Westminster Hall

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 10 December 2014

[Albert Owen in the Chair]

Tibet

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Westminster Hall

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—(John Penrose.)

09:30

[Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I am delighted that Mr Speaker has granted this debate on freedom of expression in Tibet, which I believe is the first debate on Tibet for some years. I am particularly pleased that it is taking place on international human rights day, which is appropriate given the human rights abuses that Tibetans have suffered for decades, ever since the occupation of Tibet by China in 1950.

Chinese Government representatives and diplomats will say that Tibet has always been a part of China. They say that it has never been a separate nation or an independent state, but that is simply not true. However, gradually over the past 60 years or so, Tibetans have become second-class citizens in their own land.

I had the huge privilege of visiting Tibet in 2006, thanks to the insistence of colleagues on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, in particular the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley). The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was initially reluctant for members of the FAC—of whom I was one at the time—to go to Lhasa and other parts of the so-called Tibet Autonomous Region, but we insisted and, in May of that year, a small group of five British MPs was eventually given permission to travel from Beijing via Chengdu to Lhasa. We were accompanied by Barbara Woodward, then a senior British diplomat at our embassy in Beijing—I believe she is now the ambassador-designate—who spoke excellent Tibetan, and about 15 officials from the Chinese Government’s Foreign Ministry, who were there to look after our security and attend to any medical needs, given the high altitude of the Tibetan capital. The new railway from Chengdu was yet to open later that summer.

I did not expect that the visit would have such a profound effect on me and my colleagues. The sheer beauty of the ancient home of the Dalai Lamas, the Potala palace, and the surrounding Himalayan mountains make Lhasa a unique capital city. It is, as Tibetans often say, the roof of the world. On disembarking the aircraft at 13,000 feet above sea level there is a sensation of dizziness, which can last for several days at that altitude. Heinrich Harrar’s book, “Seven years in Tibet”, had given me some background to what we were about to see, but nothing quite prepares one for the reality. The city had changed quite a lot over the years and there were many more Han Chinese residents in 2006 than there ever had been. However, the old Barkhor area in the centre of Lhasa was mainly intact and the Buddhist temples have been carefully preserved in recent years, following their initial destruction at the beginning of the Chinese occupation.

Our hosts were impeccably polite and helpful, but they always kept a watchful eye on us by sitting in the lobby of the Yak hotel in the centre of town where we were staying. It was hard to get away from the minders, even just to go to the noodle bar next door, but on the final evening in Lhasa the former Member for Thurrock, Andrew Mackinlay and I managed to escape past the security people out of a back door and into the labyrinth of small streets that eventually led us to the Barkhor. Once there, we tried to speak to local traders, but most of them did not speak English or were too frightened to engage with a foreigner, or both. The overwhelming sense we felt from the Tibetans we managed to speak to was that they were highly religious Buddhists and that they missed the Dalai Lama, who was forced to flee from Tibet in 1959 after being told of a Chinese plot to murder him.

The reverence for Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, was clear, but the fear of expressing any support for the exiled religious and political leader meant that few obvious signs of support were evident among most of the population. Local Tibetan Communist officials told us that the mediaeval feudalism that used to characterise Tibet before the enlightened Chinese Communist party liberated the Tibetan people meant that every Tibetan now had a far better lifestyle: they could live in a good home and have enough to eat.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene so early in his contribution and I am delighted that he is having this debate on this day. I wonder whether he or Andrew Mackinlay, or any of the other visiting Members, had the opportunity during their 2006 visit to obtain evidence of, or to discuss, human rights abuses, including torture, in Tibet. Will he enlighten us about that in his contribution?

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Lady for that contribution. Sadly, we did not have much of a chance to talk to anyone about what Tibetans had to suffer day in, day out, because we were not allowed access to any Tibetans without our minders from Beijing. However, we asked the abbot of one of the monasteries about the missing monks for whom we had records and names. He was extremely embarrassed and refused to answer our questions because of the people who were watching him. There was a sense of fear the whole time that we were there, but subsequently we discovered quite a lot, especially when we did our full inquiry into Britain and China. The people we were with said that the Tibetans were now better off under the Chinese People’s Republic, without a feudal monarchy over which they had no say or control—that they no longer had to be subjected to an ancient religious system of government that had subjugated them for centuries.

After leaving Lhasa, we travelled for several hours along dusty, deserted roads in a treeless wilderness towards the concrete-block town of Tsedang, a place that foreigners rarely visit, where silence greeted our entry into a run-down old bar on the evening of our arrival. The next morning we were to visit the oldest Buddhist monastery in Tibet, the eighth century Samye monastery, which is being carefully restored to its full glory by the Chinese after the damage wrought in the 1950s following the invasion. It was a truly remarkable place, but even there the interpreters were reluctant to mention the name of the Dalai Lama, who still had a throne waiting for him in one of the many rooms.

On our return to the UK, news of the trip quickly spread to the Tibet support groups and the all-party parliamentary group for Tibet, which I now have the privilege of chairing. I was asked to speak and to show my many stunning and extraordinary photographs, which I was happy to do. Just over a year later, in September 2007, I joined a visit organised by the APPG and the Tibet Society to Dharamsala to meet the exiled Tibetan community and, of course, His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama always talks about his middle way policy towards China. He jokes in his broken English that because Tibetans are no good with firearms, the Chinese are welcome to provide an army to defend Tibet and that Tibetan cooking is pretty awful, while Chinese food is very tasty, so most Tibetans would prefer to eat Chinese food. However, he thinks that the autonomy they are given should mean just that: the ability of Tibetans to have a say over their own future; to decide for themselves who their rulers should be; to speak their own language; to practise their own religion; and, most importantly, to have their Dalai Lama back among them, not continuing to live in exile.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing today’s debate. I had the privilege of accompanying a delegation on a further visit to Dharamsala. Does he agree that the ability to express one’s own culture and to show religious affiliation is not available to Tibetans, who could find themselves in fear of their lives simply for having an image of their own national flag or spiritual leader?

[Fabian Hamilton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will go on to detail some of the human rights abuses perpetrated against Tibetans simply for expressing their support for their religious leader or displaying the Tibetan flag, which is something that we can freely do outside Tibet. That is reprehensible.

The middle way approach for genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people was a policy conceived by His Holiness in 1974, in an effort to engage the Chinese Government in dialogue and find a peaceful way to protect the unique Tibetan culture and identity. It is a policy adopted democratically through a series of discussions over many decades between the Central Tibetan Administration and the Tibetan people, and there is no doubt that it is a “win-win” proposition that straddles the middle path between the status quo and full independence—one that categorically rejects the present repressive policies of the Chinese Government towards the Tibetan people without seeking separation from the People’s Republic of China.

The most recent series of talks between Dharamsala and Beijing began in 2002, with a total of nine rounds of talks being held since then. During the seventh round of talks in 2008—the year in which unprecedented and widespread protests broke out across Tibet—the Chinese Government asked the Tibetan leadership to put in writing the nature of the autonomy it sought. The “Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People” was presented during the eighth round of talks in 2008. The Chinese Government expressed a number of concerns and objections to the memorandum. To address those concerns, during the ninth and last round of talks in January 2010 the Tibetan leadership presented the “Note on the Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People”.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He gave an answer to a previous question about discussions that were held, and he outlined that there was not much engagement with people. Was there any engagement with the youth of Tibet in particular or with the educationalists, to hear their views?

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question; the answer is no, not while we were there. On subsequent visits to Dharamsala we engaged with many young people who had escaped from Tibet to seek refuge and sanctuary in India. They made their views very clear, and how they saw the oppression by the Chinese Communist regime in Lhasa and other parts of Tibet. Sadly, however, while we were in Tibet, we did not have access to anybody outside those who were dictated to by our hosts. Those were the strict rules under which we were allowed to visit Tibet at all. It was a privilege to be in Tibet, but sadly it was not a very enlightening visit as far as learning the views of the people was concerned. Nevertheless, being there and seeing things for ourselves meant a great deal.

As I was saying, the Chinese Government expressed a number of concerns and objections to the memorandum. To address these, the Tibetan leadership presented the “Note on the Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy for the Tibetan People” during the ninth and last round of talks. The memorandum and the note outline how genuine autonomy for the Tibetan people could operate within the framework of the People’s Republic of China—its constitution, its sovereignty and territorial integrity, its “three adherences” and the hierarchy and authority of the Chinese central Government.

Sadly, there has been no dialogue between the Chinese and the exiled Tibetan leadership since 2010. Despite that, however, the Tibetan leadership remains steadfast in its commitment to the middle way approach, and to finding a lasting solution through dialogue between the envoys of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the representatives of the Chinese leadership. Therefore, my first question to the Minister is this. Would the British Government support the resumption of dialogue between the envoys of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the representatives of the Chinese leadership? The Tibetan leadership has reiterated on numerous occasions its commitment to seeking genuine autonomy, not independence, and to finding a resolution to the Tibet issue through peaceful means. The British Government have a particular responsibility, unique among all western Governments, because of the relationship that we had with the Tibetan Government in Lhasa prior to 1959.

[Lady Hermon]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me to intervene on him once again. He referred to the special commitment that Britain has to Tibet. Bearing in mind the special commitment that the UK had to Hong Kong and the recent reaction by China to Hong Kong, is he saying to us and to the Foreign Office that he is concerned about China tightening, rather than loosening, its grip on Tibet?

[Fabian Hamilton]

I thank the hon. Lady for that question, which is very pertinent. I have deliberately avoided mentioning Hong Kong, but she makes an important point. My impression, having studied Tibet and Chinese relations with Tibet for the last eight years, is that China is tightening its grip. There is further oppression of the Tibetan people and China is clamping down; there is no doubt about that.

In the eight and a half years since I was in Lhasa, Tibet and its people have come to mean a great deal to me, as they do to so many supporters of a free Tibet, both in this country and throughout the world. In a materialistic consumer society, the teachings of the Dalai Lama and the ideals of Tibetans living in exile provide us with an alternative to the lives we live today. It is not that I have become a kind of Jewish Buddhist—[Interruption.] Well, there might be such a thing. It is not that we should all convert and that the world would then be a better place, but this is an ancient culture with warmth, wisdom and a message of peace and love for all humanity—I do not mean Judaism—and that is a message that we rarely hear in the world today. The 14th Dalai Lama never stops telling anyone who will listen—many millions do listen to him—that we can live in peace and harmony together, without war or conflict. I can never understand why the Chinese Government believe he is such a threat to them, and even call him a terrorist.

