military leaders constitutes war crimes and that, as with the downed aircraft, criminal sanctions should not be ruled out?
The Prime Minister
As I have said, I support Israel’s right to defend itself and that right has to be exercised in a proportionate way. That is what international law says.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
Does the Prime Minister agree that he is in danger of following the pattern of his predecessor but one, who supported Israel for far too long? Speaking as a friend of Israel, may I say that the most candid thing we can say now is that the massive land invasion is disproportionate and causing loss of civilian life, and that it will in no way enhance the long-term security of Israel?
The Prime Minister
I think I have been very clear about what needs to happen, as, indeed, I was in 2006.
Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)
Although I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement, I am left rather baffled. Three years ago, time was made available to discuss phone hacking and Mr Murdoch, and last summer Parliament was recalled to discuss an international crime. As far as I am concerned, an international crime has taken place on the continent of Europe, yet I am not in a position to be able to express my views on something to which I think we have responded rather timidly.
The Prime Minister
Obviously, Parliament is due to be suspended tomorrow, but if it is necessary for Parliament to be recalled to discuss this or any other issue, that facility is, of course, open to the leaders of the parties. Indeed, it has on occasion been exercised by Mr Speaker. I think it is good that we are having this statement today. I am trying to answer as many questions as fully as I can. Obviously, throughout the recess, the Government will be on the case of these issues and parliamentary colleagues will be able to contact us.
Mr Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
Everyone in this House condemns the rocket attacks, but the Israeli defence force is firing the most dangerous of weapons in the most dense of communities, and it is very clear that Secretary Kerry and Ban Ki-moon think that not enough is being done to minimise civilian casualties. Does the Prime Minister accept that analysis? What we really want to know in this House is what he will do today, tomorrow and through the week in the Security Council to stop the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza and beyond.
The Prime Minister
I could not have been clearer that I think there needs to be restraint and the avoidance of civilian casualties, and the Israelis need to find a way to bring this to an end. I have made all those points repeatedly.
Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)
May I welcome the Prime Minister’s strong words of leadership in yesterday’s article in The Sunday Times? Does he agree that strong and robust leadership, particularly from President Obama and the US, is needed now, more than ever, to demonstrate that Russia’s actions in Ukraine and around the world are completely unacceptable and will not, under any circumstances, be tolerated?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. To be fair, President Obama has been very clear that what has happened in Ukraine is unacceptable. He has been working hard to try to keep the United States and the European Union working together, because, obviously, if we can list the same people, take sanctions against the same banks, take sanctions against the same airlines and look at a third tier of sanctions in the same way at similar times, we will maximise the impact of what we do.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
Parts of St James’s park have been turned into a shrine of flowers and footballing memorabilia as a mark of respect for my constituent Liam Sweeney and John Alder, who died following the team they loved. Does the Prime Minister agree that the contrast between that and the total lack of respect shown for the victims’ bodies and remains at the crash site itself is totally unacceptable? When does he think the bodies will be brought home, and what is he doing to support the victims’ families in the meantime?
The Prime Minister
The hon. Lady is absolutely right: this is a question of basic decent humanity. Anyone who saw on their television screens the thuggish separatists wandering around and fiddling with people’s personal belongings will agree that that was a deeply unpleasant thing to have to see. I cannot give the hon. Lady an answer about when the bodies will come home. Many of them are on the refrigerated train, and negotiations and discussions are under way right now about trying to get that to leave to go to a Ukrainian city. I will try to keep the House and the country updated.
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
On behalf of my Ukrainian community, I welcome the Prime Minister’s statement on bringing an end to the violence in Ukraine. With regard to the crisis in Gaza and Israel, I join my constituents in deploring the loss of innocent lives. As my right hon. Friend said, we have all seen the horrific scenes of women and children being caught up in the cycle of violence. Will he continue to show leadership, with the United Nations, the US and others, in order to stop this senseless violence and to kick-start a meaningful peace process once again?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is quite right. What is needed at the end of this is to get the peace process going again. This has been a massive setback for it, not least because it was preceded by talks of Palestinian unity between Fatah and Hamas. Hamas launching these rocket attacks has not helped either that cause or the cause of a two-state solution.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I should like to associate myself and my colleagues with the Prime Minister’s condolences to those affected by the terrible tragedy of flight MH17, and with what he said about the need for early access to the site. On Gaza, when he is speaking to our European partners, will he press for a joint approach to allow the medical evacuation of seriously injured Palestinians, given the terrible situation there?
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his expressions of condolence. On getting people out of Gaza, we have helped a number of British citizens to get out, but I will look carefully at what he suggests about medical evacuations.
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)
The Prime Minister will be aware that there are about a dozen flights a day from Britain to Russia or Ukraine, with thousands of people travelling every week on business, to study or as tourists. Given the volatile situation following this terrible crime, what advice are the Government giving to those who are thinking of travelling to either country at this time? Do they need to reconsider their plans?
The Prime Minister
The air routes are effectively set out and controlled by Eurocontrol. In terms of countries and destinations, people should look at the travel advice on the Foreign Office website, which is regularly updated. That will give advice specifically about eastern Ukraine.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Lady must have been renamed; or perhaps I was not clear enough. I called Jim Dowd.
Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is not the first time I have been confused with my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown).
I am not surprised that the Prime Minister has been called to be here for much longer than normal. He has tried to conflate two very important statements into one, but I am sure he knew that. Nobody with any sense would object to the UN Security Council’s call for an immediate ceasefire on the west bank, but I can tell from looking at a lot of the faces across the House today that there is a sense of déjà-vu here. This happens every few years because the underlying elements of the Israeli-Palestinian problem—the illegal settlements and the occupied territories—have not been addressed. Until they are addressed, we and our successors in the next Parliament will be coming back to discuss this in 2016, 2017 and 2018. That is a tragedy. On the shooting down of flight MH17—
Jim Dowd
Yes, Mr Speaker.
The Prime Minister said that flight MH17 was shot down by an SA-11 missile fired by separatists. What evidence does he have? Those systems can be used only by those of the most highly trained calibre, who would either have come from the Russian Government or been supported by the Russian Government. Does he have any information about that?
The Prime Minister
The reason that there are two statements put together is that one of the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues quite properly tabled an urgent question about Gaza, and I thought that it was important to show the House respect by answering both the questions. I said in my statement that it looked increasingly likely that an SA-11 had been fired by a separatist, because of where the missile came from and because of the information and intelligence that have been shared. In terms of who trained the person, who was responsible and who knew—that is information that I am sure the Russians could make available, and I would argue that it is their responsibility to do so.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that, with regard to the situation in Gaza, the greatest strength is sometimes demonstrated by showing restraint? All that Israel’s actions are doing is creating the next generation of highly motivated Hamas terrorists. Is he minded to talk to his fellow European leaders about a form of sanction to encourage that restraint?
The Prime Minister
Everyone wants to encourage that restraint, and I agree with my hon. Friend and with the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd) about the sense of déjà-vu and the cycle of violence that is created. However, we have to come back to how we can stop this current cycle. When we see that Israel has accepted a ceasefire, we need Hamas to accept it as well. Then we can stop the cycle before we go on to the more fundamental question of how we can bring about a two-state solution.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The Prime Minister rightly spoke of his anger at the deaths in Ukraine and the dangers of turning a blind eye when big countries bully smaller countries. Will he apply those maxims to Gaza? Will he stop blaming the Palestinians for the murder of their own children? Will he show consistent resolve and equal action to uphold international law in dealing with Tel Aviv as with Moscow?
The Prime Minister
As I have said on many occasions today, when it comes to condemning illegal settlements and to the importance of a two-state solution and when it comes to calling out on such issues on past occasions, I have always done so. I would do so again, and I have been very clear today.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
With regard to flight MH17 being shot down, my right hon. Friend is absolutely right to work with the Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, to seek a UN resolution this evening. In the event that Russia vetoes the resolution to allow unfettered access to the crash and crime site, what further international actions will the UK seek to take not just with Europe, but with the wider international community?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which is that the resolution will go to a vote at, I think, 8 pm UK time. We have drafted it in such a way as to try to prevent the Russians from having any sort of excuse about obfuscation or lack of clarity. We are not being particularly precious about who exactly leads the investigation. We are happy for it to be done by international experts with the backing of ICAO—the International Civil Aviation Organisation—which is an international body, so there is no excuse for a Russian veto. The whole world will be watching very closely, and if there is one, obviously there will be very bad consequences.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Israel has a right to security, with an end to rocket attacks by Hamas, but does the Prime Minister agree that while Israel uses overwhelming and disproportionate force with heartbreaking consequences in Gaza and continues to build settlements in the west bank, there will not be peace and security until such time as it recognises the right of the Palestinians to live in security as well and agrees to a two-state solution?
The Prime Minister
We want to see a two-state solution and there are many in Israel who accept a two-state solution, but at the moment the people who are preventing a two-state solution from even being on the table are Hamas, through its actions.
Mr Speaker
Order. Somebody asked how long the statement would run, but I would just point out, if I may, that there is intense interest in it and that the frequency of the Prime Minister’s tennis playing on the one hand and his jogging regime on the other means that he is quite fit enough, I am sure.
Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)
On the murder of the passengers of MH17, may I commend my right hon. Friend on his swift action and the clarity with which he has stated his Government’s position to the British people? Has he seen the Bloomberg report today that the Russian business community—the billionaires around the Russian Government—is beginning to worry that the Russian Government’s actions will push the Russian economy into recession, and will he take that report with him when he negotiates with the Italians, the French and the Germans to push them for team action? I think this could really change the hearts of the Russian Government?
The Prime Minister
I have not seen that report, but I will study it. My hon. Friend makes a good point, which is that those who argue that sanctions do not and cannot work fail to understand that if sanctions have an impact on Russia’s economy and the finances of the people around the Russian Government, they can have an impact.
Lyn Brown
A reported 12,000-plus rockets have been fired into Gaza over the past 13 days, with more than 500 deaths and more than 80,000 Gazans displaced. May I simply ask the Prime Minister what pressure he is prepared to apply, if he will not pursue economic sanctions against Israel, to ensure that Israel complies with international humanitarian law and exercises the restraint that he says he wants to see?
The Prime Minister
The pressure we bring to bear, as a friend of Israel, is to be very clear in our interactions with it about what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. The hon. Lady has got to consider—the figure she cites is actually now out of date; 1,850 rockets have been fired into Israel—that if we want a ceasefire, we have to ask ourselves this question: why has Hamas not accepted a ceasefire, when Israel repeatedly has?
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on leading the world’s response to these terrible murders? During the Easter recess, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) and I visited Ukraine as part of a cross-party delegation. We spent part of the visit in the town of Odessa. It was made very clear to us that the Russian media, which are controlled by Putin, are putting across an image of the people in eastern Ukraine being under attack from the people in Kiev. I urge the Prime Minister to say to the French Government that it only adds to Putin’s strength if he can say to the people that people in Europe are willing to deal with him, especially over the supply of new warships.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is important that people in Russia hear about what is happening in their name. One Russian newspaper has reported—I think this is a quote—that it seems likely that it was a separatist missile that was fired at the plane. It is very important that we get that information through. What he says about working together in Europe is absolutely right.
Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)
The Prime Minister rightly says that big countries should not bully smaller countries, and he rightly expresses concern about the 500 Palestinian dead and 3,000 injured. However, he stops short of accepting what I believe is the opinion of the majority of people in this place and in the country, which is that the Israeli response is not proportionate. What more can he do to express to Israel that that is the view in the UK?
The Prime Minister
I am sure that the Israelis will be watching the debates in this House and international opinion carefully. One point that I made to Prime Minister Netanyahu was that international opinion supports Israel’s right to defend itself, but that it is in danger of losing the support of international opinion if anything happens that shows a lack of restraint and a lack of care about civilian casualties. At the same time, the message should go out from this House that there have been ceasefires called by the Israelis and not matched by Hamas. We must not wish that away or ignore it, because it is a crucial point.
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I am sure that at the forthcoming meeting of European Union Foreign Ministers, the return of the bodies to their families will be the top priority, but does my right hon. Friend agree that the potential deployment of UN peacekeepers to Ukraine should also be discussed and should not be ruled out altogether?
The Prime Minister
I will listen carefully to what my hon. Friend has said. The difficulty is that we are making the argument that the territorial integrity of Ukraine should be respected. That is why the people who should be securing the crash site and making it available for investigation should be the Ukrainian Government—it is their country. To bring in UN forces in some way would be to accept that there is a legitimate case to be made for the separatists who are trying to break up the country through violence.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Prime Minister is right to condemn utterly the downing of MH17 and the way in which the bodies have been dealt with. Does he understand why those who recall that the west supplied and encouraged the protesters of Maidan and held out to them the probably false prospect of the EU welcoming them into its bosom, and who saw the support that the west provided for the overthrow of Ukraine’s former President as a clear provocation of Russia, find it ironic that the Prime Minister now accuses Russia of being the party that initiated and fomented the tragic division in Ukraine?
The Prime Minister
I respect the hon. Gentleman, but I really do not agree with that. The former President of Ukraine wanted to sign an association agreement with the EU. I believe that if a sovereign country in Europe wants to sign an association agreement with the EU, it should be free to do so and Russia should respect it. I have always said that Ukraine does not have to choose between a European future and a Russian future; it should seek to be a bridge between the two. Europe is prepared to let that happen, but apparently Vladimir Putin is not.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
I thank the Prime Minister for his comments about Hamas. Israel has faced not just 1,850 missiles, but 11,000 missiles fired from Gaza, even after the unilateral withdrawal and millions of tonnes of aid going from Israel into Gaza every year. Will my right hon. Friend also look at the source of the missiles, because Iran is supplying Hamas with the weapons?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which is that we must look at where the missiles came from. There is information to suggest that what he puts forward is the case. If we are to de-escalate the conflict, we need to look at the source of the weapons, as well as at the people who are firing them.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
The Prime Minister has been clear today about his views on Hamas’s conduct, but I would like to give him the opportunity to be clear with the House about his views on Israel’s conduct. Given what we have seen over the weekend, does he believe Israel is acting in accordance with international law, the Geneva conventions —including on access for the Red Cross—and humanitarian principles? It is a clear yes or no.
The Prime Minister
I think it is very important that it does those things, which is why I said that it should exercise restraint, avoid civilian casualties and look at ways of bringing the conflict to an end.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
Although President Poroshenko has announced a 40-km cordon around the MH17 crash site, reports from Donetsk over the weekend suggest that the fighting, far from diminishing, has increased. Does my right hon. Friend believe that Putin and his puppets have any real sense of the enormity of what has been done, the anger of the international community and the response that we expect to that anger? I have to say, the fighting on the ground suggests that they do not.
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I cannot exactly tell him that I feel the enormity of what has happened has got through to the Russians yet, not least because of the way their media operate, but the repeated calls by Prime Minister Abbott, Prime Minister Rutte, Chancellor Merkel, François Hollande, Barack Obama and myself must be giving some impression that the whole world is coming together in saying that what is happening in eastern Ukraine is absolutely unacceptable.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
The Prime Minister will be aware that nothing happens in isolation. One of the reasons for what is happening is that in Gaza, in the past 60 years more than 6 million Palestinians have been forced out of their homes, forced to live in squalor while moving from one country to another, unlawfully imprisoned and treated really badly. All those people have legal documents to prove their ownership of their homes, yet we have done nothing. I am sure that if all those people were given back the homes to which they are legally entitled, the ceasefire would occur immediately.
The Prime Minister
I do not accept that we have done nothing. Britain is one of the largest donors to the Palestinian Authority, and we repeatedly meet and work with the Palestinian leadership. We have been staunch in our view that the settlement activity is illegal, and we have done a huge amount to try to bring about a two-state solution. But in the end, we cannot want it to happen more than the parties themselves want it to happen. They need to negotiate.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
The Prime Minister is right to highlight Hamas’s refusal to end rocket attacks as a fundamental block on ending the conflict. All international efforts to broker a ceasefire have failed. What will it take to bring Hamas back to the table?
The Prime Minister
I hope that even now it will respond to the Egyptian plan for a ceasefire and discussions. It is on the table, the Israelis have accepted it and the international community accepts it; we just need Hamas to accept it.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Hundreds of my constituents have contacted me because they are angry and sickened by the killing of innocent Palestinians and the injuries to many thousands more in Gaza over recent days. They find it hard to understand the Prime Minister’s view that that violence is proportionate, so will he explain how he has reached that conclusion?
The Prime Minister
What I have said clearly is that the Israelis need to exercise restraint, obey the norms of international law, do more to avoid civilian casualties and help bring the situation to an end, but they would be assisted in that if Hamas agreed to the ceasefire that Israel has agreed to.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
The Prime Minister is right to identify that Russia’s behaviour has been so gross that it cannot expect the access to international markets that a normal, civilised country might. Does he agree that the logical next political step might be to consider the appropriateness of Russia continuing as a member of the Council of Europe, which is supposedly a body of civilised democracies?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We demonstrated with the G8 that if countries want to belong to organisations that have at their heart a belief in democracy and the fundamental values that we share, they have to act accordingly.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I thank the Prime Minister for making a statement this afternoon on two such terrible disasters—tragedies that are of deep concern to my constituents. On Friday, 10 mosque leaders in my constituency came to me to ask me to ask the Prime Minister to use his good offices and his influence with Israel to ask it to de-escalate this terrible conflict, and to use his good offices and his influence with the United States to ask it to use its authority to persuade Israel to do likewise.
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The message that President Obama and I have delivered to Prime Minister Netanyahu is very similar, stressing the importance of restraint, avoiding civilian casualties and ending the conflict.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Many of my constituents view today’s appalling humanitarian tragedy in the context not only of the rocket attacks but in the context of Israel’s full range of actions over many years, and they draw some of the most appalling conclusions—conclusions that I am reluctant to accept. Will my right hon. Friend do more to persuade Israel that in the long term it must find a hopeful way forward for the people of Palestine?
The Prime Minister
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that we should confront views that are not sound when we receive them—as perhaps he has—but we should try and lay out a vision, not least for the people of Israel, about why it is in their interest to have a two-state solution. That is what my speech in the Knesset was all about: there is a strong and positive case for everyone concerned if they can make the difficult decisions necessary to bring that about.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
While I welcome the UN Security Council’s call last night for a ceasefire, will the Prime Minister take on board the representations I have received, including e-mails from my constituents this morning, urging him—pleading with him—to urge the Israelis to stop using flechette shells in Gaza, which lead to lethal metal darts and innocent people being killed or maimed? Does he agree that the Egyptians calling for dialogue is not enough?
The Prime Minister
The point I would make about the Egyptians calling for dialogue is that at least there is a process in place for a ceasefire and talks, which the Israelis and the international community are accepting and calling for. We now need Hamas to do that as well. On the issue of weapons, as I said earlier, I have not seen that evidence and I will look into it.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
How likely does the Prime Minister think it is that the EU will agree to impose further meaningful sanctions on Russia?
The Prime Minister
I think it is likely. It may not go as far as I would like, but I think that when we are dealing with an organisation of 28 members, some of whom are heavily reliant on Russia for gas or financial services or whatever, it is always difficult. However, I think what we have seen is outrageous, and in the end this depends on what Russia’s actions are. Russia can relieve the sanctions pressure by making sure there is access to that site and that it stops supporting the Ukrainian rebels. If it does those things, there will not be the sanctions pressure, but if it does not, there will be.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I unequivocally condemn the firing of rockets into Israel by Hamas, but the Prime Minister has to accept that the response from Israel is disproportionate. The disregard for the safety of innocent civilians, whether they are in Israel or Gaza or in an aeroplane over Ukraine, is unacceptable, and international law must be applied. On Ukraine, is the Prime Minister satisfied that western banks applied the proper criteria when money was being hollowed out of the finances within Ukraine and smuggled out of that country and into bank accounts in the west? It has led to the situation in Ukraine today. Will he ensure at tomorrow’s meeting of Foreign Ministers that an investigation is instigated into that?
The Prime Minister
I will certainly look at the point the hon. Gentleman makes with regard to Ukrainian banks and the money that has been taken out, and I will mention it to my colleague the Foreign Secretary who will be attending that meeting.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
The Prime Minister will know that Russia repeatedly vetoed any early intervention in Syria, which has led to a complete mess in Syria. Will he now review our policy on Syria despite Russian objections, taking into account the words of Robert Ford, the former US envoy to Syria, who says that current international policy does not relate to the position on the ground? Finally, there are reports that Hamas is prepared to accept a ceasefire if it is guaranteed by Qatar and Turkey. Is there any progress on that?
The Prime Minister
I have not seen that latest report, but anything that brings about a ceasefire would of course be welcome. On Syria, our policy remains the same.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
Hundreds of my constituents have contacted me expressing their horror at what is happening in Gaza, and I share that horror. This is—yet again—a disproportionate response from Israel. Does the Prime Minister agree that the collective punishment of the Palestinians, which has seen many hundreds die, including many dozens of children, is disproportionate and a war crime? People watching this debate today will see that his response has been wholly inadequate.