Today is not only international human rights day but the 25th anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to His Holiness. To quote from the announcement of the Nobel peace prize for 1989, which was made in Oslo on 5 October that year,

“The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize to the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, the religious and political leader of the Tibetan people. The Committee wants to emphasize the fact that the Dalai Lama in his struggle for the liberation of Tibet consistently has opposed the use of violence. He has instead advocated peaceful solutions based upon tolerance and mutual respect in order to preserve the historical and cultural heritage of his people. The Dalai Lama has developed his philosophy of peace from a great reverence for all things living and upon the concept of universal responsibility embracing all mankind as well as nature. In the opinion of the Committee, the Dalai Lama has come forward with constructive and forward-looking proposals for the solution of international conflicts, human rights issues and global environmental problems.”

Later today, I will attend a ceremony in London to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel peace prize to the Dalai Lama. It is important that we never forget the contribution that he has made to global peace and understanding. Despite their best efforts, the Chinese Government can never remove the love and respect that the Tibetan people have for him. His message continues to be highly relevant in the modern world.

The cause of Tibet and freedom of expression is important, and not just to Tibetans. Let me outline some of the cases that have been drawn to my attention. One of the earliest cases I became involved in was that of Dhondup Wangchen, the Tibetan film-maker who produced a documentary that was critical of the Chinese Government in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics. For his crime of making a film called “Leaving Fear Behind”, Dhondup was given a six-year prison sentence, and he was only released on 5 June this year. When he was imprisoned, I raised his case in the House with the then Foreign Secretary, and subsequently wrote to the Chinese ambassador and the authorities at the prison where he was incarcerated.

Dhondup’s wife, Lhamo Tso, came to stay with my wife and me in Leeds three years ago while she was on a tour of the UK to raise awareness of her husband’s plight, which had left her and their four children living in extreme poverty in Dharamsala. This family’s story was typical of stories of the families of any Tibetan who dared to speak out against the Chinese Government and the way that Tibetans are routinely treated in their own land. “Leaving Fear Behind” is critical of the Chinese Government and records the feelings and thoughts of ordinary Tibetans about the Olympic games. It does not advocate violence or the overthrow of the state; it is not subversive in any way; and it would be considered quite mild if it had been a documentary about this country’s attitude to what the Chinese Government label an ethnic minority. However, such freedom of expression is forbidden in Tibet, so Dhondup had committed a criminal offence.

The outrageous and severe punishment he received almost took his life, because he contracted hepatitis B while he was in jail. Born in Amdo, Dhondup is now 40. He is free again and will soon be reunited with his wife and children, who are now in the United States. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Students for a Free Tibet took up his case and organised a worldwide protest, but it made no difference to the severity of his sentence; he was not released early.

Let me leave Dhondup’s case by quoting him on why he made the film:

“At a time of great difficulty and a feeling of helplessness”,

the idea of his film was to

“get some meaningful response and results. It is very difficult”—

that is, difficult for Tibetans—

“to go to Beijing and speak out there. So that is why we decided to show the real feelings of Tibetans inside Tibet through this film. Nowadays, China is declaring that they are preserving and improving Tibetan culture and language. That’s what they’re telling the world. Many organisations and offices have been set up for these things. What they say and what they do are totally different, opposites. If they really want to preserve and improve Tibetan culture and language in Tibet then they should withdraw Chinese people living in Tibetan areas. Tibetan culture and language has to be practised in all Tibetan areas. If it’s not practised, how can it be preserved?”

Throughout the ages, music has often been used as a way of expressing protest. A number of Tibetan musicians have written and performed songs and made CDs, for which they have been arrested and severely punished. Lolo, a 30-year-old male Tibetan singer, was first detained on 19 April 2012, shortly after releasing an album with political lyrics. After a brief period of detention he was released but was later re-arrested. In February 2013, Lolo was sentenced to six years in prison by a court in Xining, Qinghai province, on charges of “seditiously splitting the state”, a catch-all offence that allows the Chinese authorities to punish ethnic minorities defending their rights. Lolo’s album, “Raise the Tibetan Flag, Children of the Snowland”, contained 14 songs that called for Tibet’s independence, the unity of the Tibetan people and the return of the Dalai Lama. The title track is a direct challenge to China’s rule.

Other musicians convicted for publishing controversial Tibetan songs include Kalsang Yarphel, who on 27 November, just two weeks ago, was sentenced to four years in prison by a Chinese court in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Pema Rigzin, 44, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and a severe fine of 50,000 yuan for composing, releasing, and distributing music with alleged political overtones. Among the songs he produced were “In Memory of Tibet” and “Tears”, which have since been banned. Rigzin was detained on 7 May 2013 in Chengdu city, and held incommunicado until the trial. Rigzin’s family were barred from hiring the lawyer of their choice.

Kelsang Yarphel, who is 39, and a popular Tibetan folk singer and composer, was sentenced to four years in prison and given an immense 200,000 yuan fine. He was detained by the authorities in Lhasa on 14 July 2013 on charges that he performed a song with alleged political overtones in a concert. Though some of Yarphel’s music encouraged Tibetan unity, none has been known to express overtly political ideology. Song titles included “We Should Learn Tibetan” and “We Should Unite”. At the Lhasa concert he performed a song called “Fellow Tibetans”, which calls on Tibetans to learn and speak Tibetan and to “build courage” to think about Tibet’s “future path”.

Finally, I draw to the attention of hon. Members and the Minister the case of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, a senior monk sentenced to life imprisonment on false charges. He is not a musician. He was arrested on 3 April 2002 following a bomb blast in Chengdu, along with his student Lobsang Dhondup. In November 2002, both were sentenced to death. At the trial, the main evidence presented against Tenzin Delek was a confession from Lobsang Dhondup, which Lobsang later retracted, claiming that he had been tortured. However, the appeal hearing in January 2003 upheld Lobsang Dhondup’s death sentence and he was executed on the same day. Tenzin Delek Rinpoche’s death sentence was suspended for two years, and then commuted to life imprisonment in 2005.

Tenzin Delek Rinpoche has consistently maintained his innocence. He is now suffering from severe ill health and there are serious concerns for his well-being, so much so that family members and others are calling for the international community to help press the Chinese authorities to grant him medical parole. Tenzin Delek is a highly revered Tibetan Buddhist lama and a community leader from Litang in Sichuan province. He has worked on numerous social, medical and educational projects and campaigned for the protection of Tibet’s fragile environment, working to stop indiscriminate logging and mining activities. I hope that the Minister adds his voice to the international calls for Tenzin Delek’s early release.

There is no doubt that the Chinese Government use a mix of systematic oppressive measures, propaganda and disinformation to stifle free expression and to present a positive image of their actions in Tibet to the outside world. Since peaceful demonstrations spread across Tibet in 2008, the Chinese authorities have adopted a harsher approach to suppressing dissent. In its current approach, which can be more accurately characterised as totalitarian, the state recognises no limits to its authority, imposes a climate of fear, and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life to crush all forms of dissent against Communist party rule. There has been a dramatic expansion of the powers of China’s policing and military apparatus in Tibet. This has created a climate of fear and lack of trust, even among families and close friends. Many Tibetans in exile report that they cannot talk to their families in Tibet on the phone, because of the danger to their families of their having contact with them as exiles.

The Chinese Government have stepped up Communist party presence in Tibet, sending thousands of Chinese officials to carry out surveillance and so-called “political education”, and to disseminate propaganda. The Chinese state media call it a “war against secessionist sabotage”, in which the Chinese Government seek to replace loyalty to the Dalai Lama in Tibetan hearts and minds with allegiance to the Chinese party-state and, in doing so, to obliterate memory and undermine Tibetan national identity at its roots.

Just nine days ago, on 1 December, the Chinese Government announced a programme of sending artists, film-makers and TV personnel to ethnic minority and border areas to help local artists

“form a correct view of art”.

Announcing the programme, the state-run news agency, Xinhua, commented:

“Art and culture cannot develop without political guidance”.

It also congratulated Chinese President Xi Jinping for

“emphasising the integration of ideology and artistic values”.

Since last May, following the killings in Xinjiang, an expansive counter-terrorism drive has been launched by the Chinese Government and has expanded across China, including Tibet. In Tibet, the Chinese authorities have organised large-scale military drills and intensified border security, and are holding training exercises for troops on responding to self-immolation and on dealing with problems in monasteries, in spite of the absence of any violent insurgency in Tibet. Armed responses to protests, including killing with impunity and the torture and imprisonment of individuals, have become the cause of instability and are therefore deeply counter-productive.

In conclusion, I have a number of requests for the Government to consider, which I believe will help the cause of Tibet and allow Tibetans the right to free expression that we in Europe and the west take so much for granted. I hope that the Minister will discuss these points with the Foreign Secretary, and that on this international human rights day of 10 December, the British Government will continue to be proactive in supporting the human rights of Tibetans in Tibet.

My requests are these. First, as a matter of urgency, I urge the British Government to call on China to engage in a broader and more substantive dialogue with Tibetan representatives, and to involve the Dalai Lama in discussions on Tibet’s future. There needs to be a more robust approach, given that the current approach is clearly not achieving anything.

Secondly, I urge the Government to strengthen policies towards China and Tibet, and to be more robust, with a clear stance and directive regarding human rights, civil society and democratic rights. The Government should adhere to their stance that human rights are integral to the United Kingdom’s foreign policy. Thirdly, I want the Government to challenge China’s policies in Tibet, in particular where the Chinese Government are flouting international standards on human rights and civil liberties. Fourthly, the Government should take the lead in the European Union in explicitly calling on the Chinese Government to address the policies in Tibet that threaten Tibetan culture, religion and identity and are the root cause of the crisis. These are the key grievances of the Tibetan people.

Fifthly, I urge the Government to prevail on the Chinese leadership to end the military build-up and to limit the dominance of the security apparatus in Tibet. Sixthly, I want the Government to initiate a scholarship scheme in the UK for Tibetans inside Tibet, as well as for Tibetan refugees. Seventhly, the Government should explore the possibility of cultural exchanges with Tibetans inside Tibet or, if that is not possible, with Tibetan refugee communities in India and Nepal, to help promote and preserve Tibetan culture. Eighthly, I want the Government to provide funding for a BBC Tibetan service. Ninthly, I urge the Government to call for medical parole for Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, who is serving a life sentence and is seriously ill.

Over the past seven years, I have been privileged to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama no fewer than eight times: twice in India, five times in London, including when he was awarded the Templeton prize at St Paul’s cathedral in May 2012, and once when he came to my home city of Leeds. I am grateful to both the office of the Dalai Lama in London and to the Tibet Society for their help in organising the visits of His Holiness to the UK, and to Mr Speaker for hosting the Dalai Lama in Parliament in 2012, against the advice given to him from certain quarters that such a meeting could damage relations with the People’s Republic of China. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister also deserve praise for agreeing to meet the Dalai Lama in 2012 at St Paul’s cathedral, an event that had repercussions for UK-China relations for many months afterwards.