The Prime Minister
Our response has been very clear to the Israelis: they have to obey the norms of international law, act proportionately, exercise restraint and avoid civilian casualties.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I am sure that everyone in the House wants an end to rocket attacks, but on Friday I met literally hundreds of my constituents—people from mosques, churches, and people of no religion at all—who had taken to the streets of Worcester because of their deep concern about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. May I urge the Prime Minister, on their behalf and mine, to use every diplomatic tool in the box to impress on both sides in this conflict the need to bring about a ceasefire, come to the table and work towards a long-term peace?
The Prime Minister
That is absolutely what we are doing. In particular, we are pushing this Egyptian ceasefire plan, to which others are prepared to sign up. We need Hamas to sign up to it, too. When we get to the talks process, we need to press Hamas to accept the Quartet principles, which include Israel’s right to exist. It is difficult to negotiate with an organisation that does not accept that the country with which we are negotiating has any right to exist.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
Russia is reliant on the manufacturing base in eastern Ukraine. It relies on 30% of Ukraine’s manufacturing output for unique and irreplaceable military components for the arsenal of the Russian military. Does the Prime Minister accept that it is about time that we put an end to this false belief that Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine and in Crimea were anything to do with the support of Russian-speaking minorities and everything to do with supporting the Russian military base?
The Prime Minister
I hear what the hon. Lady says and I am sure that she is right. It is partly about that, but it is also about Russia’s vision of itself and its neighbours and about it feeling that connection with Ukraine. What we should be saying is that of course we will protect the rights of Russian-speaking minorities in eastern Ukraine, but the people of Ukraine have made a choice in terms of a free and democratic election and a free choice to have an association agreement with the European Union, and Russia should respect that.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
Does the Prime Minister agree that the Russian Government’s recent action demonstrates the limitations of soft diplomacy, and that it may soon be time for a bigger step, including withdrawing Russia’s right to host the 2018 World cup, with its cloak of respectability and economic benefits?
The Prime Minister
A number of points have been made about the dangers that Russia faces if it opts for a path of increasing international isolation.
Shabana Mahmood (Birmingham, Ladywood) (Lab)
Now that the Israeli ground offensive has moved into densely populated urban areas of Gaza, the death toll of innocent Palestinians, especially of children, will only rise. The Israelis say that civilians should leave these areas. Given the Prime Minister’s own description of Gaza as an open-air prison camp, perhaps he could advise the men, women and children of Gaza as to where on Earth they are supposed to go?
The Prime Minister
What we want for the people of Gaza is for them to have a country of their own—Palestine —that lives in peace next to Israel. That is the goal.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
How should President Putin respond to the concerns about the crash site that have been expressed by the Australian Prime Minister, who said that it is a bit like leaving criminals in charge of the crime scene? How will the strength of public opinion and economic weight in Australia and south-east Asia be used to put further pressure on President Putin?
The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is that this is a tragedy that has affected many Australian families, and it demonstrates the fact that we need the whole world to come together to send the clearest possible message to Russia about its behaviour. Having spoken three times over recent days to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, I know that he will be very strong in delivering that message.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Prime Minister accept that the balance of opinion in the House today is that, with more than 500 Palestinians killed, the vast majority of whom were civilians and many of whom were children, and 20 Israelis also killed during this conflict, this could never be described as proportionate? What action will he take as a result of that balance of opinion? I urge him to get behind the United Nations in its peacekeeping role rather than continue to make waves about the Egyptian role. The United Nations is where it should be at, and if he empowers the Secretary-General, hopefully we can get a solution.
The Prime Minister
I am fully behind the United Nations and think that it does have a leading role to play. What the Secretary-General said about the need for a ceasefire was very welcome. The point about the Egyptian proposal is that it is on the table; the Israelis have accepted it. If Hamas accepted it, we would have a ceasefire. As for the debate today, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: it is important that Israel bears in mind the fact that there is very strong public opinion here and around the world about the need for restraint and the need to avoid civilian casualties. I am sure that it will listen carefully to what hon. Members say today.
Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Prime Minister accept that one major impediment to a lasting ceasefire in Gaza is the widely held belief across the Palestinian occupied territories, the wider middle east and our own constituencies that Israel has not lived up to its previous commitments under previous ceasefires? Furthermore, does he accept that the normal test he would apply on the deliberate targeting of civilians starts to break down in an area as densely populated as Gaza?
The Prime Minister
I agree with the hon. Gentleman that in densely populated areas it is incredibly important that Israeli forces accept the norms of international law. In terms of assurances given, for a negotiation to succeed everyone has to stick to the undertakings they have given. For instance, we need the Israelis to have a Palestinian partner with whom they can negotiate. That means that, over time, Hamas has to accept Israel’s right to exist and give up the use of violence.
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
There is a saying that if the truth is stretched thin enough, people start to see through it. In relation to Israel’s response being proportionate, I ask the Prime Minister whether he can seriously tell the House that, had he been in power at the time of republican bombings in the United Kingdom, he would have sanctioned the use of carpet bombing, close range artillery and naval bombardment in parts of Belfast and Kilburn?
The Prime Minister
I do not think the comparison is a fair and honest one. Weapons are being launched from a neighbouring country into Israel. The Israeli Government have a duty to protect their people and stop those missiles being launched. Internal terrorism is an entirely different situation.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I offer my condolences to families and friends who lost loved ones on MH17. I agree that we need to have strong EU leadership with a single voice and to send a clear message to Russia.
On Gaza, I am absolutely stunned by the Prime Minister’s change in tone. Will he unreservedly condemn the indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on the Palestinian people, particularly civilian women and children, and the breaches of international law and the Geneva convention?
The Prime Minister
I believe I have been thoroughly consistent over many years on this issue. It is very important that Israel obeys the norms of international law. It is right to condemn it, for instance, over illegal settlement activity, and I do. It is right to push everyone towards a peace process. It is right to accept that Israel has a right to self-defence, but it is right to be very clear that that means restraint, proportionality and avoiding civilian casualties. I could not have been clearer.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
President Obama was absolutely right to say that the vile crime committed on Thursday in Ukraine represents a wake-up call for Europe, but the scale of sanctions from the EU on Russia has lagged far behind those applied by the United States. Will the Government make the case tomorrow to broaden sanctions to include, for example, the Russian company that manufactures the surface-to-air missile system that may well have brought down flight MH17?
The Prime Minister
I will look very carefully at the specific suggestion the hon. Gentleman makes. I think he is being a little unfair in that the US and the EU have worked quite well in partnership to try to deliver strong and consistent sanctions packages, and long may that continue.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
I thought my new suit would catch your eye, Mr Speaker, but it did not. [Hon. Members: “It did.”] Maybe it did.
The slaughter of 298 innocents on flight MH17 was a direct result of the deployment of the most lethal arms at the top of the technology tree, which has been part of an escalation from violent skirmishes in Ukraine towards all-out civil war with a possible pretext of Russia entering Ukraine. Does the Prime Minister agree that the only people Putin will listen to, in translating him from a warmonger to a peacemaker, are the people of Russia themselves? Does he further agree that sanctions need to be far reaching and hard hitting? With that in mind, will he argue tomorrow for new sanctions by the end of this month?
The Prime Minister
I agree with almost every word the hon. Gentleman said; he put the point extremely well and made clear what needs to happen. On the timing of sanctions, some of these things can be done quite quickly. If we can nominate and agree new people—for instance, I have been arguing that we should start to sanction cronies and oligarchs connected to the regime, even if they do not have a particular connection to Ukraine and Crimea—those names can be written down and those targets dealt with relatively quickly.
That was a good note on which to end. In spite of the suit, it was a very good point.
Mr Speaker
I thank the Prime Minister warmly for both his presence and his fortitude. I feel sure that the suit of the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) and the red trousers of the hon. Member for Broadland (Mr Simpson) were highlights of this afternoon.
Points of Order
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In his response to my question on Gaza, the Prime Minister accused me of seeking to justify Hamas rocket attacks. Seeking to understand a conflict is very different from justifying it, yet so often in the Israel-Palestine debate it suits some to conflate the two, which is both lazy and unhelpful. Given that in my question I clearly said I deplored the rocket attacks, as I deplored the Israeli incursions, would it be appropriate to ask the Prime Minister to retract his earlier statement?
Mr Speaker
I do not think I have to ask the Prime Minister to do anything of the sort, to be honest, although he is perfectly welcome to come to the Dispatch Box, if he wishes. However, I say in all courtesy to the hon. Lady—I hope she takes this in the right spirit—that I was very happy for her to raise her point of order and put her concerns on the record, and I am sure she will not be affronted when I say that she is a robust character and capable of looking after herself and that I do not think he has anything to apologise for or to add, unless he wishes to do so. We will leave it there for today.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister appears still to be in the Chamber; he must have heard the question, and he knows the answer he gave, which was clearly a travesty of what my friend said. Should he not now apologise?
Mr Speaker
These things are all a matter of context and interpretation. I have the highest respect for the hon. Gentleman, but I do not want to umpire on what really are considerations of preference, taste and judgment. I have the utmost confidence—this is an important parliamentary point—in the Hansard writers faithfully to record what was said by every right hon. and hon. Member. The hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman have made their points, and I think it is fair that we leave it there for today.
Bills Presented
Energy (Buildings and Reduction of Fuel Use) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Dr Alan Whitehead presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to draw up and publish an Energy in Buildings Strategy; to require the Secretary of State to take reasonable steps to implement that Strategy; to require the Secretary of State to set cost-effective targets to reduce fuel use; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 12 September, and to be printed (81).
Houses in Multiple Occupation (Energy Performance Certificates and Minimum Energy Standards) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Dr Alan Whitehead presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to make regulations about the renting out of houses in multiple occupation; to require landlords to provide energy performance certificates to prospective tenants; to set minimum energy efficiency standards for the letting of houses in multiple occupation; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 12 September, and to be printed (82).
Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill
(10 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The Bill is about bringing back common sense to a part of our society that week in, week out frustrates many of us; about restoring balance to the health and safety culture that all too often goes beyond what is necessary to protect individuals; about tackling a culture of ambulance chasing that all too often is about generating opportunities to earn fees, rather than doing the right thing; about ensuring that people who do the right thing are confident that the law is on their side when they do so; about trying to protect those who act in the interests of our society; about protecting those who go out of their way to take the responsible approach; and about protecting those who take risks to try to help those who are in trouble. It does not rewrite the law in detail or take away discretion from the courts, but it sends a signal to our judges and a signal to those thinking about trying it on—by bringing a case in the hope that it will not be defended—that the law is no longer on their side.
We live in a society that is increasingly litigious. In a country where things are safer than ever, where our workplaces are less risky than ever and where safety standards on our roads are higher than ever, that should not be happening. Of course accidents happen; they always will. Of course people do dumb things; they always will. Of course unscrupulous people will cut corners and put others in danger; they always will. But there is no need for us to be suing more and more. In the last three years alone, figures for personal injury claims registered with the compensation recovery unit show that claims against employers have increased from around 81,000 in 2010-11 to more than 105,000 in 2013-14—an increase of 30%.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
I very much support what the Minister is doing, because there are some people out there who genuinely need to sue when there is a problem, but there are many who have manufactured a situation, where they were probably at fault themselves, and then want to blame somebody else. There is a culture of blaming somebody else whatever happens. We need to take responsibility for our own actions as well as everyone else’s.
Chris Grayling
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. I want those who are tempted to try to attract people who have been the victim of an accident—those who say, “Hey, there’s an opportunity for you to sue”—to believe that it is perhaps not in their business interests to do so. Accidents do happen. Where people are genuinely on the bad end of a poor decision or malpractice, they should of course have a defence in the courts, but people who are blameless should not be sued none the less.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
May I say how delighted I am to see that the Minister is still in his place and is a survivor? It is nice to have him here, but I am bit worried about the title of this Bill. He seems to be talking about a Bill with a different title from the one on the Order Paper. This Bill is about social action, responsibility and heroism. I thought it would be about citizenship, and I am concerned that that is not in the Bill and that he has gone straight on to health and safety issues and people being sued. What has gone wrong?
Chris Grayling
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being pleased to see me still in my place. If he looks at the three elements in the Bill’s title—social action, responsibility and heroism—he will see that all are of great importance. However, when it comes to the responsibility piece in particular, which I am talking about now, those who try to do the right thing and take responsible decisions can still sometimes end up on the wrong end of the law. That is where I want to avoid being. I want those who do the right thing—in terms of responsibility, that means employers who go out of their way to have the right standards in their workplace—to feel protected against claims that can sometimes, frankly, be spurious.
Mr Sheerman
Most of us on the Opposition Benches would agree: we do not want people to be intimidated by threats of legal action. They are totally preposterous—we have seen them, we hate them, and we can all agree on that. On the other hand, we want people to be protected from serious accidents at work and the things that trouble people who are vulnerable. Can the Minister assure me that he will get that balance right?
Chris Grayling
I can absolutely give the hon. Gentleman that assurance, because this Bill is not about taking discretion from the courts. It is about deterring spurious claims and sending a message to the courts that we want them to focus on ensuring that they are on the side of the person who has done the right thing. Of course, where the wrong thing has been done, the force of the law is there to provide an appropriate remedy. However, all too often cases are brought that I think frankly should not be brought. If the hon. Gentleman talks to small businesses in his constituency, I am sure he will find many examples of firms that say, “Actually, when I get a case against me, it’s just too much of a hassle to defend it.”
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I do not want to misinterpret what the right hon. Gentleman has been saying, but it seems to me that there would not be many frivolous claims, given that it is difficult to take somebody to a tribunal and that legal aid has been cut. I do not quite see what he is getting at with that aspect of his Bill.
Chris Grayling
All I can suggest is that the hon. Gentleman find a moment or two in his day to watch daytime television and see the number of adverts for firms trying to attract people who will sue when something has gone wrong—“Have you had an accident? Come and launch a case.” He needs to recognise—I am sure he has constituents in this position as well—that there are very many responsible employers who fear cases being brought against them when they have done nothing wrong. There are people who volunteer in their communities and who are worried about the legal position in which that puts them. There are people who, whenever they are faced with a spur-of-the-moment decision on whether to intervene in a crisis, are pursued by the fear that makes them ask themselves “If I do this, will I be doing the right thing?”
Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend may know, yesterday parts of my constituency experienced severe flash flooding from surface water, which affected pretty much the whole of Canvey Island. On numerous occasions, many public-spirited individuals stepped in. I am thinking of people such as Neal Warren and Simon Hart who spent all afternoon unblocking sewers and road drains in Hadleigh, at their own risk, and the neighbours of Bill Monk, a 103-year-old whose carers could not reach him because of the floods. Would the Bill make people in such circumstances more confident that they are safe and will be protected?
Chris Grayling
That is very much my aim. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s constituents, and indeed to her. I know that she spent time helping her constituents at the weekend. I saw the television pictures of what happened in her constituency, and I am sure that we all send our good wishes to the residents of Canvey Island who have experienced such a sudden and unexpected turn of events. Considerable damage and great disruption were caused to the island, and I pay tribute to everyone who has been involved in trying to sort things out. Of course, such people should always feel confident that if they do the right thing by, for instance, trying to unblock a sewer, yet something goes wrong, it is not their fault but a result of their trying to do the right thing for the community. The balance of probability should be that the law is on their side, and that is what the Bill will achieve.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
Everything that we have heard so far is entirely worthy, and no one would wish to gainsay or criticise the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), but I am a little puzzled, because I cannot find, in my head or my heart, a practical difference that the Bill will make to the current law. I wonder whether my right hon. Friend could give me a few examples.
Chris Grayling
The key thing that the Bill does, in legal terms, is lay down a set of principles for the courts. As my hon. and learned Friend knows, there have been a number of examples over the years in which Parliament has set out principles and allowed the jurisprudence to evolve from them. However, this is not just about what happens in the courts; it is also about what happens outside the courts. It is about the decisions to sue that may or may not be made. It is about the small business that gives way to a spurious claim, believing that there is a risk in defending it. The Bill is designed to send a powerful message, inside but particularly outside the courts, that if someone is going to take legal action, there is clear visibility of the law, and the law will clearly not be on the side of a person who is trying it on. That is what we are trying to achieve.
Many of the claims that are represented by the 30% increase are doubtless valid, but at least part of that rise must be attributed to an increasingly litigious climate, spurred on, as I have said, by personal injury firms that are quick to cash in by advertising their services on television and radio, through unsolicited and often deeply irritating and upsetting telephone calls, through posters on buses, and through other marketing techniques. We have focused firmly on ensuring that in future it will be much more difficult for spurious, speculative and opportunistic claims to succeed.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that one way of deciding, in future years, whether the Bill has been a success will be to measure the number of unsuccessful claims for negligence that are being brought before the courts?
Chris Grayling
That is clearly one of the measures that could be used, but this is an area in which it is very difficult to collect statistics. All too often, these are cases that are conceded a long time before they come to the courts. A small business may be involved. Perhaps there has been an accident at work and it is not the employer’s fault, but the employee, backed by a firm that is operating on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis, pursues the case anyway. All too often, the employer simply gives way. I think that every one of us, in our constituencies, could find a firm that had found itself facing a claim and had felt uncertain about the law: legal aid is expensive, the firm did not feel that the law was on its side, and it therefore did not defend the case.
Mr Sheerman
The Secretary of State is being very generous in giving way. As I have said, I have great respect for him, but when I read about “social action, responsibility and heroism” in the Queen’s Speech, I thought that that meant qualities such as citizenship. I am involved in a campaign about citizenship, and about making educating young people—and older people—in good citizenship more of a reality. Listening to the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, my constituents might fear that the Bill is not what they thought it would be.
Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman will have to let me finish my speech and decide in the round, but I can assure him that small businesses share the concerns I have been setting out. They believe the law needs to be more clearly on their side, but I will come back to the heroism piece and the social responsibility piece because these are important parts of the Bill as well.
We have focused on trying to ensure that we clamp down on the no win, no fee environment. In 2010 Lord Young published the “Common Sense, Common Safety” report, drawing attention to the fact that businesses were operating their health and safety policies in a climate of fear, and that the no win, no fee system introduced by the Labour party had given rise to the perception that there was no risk in starting litigation and it encouraged speculative claims. A whole industry had grown up around that.
Since that report was published, we have introduced a wide range of measures to tackle these damaging effects. We have transformed no win, no fee deals, so lawyers can no longer double their fees if they win at the expense of defendants or their insurers. We have banned referral fees paid between lawyers, insurance claims firms and others for profitable claims. We have reduced by more than half the fees lawyers can charge insurers for processing low-level personal injury claims. We have banned claims management companies from offering cash incentives or gifts to people who bring them claims. We have changed the law to enable companies that breach claims management regulation unit rules to be fined. We have also helped remove the fear of being sued for breaches of strict liability health and safety duties by introducing changes last year through the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 to prevent claims for damages from being brought under health and safety regulations. In addition to these measures, we are currently taking action through amendments to the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill to extend the ban on offering inducements to include things such as iPads. I do not think they should be offered as a reward by those who drum up business in order to pursue personal injury claims. Together with other provisions in the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill requiring the courts to dismiss fundamentally dishonest claims, this will root out the insidious and damaging bad practice and unacceptable behaviour on the part of some claimants and their lawyers that has tainted personal injury claims in recent years.
Sir Edward Garnier
I am probably being very obtuse, but everything my right hon. Friend has said over the last two or three minutes is undoubtedly true, yet what I do not understand is how clauses 1, 2, 3 and 4 change what is already in place.
Chris Grayling
They do two things. They consolidate the law, which exists in fragmented places around past legislation, so it is very clear what the law says, and they provide additional protection, particularly for volunteers, but, above all, they send a signal from Parliament to the courts, in the way that past legislation also has, and set out a series of principles off the back of which the courts will evolve a jurisprudence. They also send a powerful message to those who never get near the courts and who may give in to claims and currently do not feel the law is on their side—I can assure the House that they do not feel the law is on their side—that actually they can stand up and defend a claim in the knowledge that Parliament has very clearly said that the balance in the courts should be in their favour. So this is as much about sending a message outside the courts as inside the courts.
Although this Bill focuses on three issues, as I have said I do think that clause 3—the responsibility piece—has a particular importance in ensuring we provide proper protection for small businesses. I have talked to countless business groups and employers who tell me how the compensation culture is tying their business in knots. Employers might do the right thing and put in place sensible procedures, but then someone does something daft and the employer still finds themselves facing a damages claim. Of course sometimes that claim will have a genuine basis, and of course sometimes it needs to be recompensed in the courts, but if we are to achieve our goal of supporting business and enterprise and ensuring we continue our success in creating new jobs, we have to make sure the law is properly balanced.