I thank Philippa Carrick and Paul Golding from the Tibet Society and Chonpel Tsering from the office of the Dalai Lama for all their help in preparing my speech today. Finally, I strongly believe that Tibet and the Tibetan people should be free, and I will never give up my support for their struggle. I give everyone today the traditional Tibetan greeting: tashi delek, or blessings and good luck.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Before I call Mr Loughton, I remind the Chamber that I will call the shadow Minister at 10.40 am. We have 40 minutes and four speakers have indicated that they wish to speak.

10:01

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

Thank you, Mr Owen. I can do the maths. I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on battling against his health to be here today for a long overdue and important debate. It is right that the House has an opportunity to express solidarity with Tibetans and to question the continued oppression in the Tibetan autonomous region and of Tibetans across the world at the hands of the Chinese. I cannot rival his Jewish-Buddhist perspective or the number of times he has met His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I have only had the opportunity to meet him twice. I have not been able to go to Tibet, but I have travelled to Dharamsala and met many members of the Tibetan community there and heard the appalling stories they have to tell us. At the outset, I pay tribute to the Tibet Society and in particular to Philippa Carrick. It does fantastic work in keeping the flame of hope lit and the flag flying for the Tibetan cause in this country and beyond. I declare an interest as an officer of the all-party group for Tibet. I welcome the Minister, who has shown a genuine interest in this cause in the past, and I am sure he will be listening carefully to what everyone has to say.

The hon. Member for Leeds North East rightly said that today was an appropriate day for the debate, as it is human rights day, but it is also 25 years since the Tiananmen Square massacre, which is another reminder of China’s inability to allow free speech and expression within its borders. I am particularly concerned—I will not go into the detail of all the cases that he articulated—that the situation has been getting worse over the past six years, since the Beijing Olympics. There have been severe security crackdowns and restrictions on freedom of expression, religion, movement and assembly. The climate within the Tibetan autonomous region can be likened to that of a military occupation. I do not think it alarmist to say that the Chinese Government have effectively created a climate of fear within Tibet. They strive to regulate virtually every aspect of public and private life in order to crush any form of dissent against Community party rule.

There has also been a dramatic expansion in the powers of China’s policing and military apparatus in Tibet. As the hon. Gentleman said, many Tibetans in exile report that they cannot talk to their families in Tibet on the phone because of the danger they might be put in through that contact.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman is outlining the deteriorating situation regarding Tibet and China, but does he agree that as a society and a Government, we have to analyse the benefits of the UK-China human rights dialogue to see whether it is productive? It would appear that it was productive in the past in trying to de-escalate tensions between the United Kingdom and China. Should we analyse its benefits for the future?

[Tim Loughton]

Of course dialogue is best, but dialogue needs to take place on both sides. Everyone with an interest in Tibet needs to be given the freedom to express themselves in a peaceful way, and the Tibetans just have not been given that privilege within their borders or in other parts of the world. The Chinese Government, with their tentacles even in this country, try to suppress people who plead the cause for freedom of expression and freedom of movement for the Tibetan people. We need to adopt the guise of a critical friend and be in dialogue with China. We have much to benefit from trade and engagement with China, but it does not serve that cause or the cause of democracy that we hold so dear in this place if we turn a blind eye to the blatant suppression of the rights of millions of people who happen to live in part of what is China. It serves no purpose for what we are here to do if we carry on regardless. As a critical friend, dialogue is everything, but remember that some people are put in prison for trying to exercise just that right.

I am concerned about the escalation of surveillance and the issuing of propaganda by the Chinese within Tibet. They sent thousands of Chinese officials to carry out surveillance and what they call “political education”, and to disseminate propaganda. The example of forming a “correct view of art” shows how China’s tentacles go into every element of Tibetan society. The Chinese authorities have deemed it a counter-terrorism drive and, under that guise, they have organised large-scale military drills and intensified border security, and are holding training exercises for troops on responding to self-immolations and dealing with problems in monasteries—despite the absence of violent insurgency in Tibet. All the protests we have seen are peaceful.

Yesterday, the all-party group had a briefing from someone who recently travelled to Tibet and was allowed in as a tourist. Some of the worrying accounts he gave us of everyday life for Tibetans in their country are worth recounting. He had a Tibetan driver with a Tibetan car. There are fantastic new roads across the Tibetan autonomous region. In my constituency, we would die for such roads and the lack of congestion. The speed limit for Tibetans is 40 kph. Their arrival and departure from certain towns is closely monitored to see whether they have exceeded the speed limit. They are prosecuted or under fear of prosecution if there is any minor infraction of that speed limit, yet someone with Chinese plates is allowed to go a bit faster, it would appear. Police checkpoints are littered liberally across those roads, in the middle of nowhere—for what purpose?

Huge urbanisation is going on in the Tibetan autonomous region and, worryingly, most of the new businesses springing up are Chinese-owned. All the road signs are in Chinese, with the Tibetan language version in a small font underneath. People are unlikely to get work with Chinese businesses unless they speak Chinese, even within Tibet. We saw photographs of drones surveying monasteries across Tibet in a rather sinister way. We saw security cameras disguised as prayer wheels within monasteries and towns. We saw what Lhasa has become: a much changed place, I am sure, from when the hon. Member for Leeds North East visited some eight and a half years ago. For what is a holy place for many Tibetans is a sprawling modern city with the ubiquitous cloud of pollution overhanging it, as we see in so many parts of China. The region is home to some 3 million Tibetans, but receives approximately 13 million Chinese visitors. There has been huge immigration of Han Chinese into Tibet, swamping the language and culture and trying to dilute Tibet’s history by sheer weight of numbers. It happens day in, day out, and Tibetans have to suffer this oppression with a depressed resignation that can be seen in the faces of the people in the photographs and film we were shown.

Surveillance happens not only in person, but online. Reprisals are likely following searches for subjects such as “democracy”, “the Dalai Lama” and “Tiananmen square”. State censorship and the suppression of free expression are widespread across China, but since the protests that broke out across Tibet in March 2008, the Chinese Government have strengthened attempts to impose an information black-out across Tibet. That it is an offence to display the Tibetan flag—even a digital image on a mobile phone—because it is deemed to be a separatist activity punishable with a prison sentence, shows just how paranoid the Chinese have become. Singing a song can lead to a jail sentence. People who were legitimately protesting online about abuses in the fur trade earlier this year have also ended up in jail. It is an outrage that people suffer persecution and torture in prison and are then released before they die so they are not deemed to have died from their injuries in jail.

This House has a duty to flag up the abuse suffered by one of the most peace-loving peoples I have ever come across. To liken the Dalai Lama to a terrorist is quite extraordinary when he has spent his life preaching peace and harmony between peoples around the globe. He stands for freedom of worship and of expression. The Tibetans’ struggle for their culture, language, heritage and soul is one we have a duty to do everything we can to support.

I will end on the chilling note that the suppression is not only happening in Tibet. The tentacles of the Chinese Government reach into other Governments and local authorities and within education establishments and universities. I am particularly worried about the Confucius institutes or cultural centres that are co-operating with universities across the world. They have discriminatory hiring practices and seek to impose censorship on topics such as human rights, the Tiananmen Square massacre and any dialogue about Tibet. We must seek out, expose and resist such censorship of our freedom to speak out. When I was a Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), who cannot be here today, and I were warned off meeting the Dalai Lama at a private lunch because it might upset the Chinese—tough. We need transparency of dialogue and to be able to speak freely. When speaking freely in the House, we must say loud and clear that the Tibetan people’s struggle is a struggle for democracy and free speech in which all of us have an interest.

10:14

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), as I am also a member of the all-party parliamentary group for Tibet. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on getting this timely debate. I will not go into the individual cases that he carefully and properly raised. An important aspect of today’s debate is that we get the names of those brave Tibetans who are being held in custody or have been imprisoned for long sentences out to the rest of the world, and that has been done well this morning.

Looking through Tibet Watch’s excellent booklet, “Broken promises”, I was reminded of how we were all were duped—or how many people were; I feel personally that I was not—into feeling that if China got the Olympics, it would make such a difference and China would do all these wonderful things, changing its whole attitude to human rights. We went along with that, but what has happened? Not a single thing has changed in relation to Tibet. Indeed, as has been mentioned, things are getting worse by the day.

I, too, had the privilege of hearing from the gentleman at yesterday’s meeting who had recently been to Tibet. It is clear that the Chinese Government are making a huge attempt to rapidly change the face of Tibet—not just to change civil liberties and human rights, but to change the physical structure of Tibet. Some 13 million Chinese tourists visited Tibet last year, and we are seeing a concentration of Chinese people who are given money to go and settle in Tibet. The Chinese Government want to eliminate every last sign or vestige of Tibetan culture and the history of that wonderful country. We must be clear that none of our warm words about working closely with China seems to be having any effect whatever. I will be interested to hear what the Minister says about that.

I want to go into a little more detail about something that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham mentioned. I am also concerned about the Confucius institutes, of which I think there are now 24 in the United Kingdom. These are Chinese Government-funded cultural centres that are set up at universities all over the world, although the UK has the second highest number after the United States. Several universities in the United States and Canada—including the university of Chicago, Pennsylvania State university and the Toronto district school board—recently pulled out of relationships with Confucius institutes because of accusations and proof of discriminatory hiring practices and censorship of certain topics. In order for a university to receive Chinese money, the Chinese do not want any mention of Tibet or any criticism of anything that is happening.

I was privileged to hear recently from an American professor at a meeting in Parliament about how China’s influence on an American university is threatening freedom of speech. If we cannot have freedom of speech in our universities, we really are on a slippery slope. It is worrying and sad that one of our most famous universities, the London School of Economics, has been reluctant to give out information on how much money it has been getting from China. It is only through journalists’ use of freedom of information requests that we have discovered the exact amounts given out. It has been revealed that the LSE

“has received £863,537.91 from the Chinese state for housing a Confucian Centre and a further $33,000 for teaching Chinese government officials via BHP Billiton, a mining conglomerate.”

If China has 25 of these cultural outposts right at the hearts of our main universities, that funding will extend to several million pounds. Of course that may sound wonderful—isn’t that great: universities that are suffering from a shortage of resources are getting money directly from China? The danger, however, is that no matter how much the university hierarchies say that that will not influence or affect what they do, the reality on the ground is that it does. In fact, they are taking what could be said to be Chinese gold in return for getting out Chinese propaganda—sometimes subtly, sometimes less subtly. I really believe that our Government should be investigating this and making sure—[Interruption.]

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Order. I think the hon. Lady’s phone is vibrating and being picked up by the microphones.

[Kate Hoey]

I am sorry. The phone is turned off. I am glad I am not in Tibet, because it would have been monitored.

There is a serious issue. We are seeing Chinese developments coming into this country, into London, and the big money coming in to build tower blocks and hotels. On the subject of hotels, let me say how shocking it was that InterContinental Hotels went ahead and built one in Lhasa that employs Chinese people and is part of efforts there to destroy Tibetan culture. Tibet groups across the world are trying hard to organise some kind of boycott of InterContinental Hotels, because of what the company is doing in that part of Tibet. We must get to the bottom of the money that is coming in

There have also been incidents, such as the ones we heard about only yesterday, which happened recently in Sheffield, where there are substantial numbers of Chinese students. Many of those students are very political indeed, and we heard about the example of a shop owner who had put a Tibetan flag in the window. I do not think it was a huge flag; nevertheless, they were threatened that if they did not take it down, things would happen. In fact, the windows were broken, which was reported to the police, but the attitude was, “Well, this was just students being a bit silly.”

The reality is that this is not students being a little silly. What is happening here is coming from the very top in China. I am very worried indeed that unless we face up to it early, China will do in this country and other parts of Europe what it has done in Africa, which is to go in and simply use its money as a way of getting its message across and its way of doing things. That relates directly to Tibet, in the sense that Tibet is the issue in this country that gets the most publicity in our universities, and yet many of our students are being stopped from getting their message across because of the worry about China.

I would add that South Africa recently refused to give His Holiness the Dalai Lama a visa, which meant that the conference of all Nobel prize winners had to be cancelled—it is now happening in Rome, in Italy, this week. Meanwhile, the Chinese Government, having put pressure on South Africa, immediately thanked the South African Government and more or less said, “We will now do something for you, as you were so kind as to stop the Dalai Lama visiting.”

We are getting to the point where I want to ask our Government, “What dreadful thing would the Chinese Government have to do in order for our Government to start standing up to China?” What would have to happen for us to start calling in the Chinese ambassador and doing things that make a difference, such as saying, “I’m sorry, we might need the money—the investment is great—but you, China, are fundamentally a pariah state and we’re going to treat you as such”? Unless we start standing up to China, as the European Union or as a country, it will not buckle to anything other than force, in terms of what we are saying—I am not suggesting we invade China, but I am suggesting that we start to mean what we say.

Warm words have come out of all Governments, including this one and the previous one. We were the last country not to recognise that Tibet was part of China, but David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary in the previous Government, changed that, telling the House that it would make a great difference and that China would start behaving better. Of course that did not happen.

China has a terrible human rights record not only in Tibet, but all over China. I want the Minister to outline clearly what more the Chinese have to do to people in Tibet and through their influence in this country before we as a British Government say, “Enough is enough.”

10:25

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to make a contribution, Mr Owen, thank you.

I thank the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) for bringing the subject to the House for consideration. As the Democratic Unionist party’s spokesperson for human rights, I am delighted to be in a position to contribute to today’s debate. Religious persecution in Tibet is not only a matter of ethnic or religious conflict, or discrimination by a majority against a minority, but is politically motivated and consciously implemented as a policy to realise political aims. That is what is happening in Tibet, which is why are speaking about it today. I am always pleased to see the Minister in his place, because he is totally committed to addressing the issue of religious persecution wherever it may be in the world. I have heard his contributions in the House, but I am also aware of his work and of the many countries that he visits. We appreciate that very much.

The issues in Tibet started in the 1950s and heightened throughout the 1960s, and the Dalai Lama and some 100,000 Tibetans fled to India. Within a few years, nearly all of the more than 500,000 monks and nuns were driven from the 6,000-plus monasteries and nunneries of Tibet, virtually all of which were destroyed. Many monks and nuns were tortured, killed, imprisoned or forced to disrobe. A few years later, during the cultural revolution, any display of religion was prohibited, punishable by beatings and imprisonment, and all religious objects were confiscated and destroyed.

A campaign for political re-education, the so-called “patriotic education campaign”—sounds very Chinese—was instituted in the monasteries in 1996 to implement the goals of the third work forum. Political work teams were sent into monasteries and nunneries throughout Tibet, including many where monks and nuns had never been involved in demonstrations or protest. The work teams are frequently accompanied by armed police, who stand guard over the monks and nuns as the members of the work teams speak.

Re-education combines investigation and interrogation of individual monks and nuns with lectures by political workers. It is clear that individual liberties have been taken away and religious views discounted, with monks and nuns given the correct answers to a series of questions on Tibetan politics, history and religion. They are then required to take written examinations and sign a written affidavit of loyalty to China. To pass and to be allowed to remain, monks and nuns must agree that Tibet has always been part of China. Asking a Tibetan to be part of China is like asking me, as a British citizen, to be part of Ireland. It is impossible; I would not accede to it and neither should they. Monks and nuns must also assent to characterisations of the Dalai Lama as a criminal, unfit to be a religious leader and not worthy of veneration. Refusing to participate in the re-education is not allowed. Monks and nuns who attempt to boycott the sessions are arrested and imprisoned. Failure to comply with the demands of the work team and to denounce the Dalai Lama results in expulsion or arrest. That is a clear violation of individual liberties and an attempt to direct religious viewpoints.

In 2014 the situation in Tibet has not improved, as all the Members who have spoken today have outlined. Every aspect of Tibetan life is under siege from a Chinese leadership determined gradually to eradicate a whole culture. That cannot be allowed and it is an issue that must be addressed. The Tibetan flag and national anthem are banned. Possession even of a picture of the Dalai Lama can result in torture and imprisonment.

[Lady Hermon]

Chinese companies are now investing in Northern Ireland. Will the hon. Gentleman confirm whether his party leader—who is by happy coincidence the First Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly—makes any representations about Tibet to those Chinese companies before they invest?

[Jim Shannon]

I am not aware of what the First Minister does, but I suggest that we should have done so and that he needs to do so. Similarly, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) mentioned direct contact and using all available opportunities. I know that the Minister who is here today does it, and I am sure that he will outline such issues.

Even children in Tibet face abuses of their freedom and human rights. Tibetans are not free to protest or speak openly about their situation, and even peaceful demonstrations are met with heavy-handed military crackdowns. In 2008, thousands of Tibetans staged the largest protests in Tibet for over 50 years, and demonstrations swept across the entire Tibetan plateau. Chinese authorities arrested an estimated 6,000 protesters; about 1,000 of them are still unaccounted for. Where are they? What questions have the Government asked about those forgotten people and forgotten prisoners—if they are still alive?

We are all aware of the Tibetan monks who, horrifically, have set fire to themselves as a method of protest to highlight these issues. Every one of us can remember those horrific, horrendous stories of people driven to extremes to express themselves and to seek liberty, the democratic process and the right to religious freedom through their deaths.

Prisons in Tibet are full of people detained for simply expressing their desire for freedom. People have been arrested and sentenced to prison for peaceful acts, such as distributing leaflets or sending information abroad about events in Tibet. We take such things for granted in this country because they are part of our democratic right—we are speaking about them democratically here today. Yet those everyday freedoms—those small acts of democracy—that we enjoy, as part of the great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Tibet can lead to imprisonment and even torture. The clear violation of human rights is shocking. As a country, through this debate today and through our Government, we have to take action.

Reporters Without Borders ranked China 175th out of the 180 countries on its press freedom index. There are more foreign journalists in North Korea than in Tibet. Despite what by our own standards we can describe only as atrocities, this week a top Chinese official in Brussels told reporters that China does not need lessons on human rights from the EU; well, actually, it does. Li Junhua—putting a Northern Ireland accent on a Chinese name—a director-general in the Foreign Affairs Ministry, has said that China has its own model of human rights. It does, but that model does not conform to the model that we have in the free west. He claimed that China had a clear understanding of how human rights will be carried out in his country and was confident of its own model.

The US diplomat Sarah Sewall recently claimed that there was

“not a degree of freedom for Tibetans within China”

after meeting Tibetan refugees from Nepal and India and gleaning first-hand information about their lives in the country before they had to flee because of persecution. Clearly the ongoing hardships and crimes against them that Tibetans still face on a daily basis back up Ms Sewall’s point. Tibetans cannot enjoy any freedoms, which in turn means they are denied their basic human rights. That is the issue. The Chinese may well measure their version of human rights differently from those of us in the EU and the USA, but that does not mean that we should simply sit back and accept the situation, because ultimately it is not good enough.

It is not good enough that people are denied their freedoms—freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of speech, to name just a few. People have fought and died to secure those rights; in 2014, Tibetans are either fleeing, being imprisoned or being killed to try to secure them. We must let the Tibetans know that they are not struggling in vain or suffering in silence. We must do all that we can—at Westminster, in Brussels and on the world stage—to persuade China to change its oppressive ways in its bid for political support.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

I will be calling the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson at 10.40 am at the latest.

10:33

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Thank you for allowing me to contribute to the debate, Mr Owen, albeit fairly briefly. The debate is timely and I applaud the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) for securing it.

The situation in Tibet is very sad, given the impression we get in the west these days of China as a whole. China’s situation is one of enormous progress, with an incredible reduction in poverty and a scientific and intellectual flowering the like of which we do not often see in a country of its size. We ought to celebrate and welcome that.

Yet when it comes to Tibet, we still see what appears to be a throwback to a darker and harsher era in China’s history: the catalogue of human rights abuses that hon. Members have referred to, arbitrary and unjustified arrests, suppression of freedom of speech and the systematic undermining of Tibetan culture. We hear a language that harks back almost to Maoist terminology—reference to “correct views of art” or to “secessionist sabotage”, or the Xinhua news agency congratulating President Xi on

“emphasising the integration of ideology and artistic values”.

That post-Maoist language has a chilling tone with regard to Tibet in particular, because it suggests that the impression of progress and positive development in China as a whole masks some very negative developments.

If I had to say something about the Tibetan Government in exile—now with an elected leader in Lobsang Sangay, as the Dalai Lama has handed over political power—it is that the Chinese are astonishingly lucky that that Government in exile are campaigning for liberation and freedom in Tibet. There are so many more violent models for resistance—so many more disruptive, antisocial and potentially threatening ways in which various peoples around the world try to achieve self-determination and freedom of expression—yet the opposition in Tibet has consistently advocated peaceful change and dialogue with Beijing. It has even accepted that the sovereignty of Tibet is probably not going to be re-established and that it is really searching for some kind of accommodation with the Chinese state. Yet that opposition is met with incredibly aggressive language and a heavy-handed and oppressive response from the Chinese authorities.