I recognise that worries about liability can arise in other circumstances, too, particularly in the voluntary sector, and let me now turn to the other clauses that address those concerns. In a survey carried out by the NatCen Social Research and the Institute for Volunteering Research, worries about risk and liability was an issue cited by 47% of those questioned who were not currently volunteering. That study was carried out over the course of 2006-07, but the more recent insightful reports by Lord Young and Lord Hodgson concluded that this remains a real issue for would-be volunteers. Indeed, in the Queen’s Speech debate we heard from a number of hon. Members who reinforced that message from volunteering groups in their constituencies. It has been confirmed by Justin Davis Smith, the executive director of volunteering and development at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, who said when we announced our plans that there is
“a great concern about risk…anything that can be done to break down barriers to people getting involved in their communities is very welcome.”
I say to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) that it is precisely for those people that we are sending one of the signposts in this Bill.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
Obviously, I support the Government’s objectives and making things easier for volunteers. Have the Government made any study of what effect the Bill would have on the costs on insurance to protect people against strange litigation?
Chris Grayling
It is difficult to give an exact answer on that. We have not been able to quantify it exactly, but I believe the Bill will contribute to the downward pressure on insurance premiums coming from a range of measures we are putting in place. In itself, it will not necessarily make a massive difference, but together with the other pieces of the jigsaw puzzle we are putting in place on different aspects of insurance costs, ranging from the independent medical panels we are putting in place for motor insurance claims to some of our changes to the regulation of no win, no fee lawyers, it will have—we are already seeing this in some areas—a downward effect on insurance claims.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that one constraint on getting more volunteers into organisations is the risks they perceive? Does he agree that these concerns and risks are stopping the growth of great organisations such as the Scouts and St John Ambulance, because they cannot get the volunteers? They cannot get young people involved, off the streets and doing positive things.
Chris Grayling
That is absolutely right. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) has highlighted the case of a constituent of his who ran an outward bound organisation but has been hamstrung—he has seen his business almost disappear—because of pressure as a result of a claim that has been brought. That caused problems to his business when he was seeking only to do the right thing.
I want people to feel confident about participating in activities that benefit others without worrying about what might happen if, despite their best efforts, something goes wrong and they find themselves defending a negligence claim. Clause 2, on social action, provides valuable reassurance that if that does happen, the court, when reaching a decision on liability, will take careful and thorough account of the context of the defendant’s actions and the fact that he or she was acting for the benefit of society.
The final limb of the Bill on heroism addresses another key area of concern. Unfortunately, it is often the case that people are unwilling to intervene to help in emergencies, and may stand by and do nothing when somebody collapses on the street, for example, because they are worried about the legal position if they do try to help and something goes wrong. Although many people act spontaneously in such situations without giving a second thought to their own interests, we know that many people think it would be safer not to get involved. The debate in this House—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter), in his usual chattering way, asks how I know. Let me refer him back—he probably was not here—to the debate following Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech, which yielded a number of examples of how those worries can manifest themselves. My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) told us about his experiences as a community first responder with the ambulance service in Yorkshire. He said that when he turned up at emergencies, he often found that people were unwilling to involve themselves because they were worried that the law would not protect them. The hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck) confirmed that she has found similar attitudes in her constituency. These are not isolated cases, and other right hon. and hon. Members will be able to think of other examples in their constituencies.
Mr Sheerman
May I put the record right, Mr Deputy Speaker? As a Yorkshire Member of Parliament, I know that we have so many volunteers and so much spontaneous public action to step in to the fray when things go wrong. I would hate for that example the Secretary of State gave of someone from Yorkshire to stand, as we are second to none. I have never heard, as a Member of Parliament, of anyone being frightened to wade in and save someone or help someone if it is needed in Yorkshire. I am sorry, but I do not believe there is that much reticence.
Chris Grayling
All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that if he were right, this move would not have been as widely welcomed as it has been by the voluntary sector, for precisely the reasons I gave. It has been widely welcomed by that sector, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole would be happy to share his experiences with another Yorkshire Member of Parliament.
Clause 4 therefore addresses these concerns by giving reassurance that heroic behaviour in emergencies will be taken into account by the courts in the event of a negligence claim being brought. The Bill will therefore apply in a wide range of situations in which employers or others have demonstrated a generally responsible approach towards the safety of others during an activity or in which people have been acting for the benefit of society or have selflessly intervened to help others in an emergency.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
I realise that the point I am about to make slightly stretches the parameters of the Bill, but given that the Secretary of State has been praising people who heroically intervene is he not as surprised as I am that the people who heroically intervened to help Lee Rigby and confronted the people who had killed them have not seen their bravery recognised? Most of us expected them to get the George medal once the trial was over, so is it not a shame that their bravery has not been recognised?
Chris Grayling
I think that every one of us in this House would pay tribute to those people. I am sure that my hon. Friend’s comments have been noted and he is right to highlight the degree of bravery shown on that tragic afternoon.
Mr Nuttall
I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor for giving way. Does he agree that clause 4 would be just as effective without the last 11 words thereof? I urge him to look closely at the clause and see whether the words are necessary.
Chris Grayling
I can certainly give that assurance to my hon. Friend. I do not think he is right, but we will debate the Bill in Committee and I am sure that he will have the opportunity in Committee and on Report to take a more detailed look at the wording. If there are ways to improve the Bill, we are certainly not closed-minded in that regard, although I believe that the wording is necessary to clarify when clause 4 applies.
What the Bill does not do is tell the court what conclusion it should reach. It does not prevent a person from being found negligent if all the circumstances of the case warrant it. It is important to be clear that it does not prevent medics who negligently injure their patients or others or who perform public services in a negligent way from being held to account. It does not do that. Nor does it have any bearing on deliberate acts of ill-treatment or harm that are inflicted on others and that might amount to criminal offences. In those instances, there could, as now, be repercussions in the criminal courts as well as the civil ones. What it does, as I said at the start of my speech, is drive out spurious claims, deter health and safety jobsworths and help to reassure good, honest and well-meaning citizens that if they act responsibly, do something for the public good or intervene heroically in an emergency, the law will be on their side. Businesses should not be deterred from providing jobs and contributing to our economy by a fear of opportunist litigation and individuals should not be deterred from helping their fellow citizens by a fear that they will somehow put themselves at legal risk.
Mr Nick Hurd (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
I support the Bill, because I think it sends a valuable message of reassurance to volunteers and charities. Having knocked around the sector for six years now, I know that there definitely is an issue with people being afraid of being sued. May I urge him to consider this in the wider context of what the Government are doing to support volunteering, and will he join me in celebrating the fact that volunteering has risen on our watch following five years of gentle decline?
Chris Grayling
I will certainly make that very clear. We value enormously the work done by volunteers. May I take this opportunity to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his very good work with the voluntary sector, which rightly values the contribution he has made? He has undoubtedly been one of the principal architects of a more favourable environment for charities to operate within.
I believe that the Bill strikes a fair, proportionate and sensible balance that will provide a clear and valuable reassurance to counter the fears that are proving such a deterrent, putting people off volunteering, and that cause anxiety to small businesses, which worry that they might end up at the wrong end of litigation, while ensuring at the same time that those who are genuinely injured through negligence or who suffer wrongs are not prevented from obtaining redress where appropriate.
I believe that the Bill embeds common sense and will reassure all those people. I hope that the House will welcome the policy intentions that underpin it and I commend it to the House.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
It is customary, after a reshuffle, to welcome to their places the new Ministers who have been promoted by the Prime Minister. I appreciate that there were a couple of days when the Ministry of Justice was without Ministers and I appreciate that the new ones are part time and unpaid, but I am surprised that they are not here to share the glory of this five-clause Bill. In their absence, I congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on his new role, and welcome my good friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims, the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Mike Penning) to his new role. It is pleasing that there were finally some willing takers to take up the opportunities in the Ministry of Justice and I wish them luck in their jobs. They will need it over the next 10 months.
So here we are, on the final Monday before the summer recess, in the fifth year of this coalition Government, discussing a five-clause Bill which has been variously described as “complete gobbledygook”, “a turkey” and my favourite one, “the gallinaceous love child” of the Secretary of State and the Minister for Government Policy. Perhaps the most painful of all insults comes from the ConservativeHome blog. The editor of that site put the Bill on the list of those that should not be in the Queen’s Speech. That is how much the Conservative activists think of the Bill. It is hardly a glowing list of endorsements that herald its arrival.
In his own puff piece for the Bill on ConservativeHome, the Justice Secretary wrote:
“SARAH has taken a while to bring to the fore, and she is now getting ready for her debut in the world.”
Given the rather flat reviews that SARAH’s debut has so far received, I cannot help but wonder whether she should ever have seen the light of day.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
If the right hon. Gentleman takes that view of the Bill, why is he not going to oppose it? And why have Labour MPs been told that they are on a one-line Whip, which means that they need not be here?
Sadiq Khan
The right hon. Gentleman should give me a chance to complete my speech. Then we can discuss what we are going to do. He has been here for many Parliaments and he will know that we take the opportunity where we can to improve Bills, even five-clause nonsense Bills, in Committee. I look forward to working with him to improve the Bill during the remaining stages of its passage through the Commons.
I have referred to the fact that the Bill has only five clauses, and I accept that we should not necessarily judge its quality by its length, but if we strip out the first clause, which sets the scene, and the fifth, which deals with extent and commencement, it is only a three-clause Bill. It is so small that the short title is almost longer than the Bill itself. Does the content really warrant a Bill of its own?
It goes without saying that we all support those who volunteer. We want to see even more people contributing their time to good causes and to the vibrancy of civil society and communities throughout the country. We do not want to live in a country where there are unnecessary barriers in the way of those who want to donate their time to helping in the local community, nor do we want to live in a society where people feel unable to help out in an emergency because of a fear of litigation. But the premise of the Bill is built on sand. The Justice Secretary has stated:
“All too often people who are doing the right thing in our society feel constrained by the fear that they are the ones who will end up facing a lawsuit”,
and he repeated that in his Second Reading opening speech. One might think that such a sweeping statement would be followed up with some concrete examples of where that has happened, or perhaps some statistics to back it up, but no. Instead we are given generally wishy-washy scenarios where people and organisations might—I stress the word “might”—be put off by fear of litigation.
Chris Grayling
How does the right hon. Gentleman therefore explain the 30% increase in three years in personal injury claims?
Sadiq Khan
I am pleased that the Justice Secretary asks that question because the Ministry of Justice has confirmed that the number of civil cases is going down, not up. It would be worth his spending some time looking at his own statistics. He spent a great deal of time during his speech talking about all the progress that he has made in reducing the number of personal injury cases. Either his reforms are not working or the statistics from his Department are wrong. He must decide which it is.
During his 30-minute speech he gave us no hard facts, no proof and no evidence. We know he has previous when it comes to lack of evidence. We have seen the meltdown in probation that has come about because of his Government’s reckless and half-baked probation privatisation—all done, again, without any evidence, let alone testing or piloting; nothing to show it would work or would not risk public safety. The Justice Secretary said at the Dispatch Box that he trusted his instinct ahead of hard statistical evidence—the same instinct that brought us the Work programme and that delivered a prison crisis has now brought us SARAH.
The Justice Secretary tried to give the impression that there was a problem, and he referred to the impact assessment. I can imagine the fear in his officials’ eyes when they were told to go and find some evidence—any evidence—to support the aims of his Bill. But the Justice Secretary should have been worried when all they could come back with was a survey—a survey—from 2006-07, when the ink was not even dry on the Compensation Act 2006. How can he use as evidence a survey done when the 2006 legislation, which many people think deals adequately with the problems that he says he wants to solve, had barely come into force? In fact, there is plenty of evidence out there, as the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) said, that contradicts the Government’s claim. A Cabinet Office report from 2013 shows not a fall but a rise in volunteering, confirmed also this week by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. Volunteering is going up, not down.
Mr Hurd
The right hon. Gentleman is entirely right, and both sides of the House should celebrate that. It is in part the result of significant Government interventions to remove barriers and reform Criminal Record Bureau checks, and to invest in the opportunities to volunteer, not least the National Citizen Service. This is another milestone on that journey of removing barriers. Yes, volunteering is rising, but still, 20% of volunteers do 80% of the giving. There is so much potential to do more, but far too many people are put off by the risk of being sued, and this Bill aims to create a greater sense of reassurance on that fundamental point.
Sadiq Khan
I am grateful for that intervention because it means that I can refer to the evidence on the barriers to volunteering. The biggest obstacle is a lack of spare time—60% of respondents said that this applied to them a lot and 23% said it applied little. Where does the Bill give people who want to volunteer more spare time? The second biggest reason given by the survey was bureaucracy. Where does the Bill deal with bureaucracy? Other barriers to people coming forward to volunteer include work commitments; looking after children or the home; looking after someone elderly or ill. The hon. Gentleman will know, if he is really honest, that this is a Bill without a cause. Fear of litigation is a very small factor—I think only 1% in the most recent survey referred to that.
Sadiq Khan
If the hon. Gentleman will be patient, I will come on to what the Justice Secretary should have done and pray in aid experts in that regard.
As I said, volunteering is going up, not down. If the health and safety culture is stifling volunteering, perhaps the Justice Secretary can explain the increase in volunteering. As I have said, there is no evidence to support the problem that he describes. There is no great health and safety beast suffocating the life out of those doing good deeds, petrified into inaction at the prospect of having to fork out compensation after being sued. Even if there was, the Bill provides no real substantive solutions anyway.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
I think that many of us are of the view—I am a little surprised that this is not in the Bill—that certain volunteers, particularly in cave and mountain rescue organisations, and even the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, are put in situations that are probably far too difficult and dangerous. In certain situations, for example when people seem to make a specialism of going on to mountains when they know there will be bad weather, the Government should be doing more to protect those volunteers.
Sadiq Khan
If the Bill was really about social action, responsibility and heroism, those sorts of measures would be in it, but clearly it is not.
Let me remind the House of the conclusions of the Government’s own inquiry, which the Justice Secretary referred to, but not fully. Lord Young of Graffham, in his 2010 report, concluded:
“The problem of the compensation culture prevalent in society today is, however, one of perception rather than reality.”
There we have it, from the Government’s mouth: it is a perception, not a reality. The report goes on to highlight:
“One of the great misconceptions, often perpetuated by the media, is that we can be liable for the consequences of any voluntary acts”.
The report then refers to advice given to people in the winter of 2009 about not clearing snow from the front of their houses in case someone slipped and sued them. The Lord Chief Justice said that he had never come across someone being sued in those circumstances, yet the Justice Secretary has wilfully reported that old chestnut in articles he has written before today. I am happy to give way if he would like to intervene and list the occasions since 2010 when such incidents have occurred. No? Well, there we have it. His silence is telling, as he knows there are no such cases.
If the Justice Secretary’s point was that the threat of litigation is putting people off clearing snow, the Bill will do nothing to address that. In fact, the MOJ’s own statistics show that the total number of money claims in civil courts has been following a downward trend in recent years, rather than going up. In any case, the Bill deals with cases that have already reached the courts, so nothing in it will reduce the prospect of being sued. It will not reduce, as he describes it, the “stress and strain” if someone is sued.
Instead of preparing this Bill—the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner asked this question—the Secretary of State’s energies, and those of his officials, would have been better spent rebutting some of the myths about negligence and health and safety. That would have been a better way of tackling the fear of litigation, given that the likelihood of a negligence claim is pretty small. In fact, that was the advice of Lord Dyson, the Master of the Rolls. In a speech entitled “Compensation culture: Fact or fantasy?”, he argued that the perception of a compensation culture
“is not however as grounded in reality as had been suggested.”
He also suggested:
“All of this may also require a substantive educative effort on the part of government, the courts and the legal profession to counter-act the media-created perception that we are in the grips of a compensation culture. It may also require greater public legal education.”
Perhaps that education should have begun with the Justice Secretary.
I have already welcomed the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims to his new post and congratulated him on his promotion. I am sorry that he is not here to share the joys of the Bill with his line manager, because in his previous job at the Department for Work and Pensions he understood exactly the importance of exploding myths about health and safety. In January, in answer to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) on health and safety, he said that
‘it is very important that health and safety is taken seriously in the workplace and in public areas. Right across the Christmas period, I went public about the need to ensure that Christmas was not spoiled by stupid comments, and stupid local authorities saying, ‘We shouldn’t do this or that’—throw snowballs, or have Christmas trees in certain areas—‘because of health and safety.’ That is wrong, and it has nothing to do with health and safety; it is an insurance risk.’—[Official Report, 13 January 2014; Vol. 573, c. 579.]
I hope that although the Minister is absent today he will be able to import some of his common sense into the current MOJ team. After all, as drafted, this Bill will not help. The Government are seeking to legislate to deal with how we perceive risk, real or otherwise. If he were serious, the Justice Secretary would tackle the misconceptions about the risk of being sued, but that is a trickier task that he has chosen to duck.
In introducing this Bill, the Justice Secretary said a lot about how it will protect the responsible employer. That prompts this question: where are the dozens of examples of courts having had a case before them where an employer has done the right thing and an employee has not, and yet they have found for the employee? There are no examples of such cases. He talked about members of the emergency services not going to someone’s rescue in case they breach health and safety rules. Will he tell the House what representations he has received from the fire, ambulance, police and coastguard services in support of that contention? Silence again.
I would like to pick up an important legal point. The Bill seems to conflate health and safety and negligence cases. The former are usually strict liability and the latter are not. That confuses civil liability with criminal liability.
Dr Julian Lewis
I think I know how the right hon. Gentleman will respond to this point, but, for clarity, I am going to put it anyway. There have undoubtedly been cases, have there not, where policemen have said, for example, that they were not prepared to pull an apparently drowned victim out of a pool for fear of not being suitably qualified to do so? Is he saying that some measure other than this Bill will try to prevent that in future? Such cases clearly do exist, as they are widely reported to a horrified public.
Sadiq Khan
I have great respect for the hon. Gentleman, but he was not in the Chamber when I referred to the Master of the Rolls. We need to make sure that employees who do not know the position are educated and told the position, and that those who are not properly trained are properly trained. Debating a three-clause Bill today, and even passing it in the next few months, will not make a jot of difference. We need to make sure that the public and those who work in the emergency services are better educated and know what obligations and duties are placed on them, without the risk and fear of litigation.
Let us be clear: this Bill is targeted at negligence and not at health and safety at all. When the Justice Secretary claims, as he does, that his Bill will
“finally slay much of the ‘elf and safety’…culture”,
he must be honest about the fact that he is being disingenuous, to say the least. If this Bill were really about health and safety, he would be telling the House about the conversations he has had with the Health and Safety Executive and its views on the necessity for such legislation. Again—I think for the seventh time—I will happily allow him to intervene on me to update the House on those conversations with the Health and Safety Executive. Silence again.
We will use the Committee stage of the Bill to scrutinise in more detail its ramifications, both intended and unintended, because it might end up having the opposite effect to that which the Justice Secretary wants. A single act or omission is all that is needed to be negligent. That act or omission might be so serious, causing injury, pain or even death, as to outweigh any amount of good behaviour. He likes talking about hypothetical situations, so what about this one? You are the parent of a child. Would you want them to go on a trip knowing that if they are injured owing to a fault on the part of the school, youth club or scouts, they will not get compensated? The Bill creates the impression that this is the Government’s intention. Or this one: the chairman of a local football team cuts corners when vetting volunteer coaches working with children in the belief that he is protected by the law because in providing coaching for children, he is, to quote clause 2,
“acting for the benefit of society”.
The ramifications of this Bill are that children risk being more exposed to risk. Is that the Government’s intention in introducing it?
If that is not the Government’s intention, this three-clause Bill will not make any difference to the current state of play, as the former Solicitor-General made clear in his intervention. When assessing negligence claims, courts already take into account whether somebody is doing something for the benefit of society, as is recognised by the impact assessment of the Ministry of Justice. That is why organisations have insurance. Although they may be defendants in a claim, they would not be financially liable and their insurer would pay out.
That leads me on to another point. It is interesting that the impact assessment states:
“Insurers and other defendants may gain from slightly reduced aggregate compensation paid and this may feed through to lower insurance premiums.”
However, there is no attempt whatsoever to quantify that, and nor is there any undertaking from insurance companies that it will be passed on to customers—all of which leaves us questioning whether any of that will actually happen in practice, or will insurance companies just end up with higher profits? We all know, by the way, that those companies have donated millions of pounds to the Conservative party’s coffers over recent years.
The House must also steel itself for the inevitable last-minute tabling of a slew of Government new clauses and amendments. The Justice Secretary has a very bad habit of doing that. Such proposals get a cursory amount of scrutiny at best, but they are designed to get the good media hit he so craves and to raise a cheer from his beleaguered Back Benchers. We are very alert to the possibility of new things being added to the Bill at later stages.
Short though today’s Second Reading debate will be, given the paucity of Government speakers, it would be helpful if the Justice Secretary could provide a number of reassurances. Will he reassure us that the Government have no intention of watering down the duty on businesses, particularly small firms, to take out employers’ liability insurance, and that there are no plans to make individual employees take out their own insurance as an alternative to employers’ liability insurance?
Chris Grayling
Given that the right hon. Gentleman is opposed to every aspect of what we are proposing, I am baffled that the serried ranks of Labour Bank Benchers do not plan to vote against the Bill.
Sadiq Khan
I appreciate that the Justice Secretary is demoralised because he has not been moved from the Justice Department. When the Prime Minister asked Cabinet members to volunteer Bills and the Justice Secretary put up his hand and said, “Please, sir, I’ll put forward a Bill,” he thought he would have moved on by the time it came to Second Reading, so I am sorry that he has to deal with this pathetic and embarrassing Bill. Given that it is the Justice Secretary’s Bill, we expected dozens and dozens of his MPs to be present saying what a wonderful Bill it is, but they are not piling up behind him to say so.
The Justice Secretary has claimed that years of work—that is what he said—have gone into this pathetic and embarrassing Bill. It confuses important legal concepts and it is not properly thought through, so it could have negative knock-on effects as a result. It lacks an evidence base and seeks to legislate on the back of myths. It will not do what the Justice Secretary claims it will. It is UKIP-friendly, but it is more like something out of “The Thick of It”. It does not seem to do anything that the current law—section 1 of the Compensation Act 2006 —does not already do.
Members should not just take my word for it. Today’s briefing by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, which was mentioned by the former Minister for Civil Society, who has now left the Chamber, says:
“NCVO does not expect this bill to significantly alter the current law, with similar provisions already made in the Compensation Act 2006.”
Therefore, the only people whom the Justice Secretary could pray in aid say that the Bill will not make a jot of difference. All three main aims of the Bill are covered by that existing legislation. In fact, the MOJ’s own impact assessment also notes that
“the courts are already very experienced in dealing with these cases”.
It is a sad indictment of this Government that this is the best they have to offer in the final year of this Parliament, when prisons are in crisis, probation is in meltdown and access to justice is under attack on a daily basis. If the Justice Secretary was told by the Prime Minister that he had to introduce a Bill in this Queen’s Speech, we would have thought that he might have chosen a better one. What about a victims’ law? He could have used this window to put the rights of victims and witnesses into primary legislation. Instead, we have the SARAH Bill—a turkey of a Bill, a vacuous Bill—which, without doubt, is the most embarrassing and pathetic Bill that the Minister of Justice has published since the Department was first formed.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
I confess that I am no enthusiast for this Bill, but if I was ever to be persuaded to change my mind, the speech of the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) would go a long way to doing so. It was a rather snide and unnecessarily cheap speech, if I may say so, but it pains me to say that I largely agree with its thrust.
Sadiq Khan
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Particularly bearing in mind where I think the former Solicitor-General is going in his speech, is it not the practice for someone who has made a speech to stay for at least the next two speeches to hear other people’s contributions?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Actually, it is in order normally to hear one. I do not know the circumstances, but I am sure the right hon. Gentleman has made his point. The Secretary of State waited fully until the end of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. I am not sure whether he wanted to hear Sir Edward Garnier’s speech—that is not for me to decide—but the point has been made.
Sir Greg Knight
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it also not normally the case that members of a political party should come into the Chamber to listen to their Front-Bench spokesman address the House, and is it not the case that there is not one other MP here?
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Sir Greg, come on. Not only can you do better than that, but we are certainly not going to waste our time discussing it.
Sir Edward Garnier
That was very interesting. I have absolutely no doubt that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wanted to hear every word I am about to say, but he has other pressing public duties to attend to. No doubt, he will read the whole of this afternoon’s debate in the Official Report in due course.
One good reason for speaking in this debate is to give me an opportunity to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd) for his work as a Cabinet Office Minister, particularly on the voluntary sector. He worked extremely hard, with precious little thanks, and was content to do so, despite the fact that all he did achieved, sadly, very little public profile. At least on this occasion, we can thank him very much for all he did. I trust that it will not be long before he is back in government again.
As I said at the outset, I am not hugely enthusiastic about this particular piece of legislation. I am concerned that what the Secretary of State said does not reflect the long title, which states that it is a Bill:
“To make provision as to matters to which a court must have regard in determining a claim in negligence or breach of statutory duty.”
Most of what he said had to do with sending out messages. We all need to send out messages from time to time—sometimes to ask for help, and sometimes to ask people to pay attention to what we are trying to do. In so far as it went, his speech was no doubt well intended, but it did not, if I may say so, condescend to deal with the Bill as a potential piece of law. If we are to pass or make laws, they must be coherent. Although I entirely agree with all the sentiments that he uttered this afternoon about reducing the so-called health and safety culture, reducing the easy acceptance of the only answer to a problem being to sue and dissuading ambulance-chasing solicitors from doing this, that or the other, I regret to say that I do not agree that this particular Bill will achieve that.
I do not know how many people who are intent on bringing an action, if they are not lawyers themselves, think about pieces of legislation. Let us hope that I am wrong and my right hon. Friend is right, and that when the Bill is enacted, copies of it will be plastered all over doctors’ waiting rooms and other public places, so that no citizen will be tempted to bring a spurious claim.
I would be interested to hear how many High Court or county court actions would have been decided differently had the Bill been in force. It is perfectly true to say that the Compensation Act 2006 covers many of the areas of conjecture that are covered by the Bill. I am not persuaded that the Bill covers any new territory.
Sadiq Khan
The hon. and learned Gentleman is being very generous. I hope that my comments will be helpful. The impact assessment that accompanies the Bill states in paragraph 17:
“Both the possible reduction in case volumes and the size of any compensation payments are unknown, but are likely to be small.”
Sir Edward Garnier
That is, no doubt, what the impact assessment says. Whether that justifies the bringing into law of the Bill, I rather doubt.
I spoke about the Bill before having read it on the Thursday of the Queen’s Speech debate. I teased the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government rather rudely by inviting him to provide a definition of “heroic negligence”. He heroically tried to provide me with such a definition, but he did not do so. That is not surprising, because I am not entirely sure that there is such a thing.
I was interested in what my noble Friend Lord Faulks, the Minister of State at the Ministry of Justice, said on 9 June in the debate on the Queen’s Speech in the other place. He said that the Bill will not change the existing overarching legal framework or leave victims without protection, but that it will provide reassurance and send a strong signal to the courts. To quote directly, he said:
“They will still need to look at whether a defendant met the appropriate standard of care in all the circumstances of the case.”—
I say, in parenthesis, that that is what they do already—
“Nor will it introduce blanket exemptions to civil liability. There is an important balance to be struck between encouraging participation in civil society and being mindful of the impact that careless or risky actions could have on the very people that the defendant was trying to help. The Bill is not about removing protection and leaving victims without proper recourse in those circumstances. However, it will give valuable and needed reassurance to a wide range of people and send a powerful signal that the courts will take full account of the context of a person’s actions when determining a negligence claim.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 June 2014; Vol. 754, c. 132.]
I do not think that anybody in either House knows more about the law of negligence than my noble Friend Lord Faulks, who has 40 years’ experience at the Bar dealing predominantly with cases involving negligence and public authorities, such as fire authorities. Reading between the lines of what he said—he will contradict me if I have got this wrong—he does not have a huge amount of enthusiasm for the Bill. However, I may have misread what he said.
The Bill is more like an early-day motion than a proper statute. I say that because, as the Secretary of State admitted, it is predominantly there to send out a message—a strong signal. As I have had many opportunities to say in my 22, 23 or 24 years in this House, we should legislate not to send out signals or messages, but to make good black-letter law, so that the courts know what the law is and can apply it, and so that the legal professions know what it is and can advise the public on it.
My concern is that the contents of the Bill have been within the common law and the ambit of the court’s appreciation for years and years. In 1954, in the case of Watt v. Hertfordshire County Council, Lord Justice Denning, as he then was, spoke about the balancing act performed by the court when people intervene to help in an emergency, which relates to clause 4. He said:
“It is well settled that in measuring due care one must balance the risk against the measures necessary to eliminate the risk. To that proposition there ought to be added this. One must balance the risk against the end to be achieved. If this accident had occurred in a commercial enterprise without any emergency there could be no doubt that the servant would succeed. But the commercial end to make profit is very different from the human end to save life or limb. The saving of life or limb justifies taking considerable risk, and I am glad to say there have never been wanting in this country men of courage ready to take those risks, notably in the Fire Service.”
What Lord Justice Denning said is as true now as it was in 1954, as I know from the emergency services in my own county of Leicestershire, be it the police, the ambulance service or the fire service. There are plenty of brave people who will risk their own life and limb to save others.
I rather agree what my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) said about the last words of clause 4, which refer to an action taken
“without regard to the person’s own safety or other interests.”
I suggest, and I think he agrees, that it is much more heroic to do something having had regard to one’s own safety or other interests, and to go on and do the brave thing—rescuing someone from a frozen lake, pulling them out of a burning building or whatever it might be—despite having thought about those interests. For goodness’ sake, if the Bill is to become law, the least we can do is to remove those last few words of clause 4. Even if it were difficult to work out in law what heroic negligence actually was, we would at least have made that clause a little better.
Nobody will be thanked, least of all a Government Back Bencher, for making a rude speech about a Government Bill, but from time to time, even on a hot day when I would rather be somewhere else, I find it necessary for this House to introduce a degree of common sense into a Bill before the other place gives it a thorough grilling. Far too often, the laws that we pass are the laws of the unintended consequence, and I have a horrible suspicion that if the Bill becomes an Act as it is currently drafted, it will be the subject of derision and confusion, or that even if that does not happen, it will fall into disuse.
I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take my remarks in the spirit in which they are intended. I really do share with him and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State the aims that the latter set out quite a few times— to prevent the abuse of the health and safety culture, to reduce spurious litigation and claims and so on. If I may say so, though, passing a Bill that has a hideous resemblance to an early-day motion rather than a proper Act of Parliament is not the way to do it.
I hope that the Bill will not be the subject of a Division this evening, because I cannot support it. If the Opposition seek a Division I will not join them in the lobby, because I found the manner in which the right hon. Member for Tooting made his speech unattractive, but that is a matter for him. We need to take the Bill away and give it a thorough scrubbing over the summer holidays.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to say a few words about this Bill, and I congratulate the Secretary of State in his absence on bringing it before the House. I support the principle of the Bill. That may come as a bit of a blow to my colleagues in the Opposition and is probably unusual, but I feel that the principles behind the Bill are right, and its theme and thrust appropriate. I am aware that the Bill currently relates only to England and Wales, but I give it my full support and I am both hopeful and confident that in future it will extend to Northern Ireland so that protection is given and awarded to volunteers. I am reminded of the comedy programme back in the ’70s—you will be much too young to recall it, Madam Deputy Speaker—called “Never Mind the Quality, Feel the Width”: do not judge the Bill by the fact that it contains only five clauses; it is important that we judge it on its content.
In 2007, a national survey of volunteering found that 47% of people who do not volunteer said that one of the main reasons for their not doing so was the fear of being sued. We are in a very litigious age in which people are sued for the smallest things, sometimes without justification. However, the number of people volunteering is increasing and it is estimated that about 15 million people volunteer every month. That is a fantastic number who contribute on a volunteer basis every month of the year to help very many people. As Members of Parliament, each one of us will be aware of the impact of those volunteers. That is great news, and it is even better that 28% of young people between 16 and 25 volunteer—something that I know in Northern Ireland is supported and encouraged by schools and universities. Volunteering gives those young people experience and discipline when it comes to making a contribution and giving time each day.
I was speaking to my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), about the age of litigation, and I reminded him of a story from back home. It was the Christmas before last and there was terrible snow and ice in the streets in front of the shops. The shopkeepers said, “Should we clear the ice? We are afraid that if we do so we will find ourselves in a position where if someone falls outside the shop, we will be held responsible.” It turned out that those shopkeepers cleared the ice anyway and took the chance, and everything worked out okay. However, their fear was that someone could fall and that they would be held responsible. I suspect that the Bill will address such cases.
There are provisions in the Compensation Act 2006 for those caught up in litigation, but I completely support and agree with the aims of this Bill, which are to ensure that the good Samaritans out there, and the thousands of volunteers and charitable groups across the UK, are not put off helping for fear of getting into difficulties. Those thousands of volunteers and charitable groups—the good Samaritans of this world whom we all know—are those we need to help. The Bill will ensure that people receive what I believe is a “fair trial”, and those who have been acting for the benefit of society will not be punished for their actions or interventions. The Bill will also seek to protect those acting in an emergency.
The hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) intervened at the beginning of the debate to speak about floods in the south of England and the people who react to emergencies. Will they be held responsible? I hope that the Bill will reassure such people and recognise that they were simply trying to help. Again, there is a clear issue there.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
My hon. Friend is outlining circumstances of deep winter and people clearing snow, or flooding in south- east England. Does he agree that when dealing with people who voluntarily try to help others, we need to see substantive evidence during the passage of the Bill that the situation will be dramatically different in future?
Jim Shannon
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. In his introduction, the Minister—and, to be fair, the shadow Minister—made the point that the Bill is trying to achieve much in principle, but will probably need to be firmed up. My hon. Friend is right, but that will come out through the Committee stage, and everyone will have the chance to contribute.
Helping someone in need seems like the natural response, and so it should be on every occasion, but everything has become so bureaucratic these days that people will often cross to the other side of the street—unlike the good Samaritan in the Bible—because they fear that they might become part of a conflicting or illegal situation. It is important that people do not turn a blind eye, or develop a Nelson’s eye, to what is going on. They should continue to have a compassionate interest in people and in what they can do to help.
I fully support this Bill, and believe that it will bring positive changes to the current system. Hopefully, it will encourage the 47% of people who are concerned about volunteering to do so. A number of people had expressed their concerns about volunteering, fearing that it could have an impact on them in the event of litigation. Hopefully, the Bill will address that issue as well.
This Bill will also protect those who are acting in a “generally responsible way” when an accident occurs. For example, there are youth leaders who organise numerous events and trips throughout the year for young people. People in such roles do fantastic jobs, which is why I think this is a worthwhile Bill to support.
I was disheartened to hear that some of my colleagues on the Opposition Benches have concerns about the Bill. Hopefully, they are frivolous concerns, and when it comes to discussing the contents of the Bill, they will come together to support it. This Bill is certainly not a waste of time; I believe it is something that people want to see. Given the importance that is placed on voluntary work in this economic climate, particularly for young people—the Prime Minister has talked about volunteers many times—it is a vital piece of legislation to introduce, and the benefits will be there for young people as well. The Bill will ensure that further checks and balances will exist for anyone making unmeritorious claims, and as an outcome we expect they will be deterred from making such claims. I hope to see the Bill introduced in Northern Ireland in the not-too-distant future. Given the large number of volunteers in Strangford, who do a really tremendous, worthwhile job, and whom we could not be without, I certainly welcome its introduction.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon). He is right that I will not find the same value in the Bill that he does, but none the less I felt that his speech showed his usual good grace and spirit. He is the archetypal good Samaritan in this respect.
It is all change in the engine room at the Ministry of Justice, though the captain is still there steering manfully for the rocks as ever. [Hon. Members: “Where is he?”] He is rather more like Captain Oates today. I think it showed some disrespect for this House that he did not stay for any speeches, including that of the former Solicitor-General, the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier).
May I, in true bipartisan spirit, congratulate the hon. Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright), who is not in his place, on his promotion to the role of senior Law Officer? He will no doubt discharge it with the same calm and rational demeanour that was his hallmark at the Ministry of Justice. Let us hope that he also adopts the robust independence that the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) showed in that post.
I also welcome the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) to the justice team—it is a shame he is not in his place either. I understand that we are getting only a part of him as, along with being an unpaid Prisons Minister and an afterthought in the reshuffle, he will spend part of his time in the Whips Office. Of course it is an unalloyed pleasure to see the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), still in his place.
This Bill has been described as “a turkey”, “a complete waste of time,”
“a solution in search of a problem”
and
“an unnecessary and wholesale interference with the rights of injured people.”
It has been accused of
“shifting the blame to workers when they are injured.”
It is said to be, “an erosion of workers’ rights”, “nonsense” and “gobbledygook”. It is said to cause confusion about
“who is protected from the law and to what degree.”
Surely it has some supporters. Well, no, it does not—not really. The Government pray in aid the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, but the NCVO says it is
“not expected to significantly alter the current law.”
It says it is “classic nudge tactics”. At best, it sends a message and is
“unlikely to be able to do any harm.”
But then that is the Government’s view as well. The explanatory notes say that the Bill would not change the overarching legal framework. The Lord Chancellor himself says it is
“a signpost from Parliament to the Courts.”
Do we really need legislation for that? It is only two stops on the tube to the Royal Courts of Justice. Where are the other representatives of civil society, defendant lawyers and even political allies speaking up for this Bill?
We heard a thoughtful speech from the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, who quietly but effectively proved there is no justification for the Bill. As we have heard, ConservativeHome described it as a Bill that should not be in the Queen’s Speech. The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), is now charged, on behalf of the Lord Chancellor, with weeding out unnecessary laws that clog up the statute book. He could start with this one.
There are only three short operative clauses in the Bill. They instruct a court considering negligence or statutory duty claims to have regard to whether a defendant was acting for the benefit of society, demonstrating a generally responsible approach or acting heroically. The Lord Chancellor claims the Bill will not fetter judicial discretion, but that is all it sets out to do. Fortunately, it is so poorly drafted that it will probably fail in that aim, but it will undoubtedly spark quantities of satellite litigation as the parties seek to define “benefit of society”, “a generally responsible approach” and “acting heroically”.
First, insofar as it is necessary at all, the purpose of the Bill has already been fulfilled by section 1 of the Compensation Act 2006, which states:
“A court considering a claim in negligence or breach of statutory duty may, in determining whether the defendant should have taken particular steps to meet a standard of care (whether by taking precautions against a risk or otherwise), have regard to whether a requirement to take those steps might—
(a) Prevent a desirable activity from being undertaken at all, to a particular extent or in a particular way, or
(b) Discourage persons from undertaking functions in connection with a desirable activity.”
This gives guidance to the court in less ambiguous and florid language than the instant Bill, while retaining discretion. If the Secretary of State disapproves of the Compensation Act, why is he leaving it on the statute book? If he thinks it ineffective, why is he repeating the mistake of legislating in much the same terms? If he thinks it is working, his own Bill must be otiose.
Secondly, the Lord Chancellor has, as usual, adduced no evidence that a new law is necessary. He relies on a survey of 300 people from almost 10 years ago to say that some people are deterred from volunteering by fear of being sued. But the National Council for Voluntary Organisations says only 1% of volunteers stopped because they feared opening themselves up to litigation. Last year, the former Minister for Civil Society, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), issued a press release trumpeting that volunteering was at an all-time high.
Let us look at the problems the Lord Chancellor purports to address in the Bill. The first is:
“the person who holds back from sweeping snow off the pavement outside their house because they are afraid that someone will then slip on the ice and sue them”.
No one, up to and including the Lord Chief Justice, can point to a case of this kind being brought, let alone succeeding. Indeed, the Government’s own website, Direct.Gov.uk, used to host a section debunking the snow and ice myth. It said:
“Don’t be put off clearing paths because you’re afraid someone will get injured. Remember, people walking on snow and ice have a responsibility to be careful themselves. Follow the advice below to make sure you clear the pathway safely and effectively. And don’t believe the myths—it’s unlikely you’ll be sued or held legally responsible for any injuries if you have cleared the path carefully.”
Curiously, this page was recently removed from the site, but we still have the words of the new Attorney-General, who in 2010 said that
“the courts are very unlikely to find the public-spirited domestic snow shoveller negligently liable for any injuries, in the absence of spectacular incompetence.”—[Official Report, 2 February 2010; Vol. 505, c. 171.]
More seriously, the signal that the Government are sending to volunteers in clause 2 is misleading. It implies a lower standard of care is needed by those engaged in altruistic pursuits. Parents may face the fear that if their child is injured on a school trip due to fault with the organisers, they will struggle to get compensation. Parents may well take a dim view that because the negligent organiser failed to use the right safety equipment, they will not receive compensation to help them support their newly injured child. Alternatively, they may boycott the activities the school has arranged. How does that help the school, the parent or the child?
Secondly, the Lord Chancellor bemoans the
“member of the emergency services who feels they can’t come to the rescue of someone in difficulty because of the fear they will end up in trouble for breaching health and safety rules”.
If this is intended to give the green light to anyone, trained emergency service worker or public-spirited bystander, to act with less care and a feeling of impunity, it is dangerous. The emergency services have vast experience of how and when to intervene. As the TUC has said:
“There is not a shred of evidence that there is a problem. The police, fire and ambulance unions have worked closely with their employers and the HSE to develop guidance which ensures health and safety protection is compatible with emergency situations...There is not a case of anyone being prosecuted for trying to save someone in an emergency situation”.