As for the wider situation, I seem to take part in a lot of debates—whether on cybercrime, wildlife crime, militarisation in east Asia, China’s aggressive relations with some of its neighbours, including Taiwan, Japan and Vietnam, China’s indulgence of various dictatorships in Africa, or the situation in Hong Kong—during which, in each case, we say that China is not pursuing the responsible and statesmanlike approach we would expect of a new world power or superpower. Yet we never seem to join up the dots or sit back to look at the situation and ask, have we had a sophisticated enough policy towards China? Has that policy simply been too focused on trade, investment and the economic benefits of our relationships with China—not just as the UK, but as part of the European Union and the international community? Do we now need to wake up to some of the worrying developments: abuses of human rights, suppression of freedom of expression, and aggressive stances towards—in the case of the people of Tibet—some of the most vulnerable and disempowered people in the world? Do we need a more sophisticated and developed policy towards China?

At the end of his speech the hon. Member for Leeds North East read out a list of specific things he was asking for. If I had to pick out one as the most important, it would be to take a lead within the European Union on developing a new approach and asking the Chinese Government to address the issue of policies toward Tibet that threaten Tibetan culture. As the European Union, we are not so subject to the divide and rule approach. Other hon. Members referred to relations between this country and China, or between South Africa and China or Norway and China. When one country takes a stand, it is more vulnerable than we will be if we take a collective and collaborative approach across the international community.

There is much to celebrate in our relationship with China. I know the Minister has enormous expertise on the part of the world we are debating. However, the current situation, in which the international community appears to be showing a rather aimless indifference towards the plight of the people of Tibet, simply cannot go on.

10:38

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing this debate. His long-term commitment to the Tibetan people and their cause is outstanding.

As my hon. Friend said, it is particularly fitting to be debating the subject this morning, as today is human rights day. The UN’s theme for this year’s human right’s day is “Human Rights 365”, which makes the point that we should be concerned about human rights not just on one day a year, but every day of the year. As has been said, it has been several years since the subject of Tibet was debated in Parliament, so it is useful to make the point that it is not a concern that should just pop up occasionally. As the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) has just said, Tibet should be raised as an issue of concern whenever our Government have dealings with China, be it a trade mission meeting or another form of engagement. I hope the Minister can reassure me that that is indeed the case.

The sovereignty of Tibet is not really on the table at the moment; the discussion is more about a middle way, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East outlined. I should make it clear that the Labour party recognises Tibet as part of China, but that does not mean that we cannot support meaningful autonomy for Tibet. The issue can be resolved only by genuine dialogue between the Government of China and representatives of the Dalai Lama, but talks have been stalled since 2010. I do not want to repeat all the questions that have been put to the Minister, but the British Government could play an important role in getting those talks moving again, and I hope we will hear from the Minister about that.

As the hon. Member for Cheltenham said, the Chinese are fortunate that the approach taken by the Tibetan leaders has been to urge a peaceful solution. They have shown remarkable restraint and taken a measured approach. The Chinese Government should recognise that and be prepared to engage with them.

We have heard several strong speeches about the abuse of human rights—particularly the restrictions on freedom of expression and the use of violence as a means of repression. We have also heard about how the human rights situation seems to be deteriorating and about the growing influence of Chinese culture—how its pervasive impact is gradually making Tibetan culture secondary. That is particularly true of the development of Lhasa.

I do not want to repeat all those points, but I would reiterate a number of concerns. I was particularly struck by the number of musicians my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North East mentioned. Often, they are at the forefront of expressing dissent, even though the examples he gave could hardly be regarded as incitement to great political insurgency. The fact that China is cracking down on the arts and cultural diversity by sending artists to rural areas to form a “correct view of art” is quite a totalitarian response, and we should be very concerned about that.

Campaigners have been jailed for messaging each other even about an anti-fur campaign. Bloggers have been jailed. Nuns were expelled from a nunnery last month after they failed to denounce the Dalai Lama during a police raid. There are many other examples, and the fact that I am not going into great detail about them does not mean we are not hugely concerned—it is just that we have heard from the people I mentioned, and I am also keen to give the Minister time to respond.

We did not hear that much about self-immolations. There have been 133 since 2009, and the vast majority of the people involved have died, while details of the well-being and whereabouts of some of the others are not known. The fact that people are prepared to resort to such extreme measures and feel that is the only way to get their views across is the most harrowing indictment of human rights in Tibet.

The Chinese Government have now criminalised self-immolations, rather than responding to the underlying reasons why people would resort to such drastic measures. Since December 2012, anyone potentially associated with a self-immolation risks a charge of intentional homicide, which is subject to the death penalty. Family members could be arrested even for their involvement in the funeral of someone who self-immolated. Last year, Lobsan Kunchok received a death sentence, suspended for two years, on such a charge, while more than 40 Tibetans were sentenced to prison last year. I hope the Minister will tell us what representations he has made about those cases, against the intentional homicide law and against the use of the death penalty.

I recognise why the Government are so keen to promote trade links with China. Our bilateral relationship is incredibly important and we value it, but that does not mean we should be silent on human rights. We need a much more strategic engagement that allows the UK to raise human rights concerns and to meet the Dalai Lama without fear of being frozen out. I hope the Minister will agree that the Government’s commitment to business and human rights—the business and human rights action plan was published just over a year ago—should mean that no Minister from any Department visits China without being prepared to raise such issues.

The Foreign Office’s latest “Human Rights and Democracy” report noted

“concerns around the consequences of resource extraction and allegations of corruption.”

British businesses do not tend to operate in Tibet at the moment, although we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) about InterContinental’s regrettable decision to open a resort in Lhasa. It would be helpful if the Minister told us whether concerns about corruption and human rights in Tibet have been reflected in the advice the UK offers British businesses, and whether the UK uses its trading links with China to address those concerns.

I want to touch briefly on environmental considerations, which have not been mentioned. Tibet is often referred to as the third pole, as it is home to the largest concentration of ice and glaciers outside of the Arctic and the Antarctic, providing an invaluable water source but also making Tibet especially vulnerable to the impact of climate change, and meaning that Tibetans face the threat of forced migration. China’s new commitment to action on climate change and its agreement with the US provide welcome leadership on the international stage. Talks are going on in Lima, leading up to Paris 2015, but it is important that China demonstrate responsible stewardship in Tibet and look after the environment there. I would be grateful if the Minister updated us—he can do this in writing, because he has a lot of questions to reply to—on any talks the Government have had with the Chinese authorities about the Tibetan environment and Greenpeace’s report earlier this year exposing illegal mining on the Tibetan plateau. Greenpeace says that that operation covers 14 times the area of the City of London, and it believes that the mining violates water protection laws.

My final point is about access for the media, non-governmental organisations and other groups wanting to visit the Tibet Autonomous Region. It is disappointing that the British embassy’s requests to visit it last year were declined. Perhaps the Minister can update us on the prospects for future visits. The EU special representative for human rights and a number of diplomatic missions have been permitted. I hope the Minister will agree that it is important that the UK and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights have discussed with China the possibility of visiting Tibet. I hope the Minister and the British embassy will do all they can to support that and visit Tibet.

10:39

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Hugo Swire)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds North East (Fabian Hamilton) on securing the debate, particularly given that it is international human rights day. I pay tribute to his expertise on these issues, which he spoke about so eloquently. Of course, he has two advantages over me: one is that he has met His Holiness the Dalai Lama on a number of occasions; the other is that he has actually visited Tibet—something that I have yet to do.

The subject commands such interest right across the House that it deserves rather more than an hour-and-a-half Westminster Hall debate, and it would be good if we could return to the subject. I will try in the time that remains to answer all the points raised, but if I miss any out, I will undertake to write to hon. Members.

So as to avoid any misunderstanding, I will restate the Government’s policy on Tibet. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister outlined in Parliament on 8 May 2013, our position on Tibet is clear and unchanged from that of the previous Government: we regard Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China. We do not support Tibetan independence.

We have a strong relationship with China, and we understand that, for China, Tibet remains a sensitive issue. The Chinese Government are well aware of the United Kingdom’s position; in fact, the Prime Minister reaffirmed it with Premier Li during the UK-China summit in London in June. Those high-level discussions form part of a broader engagement with the Chinese Government, in which we seek to ensure that all citizens, including Tibetans, fully enjoy their rights under the Chinese constitution.

We welcome the significant economic investments the Chinese Government have made in Tibetan areas, leading to improvements in the standard of living, health care and life expectancy, as shown in the fact that the area’s gross regional product is estimated to have seen average annual growth of 8.5% over the last 50 years.

We welcome President Xi’s public commitment to ensure that, by 2020, China is ruled according to the law, respecting and protecting human rights. We would expect that to apply to Tibetans as much as to people in Shanghai, Wuhan or Beijing. However, as the Chinese Government have acknowledged, proper implementation will be key, so we, along with our EU partners and the United Nations, will follow those matters closely. Importantly, we have shown clarity and consistency in our position on human rights in China. That happens through the UK-China human rights dialogue, which the hon. Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), who is no longer in his place, mentioned. The UK is one of a handful of EU member states that engage with China in that way. It happens also through our Foreign and Commonwealth Office human rights report and its quarterly updates; through our work at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva; and through actively pressing for an EU-China human rights dialogue.

Hon. Members rightly raised some individual cases. During the UK-China human rights dialogue in London this year, we raised more than 20 individual cases, a quarter of which related to freedom of expression. The hon. Member for Leeds North East spoke about Dhondup Wangchen, and we have raised his case. He was of course arrested in 2008 for filming a documentary recording the reactions of ordinary Tibetans to the Olympic games.

Ethnic minority rights remain a concern; my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has consistently raised that issue in relation to Tibet, even when he was a Minister. As he pointed out, cultural rights are incredibly important in all societies and should be actively protected in all countries. We have discussed ethnic minority issues with China on numerous occasions, including during the UK-China human rights dialogue in May and during China’s universal periodic review in October 2013. We would like further progress on promoting freedom of religion and belief in China, particularly in minority areas. We regard freedom of thought, conscience and belief as a universal human right and, as such, it is a priority for the FCO across the world.