The few, but widely reported, cases of systems breaking down require better training and communication, not legislation. The everyday hero is not put off from helping out in a crisis by fears for his or her own safety, so why would they be by fear of litigation? Yet the Bill will give no more legal protection—so much for clause 4.
Clause 3, while equally vacuous, has a more malign intent. The Lord Chancellor told The Sunday Telegraph yesterday:
“This is a Bill that’s out to…slay the health and safety culture. It is about trying to restore common sense to the kind of situations which happen all too often and very seldom get to court - where somebody has an accident at work, it’s entirely their own fault, they have got a perfectly responsible employer who has the normal health and safety procedures in place but that person does something dumb, hurts themselves and sues the employer anyway.”
In that situation, the court would find against the claimant on liability or quantum. This is a further, though probably ineffectual, attack on the rights of employees, and an attempt to give the whip hand to employers, even in this sensitive area, and to please the Association of British Insurers, whose members are such generous donors to Tory party funds. They hope that claims will be suppressed and individuals driven to self-insure.
Once again, where is the evidence? The number of workplace claims has halved in the past 10 years; more than half of claims are for less than £5,000; and 75% are for less than £10,000. It is a myth that negligence cases are easy to bring, and now that the Government have all but abolished strict liability, who is the stronger party in workplace disputes—the employer, insured and in control of the accident site, or the injured employee, unable to earn their salary and plucking up the courage to sue their boss?
The case for the Bill is not made out. The Lord Chancellor said he did not need a Bill to dismantle criminal aid or embark upon his disastrous privatisation of the probation service, so why does he need one to tackle what has been overwhelmingly proven to be a matter of education, rather than enforcement? The Bill does nothing to tackle the growing crisis in British prisons or the hundreds of thousands of people going unrepresented in the family courts or lacking the most basic advice where social welfare legal aid has been taken out of scope. The Bill addresses none of the damage the Government have done to the criminal justice system.
Rather than stoking unjustified fears, the Government should be tackling the real crisis in our legal system: the steady erosion of our civil liberties and access to justice, which protects the strong and leaves the ordinary citizen without justice or redress.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to this debate, whether with speeches or interventions.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Justice indicated in his opening speech, the core aim of the Bill is to ensure that people, especially employers, who generally take a responsible approach towards the safety of others during an activity, feel confident that the courts will take full account of this in the event that they are sued. Employers should not be prevented from growing their businesses by irresponsible employees who seek to harm them financially by bringing unfounded negligence claims. The fear of litigation can force businesses to go further than they need to when planning and managing for health and safety risks, which in turn can have a damaging effect on growth. The Bill should reassure employers who adopt a generally responsible approach towards the safety of others during the course of an activity that the courts will always take full account of the circumstances prior to making a decision on liability.
The social action clause is part of a wider package to fulfil a coalition agreement commitment. Figures published last year showed that the proportion of people volunteering at least once a year increased from 65% in 2010 to 73% in 2013. This is due partly to the initiatives that we have been backing to support people getting involved in their local communities. For example, the National Citizen Service programme for 16 and 17-year-olds saw 40,000 young people give more than 1 million hours in 2013 to socially useful activities. The Step Up to Serve initiative, launched last November by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, aims to double the number of young people aged between 10 and 20 participating in social action by 2020. Earlier this year, in April, the Prime Minister launched a new volunteering award called “Points of Light”, which recognises outstanding individual volunteers who are making changes in their community and inspiring others.
Those are only a few of the initiatives that are happening on a local basis all around the country. The commitment that people show to volunteering is something that they and we can be proud of, but we also know that volunteering rates could be increased further if barriers that deter people from getting involved are removed. That is where the Bill has another important role to play. We want people to feel confident about participating in activities that benefit others without worrying about what might happen if something goes wrong and they find themselves defending a negligence claim in the civil court.
The same goes for good Samaritans who might be deterred from intervening to help somebody in an emergency in case they are sued for making the position worse. The perception of legal risk can be a bar to positive action. As the Secretary of State said in his opening remarks, the Bill should provide a valuable reassurance to people who are acting for the benefit of society or intervening in emergencies: that the court will take the context of the person’s actions into account when reaching a decision on liability.
As I have said, I am grateful to those who have contributed to this debate, although I must say that I am somewhat disappointed, but not surprised, by the tone adopted by the Front-Bench spokesmen for Her Majesty’s official Opposition. They ask for examples; I suggest that they need only refer to Hansard to see an example given by their colleague, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Moor View (Alison Seabeck), who said in a debate:
“I once stepped off a bus and found a lady lying on the pavement in front of me. There was a group of people around her, but none of them had done anything. Some of them said, ‘I don’t want to be sued.’”—[Official Report, 10 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 489.]
That is an example from one of their own colleagues, and of course—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) chunters away from a sedentary position, as always. He says that that is the only example, but if he had taken the trouble to read Hansard, he would know that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) also gave an example from his experience as a first responder.
Mr Slaughter
There were two such hon. Members—who have now been mentioned three times—but there were a couple today who took the opposite view, including my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), the former Chairman of the Select Committee on Education. I believe there were 50 Members of the other place who spoke in the debate and not one of them mentioned that issue. This is a turkey of a Bill; the hon. Gentleman ought to admit it.
Mr Vara
The hon. Gentleman says I have given two examples. That is two more than the number of times he has repeated the same question, over and over again. I am sorry that he does not like the answer, but he will have to live with it.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) was quite candid in his comments. I have to say that while I respect his distinguished career in the law and his legal brain power, on this issue I will respectfully disagree with him. What we are trying to do is consolidate the measures elsewhere in the statute book in one Bill. Also, as my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary made clear, we are seeking to send out a powerful message to public: that when they do the right thing, the law will take them into account.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who spoke in support of the Bill. As he rightly put it, we should judge the Bill by its content, not by the number of clauses. He asked whether it would be extended to Northern Ireland. That is a matter for the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly, as it is a devolved matter, but I will certainly be following with interest to see what progress is made by the Northern Ireland Assembly. It is comforting that he has put on the record his support for the measure.
We need to be clear that there is nothing in the Bill to stop an employee bringing a negligence claim against an employer. [Interruption.] Clearly the paymasters of the Labour party, the trade unions, have been lobbying it hard, as was abundantly clear from the way Labour Members spoke about their friends in the trade unions. The Bill is not designed to reduce standards of health and safety in the workplace or to leave workers without a remedy where they have been injured by the negligent actions of an irresponsible employer. It will, however, provide valuable reassurance to employers who have taken a responsible approach to safety, but end up in court when, for example, an employee suffers an injury that simply could not have been foreseen by any reasonable person. The Bill will send the powerful message that the courts will always consider the employer’s general approach to safety in the course of the activity in question before reaching a decision on liability.
The courts will, of course, need to consider in every case whether someone was acting for the benefit of society or adopting a generally responsible approach to the safety of others in the course of a particular activity. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) chunters away from a sedentary position. All I will say to him is “Where are your Back Benchers?”
Sadiq Khan
I am intervening to ask whether the Minister can tell us the difference between the position created by the Bill and the position under the Compensation Act 2006. It is a simple question: what is the difference?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Mr Khan, you have got your point on the record. Everyone is joining in the shouting across the Chamber, and it is very undignified. Minister, will you please continue your speech?
Mr Vara
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am happy to continue, in a reasoned and measured way.
As I was saying, the courts will need to consider in every case whether someone was acting for the benefit of society or adopting a generally responsible approach to the safety of others in the course of a particular activity. However, as has already been pointed out, the Bill will not preclude them from considering any other relevant factors. It will not give medics, police officers, teachers or anyone else immunity from being found negligent if all the circumstances of the case warrant that. Nor will the Bill have any bearing on criminal liability. If a person’s conduct amounts to the commission of an offence such as gross negligence manslaughter, there may be criminal as well as civil repercussions.
I believe that the Bill will serve an important purpose in reassuring a wide range of people that the law will treat them fairly, and that they should not let worries over being sued deter them from making a valuable contribution to society. Again, I thank all Members who have contributed today. I simply say to Opposition Members that they should illustrate their observations by their actions. If they really mean what they said earlier, where are their Back Benchers, and why will they not be voting against the Bill?
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill: Programme
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 14 October.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Consideration and Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration o of Lords Amendments or on any further messages from the Lords) may be programmed.—(John Penrose.)
Question agreed to.
Business without Debate
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
With the leave of the House, I shall take motions 3, 4 and 5 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Children and Families
That the draft Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice: 0 to 25 years, which were laid before this House on 11 June, be approved.
Local Government
That the draft Local Government (Transparency) (Descriptions of Information) (England) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 24 June, be approved.
police
That the draft Police and Crime Commissioner Elections (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2014, which was laid before this House on 9 July, be approved.—(John Penrose.)
Question agreed to.
European Union Documents
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 119(11)),
Reform of the Eu’s Staff Regulations
That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 18638/11, a draft Regulation amending the Staff Regulations of Officials and the Conditions of Employment of other Servants of the European Union; further notes that this Regulation is now in force; further notes that the UK voted against the Regulation at the Council of Ministers in October 2013; regrets that, in the context of the first real-terms cut to the multi-year EU Budget framework secured by the Prime Minister in 2013, the final Regulation was not more ambitious in achieving genuine reform and real budgetary restraint in the EU Institutions; and welcomes the modest reforms and savings that were achieved.—(John Penrose.)
Question agreed to.
Petitions
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I wish to present two petitions. The first has been signed by more than 5,000 people and declares that the petitioners support Peter Yates, MBE, and the people of Carnforth in their campaign.
The Petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the Petitioners support David Morris MP's campaign to support the reinstatement of the platforms at Carnforth Station on the West Coast Mainline.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to put pressure on Lancashire County Council to approve funding for a feasibility study to allow the platforms to be re-instated.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001375]
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
The second petition has over 300 signatures.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the Petitioners believe that there should be more train services stopping at Silverdale rail station. The Petitioners believe that the trains to Barrow and to Manchester Airport that pass through Silverdale should all stop at the station.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to take steps to support Silverdale station in any further franchise applications in the area.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001374]
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of petitioners from the Haverstoe and Croft Baker wards in Cleethorpes and the wider area of north-east Lincolnshire, who are greatly concerned at proposals from North East Lincolnshire council to close youth centres in the borough and, in the jargon, to reconfigure the council’s youth services. Four of the centres are in the neighbouring constituency of Great Grimsby, but of the two in the Cleethorpes constituency, one has acceptable alternative provision but the centre known as “Trin” in Trinity road, Cleethorpes, is greatly valued by local youngsters. I have visited it on a number of occasions and on one of those occasions was accompanied by the Humberside police commissioner, Matthew Grove, who, like me, was extremely supportive of the work done there by the youth leader Cazzie Adams and her team. The petitioners believe the proposals are “unfair to young people” and
could lead to an increase in antisocial behaviour
and the loss of “up to 24 jobs”. They urge the council
to urgently reconsider their decision to close
the youth centres.
Following is the full text of the petition:
[The Humble Petition of the people of North East Lincolnshire,
Sheweth,
That the proposal of North East Lincolnshire Council to close youth centres in the Borough is unfair to young people who would be forced out onto the streets, which could lead to an increase in antisocial behaviour, and to the staff with up to 24 jobs being lost.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges North East Lincolnshire Council to urgently reconsider their decision to close the aforementioned youth centres.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.]
[P001373]
Alleged Police Crimes (Investigations)
(10 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Charles Hendry (Wealden) (Con)
I am most grateful to have this chance to introduce this Adjournment debate shortly before the summer recess.
Late one February evening five years ago my young constituent, Luke Bland, received a call from one of his closest friends, Ben Blackford. Ben’s car had been involved in a minor accident and he asked for Luke’s help to move it. Even though it was a dark night and the conditions were icy, Luke—a bright 20-year-old who was hoping to join the police—did not hesitate and went off to help him on the road between Uckfield and Lewes.
At around 1.30 in the morning, having moved Ben’s car to a safe position off the main road into a side lane, the two young men were walking along the public footpath to meet the police officers who had arrived at the scene. At that moment, another car, a Lotus Exige, came round the corner, out of control. It hit both young men. Luke was hit so hard his body was knocked over a fence and into an icy pond 12 metres away. He died instantly. The Lotus then hit Ben and carried him underneath it, as it careered over the verge, went through a fence and came to a halt in the pond. Ben sustained injuries from which he has not yet recovered, and in all probability never will do.
There are other matters which are not the subject of this debate but which should cause us disquiet, such as the fact that the driver’s insurers paid for him to have a new car, but there was no claim entitlement for the loss of a young man’s life. Indeed, in seeking justice Luke’s family had to spend thousands of pounds of their own money to take on the system.
One could put this down as a tragic accident. For Luke’s parents, Sally and Peter, and his brother and sister, it was the loss of a much-loved son and brother, but could it have been avoided on such an icy night? How could the driver have known that two people would be on the pavement that night? Indeed, that was the outcome of the trial, which found that the driver was not guilty of dangerous driving. However, the more I have looked into this case, the more evident it has become that there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice.
The driver of the other car was an off-duty police traffic officer, Stewart Chalmers, who was back at work quickly and without a blemish on his record. His destroyed Lotus was replaced, by his insurance company, with a Porsche. His life was back on track. He was back at work as a road traffic officer, stopping other motorists who were breaking the law, perhaps without a valid MOT or insurance. But thanks to dedicated research by the parents of Luke and Ben we know now that that is exactly what Mr Chalmers had himself been doing prior to the accident: driving without a valid MOT or insurance. The issue in this debate is how crimes by police officers are handled and how the rights and interests of the victims can be lost.
In my 13 years as MP for Wealden, I have met hundreds of Sussex police officers—we all do this in the course of our work. I have found them exactly as I would hope police officers to be: conscientious, decent, hard-working people who want to make their communities safer. But for all those hundreds of good officers, every barrel has, as they say, some rotten apples. As soon as Stewart Chalmers had hit the two young men, those police officers who were already at the scene, having witnessed the accident, ordered him out of his damaged car. It is recorded in witness statements that they soon realised that the Lotus driver was a police officer, and he was ushered into a police vehicle. Had it been any ordinary member of the public involved in a death by driving incident, we would rightly have expected him to be questioned there and then, and indeed taken to a police station for further questioning. However, for reasons we have never established, he was not held for questioning and he was not taken to a police station. Instead, he was taken to be checked out at hospital and then allowed to go home.
In the days following the accident, the inspector in charge went on holiday but, having read the eyewitness statements, he left instructions for Stewart Chalmers to be arrested and questioned. We know that the Police Federation made representations—“ferociously” was the word used—against his arrest; shockingly, it actually threatened the arresting officer that he would be sued personally if he proceeded. Mr Chalmers was not, therefore, arrested until the inspector returned from holidays and demanded it—two whole weeks later. That two-week delay allowed Mr Chalmers to come up with a range of explanations for what had happened and why he should not be held responsible.
On the night of the accident, Ben’s mother was called by the hospital where her seriously injured son was unconscious. Luke Bland’s parents were contacted in the middle of the night, not by the police but by a friend, to be told that their son may have been injured in the accident, too. They were only informed of his death when Mr Bland and his younger son went to the scene some four hours after the accident, fearing for Luke’s well-being.
The police, and the county’s excellent new chief constable, Giles York, now readily accept that they should have done many things differently: they should have questioned Stewart Chalmers immediately; they should not have told Mr Bland in front of his 17-year-old younger son Josh that Luke had been killed; they should have given more professional support to the grieving family; they should have been more thorough in their search of the area—the roof of the Lotus was not even found until Mrs Bland pointed out that it was missing from the vehicle inspection, and she herself found it, still sticking out of the pond; and they should not have escorted Mr Chalmers to his trial in a police car or taken him away at the end, with his lawyer, in a police car with its lights and sirens blazing.
My principal concern today, however, is the failure to investigate properly Mr Chalmers’ defence. I believe that the version he told the court was not the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It has been left to Mr and Mrs Bland and Mrs Browning to unearth the true facts, and in this desperately sad and awful case they should have been able to look to the police to do that. Mr Chalmers said in his sworn police statement, which was referred to in court, that
“there had been no occasions when control had been lost”.
He explained that the vehicle was serviced two weeks before the crash and was “in good condition”. His statement stated he was a careful driver, and indeed his defence rested on that claim.
Luke’s parents have discovered that that was not the case. On 28 October 2008, four months before the accident, Mr Chalmers took his car to be MOT-ed at Kwik-Fit in Uckfield. It failed its MOT because its nearside front tyre was below the legal threshold. Had Mr Chalmers been the good custodian he claimed, then surely, especially as a police traffic officer, he would have checked on a regular basis that his tyres were legal, but apparently not.
Mr Chalmers was allowed to take the car away to get the tyres replaced, which he did—eventually. It was three weeks later, on 19 November, that he took the car to Dream Machines in Heathfield to have the tyre replaced, by which time the car had been driven an extra 455 miles. That is 455 miles without a valid MOT and so, by definition, in a car without insurance; that is 455 miles of illegal driving. The car was then given a further MOT, which it passed but only with an advisory notice that that the rear tyres were close to the legal threshold. One might have thought that this time Mr Chalmers would have acted quickly, but no, he continued to drive the car without changing the tyres. By the time of the accident on 14 February, three months later, those rear tyres were indeed below their legal limit.
No one will ever know if the accident could have been avoided if the tyres had been in a roadworthy condition, but the court case would have been very different. If it had been established that, far from being the responsible driver he claimed, Mr Chalmers drove his car illegally, in an unroadworthy condition, and did not bother to check the legality of his tyres even when warned they were close to the limit, the main line of his defence would have fallen apart.
Mr Chalmers did not tell the Court that he had been issued with an advisory notice and he allowed the assumption to be drawn that he had replaced the worn tyres in November when that related to the front tyre and not the rear tyres, which were the ones in question. After the trial, when this information eventually came to light through the persistence of Mr and Mrs Bland and Mrs Browning, I wrote to the police to ask them to reconsider the case. The response included the following paragraph:
“It is possible that the defective tyre was changed immediately on returning from the failed test on 28th October and the vehicle then driven for 3 weeks on legal tyres until its re-test. It is possible someone else drove the vehicle throughout this period. It is possible the additional mileage was driven on a private road or even outside of the United Kingdom”.
It went on:
“The officer himself denies committing any traffic offences and is unable to account for the usage of the vehicle stating that he cannot recall details from 5 years ago.”
It beggars belief that anyone could have written that. Even if Mr Chalmers had allowed someone else to drive his car—I think anyone with a Lotus would remember if they had lent it to someone else for a period of weeks—he would still have been responsible for its roadworthiness, or lack of it. We know exactly when Mr Chalmers had his tyre changed, and it was not immediately after the failed MOT, but rather 22 days later, on the very same day as it was retested. As a police traffic officer, how could Mr Chalmers not have known that he was driving illegally?
As for the suggestion that it could have been driven on private roads for 455 miles, or even taken abroad without Mr Chalmers remembering it, those comments are so incredible that they would have been laughed out of court. The police investigation discovered none of this and now that this evidence has been presented to them, they still feel they cannot reopen the case.
Mr Chalmers still went about his work, stopping and no doubt charging people for this same offence. His Lotus was replaced by a Porsche, and no doubt his insurance company, Elephant, believed him when he said he was a responsible driver. He has put behind him the accident that resulted in Luke’s untimely death and Ben’s lasting injuries. He is free to get on with his life.
In the conditions that night, with tyres in perfect condition, the accident might of course still have happened. However, what remains for Mr and Mrs Bland and Mrs Browning is a searing sense that justice has not been done. Justice was not blind, as it seems to have been applied differently to a police officer than it would have been to any other member of the public. A police officer gave partial evidence in a court of law, with no action taken against him.
Four things should happen now. Sussex police should review again the civil case to consider prosecuting Mr Chalmers, or they must explain how they can still have confidence in Mr Chalmers as a serving officer. The Home Secretary should set clear rules for how potential crimes by police officers are investigated to ensure that they are treated no more lightly than crimes by members of the public. Mr Chalmers’ insurance company should instigate its own action to review his insurance claim, and it should award a payment to Mr and Mrs Bland and Mrs Browning for their loss and for the financial costs they have incurred in seeking justice. Also, Mr Chalmers should make a public apology to the families of Luke Bland and Ben Blackford and accept that his policing career is over. He has shown no remorse for what happened on that night or afterwards.
Mr and Mrs Bland have been through every parent’s nightmare. The strain and stress on them and their two other children, Josh and Lily, have been overwhelming. Together with Mrs Browning, they are three of the most courageous people I have ever met, but they have been ill served by the police and by the justice system. After more than five years, it is time to bring this matter to an end, so that their grieving for their much-loved son Luke can begin.
The Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims (Mike Penning)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) on securing the debate this evening. As an ex-fireman myself who regularly used to attend such instances, my thoughts and prayers are with the families and particularly with Ben. I hope that my hon. Friend is wrong and that Ben makes a partial, if not a full, recovery.
As the new Policing Minister, I was very concerned when I saw that this debate was due to take place, so I have taken some time to look into the event. It is not for this House to retry the case. With that in mind, I will try to address some of the facts of the case, then the way that the case should have been treated, and finally the four points that my hon. Friend raised. Even though, as he rightly said, the family have since found a lot of evidence, there is none to suggest that the accident would not have happened anyway. I think everybody accepts that. I am not responsible for the letter. That is a matter for Sussex police.
Sussex police have acknowledged that their procedures could have been improved. That is right and proper. Interestingly, the Independent Police Complaints Commission carried out an investigation into the complaints made by the family about the conduct of the investigation by Sussex police, and I know that there was some concern about whether Sussex police or another force should have carried out that investigation. I shall come back to that in a moment. The IPCC found that although some of the complaints were well founded, there was no misconduct on the part of the officer. The IPCC is, of course, a completely independent body.
The other fact that I should raise at this point is that the gentleman concerned was an off-duty police officer. Had he been on duty, what happened afterwards would have been completely different. I was not at the scene and I do not have some of the facts that my hon. Friend referred to in his comments, so I will stick to what I know and the information that has been passed to me. The IPCC said that the Sussex police investigation of the incident was conducted thoroughly and effectively, so that part of the complaint referred to by my hon. Friend was not upheld. It is important to note that.
The operational independence of the IPCC from the Home Office and from Ministers is an integral part of our system and we should make sure that no Minister intervenes in its working. Nor should we as Ministers intervene in police investigations. At the heart of my hon. Friend’s concerns was the investigation of PC Chalmers by his own force. I reiterate that if he had been on duty, the matter may well have been dealt with by another force. In this case, as he was treated as an individual off duty, it was investigated in the same way as a case involving any other member of the public. The fact that he was an off-duty policeman should not, I agree, have precluded Sussex police from investigating the death of Luke Bland and the rest of the incident. The really serious injuries that occurred, in particular to Ben, were taken into consideration when the prosecution decisions were made.
Sussex police’s criminal investigation led to the prosecution of PC Chalmers. The IPCC found that the case was investigated thoroughly and effectively by Sussex police. Therefore it would appear that the case was treated with at least as much integrity as an investigation of any other member of the public who had been at the wheel. It would also appear that even though prosecution was withdrawn, it was not because Sussex police’s investigation was at fault.
My hon. Friend makes four suggestions. I think I understand all the points that he is trying to make, even if I cannot agree with them at the Dispatch Box today. The first point— that Sussex police review again the case—is clearly a matter for the police force. It is not a matter for a Minister or the Home Secretary. I may not be dealing with these points in the same order as my hon. Friend.
The second point is that the insurers should instigate their own action and review PC Chalmers’ claim. That is clearly also a matter for the insurance company. I was at the Department for Transport for many years. Insurance companies tend not to pay out unless they have to. They will hate me for saying that, but they do not. They like taking our premiums, but rarely pay out. It is clearly a matter for the insurance company whether to pay for the damage to the car and compensation to the families. It might also be a matter for civil litigation should the families wish to purse that course.
The third point concerns whether the Home Secretary should ensure that the police are investigated in the same way as the public. They are, should they be on duty. If they are off duty, they are civilians: they are not doing their job of work, so they are not investigated by the IPCC in the same way. It is right and proper that those who are off duty are off duty, and when they are on duty they are on duty.
Lastly, should PC Chalmers make a public—
Charles Hendry
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, and I am particularly grateful to him for the sensitive and thoughtful way in which he is responding to the debate. Will he, however, look at the role of the Police Federation in this? When an instruction was left that Stewart Chalmers should be arrested, the Police Federation got involved in a way that was described as “ferociously” by the police themselves. They then suggested that if they went ahead and arrested Stewart Chalmers, the police officer doing that would himself be sued personally. That cannot be a level playing field, because that would not happen if it was not somebody who had been a police officer who had done it.
Mike Penning
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He must have read my thoughts on the point I was going to come to in my conclusion to this short debate.
The fourth point—made, I am sure, on behalf of the family but through my hon. Friend—is that PC Chalmers should make a public apology. That is a matter for the gentleman concerned and for his own personal thoughts and conscience. I personally cannot in any way instruct the gentleman to do so.
However, because of the comments that have been made in this evening’s debate, I intend to go away and ask my officials to look into the conduct of individuals from the federation. I do not think we should smear the federation. It is going through a transitional period at the moment. I met the senior management of the federation earlier this afternoon; it was actually a very convivial meeting. They were very much standing up for their members, and in many ways I sympathise with some of the comments that they made, but they are really moving on, and I think in the right direction. However, I will ask my officials to look into the matter regarding the comments that my hon. Friend has made about what the Police Federation representative may or may not have said. I will ask my officials to look into that immediately. If I do not have the powers to do that, I will find someone who does.
With that in mind, I am conscious that this has been a very difficult matter for my hon. Friend to bring before the House. If I was a Back Bencher, I would really have to rack my brains about whether to do so, not because I would have to decide whether standing up for someone was right or wrong, but because the courts have made a decision, based on the evidence placed before them. That is the justice system we have in this country and that is the democracy we live in.
With hindsight, and especially given the tone with which my hon. Friend has brought the matter before the House, I think it was right and proper that there was a Minister here to respond, even if on most of the points I do not have the powers to intervene, and nor would I wish to have them. With that in mind, I will take away the comments about looking into the Police Federation, and I truly hope that the family can have some peace after the loss of their loved one and that Ben gets better soon.
Question put and agreed to.
Petitions
School Absences
Development of Earls Barton Village (Daventry)
Westminster Hall
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Backbench Business
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Eid and Diwali (Public Holidays)
(10 years, 5 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the e-petition relating to making Eid and Diwali public holidays.
Mr Bayley, it is an honour to serve under your chairmanship for the first time. Jai Shree Krishna, Salaam Alaikum, Namaste and Shalom!
This e-petition was not my idea and I cannot claim ownership of it. However, I will explain why I have agreed to be the Member who sponsors it and makes sure that it is debated in the Houses of Parliament. I am the MP for Harrow East, an area of enormous diversity of culture and religion—in fact, I would claim that it is the most diverse constituency anywhere in the country, containing people of all religions and from every country on the planet.
I celebrate all the religious festivals in a number of ways. I join my Hindu friends at all their various festivals, including Diwali—or, to use the term more appropriate for my constituency, Deepavali. I join my Muslim friends at Eid, my Jewish friends for Rash Hashanah and Hanukkah, and my Christian friends for Christmas, Easter and other celebrations. I join my Sikh friends for Vaisakhi and my Chinese friends for Chinese new year. I also celebrate many other occasions throughout the year with all kinds of groups within my constituency alone.
I myself am a committed Christian, but it is probably fair to say that I am a Chrinjew—a Christian with Jewish roots and a deeply embedded friendship with the Hindu religion. I believe that Harrow East is a beacon of everything that is positive about the enormous cultural diversity of London and the rest of this country. Being the MP for the area has given me a broad insight into the question of holiday observances. When this petition was forwarded to the Backbench Business Committee, I felt it was my duty to ensure that it received full and due attention in the House.
Given all the pressures on the parliamentary timetable in the run-up to the recess that is just about to start, it was important to bring this matter forward now, within the required timeline of three months. That is why the Backbench Business Committee has taken the unusual step of scheduling this debate in Westminster Hall on a Monday afternoon, when it is not normally open. If we had not scheduled the debate for today, the petition would have fallen and no debate would have taken place. If that had happened, we would have lost a great opportunity to debate this matter in Parliament and there would have been enormous dissatisfaction for the people who care about it passionately.
Consideration should be given to whether we, as a culturally diverse nation, should start public holidays for non-Christian religions. Such consideration raises all kinds of issues, which I will briefly touch on today. First, I will address some of the main objections to the idea straight away. The Government response to the e-petition was:
“Whilst we appreciate a new national holiday may benefit some communities and sectors, the cost to the economy remains considerable and any changes to the current arrangements would not take place without a full consultation.”
I do not disagree with having a consultation or with the need to ensure that there are benefits to a public holiday. Such concerns are valid. According to the Centre for Economics and Business Research, each public holiday costs £2.3 billion per day due to losses in retail, commercial, service and other industries. If that estimate is correct, we are looking at an overall economic cost of just less than £5 billion if the Muslim faith and the Hindu faith were to be given one specified public holiday each.
Further, the centre believes that annual output would be raised by £19 billion if all public and bank holidays were scrapped. Accountants RSM Tenon had an even higher estimate, reckoning that £30 billion would be recouped if we cancelled all public holidays. However, that is not likely to happen; I cannot believe that any Government would ever dare to cancel Christmas.
We cannot make a case for or against further public holidays just on the basis of money; if we did, we would not have any at all. Saying that is not to diminish the response of the Department for Business, Innovations and Skills to this petition, but to make the case that there are bigger considerations than just the cost.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. He may be about to mention this, but will he clarify something? Is he saying that we need two extra public holidays or that he wants to reallocate existing bank holidays so that they come at the right time to recognise these festivals?
Bob Blackman
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will come to the issue of the number of public holidays and how they should be apportioned in a few minutes. If he allows me to develop my points a little further, all will become clearer.
Another contentious issue is the fact that both Eid and Diwali have unpredictable timings. They fall on different days every year, but so does Easter; Easter is not a fixed time in the calendar, but we schedule that without too much difficulty. It is also useful to consider that Eid and Diwali fall at times of the year that are currently devoid of public holidays. Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, comes around the end of July, while Diwali comes towards the end of October or the start of November, depending on the phasing of the moon. Public holidays at those times would work well in giving workers an even spread of celebratory days off.
This e-petition attracted the signatures of 122,991 people, which I believe makes it the largest e-petition that has come to central Government since e-petitions began. That demonstrates that this issue is an important concern for a significant number of people in this country. Furthermore, it is probably worth mentioning that a responding e-petition, which called for the status quo to be maintained, has not even received 40 signatures yet. So the groundswell of opinion certainly appears to be in favour of this particular move.
Islam and Hinduism are the second and third largest religions in the UK respectively, after Christianity. Combined, they account for 6.8% of the population, with the trend of their growth increasing. The Muslim population is predicted to increase by 8.2% by 2030, due to a higher than average birth rate among Muslims and increased immigration from Muslim countries. In Manchester, one in 10 school days were missed due to religious occasions for Muslims, which raises concerns about educational attainment in that particular community. With young Muslim men currently twice as likely to be unemployed as other young men, according to the Office for National Statistics, this has to be of paramount concern; it is an issue not only in that community, but in the whole community.
In 2013, the average unemployment rate for young people in all minority ethnic groups, who are typically from these faith communities, jumped from 33% to 37%, according to the Department for Work and Pensions. Young people of faith should not be put in the position of having to choose between their religious festivals and their education; that is not good for them and it is not good for the country or the economy as a whole.
With regard to all Muslims and Hindus who are working and contributing to our economy, is there not an argument to be made about the validation that would come with a sense of recognition? Would it not be a statement that we, as a nation, embrace these religions and the people who hold them dear and are ready to recognise their place in our society? Creating these public holidays would be an important step towards promoting the understanding and tolerance of different faiths, not only at home but abroad. We want other nations to look to the UK for a good example of positive integration, and highly skilled prospective immigrants to consider coming to our country with the sense that their faith is a respected part of their identity.
That is particularly important for the Muslim community, who have been the target of all kinds of hate campaigns and abuse because of the sins of a very small minority of extremists. To give a snapshot of the problem, I should say that ChildLine reported that 1,400 people—an increase of 69% of students—claim that they have suffered racial and Islamophobic bullying.
Education is important, as is societal acceptance, and public holidays are not just for the few; they are a national event that everybody can take part in, regardless of whether they subscribe to a particular faith or to none. The argument has to be made that educating a wider section of the population in the traditions and holidays of different religions in such a widespread way would be valuable in helping to normalise the integration of those faiths into our cultural identity. It would be valuable in promoting cohesion and peace among the religions in our country, as it would not place preference for one over another.
I realise that this argument prompts a question: why only create public holidays for Hindu and Muslim festivals? Why not also add days for other religious groupings as well? At the last count, in the 2011 census, there were 2.6 million Muslims, 800,000 Hindus, 420,000 Sikhs and 260,000 Jews in this country. Although this petition focused on the former two groups, I do not see why it should not be expanded to include other popular major religions. Just because Judaism already has some festivals that coincide with the Christian holidays—for example, Passover and Hanukkah—does not mean the Jewish religion should not have its own public holiday for Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur. If we stay away from the cost issue for the moment and look at the ulterior social benefits involved, why not? Why not give each of these main faiths an honoured place in our calendar?
To acknowledge the intervention by the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins), I should say that it is a sad fact that the UK has fewer public holidays than everywhere else in the world, apart from Mexico and China. We have eight public holidays, including the two at Christmas and Easter, over four-day periods, which are tied to the Christian faith.
Looking at the national picture, the economic recovery that the Conservative-led coalition Government have secured, against all the odds, means that the UK is now set to overtake France to become the fifth largest economy in the world by 2022, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research. I would say that whether that occurs is contingent on gaining a Conservative majority next year, but of course we are on the up and I trust that our coalition partners will continue to join us.
Looking at the economic league tables and comparing the number of public holidays that nations have, we should be able to come to some conclusions about how much public holidays affect our economic performance. The United States has 10 public holidays; Japan, the third largest economy in the world, has 15 national public holidays, with another one recently approved, giving it double the number that we get; Germany, in fourth place, gets nine; and France has 11. I will refrain from making the old joke that half of every day in France is a public holiday, but suffice it to say that our next door neighbours and competitors have more holidays than we do. It is hard to make the case for economic concerns based on those numbers.
Some schools of thought hold that the economy is actually boosted by allowing the work force to have time away from work, which can be in the way, to shop or enjoy sports activities or observe faith-related events. After all, a happy work force is a productive one, as the old adage goes. It is impossible to tell the economic benefit of or the economic damage done by a public holiday, as there are simply too many factors involved. However, no one can doubt that national morale is important and, like it or not, people of different faiths are very much a staple part of our work force and our national cultural identity.
Just as the Christians get to enjoy the traditions associated with Christmas—an early morning start to open presents, joining family and friends in celebration and the traditional feast—so should our second and third largest faith groups be able to do the same on one or two days of particular importance.
In the departmental response to this e-petition, it is also stated, as a matter of rejection, that the
“current pattern is well established and accepted”.
That is true. However, I would argue that traditions have to be made, not just maintained. We have had British Muslims and British Hindus for decades. It is not a case of creating a new tradition; it is a case of observing traditions that already exist here on a more widespread basis—of validating the cultural heritage of all sections of our society, not just the majority.
Let us not forget that people from minority backgrounds still find it a great deal more difficult to have any sort of visibility in public life. I recently instigated the all-party group on British Hindus in an attempt to give that community in particular a way to make their concerns better represented—in politics, at least. I have met Hindus from various parts of the world who have taken the creation of the group as a positive sign that the political establishment no longer intends to ignore their needs.
Being such a peaceful, hard-working, well established and therefore integrated community has in some ways worked against British Hindus, as they were allowed to feel invisible for far too long. However, the truth is that establishing an all-party group is only one small part of what needs to be a far greater effort to ensure that our minority faith communities gain that sense of belonging that the majority take for granted.
Hon. Members who are interested will have noted that an effort is already being made in both Downing street and Parliament, generally, to observe holidays such as Eid and Diwali properly. I expect that many colleagues in the House have attended these occasions and supported them. They are popular, lively, joyous events that I enjoy getting involved with each year. There is something to be said for everybody embracing the heritage of these cultures, even if for only one day a year, and it would be nothing but a positive step to have our observances replicated nationally. If the Prime Minister can take time out to celebrate these occasions and the communities they belong to every year, why should not the rest of us?
The extremely high number of signatures gained by this e-petition should not go unheard in Parliament and by Ministers, because it is not simply about having more public holidays—although more of those would certainly be welcome, regardless of what they are for; it is about the meaning behind them. It is about giving an overwhelming indication that our minority communities are not just on the fringes of our society any more, but are a part of who we are and what our nation will become in future.
To have an Eid public holiday and a Diwali public holiday, as a starting point, would send a simple, straightforward message that transcends any cultural or language barriers. It would be a mark of modernisation in this globalised world for Britain to recognise non-majority faith holidays so decisively. Indeed, it would be unprecedented. I am not suggesting a flurry of new holidays, so the Minister can sit happily for the moment. All religions have many different festivals and occasions that are marked through the year and, if we had a public holiday for all of them, no one would have time to work. I am merely suggesting a single day for each, so that every part of our community is celebrated and able to celebrate fully, without having to sacrifice time in education or work.
I should be grateful if the Minister provided a fuller analysis of the Department’s causes of objection to this e-petition and responded to my points on the many and varied positive aspects of introducing these holidays. Some 122,000 people deserve a better answer than a vague excuse regarding costs and established traditions. I look forward to the responses from the Opposition spokesman and the Minister on this important subject that I believe is without precedent.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Before congratulating the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), it is important to note that people are watching this important debate, which is being held in the House because it was proposed by a huge number of signatories. I know that many hon. Members wanted to contribute. However, it is unfortunate that the timetabling means that it is happening at exactly the same time as the statement in the main Chamber on the appalling travesty that has happened in Ukraine, and the incredibly serious situation that continues in Gaza and that is causing a huge amount of widespread concern. Unfortunately, a large number of people who would have been in this debate are listening to that statement. As a result, it is left to me to respond to the debate.
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing the debate. He did so in a constructive manner, with a good deal more conviction and power than he showed with his recent penalty at White Hart Lane. None the less, he introduced the debate in a way that many people will have appreciated and respected. I place on record my pleasure at having the opportunity to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley—I think it is the first time I have done so.
The debate is on an incredibly important matter. I am responding as Labour’s shadow small business Minister and, in doing so, I will take a moment to reflect on the huge contribution made by people of Muslim, Hindu or Sikh faith, not just to our society, social integration and the diversity of our country, but to our economy, which it is equally important for us to recognise. As I go to small business consultations up and down the country in my capacity as the shadow small business Minister, I am unsurprised but always blown away by the massive contribution of our south Asian communities and the huge number of businesses they have set up. There has been huge growth in the number of small businesses in the past 25 to 30 years, and it is no coincidence that that has coincided with a big increase in the number of members of those communities. Their contribution to our community and our economy is recognised, as is their contribution to our sense of diversity. On this day when England have sadly been trumped at cricket by India at the home of cricket, in front of what appeared to be tens of thousands of Indian cricket supporters—that loss would never have happened in Nasser Hussain’s day—it is important to recognise that contribution.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the festival of Eid al-Fitr, which is also known as the feast of fast-breaking. It marks the end of Ramadan and the start of a feast that can last up to three days in some countries. It is one of Islam’s two major festivals and involves many Muslims waking up early and praying, either at an outdoor prayer ground or a mosque. I know that the decorations that go with the festival and the people dressed up in their finery are a sight to behold. One lesson across all religions, and for those of all faiths and none, is that it is a festival where old wrongs are forgiven, money is redistributed to the poor, special foods are prepared and families and friends get together to share the feast—they share in not only a very spiritual time, but a time of great celebration. It is a joyous occasion, but underlining all that is that it is a festival of worship and praise. It is important to get that on the record.
Diwali is also known as the festival of lights. Anyone who has been involved in or invited to a Diwali celebration knows that it is a truly magical occasion, celebrated by Hindus and Sikhs. It refers back to the day that Rama returned to his people after 14 years of exile, during which he fought and won a battle against the demons and the demon king Ravana. The festival of lights symbolises that victory over evil—the victory of light over darkness, which has parallels in many other religions. I put on record the importance of these festivals to the two largest religious groups in this country aside from Christians. It is incredibly important to recognise that.
I will respond to some of the points that the hon. Gentleman made. He mentioned his constituency, which has tremendous diversity, and he rightly hit on one of the issues that faces us. As we become an increasingly diverse country and we see bigger communities—not just Muslim and Hindu, but Sikh, Jewish, Chinese and those of people from across Europe—if we go down the path of saying, “Everyone across the entire country should take time off for their festivals,” we may find that that path is never-ending. It is difficult to make judgments on which groups we would recognise by introducing time off for us all to celebrate with them. Is there a better approach to trying to recognise across all those religions and groups of people that their needs should be respected and that businesses and employers should try to work around those? Just because the Chinese community is smaller, it does not mean that its festivals mean less to them than festivals mean to Muslims and Hindus. That is one circle that the Government will find difficult to square, and we recognise that.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the fact that the festivals come at irregular times in the Gregorian calendar. He made the point that Easter comes at irregular times and that we manage to accommodate it. The truth is that the Easter festival has Good Friday and Easter Monday, so it always comes around a weekend. It naturally fits into being part of a long weekend, and that is a consistent feature. That is not to say that the irregularity of other festivals is impossible to get around, but it is an important issue.