The hon. Member for Leeds North East raised a number of questions. We continue to encourage dialogue and we raise human rights concerns. We work through the EU, and the EU-China human rights dialogue happened only last week. We encourage proportionate security responses in China, as, indeed, we do everywhere else. As to scholarships, we have a big Chevening programme in China, which I have been actively promoting. Tibetans have taken places on the Chevening scholarship programme in the past and are welcome to apply again. We commend the work of non-Government groups in the area of cultural exchanges. I think the British Council could probably do more, and I will ask it to consider what more it could do. The point about the BBC is an issue; it comes just as we have got rid of responsibility for the World Service. It is bombarded with requests relating to where it should broadcast around the world. Matters to do with where to broadcast, and programming and radio, are best addressed to the BBC.

We share the concern of the hon. Member for Leeds North East about the conviction of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, and about his health. We have raised the matter in Beijing, and I urge consideration of parole on medical grounds. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) raised the issue of immolations. We had a spate of questions about self-immolations about a year ago, when there was a series of them. It is not something that we should take our eyes off. We urge the Chinese authorities to ensure the protection of their citizens’ constitutional rights in line with the international frameworks to which China is a party. The development of civil society and the application of human rights under the rule of law are essential to China’s long-term prosperity and stability, and it is with deep concern that we note that at least 130 Tibetans have attempted self-immolation, often fatally, since February 2009.

The hon. Members for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) and for Bristol East talked about the InterContinental hotel in Lhasa and our advice to British businesses about investment. We encourage all British companies to be aware of the human rights risks in the countries where they propose investing. Our overseas business risk guide for China provides information on key risks, including human rights risks, that UK businesses may face when operating in China. Last September, we were the first country to publish a national action plan on business and human rights, setting out our commitments as a Government to implementing the UN guiding principles.

I want to deal head-on with the question raised by the hon. Members for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) and for Vauxhall about whether there is a binary choice between human rights and investment in doing trade with China. I utterly reject that. I do not think that there is such a choice, and I do not apologise for this Government’s desire to rebuild the economy as part of our long-term economic plan to attract increasing inward investment from China. That is critical to renewing our national infrastructure. Bilateral trade is as important to companies in my constituency as it is to the constituencies of the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady. I do not think that we have anything to apologise for on that. We are robust in maintaining a dialogue with the Chinese Government on a range of issues, and Tibet is of course one of those.

We work increasingly closely with the Chinese Government on various issues. We are both members of the UN Security Council, and we work together as part of the E3 plus 3 process on Iran. The hon. Member for Bristol East mentioned climate change; we have invested an enormous amount in our relationship with the Chinese in relation to combating climate change. It would simply not be possible, as she pointed out, to reach any kind of meaningful global deal at next year’s COP 21 in Paris without a constructive approach from Beijing. We need to work side by side with the Chinese on global challenges of the moment, such as combating Ebola and—this is timely—today’s London summit, hosted by the Prime Minister, on ending the online sexual exploitation of children. Our relationship with China is dynamic and must be carefully balanced, but I utterly reject the point that we are in some way subjugating our principles on human rights because of Chinese money. It is not the case at all.

I want to reiterate the Government’s position on His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama is recognised worldwide as an important religious figure and esteemed Nobel laureate, having been awarded the peace prize in 1989. Given that he has stated publicly that he does not seek Tibetan independence, we encourage the Chinese Government and Tibetan interest groups to seek a peaceful resolution to their differences through a resumption of dialogue. Dialogue with non-governmental organisations and interest groups is something that the British Government undertake as a matter of course in every country that we engage with. As part of that, I met a number of Tibetan groups in June, and my officials consulted them ahead of our human rights dialogue in May. We will continue to use broad-based engagement as an integral part of promoting our values around the world.

[Kate Hoey]

The Minister has not said anything about his or the Government’s view of the Confucius institutes and the university funding issue.

[Mr Swire]

May I write to the hon. Lady on that? I want to conclude.

Our long-standing position remains that we do not support Tibetan independence, but we believe that Tibet’s long-term stability is best achieved through respect for universal human rights and genuine autonomy within the framework of the Chinese constitution, so we continue to engage actively and constructively with the Chinese Government as they work to improve human rights and the rule of law across China, including in Tibet. I thank the hon. Member for Leeds North East for this opportunity to re-state the Government’s position, and other hon. Members for their remarks today. I am sure that they will keep questioning the Government, as is their duty and right. I in turn will, as I said, undertake to write to them to answer the questions I did not have time to address in this morning’s extremely good debate.

Sickle Cell Anaemia

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to debate this matter under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. Sickle cell anaemia affects an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 people in the UK and around 400 people in the west midlands, where my constituency lies. The associated condition, thalassaemia, affects around 1,000 people, although hundreds of thousands more in our country carry the trait for these conditions. They mainly, but not exclusively, affect the Afro-Caribbean community.

Sickle cell anaemia is the most common genetically inherited condition in the UK. Roughly one baby every day is born with the condition in our country. There is no known cure and for those who have it, the symptoms can vary from relatively mild, infrequent pain to much more serious episodes of crisis, frequent hospital admissions, strokes, often in very young people, organ damage and reduced life span. At the heart of the debate about treatment for the condition lies one simple question: why, with all the progress that has been made—there has been progress—is there still such variability in the treatment for sufferers, leading to enormous and debilitating pain, unnecessary and expensive hospital admissions and damaging consequences for the families of those who suffer from sickle cell anaemia?

Some hospitals and some specialist care units do a fantastic job, but patients with sickle cell anaemia do not want islands of excellence. They want an excellent system that offers high quality integrated care that minimises hospital admissions, manages pain treatment and enhances quality of life wherever they live in the country. The experience of patients, as told to me and to others, is that we are still a long way from having a system in place that delivers that standard of care wherever people live.

I pay tribute to the work of the Wolverhampton sickle cell care and social activity centre based in Bilston in my constituency and to the other patient-led groups around the country, to the Sickle Cell Society, which is the national organisation that speaks up for sufferers, and to the work of the all-party group on sickle cell and thalassaemia, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott).

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The right hon. Gentleman and the House know that people are living longer. On average, people live into their 80s or thereabouts, but life expectancy for those with sickle cell anaemia is 40 to 50, which is better than it was. Can the Minister and the NHS do more with private pharmaceutical companies to try to find a method of prolonging their life? It may not be as good as 80, but it could certainly better than 40 to 50.

[Mr McFadden]

That is a very good point. Shortened life span is one effect of the condition, and there is certainly more to do on the research and treatment fronts.

Organisations such as those I mentioned are doing a tremendous job in explaining what the condition means for sufferers, calling for more attention to it, and pressing for better training for NHS staff and a more rounded way of providing treatment. I have had extensive contact over the past seven years or so with the Wolverhampton sickle cell care group. It provides hugely needed and valuable support for sufferers, which may be anything from helping patients to deal with different governmental agencies and helping their families through crises when they have to be admitted to hospital, to a broader advocacy role. The group praises many NHS staff locally, but their biggest and most consistent complaint is about lack of understanding of the condition among GPs, A and E staff and some other NHS staff, leading to pain and delay for sufferers and bad consequences for their families.

The group told me about Sharon, a single parent of two children under the age of 10 who has full sickle cell disease and is in frequent crisis. Every time she is admitted to hospital, there is a desperate scramble among friends and relatives to ensure care for her children. There is no proper system in place to support her children, and the stress on her and her family is enormous. She discharges herself from hospital early, often before proper treatment is complete, because she has to look after her children, so the whole pattern soon begins again. Is there not a better way to manage Sharon’s pain than through frequent hospital admissions and incomplete treatment? If she does have to be admitted, should there not be a better system of support for her children?

The group also told me about a local man in his 40s who has gone for years without treatment for bleeding at the back of his eyes as a result of sickle cell disease. His sight is now at risk, but earlier treatment might have brought about a different outcome.

The Sickle Cell Society told me about a patient who was costing the NHS a fortune through repeated hospital admissions, exacerbated by the fact that her children slept in the one bed in her flat and she did not have a bed. Eventually, the charity was able to help her to buy her a bed and that made a huge difference. The cost of her hospital admissions could have paid for a hundred beds.

We will never reach the stage where no patient with sickle cell anaemia needs to be admitted to hospital, but getting the care right has the potential to reduce hospital admissions, making the condition easier to manage for the patient and saving the NHS a considerable amount of money. The fact that there is no cure does not mean that good professional care cannot make a difference.

That brings me to the national picture and the peer review of specialist care carried out by the west midlands quality review service and the UK Forum on Haemoglobin Disorders, which was published last year. The review visited 29 hospitals and reviewed the care provided. The aim of the care standards that have been developed is quite simple: there should be specialist haemoglobinopathy teams based in hospitals, backed up by a local haemoglobinopathy team. In other words, the system should have both the expertise to offer the best care and properly connect primary and hospital care. That is a good aim, but the reality is much more varied and therein is one of main causes of frustration for sickle cell disease sufferers and the organisations that speak out for them.

The peer review process found instances of excellent joined-up practice. It found committed staff going the extra mile to deliver the best care, but it also found overstretch, patchiness, breakdowns in care pathways and an unacceptable degree of variability across the country. The report says:

“Cooperation between acute and community nursing teams was sometimes very good but this was not universal. The availability of social work and psychology support was variable”.

It continued:

“In many teams there were inadequate numbers of nursing staff for the number of patients, or in some cases no acute nurse specialist at all. Even where these posts were in place they often had a very high workload which included inappropriate tasks”

such as

“filling in benefit forms…with very poor cover arrangements.”

The peer review process also found that, particularly in non-haematology parts of the system, patients

“perceived they were viewed as ‘second class’ haematology patients.”

That point about how sickle cell patients view their own experience is critical. They often feel that they are treated either with a lack of understanding or, even worse, sometimes with suspicion when they try to explain their condition or arrive at A and E in need of urgent pain relief. Lack of understanding can lead not only to poor care, but to patients feeling they have not been treated with dignity and that their need for treatment is not respected.

I do not need to remind the Minister that the very principle of the NHS means there should be no such thing as first-class and second-class patients. I do not want to see anyone treated as, or feeling as though they have been treated as, a second-class citizen. The whole basis of the NHS, paid for collectively with treatment on the basis of need, is that everyone is a first-class citizen. If there are sufferers of a genetically inherited condition who do not feel they are being treated as such, that is not acceptable and something we should take very seriously indeed.

Another issue identified by the peer review process is poor quality of data. That leaves us unsure about the number of sufferers and unsure, beyond emergency admissions, about the resources devoted to treating the condition. How can we ensure that there is the right treatment if we do not know how many sufferers there are or where they are? What is the Minister doing to improve those clearly identifiable data problems?