The hon. Gentleman also made the point that many Muslim children take time off because of festivals. He then argued that, because they are falling behind educationally in some areas in comparison to children of other religions, the response should be that other children have that time off. I suggest that that possibly answers an important question with the wrong answer. Perhaps we should think more specifically about how schools can work more productively to recognise that some children will on occasion be off school because of festivals. We should look at how we can work with them to catch up outside of that time. It goes in the opposite direction of Government policy to say that all children should have more time off from school by creating an extra bank holiday when the problem that that tries to address is that children from those communities are already taking that time off. It would fly in the face of other Government policies.
The hon. Gentleman made a number of points with which I strongly agree. One of them was that a recognition of the significance of the festivals—he was talking about that in the context of a public holiday, but it is important to recognise their significance anyway—is part of a recognition that Muslims’ and Hindus’ faith is an important part of their contribution to our country and their make-up. We cannot celebrate their contribution, as we all do across the House, without recognising that those festivals are an important and integral part of their faith and that their faith is an integral part of their being. I am glad that he put that point on the record. It is one that I absolutely support.
The hon. Gentleman pointed out that Britain has fewer public holidays than most other countries, but that is potentially misleading due to the difference between public holidays and the number of days that workers have away from work. On the basis of what he said about happy workers being productive workers, he will celebrate that the previous Labour Government introduced the statutory right to a minimum of 20 days holiday. An analysis of the number of days of holiday that employers allowed their workers versus the number that they took placed the Japanese at the bottom of the list with an average of 16 days allowed holiday per annum. Next were those from the United States with 17 days, then came New Zealanders with 19.5 days, Canadians and Australians came next with 20 days, and the Swedish and the Germans were found to have 27.5 days. Those from the United Kingdom have an average of 28 days.
The UK figure usually means a minimum of 20 days plus eight statutory holidays, so we are actually slap bang in the middle of the range of days that employers in major economies allow employees to have. While the hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have the lowest number of days when we are all off on the same date—as someone who has recently been attempting to book a summer holiday, I am conscious of the fact that it is not always a good thing for us all to have holidays at exactly the same time—it is important to put it on the record that our number of holidays is not extreme one way or the other. Having claimed that he was not going to do so, the hon. Gentleman made a bit of a jibe at the expense of French workers. It is almost as if he shares the view that the French do not know the meaning of entrepreneur, but I am sure that he would not want to go down that route. It is important to recognise that this country is neither uniquely blessed in terms of holidays, and nor are we are we particularly badly off when compared with most of our competitors.
The hon. Gentleman said one incredibly important thing—that a happy work force is a productive work force. He said it in the context of a bit of a party political statement, but I share his view. He will be as disappointed as I am that productivity has fallen significantly over the past four years, that we have a surfeit of zero-hours contracts, that an ever-increasing number of people are leaving work and heading down to food banks, and that the number of people in work and in poverty is increasing. Huge numbers of people in my constituency and many others are earning less in insecure work and are paying more for the things that they rely on. The Opposition therefore share his concern about productivity and about doing more to make work pay. The issue’s time has come and it will be a central part of the Labour party manifesto. He was right to say that the issue is important, but my opinion differs on whether the Government have a tremendous track record.
On the substantive points in the hon. Gentleman’s speech, the question of how many bank holidays we should have is not new. Creating new bank holidays is not simple, which the previous Government found out when considering the creation of a new bank holiday for St George’s day. It was also a problem when there were plans to create a VE day bank holiday. The plans were eventually not followed through because of the difficulties involved.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned the cost implications, and it is fair to say that the margin of error is pretty broad. Some argue that there would be a net benefit to the UK economy of as much as £1.1 billion, but some believe that the economy would face a net loss of £3.6 billion. The most recent Department for Culture, Media and Sport assessment that I have seen suggests a £1.2 billion loss to the economy. He rightly referred to the report from the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which contains different figures, but the cost implications are important.
The irregular nature of the suggested new Eid and Diwali public holidays would also pose particular challenges. It is important to recognise that the UK has significant numbers of Sikhs and Jews and growing populations of other religions, so our response to the debate has to be about how to do more to recognise their contributions. We should work with employers to ensure that they bear important festivals in mind when allocating work and shifts. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills should show leadership, working with organisations such as British Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses, in particular in areas that have smaller numbers of people from those religious groups and where awareness might not be so great. It may well be that people of all faiths in Harrow are aware of Eid and Diwali, but there may be less awareness in other areas with smaller but no less important communities of people who celebrate such festivals. As a result, employers in such areas may not be thinking about how they work with people of all faiths to ensure that they get the opportunity to celebrate their festivals.
I have several questions on this incredibly important topic and am interested in the Minister’s response. What assessment has she made of the number of bank holidays in Britain? What assessment have the Government made about whether holidays are spaced in the most effective way? Is the balance right? What discussions have the Government had with business groups and trade bodies to maximise the opportunities for Muslim, Hindu and Sikh worshippers to celebrate their festivals? What efforts have been made to promote awareness of different faiths and of the importance of these festivals among employers?
Has any review of bank holidays taken place under this Government or are there plans for such a review? What is the Government’s latest assessment of the benefits and costs to the UK economy of additional bank holidays? What are the Government’s thoughts about ensuring that bank holidays fall on days on which the largest number of people will want to celebrate, so that they are seen as inclusive rather than exclusive? How can the Government use bank holiday policy to bring different communities together?
In conclusion, I look forward to hearing to the Minister’s response to those questions. I thank the hon. Member for Harrow East for securing the debate and for the manner in which he introduced this incredibly important topic. It may be that we are not able to deliver precisely what he calls for, but I hope that the debate has provided an opportunity for us to recognise the issues facing people in Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities, and for us to think not only in legislative terms, but also about Government guidance and leadership, to ensure that the maximum number of people get to celebrate such festivals. This country should continue to be diverse and we should go as far as we can to recognise people of all faiths, and to ensure that their right to celebrate their faith is not economically or culturally undermined in any way. This important debate should be a stepping stone towards greater diversity and social cohesion. If we are able to achieve that, it will have been a very important debate indeed.
Jenny Willott (Cardiff Central) (LD)
The subject of this debate is an important issue for us to discuss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) for ensuring that we have the debate before the petition expires. The issue is important to a very large number of people throughout the country.
I cannot claim a constituency as diverse as that of my hon. Friend’s, but Cardiff Central is mixed. I have two gurdwaras, two synagogues, five mosques and goodness knows how many churches, of all denominations and both English language and Welsh speaking. There is a ring of temples around the edge of my constituency, although none are in the constituency, and I have a Quaker meeting house and a Buddhist centre. A broad range of different religions is therefore represented. That diversity and vibrancy are among the things that I love about my constituency and my city. I am sure that my hon. Friend feels the same about his area. In this country, we are lucky to have such a hugely diverse, mixed and vibrant community, which we all benefit and learn from. We can all see the benefits to the country of that diversity.
Faith groups play a hugely important role in our communities throughout the country. Wherever they are, people from different faiths are working hard in churches, mosques, temples, gurdwaras, synagogues and so on, as well as in charities and community groups, to address problems in their local communities. The faith groups of the country play a hugely important role in making life better for other people and in making our communities a better place to live. The Government want to support that, to develop friendly relationships between people of different faiths and to help those groups that are active, co-operating and working together for the benefit of all in our society.
We are talking about people from different backgrounds coming together, not only to sit down and share tea, samosas, pakoras or whatever, but to work together for the common good and to tackle shared social problems, regardless of faith background. That might be to deal with something that my hon. Friend mentioned, tackling extremism, but it might be about planning issues or protecting green spaces in our communities. Our faith communities should be working together on all such issues.
The Government have invested more than £8 million in the Near Neighbours programme, which is intended to build productive local relationships between people of different faiths in areas of high deprivation. Since the start of the programme in 2011, we have funded a number of Eid and Diwali-related projects, including many successful events, such as at the Quba mosque in Leicester or the Shree Krishna community centre in Bradford. Those events have been targeted at local residents and at local people of all faiths and of none.
The Shree Krishna centre in Bradford, for example, worked with a nearby Sikh temple, St Clement’s church and the Ahmadiyya mosque, as well as local schools, to put together a Diwali celebration for as many local people as possible. More than 2,000 people attended the event—hugely successful—where food, entertainment and a fireworks display were laid on for them to enjoy. Such events help to build relationships between communities and faith groups and make people in a local area feel more part of the community, more supportive of each other and stronger together.
The Quba mosque in Leicester supports the local Somali community and acts as a place of worship and a community centre. It held an Eid celebration for the local community, which was opened up to local residents of all faiths, with the intention of building relationships across the community. The mosque worked with Leicester city council and the St Philip’s centre to bring in a wider group of people to celebrate Eid.
The Government also funded the Oldham Interfaith Forum, which has hosted events to bring together different faith groups. It hosted a seasonal Festival of Lights to celebrate Hanukkah, Diwali, Eid and Christmas and to show the links between the different religions, bringing everyone together to celebrate each others’ religious festivals. Representatives of faith groups from the town had the opportunity to explain their festivals to other groups and to put on an artistic show involving music or dance. The Government funding ensured that many members of the local community were able to come together to share the event.
Together in Service is another Government programme to build on those relationships. It was launched last year to strengthen social action around the country. We are investing £300,000 in the programme over two years and 37 projects are already running. For example, the Dagenham Bangladeshi Women and Children’s Association runs a project to improve quality of life through participation in local community events, again bringing people together to have a better understanding of the different faiths in a community.
The Government are also funding a project called Remembering the Brave, which is particularly interesting. It works across faith groups, whether Christians, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or others, to remember those who died for our country. When I meet members of my local community and discuss remembering the first and second world wars, the role of different faith communities and their contribution is frequently raised with me, because it is often overlooked and not remembered in quite the way that it should be. Such projects can therefore make a big contribution to bringing people together and to making them feel that their contribution to the past as well as the present of the country is properly recognised.
We continue to fund the important work of the Inter Faith Network for the UK in linking and encouraging inter-faith dialogue throughout the country. As part of that, I am pleased to say that more than 409 events are known to have taken place across England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2013, which is an increase of nearly a third on the previous year. We are putting our money where our mouth is, and communities are coming together, which I am sure we all think is a good thing.
As we know, members of our Muslim communities are observing the month of Ramadan, so it is particularly appropriate to mention the Big Iftar, which I am not sure that people have heard about. In the past, many non-Muslims felt that they knew little about Ramadan and its meaning. In recent years, many have felt that they would like to learn more about it and to understand it more.
I was on holiday in Morocco a few years ago, when Ramadan began, and the owners of the apartment block in which we were staying invited us to break the fast with them and their family and to share the evening meal. It was a quite extraordinary experience. Not only was the food out of this world, but it showed what an important part of the celebration the coming together is. It is not only the food, but the fact that everyone is together and everyone shares the experience. I cherish the memory.
The Big Iftar initiative, which is supported by the Government, is designed to spread awareness and understanding of Ramadan, its implications and what it means throughout our communities. I am delighted that this year hundreds of multi-faith iftars have taken place. From Birmingham to Bradford, Leeds to London and Maidenhead to Manchester, a range of different events have taken place. Iftars have taken place in mosques, churches, synagogues, town squares and parks, and with the homeless. We have even seen World cup iftars—a real innovation.
My hon. Friend mentioned hate crime and the fact that ChildLine has reported a significant increase in the number of students who have said that they have suffered racial and Islamophobic bullying. An increase of 60% is clearly extremely worrying and something that we take very seriously. The Government have funded Tell MAMA—Monitoring Anti-Muslim Attacks—which is the first service to report such incidents specifically, as well as to offer support to victims. We also set up the first ever cross-Government working group on anti-Muslim hatred to tackle that dreadful crime. We all recognise it as a worrying trend, which needs to be tackled as soon as possible.
I have set all that out to show that the Government support all that work because we understand that strengthening relationships with our neighbours and within communities is critical to teaching future generations to respect each other and to building links between members of a community. The more people understand each other the better it is for all of us. It helps us to accept differences between people and to break down some of the barriers and misunderstandings there may otherwise be. It also makes a real difference to integration and the way that people feel about the communities in which they live.
As part of that, we welcome the celebration of Diwali, Eid and various other religious festivals, just as we have always enjoyed celebrating Easter and Christmas together as a country. All faiths have a home in this country and it is important that their members feel that their faiths are valued and recognised. The religious observances and celebrations of Eid and Diwali are clearly important to followers of the Islamic and Hindu faiths. As I have already said, wider communities are now getting involved in the celebrations, showing the many common values that we all share regardless of our own religious beliefs.
The Government regularly receive requests for additional bank and public holidays to celebrate a variety of occasions, both religious and non-religious. The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) spoke about requests to recognise St George’s day. I am the MP for a Welsh constituency, and there are always calls to recognise St David’s day as a bank holiday in Wales. I think there have even been requests for a Margaret Thatcher day as a recognised bank holiday, so a range of different suggestions has been put forward over the years. However, the current pattern of bank holidays is well established and accepted. The Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 provides the statutory basis for UK bank holidays and bank holidays designated since 1971 are appointed each year by royal proclamation.
Provisions in the legislation enable the dates of bank holidays to be changed or other holidays to be declared, as we saw with the diamond jubilee, but that has to be done by royal proclamation. Such holidays are for celebrating special occasions or for one-off events such as the millennium. Proposals for the declaration of special bank holidays are considered by a ministerial committee. Any final decision requires the approval of Her Majesty the Queen. It is the usual process to consult widely when considering new bank holidays or amending the date of an existing one, and an impact assessment is carried out as part of that.
As hon. Members will know, there are currently eight permanent bank and public holidays in England and Wales, nine in Scotland and 10 in Northern Ireland, including St Patrick’s day and Battle of the Boyne day. Those figures include Christmas day and Good Friday, which in England, Wales and Northern Ireland are common-law holidays—they are not specified by law as bank holidays but have become customary holidays because of common observance. The last change to the pattern of bank holidays was for the Queen’s diamond jubilee in 2012, which followed precedents for celebrating jubilees with an additional bank holiday.
Although bank holidays have become widely observed across the board, legislation does not give employees any right to time off or extra pay on bank holidays. Workers may use some of their annual leave entitlement for them. In the UK, that entitlement is 28 days, which is intended to reflect the combination of the eight bank holidays with EU minimum annual leave of 20 days. Those eight days of leave do not need not be taken on the bank holidays themselves, giving flexibility to workers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East talked about international comparisons. The hon. Member for Chesterfield took that one stage further and talked about total leave taken in different countries. The UK’s statutory leave entitlement is very generous when compared with countries outside the EU. The US has 10 public holidays, but there is no statutory entitlement to either annual leave or public holidays. Japan has 15 public holidays but employees are only eligible for 10 working days of annual leave, with one additional day’s leave for each year of tenure up to a total of 20 working days. There is also no guarantee of pay for public holidays there.
Our statutory entitlement is in line with that of other European countries. As I have said, providing an annual leave entitlement that does not distinguish between public holidays and annual leave gives employees greater freedom over how they use their leave entitlement, as they can choose when they wish to take it. Public holidays in Germany are paid, but the additional entitlement is 20 days of annual leave only for those who are over 18 years old and are working five days per week. Many other countries such as Denmark and Sweden offer only the European minimum of 20 days per year, with no additional public holiday entitlement. The UK entitlement is generous.
As the hon. Member for Chesterfield said, the Government’s policy is to encourage employers to respond flexibly and sympathetically to any requests for leave, including requests for religious holidays, bearing in mind business needs. The Equality Act 2010 also makes it unlawful for employers to treat staff from a particular religious group less favourably than those from other religions when considering requests for leave or requests to refrain from work on particular days. It is absolutely right that people should not suffer discrimination at work due to their religious beliefs. Under the Equality Act, employees can challenge their employers’ rules and practices if they unreasonably put people who have a particular religion or belief at a particular disadvantage and cannot be justified. We welcome any reasonable steps that employers can take themselves to accommodate the wishes of their religious employees. British employers are generally very good at being reasonable in accommodating people’s religious beliefs and there is often quite a lot of flexibility.
Although I appreciate a new public holiday may benefit some communities and sectors, both my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East and the hon. Member for Chesterfield raised the cost to the economy, which remains considerable. For example, the most recent assessment of the economic cost of the additional holiday for the diamond jubilee shows that bank holidays across the UK as a whole cost employers around £1.2 billion, despite there being no statutory right to time off or extra pay on the additional holiday. That estimated cost of £1.2 billion is calculated by considering different scenarios for the extent to which businesses will be shut on the bank holiday and the associated loss in output.
The costs are partially offset by increased revenues for businesses in the leisure and tourism sectors and a boost in retail spending, but it is not expected that additional bank holidays for Eid and Diwali will result in increased tourism. Taking that into account, the cost figure would be higher for each bank holiday. In addition to the business cost, there is the unquantified operational impact from staff absences in health, local authority and transport services.
It is important that as a country we celebrate all major religious festivals together. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East said, the Government already take the lead in doing so—by hosting annual Eid and Diwali celebrations in Downing street, for example, which are extremely popular and always well attended. Ministers also take opportunities to go out to local communities to share in the celebrations marking major religious festivals. I am sure that all of us, as Members of Parliament, do the same in our own local communities.
The Government do not believe there should be a public holiday to mark these two particular occasions. I know that will disappoint some people, but I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue today. It is important that we should be able to discuss it and put on the record the value of the huge diversity and wide range of different faith groups represented in our communities, and the massive contribution they all make to our local communities and to society as a whole.
I thank my hon. Friend for raising the matter today and for his continuing dedication to and support for the work of those communities. I hope that people who have been listening to us are at least happy and satisfied that we have debated the matter at length and that all of us have put on the record our belief that the contribution made by faith communities in the UK is critical to the way our society functions.
Bob Blackman
I thank both the Minister and the Opposition spokesman for putting on the record their considered and thoughtful contributions to this debate. We should remember that this e-petition, signed by 122,000 people, has demonstrated that there is a demand out there in the community for us to consider this particular idea. Today is the starting point for that discussion, not the end of it. It is important that I commend the Government and the Opposition for all their attempts to break down religious barriers. I believe passionately that if religions open themselves up to participation by those in other religions, to enable understanding of what they do, we will break down the barriers of ignorance and encourage people to celebrate their religions in peace and harmony.
The key point about the e-petition is that if we were to grant public holidays for Eid and Diwali, as well as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur for the Jewish community, that would enshrine the major religions of the world and recognise the important part they play in this country. There would also be a challenge—the hon. Member for Chesterfield asked whether Eid and Diwali would always fall on set days or during the week—but we are British and very good at resolving such problems for the benefit of the whole community. The British people’s traditional tolerance and ability to find practical ways of resolving issues would come to the fore.
The Minister raised the key issue of the work done by volunteers across communities. The Jewish community celebrates Mitzvah day, when everyone gives a day of service to the community free of charge, and the Hindu community does the same on Sewa day. Both should be applauded. The Minister also mentioned the Big Iftar, which is a tremendous boost for the whole economy. If we declared those to be public holidays in the UK, they would become a major tourist attraction, drawing people from across Europe and other parts of the world to celebrate those great religious experiences. They would bring great tourist trade to this country. Anyone who has been to a mosque or a temple on Eid or Diwali will know that they bring a tremendous number of people and families together. People would come from different parts of the world and we would attract more tourists—not just for one day but for many days either side of the great public holiday that would be created.
This e-petition, the largest we have had in Parliament, deserves a positive answer. As parliamentarians, we should consider it carefully, take it forward and develop it. Will the Government consider holding a consultation to see what benefits would accrue from enshrining those great religious days as public holidays in our calendar? There are difficulties, but we can overcome them if we come together as one big group.
This debate seems to have gone into overdrive in the Twittersphere this afternoon, with many people listening and observing. That shows that we have started a debate that the public think matters. That is all important, and we as parliamentarians are placing on the record views sympathetic to the concerns being raised. I thank hon. Members for the debate and the opportunity to put our views on the record, and I trust that this debate will be the beginning and not the end.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statements
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Decommissioning Relief Deeds
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Priti Patel)
At Budget 2013, the Government announced they would begin signing decommissioning relief deeds. These deeds represent a new contractual approach to provide oil and gas companies with certainty on the level of tax relief they will receive on future decommissioning costs.
Since October last year, the Government have entered into 61 decommissioning relief deeds (50 were signed in financial year 2013-14). Oil & Gas UK estimates that these deeds have so far unlocked at least £2.2 billion of capital, which can now be invested elsewhere.
The Government committed to report to Parliament every year on progress with the deeds. The report for financial year 2013-14 is provided below.
(a) The number of decommissioning relief agreements entered into—The Government entered into 50 decommissioning relief agreements in 2013-14.
(b) The total number of decommissioning relief agreements in force at the end of that year—Fifty decommissioning relief agreements were in force at the end of the year.
(c) The number of payments made under any decommissioning relief agreements during that year, and the amount of each payment—No payments were made under any decommissioning relief agreements in 2013-14.
(d) The total number of payments that have been made under any decommissioning relief agreements as at the end of that year, and the total amount of those payments—No payments had been made under any decommissioning relief agreement as at the end of the 2013-14 financial year.
(e) An estimate of the maximum amount liable to be paid under any decommissioning relief agreements—The Government have not made any changes to the tax regime that would generate a liability to be paid under any decommissioning relief agreements.
Pensions
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr George Osborne)
This Government believe that individuals should be trusted to make their own decisions with their pension savings. One of the most important stages in life everybody has to save for is retirement, and one of the biggest financial decisions people will take is what to do with those savings when retiring. Under the old system, only those with very large or very small pension pots could access them with any flexibility.
That is why at the Budget I announced the most radical change to how people can access their pension in almost a century. From April 2015, everyone over the age of 55 with defined contribution pension savings will be able to access them as they wish, regardless of their total pension wealth, subject to their marginal tax rate.
Those who want the security of an annuity will still be able to purchase one. Equally, those who want to access all of their pension savings will be able to take them as a lump sum. Those who do not want to purchase an annuity or withdraw their money in one go, will be able to keep their pension invested and access it overtime, for instance through a draw-down product.
These reforms mark a radical departure, by giving choice back to individuals, and since the Budget the Government have consulted extensively on how best to implement the changes. I am pleased to say the reforms have overwhelmingly been positively received.
Later today I will lay the Government’s full response to the consultation on delivering these changes before Parliament. Before then I wanted to provide a high-level summary of the response, information about the resource expenditure for the guidance guarantee and the full details of the decisions with regard to private sector defined benefit pension schemes, which I am setting out in full this morning before markets open.
These reforms create more choices for individuals, and the Government want people to be equipped and ready to make informed decisions. The right to free and impartial guidance I announced at the Budget will empower savers and ensure that they are clear on their retirement income options before they make any decisions about what to do with their savings.
Given the need for guidance to be trusted by savers, I can confirm today that the guidance guarantee will be provided by independent organisations—with no actual or potential conflict of interest—in order to ensure complete impartiality. Delivery partners will include the Pensions Advisory Service (TPAS) and the Money Advice Service (MAS). The Government welcome expressions of interest from a range of trusted consumer-facing organisations, including Citizens Advice and Age UK, and looks forward to discussing further with these and other independent organisations how they can be involved.
The Treasury has obtained approval for an advance from the Contingencies Fund of £10,000,000 (out of the £20,000,000 development fund for the guidance guarantee announced at Budget) for preparatory work for the guidance guarantee in advance of Parliament’s approval. Parliamentary approval for additional resource of £10,000,000 for this new expenditure will be sought in a supplementary estimate for HM Treasury. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £10,000,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund. The repayment is expected to be made in the financial year 2014-15.
I can also confirm today that a new override will be introduced to ensure that pension schemes are able to offer individuals flexible access to their savings, and the tax rules will be amended to allow providers to develop new retirement income products that are tailored to the needs of individual consumers.
The Government want to maximise freedom and choice for retirement savings, but not if this were to be at the expense of the wider economy. For most defined benefit scheme members, it will be in their best financial interest to remain within their scheme. However, the Government, having considered the issues carefully, agree with the view of many stakeholders (including the Confederation of British Industry, Association of British Insurers and the National Association of Pension Funds) who have argued it is right to preserve the existing freedom to transfer out of a defined benefit scheme under the new arrangement. The Government will therefore continue to allow transfers from private sector defined benefit to defined contribution schemes, excluding pensions already in payment, subject to additional and important safeguards.
The Government continue to believe that transfers from unfunded public service defined benefit schemes should be banned, in order to protect the Exchequer and taxpayers. Transfers from funded public service defined benefit to defined contribution schemes will be permitted, and safeguards similar to those in the private sector will be introduced where appropriate.
The Government will present the document “Freedom and choice in pensions: Government response to the consultation” to Parliament and place copies of the document in the Libraries of both Houses. The relevant extracts from the defined benefit chapter of the consultation response document are copied below.
Extract from Freedom and choice in pensions: Government response to the consultation.
For the majority of individuals, retained membership of a defined benefit pension is likely to be their best option, as defined benefit pensions offer a level of security and guaranteed indexation that defined contribution pensions do not. Furthermore, the transfer values offered when requesting to transfer out are often less than the net present value of the benefits that an individual would ultimately receive from their defined benefit pension.
Nonetheless, it is likely that some individuals will request transfers out of their defined benefit pensions, and for some individuals, this may be in their best interests.
Discussions with stakeholders during the consultation highlighted a range of estimates of the proportion of those who would seek to transfer from a defined benefit scheme. The majority of estimates were between 10% and 20% but with a number expecting transfers to be below 10%. These estimates are consistent with stakeholder feedback that the Budget announcements had resulted in only a very small number of additional requests for transfers.
A precise figure of the proportion of transfers will be inherently difficult to determine, being dependent on a number of factors, including: whether pension schemes actively promote transfers; the attractiveness of new financial products being offered in the defined contribution market; and any requirements to take, and the quality of financial advice.
Pensioners are excluded from the right to transfer
Currently, existing (as opposed to future) pensioners are prevented from transferring out of their defined benefit schemes by law. A number of stakeholders highlighted the risks of changing the current position; very few representations were received arguing to do so.
Stakeholders highlighted the significant adverse selection risk of allowing current pensioners to transfer out of their defined benefit schemes. Such a scenario would place significant risk onto the pension fund, and would be unfair to remaining members, and could require schemes to increase their funding requirements. Stakeholders noted that retaining the current position whereby pensioners have no statutory right to transfer would retain equality with those who have already purchased annuities with their defined contribution savings. The Government have therefore decided to retain the current ban on existing pensioners transferring out of defined benefit schemes. Netting out pensions in payment from the total asset base reduces substantially the amount of assets potentially subject to transfers.
Timing of transfers out of defined benefit schemes
The timing of any transfers out of a defined benefit scheme will also make a difference to the impact on scheme investments.
Stakeholders noted that members of private sector defined benefit pension schemes who wish to transfer would benefit by doing so as close as possible to the point they crystallise their pension. It is unlikely that transferring to a defined contribution scheme earlier in life would lead to greater pension wealth in retirement compared to accruing more years of defined benefit pension, or, for those with deferred benefits, benefitting from index linked uplifting. This means that any transfers would be likely to take place over a number of years, in line with the age profile of members, rather than all at once.
Wider defined benefit investment trends
As a number of responses to the consultation highlighted, in recent years, there has been a significant trend of de-risking by defined benefit pension schemes, characterised by shifts in asset allocation from equities into fixed income. This trend has been driven by changes in the regulatory approach, accounting standards, increasing risks from longevity, and the increasing maturity of schemes, with most closed to new members (and some to future accruals).
Therefore it is expected that there will still be a strong continuing demand for high-quality fixed income assets, including Government and corporate bonds, in the future from defined benefit schemes, even allowing for a possible reduction in demand due to transfers out.
Impact on financial markets
Taking into account the exclusion of pensioners from the right to transfer; the limited number of active and deferred scheme members for whom it would be in their best interests to transfer; and the likelihood that those transferring would do so when they reach the scheme’s normal age for crystallising their pension pots, the Government believe that the overall impact on the existing defined benefit asset base is likely to be limited if private sector defined benefit to defined contribution transfers continue to be allowed.
From a market perspective the impact of maintaining defined benefit flexibility will at the margins necessitate greater liquidity in asset holdings. However, the main driver underpinning portfolio restructuring in the future is likely to continue to be increasing maturity of defined benefit schemes and corresponding de-risking, irrespective of any decision on defined benefit flexibility.
Therefore, the Government have decided that retaining the existing flexibility of transfers out of private sector defined benefit schemes for all pension members (other than those whose pensions are already in payment), together with the additional safeguards outlined below, is appropriate.
Introducing additional safeguards—supporting individuals to make an informed choice
A number of stakeholders who supported retaining the current right for private sector transfer suggested that current safeguards could be improved.
At present, although the majority of defined contribution schemes will only accept transfers if professional financial advice is taken, guidance for transfers from defined benefit schemes only stipulates that such advice has to be taken when transfers are instigated by the employer not when they are instigated by the employee. The Government intend to make it a statutory requirement on the transferring scheme for all individuals who are considering transferring out of defined benefit schemes to take advice, from a professional financial adviser who is independent from the defined benefit scheme and authorised by the FCA, before transferring. The FCA are today publishing a thematic report on enhanced transfer values out of defined benefit schemes, summarising examples of good and bad advisory practice.
As a result, defined benefit schemes will be required to check that a member has taken advice from a professional financial adviser who is independent from the defined benefit scheme and authorised by the FCA before allowing a transfer out of the scheme. In most cases the individual pension member will need to pay for the financial advice. However, responsibility for paying for the financial advice will fall on the employer if the transfer is from defined benefit to defined contribution schemes within the same scheme, or as a result of an employer led incentive exercise.
The proposal to make it a statutory requirement to take professional financial advice was recommended by a large number of stakeholders including the ABI and CBI. It will ensure that all pension fund members are fully informed before taking any decision, and counteract the risk that a significant number of pension scheme members act against their own best interests or are coerced out of their scheme. This requirement for professional financial advice would not apply to small pot holders with pension savings below £30,000 as the trivial commutation rules would still apply.
Introducing additional safeguards - protecting pension schemes
Although it is unlikely that the number of members of defined benefit schemes wishing to transfer would be sufficient to destabilise any individual scheme, this was nonetheless a concern raised by a number of stakeholders who were supportive of allowing continued flexibility.
At present pension fund trustees have the power to ask the regulator for longer to make transfer payments if the interests of the members of the scheme generally will be prejudiced by making the payments within the usual period. Trustees are also able to reduce the transfer values offered to individual members to reflect the schemes current funding position. As it stands current powers available to trustees are sufficient to keep schemes viable under the new flexible pensions regime. However, the Government want to ensure that trustees are fully aware of these powers and are prepared to use them should the need arise. The Government therefore intend to ensure that there is new guidance to trustees on the powers available to them to maintain the sustainability of schemes. The Government will work with the pensions regulator, employers and trustees to develop the guidance.
Future changes to private sector defined benefit transfers
A number of stakeholders raised the issue during the consultation of allowing full or partial withdrawals direct from a defined benefit scheme, rather than an individual first needing to transfer to a defined contribution scheme. The argument being that requiring members first to transfer to defined contribution schemes creates additional unnecessary burdens and that allowing full or partial withdrawals from defined benefit schemes would better enable the pensions industry to provide the pension products that their members want. The Government intend to consult further on this issue.
Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
In 2010, I decided to make Doncaster metropolitan borough council subject to statutory intervention involving the council being overseen by three commissioners, appointed by me, and who are also responsible for exercising certain of the council’s functions such as appointing senior staff.
This intervention was necessary given serious failings in the council’s corporate governance, and no capacity among those leading the council to make improvement. The council’s previous attempts to address its problems had failed, allowing poor and failing services to continue. In particular, the council operated to frustrate what the (then) mayor and cabinet sought to do, the mayor and cabinet showed a lack of efficient leadership, and the desire to pursue long-standing political antagonisms was given priority over much-needed improvements to services for the public.
The intervention is scheduled to end on 31 July 2015.
Alongside this intervention, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and I are, with the council, implementing a separate intervention focused on children’s social care services, involving transferring responsibility for those services away from the council to an independent trust. This intervention is designed to deliver sustainable improvements in children’s social care in Doncaster, addressing the long-standing serious weaknesses in those services.
In June this year the Local Government Association undertook a peer review of the council. That review has now reported, concluding that the council’s performance has materially improved, both politically and managerially, and that the council is no longer an outlier in terms of the performance expected of a local authority, except with regard to children’s services. Following that peer review, on 1 July my hon. Friend the former Minister for local government, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Brandon Lewis), had a meeting with the lead commissioner on the corporate governance intervention, together with the council’s mayor and chief executive. At that meeting the mayor explained the improvements that the council had achieved and described the further progress the council were planning to make.
It is clear to me that, given the level of improvement that Doncaster has now achieved, its firm plans for the future, and its readiness to engage with the wider local government sector on improvement, continuing the statutory corporate intervention will add little, if any, value. The lead commissioner shares this view as he explained when he met my hon. Friend.
Accordingly, I intend to bring the statutory corporate intervention to an early close. It is also important that we now finalise the statutory intervention on children’s social care and take the final steps to establish the Children’s Services Trust; we will very shortly be consulting the council on the statutory direction which is the final technical step to establish the trust.
In these circumstances, I am proposing to end the statutory corporate intervention as soon as the trust is fully up and running, which I expect to be by the end of September. While statutory intervention is rightly a measure of last resort, its use at Doncaster is a clear demonstration of how appropriate intervention can be a powerful means of successfully addressing deep-rooted failings in a council and ensuring that it is able to provide the leadership and local services that local communities rightly expect.
Public Procurement of Food and Catering
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Elizabeth Truss)
The public sector is a significant buyer of food and catering services. This market offers an opportunity for Government to open up the market to allow more small businesses to compete for Government contracts, ensuring that our schoolchildren, hospital patients and soldiers are fed healthy, nutritious food that is produced to high standards, in an affordable way.
Today, I will launch “A Plan for Public Procurement of Food and Catering Services”, and place a copy in the Libraries of both Houses. This work was led by Dr Peter Bonfield OBE; it aims to make excellent procurement the norm across the country. The plan complements other Government initiatives, including the Government’s procurement pledge, the school food plan, the work of the hospital food standards panel, and the GREAT initiative. The plan strengthens the Government buying standard for food and catering and offers public procurers a toolkit to help them deliver a good service, through a clearer and more consistent approach to buying food or catering services.
By using a simplified and more consistent approach. Government procurement can open up the public sector market to small and local businesses, which means more competition and good value for the taxpayer. It will allow more locally-sourced food to be served in our public sector organisations, which means more money into the local economy. It is also good for the environment, as the approach supports UK farm production standards and measures to reduce food waste. It will encourage healthier eating, foster a great connection with food, and celebrate local food.
Afghanistan (Monthly Progress Report)
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Philip Hammond)
I wish to inform the House that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, together with the Ministry of Defence and the Department for International Development, is today publishing the 39th progress report on developments in Afghanistan since November 2010.
The second round of the presidential election took place on 14 June. Both candidates alleged widespread fraud; the IEC chief electoral officer resigned following the release of an audio tape by the Abdullah campaign, allegedly of him discussing how to commit fraud. Abdullah rejected IEC proposals to audit the vote and withdrew from the process. Although outside the timeframe of the June report, the House will be aware that the situation deteriorated following the release of preliminary election results by the IEC on 7 July, which gave Ashraf Ghani a commanding lead over Abdullah. Strong international community action, led by the United States, succeeded in bringing both sides to agree to a comprehensive and intrusive audit of 100% of the vote, and to work together towards a Government of national unity. These events will be covered more fully in the July parliamentary report.
Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism finance legislation was passed by Parliament. The Taliban launched a major offensive in northern Helmand. After the insurgents captured some isolated checkpoints and inflicted heavy casualties on the security forces, ANSF reinforcements stabilised the situation and retook much of the ground lost to the insurgents. NATO Foreign Ministers endorsed the operational plan for the NATO resolute support mission, and most countries reaffirmed their commitments from the 2012 Chicago conference.
I am placing the report in the Library of the House. It will also be published on the gov.uk website (www.gov. uk/government/publications/afghanistan-progress-reports).
Non-departmental Public Bodies (Triennial Reviews)
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I am today announcing the start of the triennial review of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD), the National DNA Database Ethics Group (NDNADEG) and the Animals in Science Committee (ASC).
Triennial reviews are part of the Government’s commitment to ensuring that non-departmental public bodies continue to have regular independent challenge. The review will examine whether there is a continuing need for the functions and form of the ACMD, NDNADEG and ASC and whether they should continue to exist at arm’s length from Government. Should the review conclude there is a continuing need for each of these bodies, it will go on to examine whether the body’s control and governance arrangements continue to meet the recognised principles of good corporate governance.
I shall inform the House of the outcome of the reviews.
Special European Council
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)
I attended the special European Council held in Brussels on 16 July.
This special Council had been called principally to discuss the appointment of a new President of the European Council to succeed Herman Van Rompuy when he completes his term later this year, and on the nomination of a new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy to succeed Lady Ashton when the next European Commission takes office in November.
In discussion, it became clear that it would not be possible to reach consensus on either appointment at this point, and that further discussions would be required. A further special European Council will be held on 30 August, at which decisions are now expected.
The President-elect of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, joined the Council for a discussion of priorities for the European Union for the next five years. He confirmed his commitment to the principle that the institutions of the European Union should concentrate their work in areas where the Union can add real value; and that other areas should be left to member states.
The focus of much discussion at this Council was the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. I made it plain before the Council that I believed that a clear signal should be sent to Russia that it must change course and act to bring the crisis to an end. The Council agreed that Russia had not adequately implemented the steps set out in its 27 June conclusions. As a consequence, it agreed to expand the restrictive measures already adopted. In addition to the steps decided immediately, it tasked the Foreign Affairs Council to pursue further action by the end of this month. I would expect the European Council to return to this issue on 30 August if the situation in Ukraine has not improved by then.
The Council also discussed the current violence in Israel and Gaza. It condemned the firing of rockets from Gaza into Israel and the indiscriminate targeting of civilians. It called on both sides to de-escalate the situation and to end the suffering of the civilian population.
Copies of the Council conclusions have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Electoral Commission Report (May Elections)
(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon)
(Representing the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission): The Electoral Commission has today published its report on the European parliamentary elections in the UK and the local government elections in England and Northern Ireland that took place on 22 May 2014.
The Commission reports that overall the elections were well run and there were high levels of voter confidence in the administration of the elections. Nearly nine in 10 voters surveyed (88%) were confident that the elections were well run, and nearly all were satisfied with their experience of voting, whether in person or by post, reflecting positively on the work of local authority returning officers and their staff.
In the run-up to the elections, the Commission worked closely with both returning officers and the police in those local authorities it had identified as being at greater risk of allegations of electoral fraud, to ensure appropriate measures were put in place to prevent and detect it. The Commission reports that, across the UK as a whole, there have been fewer allegations of electoral fraud than at previous polls, and where allegations have arisen the Commission is confident that the police have taken swift and robust action to investigate them.
These elections were the first time that the Commission’s new performance standards framework for returning officers was used at a set of polls. As part of the framework, the Commission monitored the work being undertaken by regional returning officers and a principally risk-based sample of local returning officers in Great Britain to plan for and deliver the polls.
There were a small number of instances where the Commission intervened to recommend minor improvements. However, there were two issues with the printing of election stationery which led the Commission to conclude that the returning officers at Reading borough council and Reigate and Banstead borough council did not fully meet its performance standards.
Despite the high levels of voter confidence overall, the Commission’s report sets out some problems that occurred during the elections.
There were concerns about delays affecting the election count in the London borough of Tower Hamlets. The Commission reported separately on these problems ahead of the countermanded poll held in one of the wards in the borough on Thursday 3 July. The Commission was pleased to see that the returning officer has already started to take forward its recommendations.
More broadly in Tower Hamlets, there were concerns raised about campaigners outside polling stations, where some voters felt intimidated by the presence of campaigners and what they felt were aggressive appeals for them to vote for particular candidates.
In other areas of the UK some voters at the elections were not able to vote by post because of the way campaigners handled postal vote applications. The Commission believes that campaigners should not handle completed postal vote application forms or postal ballot packs and will be consulting political parties over the coming months to seek their agreement to a revised voluntary code of conduct for campaigners by November this year, in time for the May 2015 UK parliamentary general election.
The Commission’s report also notes issues with party descriptions on ballot papers at the elections. Candidates standing for political parties and the parties themselves are allowed to use these descriptions on ballot papers, provided the Electoral Commission has registered the description. In the light of the issues highlighted in the report, the Commission now wants the Government to consider the case for changing the current rules, with a view to reducing the risk of voter confusion.
The report makes a number of recommendations for changes which will be an important part of preparing for the May 2015 UK parliamentary general election and for the next European parliamentary elections in 2019. But there will be a range of other preparations that the Commission will want to see in place well before May 2015. The Commission will make these clear over the next few months as it issues further guidance and advice for returning officers, electoral registration officers and their staff; and for political parties, candidates and others who plan to campaign.
Copies of the Commission’s report have been placed in the Library and it is also available on its website at: www.electoralcommission.org.uk.