The peer review made a number of good and important recommendations about access to specialist care, staffing levels, training, psychological support and managing the important transition between paediatric and adult care. Those issues are absolutely central to the experience of sickle cell patients. Can the Minister tell us this morning what is happening to those peer review recommendations? Will he undertake to go through them not in a general way, but point by point, and to give a progress report to the House if not today, then soon and in writing? Such a report would be welcomed by sufferers and would ensure that there was follow-up on these important recommendations.

Then there is, for patients, the basic cost of living with the condition. To live with sickle cell is to live with pain, and that often means frequent prescriptions. For some patients, the cost can be prohibitive. This is not just a matter of money, but of behaviour. If people do not use their pain relief efficiently because they cannot afford more, it can affect their condition. I appreciate the cost pressures on the NHS, but will the Minister agree to commission a departmental analysis on whether free prescriptions for sickle cell sufferers would cost money or lead to net savings because they would reduce avoidable hospital admissions?

What of how sickle cell care is to be delivered in the future? NHS England is currently the body responsible for commissioning care for rare diseases. That is sensible, because sufferers might be concentrated in different parts of the country and sometimes there may be few sufferers. However, a review is taking place into how that will be done in the future, the results of which are due next year. There are three possible models: continuing with national commissioning, co-commissioning with clinical commissioning groups locally, or leaving it all to CCGs. Given that concern already exists about the large variation in the quality of treatment, knowledge of the condition and the priority given to it, sickle cell organisations fear that a move to only local CCG commissioning will exacerbate the problems. Can the Minister ensure that the way treatment is organised in future is in line with the central aim of the peer review exercise—to deal with the variability of treatment issue—rather than its being organised in such a way as to make it more difficult? I repeat that our aim should be a system that makes the best the norm, rather than balkanising care and creating a lottery, depending on where sufferers live.

Sickle cell anaemia is an issue that deserves more attention than it has received and a greater priority in the delivery of high-quality health care. In some ways, it is less about knowing what the best care looks like and more about ensuring that it is delivered to the highest standard throughout the country, regardless of where patients live. The condition also requires some smart, joined-up thinking between different agencies. Repeated hospital admissions because of a lack of a bed to sleep on is not a smart way to deal with a condition such as sickle cell.

Sufferers have to put up with a life of pain, but good treatment, the right information and the right lifestyle can make an enormous difference. That treatment, information and help vary so much is not acceptable. Dignity and respect are essential for all NHS patients: sickle cell patients feeling they do not always get that should be a concern for us all. It is time we ensured that the best care is available to all sufferers, delivered by a system that understands the condition, fully respects the patient and allows sufferers to live as full a life as possible. I hope the Minister can respond to the issues I have raised today in a way that makes that more likely. On the issues for which he does not have immediate answers, I hope he will go back to the Department and press his officials to make sure the changes we know are needed happen.

11:16

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (George Freeman)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen, and to respond to the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), whom I congratulate on securing the debate. I hugely welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue.

Sickle cell anaemia is a really terrible condition and diagnosis for all those who are affected, but especially for our African and Afro-Caribbean communities. I want to start by acknowledging the work that the right hon. Gentleman has done for his constituency and his community, and I join him in paying tribute to the all-party parliamentary group on sickle cell and thalassaemia, chaired by the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). I also pay tribute to the Sickle Cell Society, the Wolverhampton sickle cell care and social activity centre and the patient groups. As with so many rare diseases, it is the advocacy of the few that in the end leads to changes in mainstream provision, and I am serious about paying tribute to that. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East made a number of important points that I will try to deal with in detail. If I run out of time, perhaps he would allow me to follow them up in more detail in writing.

I stress that for those who have had a sickle cell diagnosis, it is a life-changing moment. All of us who are involved in policy making should not take our eyes off the personal suffering that patients—those with the diagnosis—and families and loved ones experience. Some 250,000 people in the UK carry the sickle cell trait, with about 15,000 affected by sickle cell anaemia, as the right hon. Gentleman knows. For those affected, it can mean a life of constant pain management, including, often, extensive periods of hospitalisation when the pain is bad, blood transfusion and red cell therapy, and tiredness, dizziness, palpitations, jaundice and gallstones. All those in combination mean that people are denied the quality of life that the rest of us take for granted.

However, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out, the worst aspect of all is a substantially reduced life expectancy. Even today, sickle cell sufferers will, on average, survive until their 40s or 50s. Even though that is a massive improvement on the position 40 years ago, when the average life expectancy was only 14 years of age, it is still a shock when the rest of us are expecting to live very much longer than that. We can only pay tribute to the bravery shown by the people who have to deal with all the problems that this condition brings. However, bravery and resilience are not enough; we need to look at the way in which we support and treat people and bring on innovative care pathways and medicines. That is why we are continuing to invest in improving services, especially blood, bone marrow and stem cell services, which are vital for the condition.

Let me say something about what we are doing. In England, NHS Blood and Transplant provides blood for transfusion services. There is targeted donor recruitment, extended donation testing, and supplements, through a national frozen blood bank suitable for the long-term storage of blood for those with rare conditions. NHSBT’s therapeutic apheresis services provide a range of services to patients through NHS trusts from its six units situated across England, in Bristol, Liverpool, Oxford, Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds. Those units undertake procedures that provide direct treatment to patients with a range of medical conditions, as well as collecting stem cells from both patients and donors. Therapeutic apheresis treatments and services provide both life-saving and life-enhancing treatments for patients referred in sickle cell crisis or for ongoing sickle cell management. NHSBT is working with commissioners further to improve access to automated red cell exchange for sickle cell patients as part of those services.

One option for patients is a stem cell transplant, which requires genetically matched stem cell units, either from bone marrow donated by an adult donor or through stem cells harvested from cord blood. In the past four years, the Government have provided an additional £12 million of new money to help with transplant services. The Department of Health, working in partnership with NHSBT and the Anthony Nolan charity, has overseen the delivery of improvements way above what we originally anticipated.

The achievements include the following. More than 60% of black, Asian and minority ethnic patients are able to find a well matched donor now, compared with 40% at the beginning of the Parliament, and 258 more UK patients received a potentially curative stem cell transplant in 2013-14 than in 2010-11. The process for stem cell provision has been significantly streamlined, with single access searching in both England and Wales. I am delighted to say that there are now 60,000 young donors on the so-called fit panel, whose volunteers are eight times more likely to have donated stem cells than other registry volunteers.

Increasing use of UK-sourced cord blood to meet the needs of UK patients is crucial. This year, more than 25% of cord blood transplants will use donations from UK donors, costing about half the price of imported units. That compares with 10% in 2010. The time taken to provide stem cells from adult donors has improved. The right hon. Member for Wolverhampton South East knows that that is a crucial issue. Samples for confirmatory HLA—human leukocyte antigen—typing are provided from more than 80% of donors within 15 days now, compared with 35% in 2010.

The NHS and its key delivery partners are committed to continuing service improvement—I will say more about that in a moment—in collaboration with patients and patient group representatives, which is crucial. In the NHS today, if a child is diagnosed with sickle cell anaemia, they will be referred to a care team in a specialist sickle cell centre. Those are specialist units usually based, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, in large hospitals and staffed by front-line health care professionals with a high level of expertise in treating people with sickle cell anaemia. A detailed treatment and care plan, which outlines future medical care, is now drawn up for each patient, and parents are given information and support to help them to manage their child’s condition.

Due to the complexity of sickle cell anaemia, multidisciplinary teams are now assembled. Typically, they include paediatricians, haematologists, clinical psychologists, social workers and specialist nurses. The purpose of the care plan is to avoid sickle cell crises and to provide adequate pain relief when a crisis does occur, as well as reducing the risk of serious complications developing, such as infections, stroke and other associated symptoms of sickle cell anaemia.

Clearly, we want to see improvements in health care services for all types of patients. The right hon. Gentleman made that point well. The Government have committed to specific strategic plans in key areas. One of those plans is “The UK Strategy for Rare Diseases”, which covers sickle cell anaemia. The strategy sets out a shared UK vision for all those affected by rare diseases. It is owned by each country in the UK and commits them to more than 50 commitments. The strategy focuses on five areas: empowering patients, identifying and preventing rare diseases, diagnosis and earlier intervention, the role of research and, most importantly of all, co-ordination of care. As I have said, people suffering from long-term conditions are resilient, but that resilience can easily be undermined by the constant to-ing and fro-ing that occurs when a patient’s care pathway is not properly managed.

[Mr McFadden]

I thank the Minister for outlining the nature of the specialist care teams that are in place. He is right, but the critical point made by the report from the peer review exercise was that although that approach worked well in some places, it did not work as well in others. The specialists whom he talked about—the specialist consultants and specialist nursing staff—were not always there in sufficient numbers, and there is still something of a lottery, some might say, or at least unacceptable variability in the quality of treatment and the understanding of the condition, depending on where the patient lives. I therefore want to press the Minister on the recommendations from the peer review exercise, which were all about making the best the norm. What will he and the Department do to ensure that those recommendations are followed through on in that way?

[George Freeman]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I have my eye on the clock, and I will deal with it.

I conclude my opening remarks by saying that it is no longer acceptable to make the patient fit the pathway. We need to fit the pathway around the nature and progression of the disease in patients. These patients in particular have to see a wide range of professionals, and we need to look at that model. The final thing that I want to mention in terms of our strategic response is the genome project. We are funding 100,000 full genome sequences, to be put together with phenotypic data, with cancer and rare diseases as the initial focus. I am confident that that will quickly start to unlock some insights into possible preventions and new treatments.

The right hon. Gentleman made a number of important points, and I want to acknowledge them. If I cannot deal with all of them now, I will come back to him in writing. He made points about the lack of understanding among GPs across the system; the need for better care pathways to try to reduce hospital admissions; the importance of data underpinning our understanding of good outcomes, best and worst practice and variability; and the important insights in the report. I want to come back to his two specific requests. I would be delighted to ask the various organisations involved to give me a progress report on where they have got to in implementing the various measures, and I will obviously share that with him; perhaps we will have an opportunity to debate it. I will also happily ask NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to look at the health economics of free prescriptions in terms of short-term costs unlocking longer-term savings. I cannot prejudge the outcome of that, but I will happily look into the issue.

In the three minutes left to me, I want to touch on a couple of the specific points that the right hon. Gentleman made. How do we promote understanding and get sickle cell disease higher up the agenda? The 100,000 genomes project also includes a substantial investment in training in rare diseases for clinicians across the NHS as we launch our genetic medicines service. NHSBT and the Anthony Nolan charity continue to promote donations of blood and stem cells, but there is also the issue of the training that goes with that. The Department of Health is working with those key delivery partners to see what more can be done to improve not only donation, but the understanding of the condition and the training across the system.

The right hon. Gentleman asked what measures were being put in place to support care for people with long-term conditions. Our aim is to make the NHS among the best in Europe at supporting people with long-term conditions such as sickle cell disease. In the past, we have not done as well in that area as we would have liked. Through the mandate, we have asked NHS England to make measurable, tangible progress and commitments to supporting people with ongoing health problems to live healthily and independently. The NHS outcomes framework contains a range of improvement areas, and I will happily ask it to give me a progress report on that work.

NHS England is tasked with responding to the UK rare diseases strategy. Earlier this year, as the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, it issued a statement of intent that sets out how it intends to play its part in delivering that strategy; and in the recent NHS England “Five Year Forward View”, it has set out various commitments on exploring specialist centres for rare diseases to improve the co-ordination of care for patients in line with the strategy. I understand that NHS England will be looking to those specialist providers to develop networks of services, integrating different organisations and services around patients. As I said, I will happily ask for a progress report and share it with the right hon. Gentleman. Possibly we will have a chance to debate that in a format similar to this.

I again pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman’s leadership on this issue. I think that the advocacy of Members of Parliament and particularly those with high concentrations of patients who are especially heavily affected by this condition, along with that of patient groups and charities, will be seen in years to come to have played a major part in helping to drive new care pathways and the integration of research, medicine and care, so that patients who are suffering are given the support that they need.

11:28

Sitting suspended.

Ofsted

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Dr William McCrea in the Chair]

14:29

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to introduce a debate on the accountability of Ofsted, not least because Her Majesty’s chief inspector’s annual report was published today. Few issues can be more important for our country than standards and attainment in education. Ofsted plays, and has played, a pivotal role in trying to ensure that all our schools are stretched to demonstrate excellence in what they do, and that they are held to account publicly for their failures and shortcomings.

At the start of such a debate, one can do little better than to refer to the chief inspector’s conclusion in today’s report, in which he states:

“We are at a watershed moment in the history of our education system. As we near the next general election, no major political party is talking about reversing the trend towards the greater autonomy that our schools now enjoy.

I believe the time has now come to move away from the debate that has raged for the past five years about school structures and towards a sharper focus on what works in all schools, regardless of their model of governance or status.

The essential ingredients for success are no secret and have been well documented from time immemorial—strong leadership, a positive and orderly culture, good teaching and robust assessment systems.”

I want to concentrate on that last phrase. Without robust assessment systems, it is difficult for Ofsted to demonstrate that it is objective and consistent. Ofsted must be accountable publicly for its actions and judgments, and particularly for ensuring the factual accuracy of the data on which such judgments are made. Only then can we be sure that the assessments it makes are robust.

On 30 October this year, the National Audit Office published a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General on oversight and intervention in academies and maintained schools. The NAO states:

“Our public audit perspective helps Parliament hold government to account and improve public services.”

As the report makes clear, it has been the policy of the Department for Education since 2010 that a maintained school with sustained or serious underperformance should normally expect to become a sponsored academy. A sponsored academy is directly accountable to the Secretary of State rather than to the local authority. The latest figures from the NAO show that there are some 4,200 academies in England, and that 17,300 maintained schools are still overseen by local authorities. Academies have been an important vehicle for improving standards. They have helped to ensure that the majority of schools that Ofsted rates inadequate improve by their next inspection.

As the NAO reminds us, however, 1.6 million of the 7 million children aged four to 16 are still educated at schools that are not rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. Against that background, we must be concerned by the NAO’s conclusion that the Department for Education has not demonstrated that the £382 million of taxpayers’ money that was spent on oversight and intervention in 2013-14 is delivering value for money. The NAO states that

“the clear messages about acceptable standards of performance must be paired with more ways to spot problems early on and a demonstrably consistent approach to tackling underperformance when it occurs.”

Ofsted responded, in a sense, to those comments on page 25 of its annual report:

“We are also taking action to improve the quality of inspection.”

That is an implicit acceptance of the fact that, hitherto, the quality of inspection has not been sufficiently good. The report states that

“from next year, Ofsted will contract directly with inspectors, rather than through third party providers. This will enable Ofsted to take direct control of the selection, quality assurance and development of its inspection workforce.”

Having provided some background, I want to draw attention to what has happened to a secondary school in my constituency. In today’s annual report, the chief inspector states:

“Over 170,000 pupils are now in secondary schools rated inadequate, around 70,000 more than in 2012.”

On that basis, more secondary schools are becoming inadequate at a time when everybody is saying that we have to improve standards. My concern is that some of the judgments about whether schools are inadequate or good are extremely subjective.

Pupils at Ferndown upper school in my constituency are among that cohort of 70,000. When the school was inspected on 24 and 25 November 2010, it was rated good, which is the second highest of the four categories. In its report on that inspection, Ofsted stated:

“Ferndown Upper is a good school that has improved appreciably since the last inspection and has the capacity to improve further.”

The report also states:

“There is a rising trend in students’ attainment and the majority of students make good progress regardless of their background, starting points or special educational needs. Teaching is good and there is a strategic policy to ensure that regular and systematic assessment takes place in all subject areas.”

According to the report,

“examination results for 2010 show a continuing trend of improvement…there has been a significant increase in the number of students attaining five A* to C grades at GCSE, including English and mathematics. This figure has risen by 12 per cent since last year and is now above the national average.”

The report goes on to say:

“The school has worked hard to improve attendance and has put in place monitoring and support systems”.

It also states:

“The headteacher and his leadership team have a clear vision for the school. They are committed to driving through a range of improvements to raise standards and develop students as ‘confident, independent learners and responsible citizens’.”

Just over three years later, another Ofsted report was published. The school has the same head teacher and chair of governors, and, speaking as the Member of Parliament, there is no dispute among local people about the fact that the school, although by no means perfect, has not deteriorated but has improved during those three years. In the inspection of 9 and 10 January 2014, Ofsted rated the school as inadequate, which is the lowest of the four grades. Ofsted said that the school had “serious weaknesses” and stated:

“Achievement is inadequate because both past and current students have not made sufficient progress, especially in English.”

It stated that teaching was inadequate and that leaders

“have not taken the actions needed to improve teaching and achievement, particularly in English”.

The school was, understandably, incensed that it had been marked down in such an arbitrary fashion.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

What has happened to the school’s GCSE results since 2010? What happened to the number of pupils receiving five A* to C grades in the period between the two inspections?

[Mr Chope]

I do not have those figures in my head, but I have figures showing that, in the period since the inspection, there has been a significant increase in GCSE performance at A* to C. Those figures compare very favourably with many other schools in Dorset that are rated not inadequate but good. If in due course I look at the detailed material I have here, I might be able to answer the hon. Gentleman’s specific question.

The school and its governors decided to appeal against what they regarded as an inadequate conclusion to the inspection. The report was published on 19 March 2014, and when the head distributed it to parents, as he is obliged to do, he said that the inspectors had ignored various issues. He said that, although

“there remain areas for improvement, the Governors and Senior Leadership Team of the school share with the whole staff the belief that this inspection was unfair and deeply unjust…We knew and accepted that English had under-performed”.

He stated that the school was taking action about that, which is why the school was

“predicting…good results in English this summer”.

Indeed, the school did get good results in English in the summer of 2014, and the head expressed concern about predictions for the future:

“a point the inspectors seem to have ignored. Instead they focused on data from the last 3 years, including 2012, the year in which grade boundaries were suddenly changed leading to a national outcry. This directly contradicts their own guidance which urges inspectors not to focus just on the last 3 years but to take into account current progress.

Inspectors also appear to have ignored the wealth of opportunity that the school continues to offer through the wide variety of trips, activities, clubs and achievements that cannot be measured as easily as English results.”

He drew a contrast with the inspector’s report from 2010, saying that

“everyone who knows the school well would say that it is actually a better school today than in 2010!”

One of the concerns the head and the governors have is that Ofsted compared the school’s attendance and exclusions—the inspection was carried out not by Ofsted inspectors but by Tribal, a subcontractor to Ofsted—with secondary schools that were not comparable. Ferndown upper school has only years 9, 10, 11 and a sixth form, whereas the schools with which Ofsted compared it also have years 7 and 8. Obviously, in years 7 and 8, as national figures make clear, attendance is better and exclusions are fewer. Ofsted was not comparing like with like, which is a fundamental error.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Using the evidence of one school, he seems to be saying that there are concerns about standards within Ofsted. He just mentioned that the inspection was carried out by a subcontractor. Does he agree that the answer to improving the consistency and quality of Ofsted is to ensure that all inspectors are directly engaged, as Sir Michael Wilshaw has recommended in recent months?

[Mr Chope]

Indeed, Sir Michael Wilshaw has recommended that, and I assume that the only reason he has done so is because in his experience there has not been such consistency and quality assurance under the old regime. I support his judgment on that, but it is no consolation for a school that has fallen foul of the old and inconsistent regime. Future improvements may lead to more consistency; indeed, the purpose of this debate is to try to find out what can be done to ensure consistency. So much turns on Ofsted’s judgment of a particular school.

What happens if a school is dissatisfied with an inspection? All it can do is appeal. Under Ofsted’s internal appeals process, Ofsted inspectors judge the work of other Ofsted inspectors. In the case of Ferndown upper school, a more junior Ofsted inspector judged the work of a more senior inspector, which I would submit is quite an invidious position to be put in—it certainly lacks the transparency and objectivity that we should demand of such organisations.

The school then appealed to the Independent Complaints Adjudication Service for Ofsted, which deals with appeals against Ofsted. Unfortunately, the ICASO is effectively toothless because it cannot adjudicate on the important issues. The school made what is called a stage 4 complaint, which said, for example, that the inspectors who went to the school made notes and said orally to the school that they found that the pupils’ behaviour was good and that there were no examples of bad behaviour, but that they changed their judgment at a later stage in the process and said that they were concerned that there had been examples of bad behaviour.

Not surprisingly, the school said, “Well, let’s see where those examples of bad behaviour were noted by the inspectors at the time.” The school was told, “That’s all confidential information and it’s not available under freedom of information.” The school raised that issue with ICASO. The response from ICASO, which came through in the summer, stated that the complainant’s concerns relating to the Freedom of Information Act lie entirely outside ICASO’s remit, so it was not able to look at that. ICASO also said that it is not within its remit to overturn Ofsted judgments or to scrutinise its inspection criteria. Indeed, the only thing ICASO can do is look at the process, which is not really what we want in an appeals system.

Once a school has gone through that stage and had its ICASO adjudication, what can it do next? All it can do is send the matter to the parliamentary ombudsman. If ever there was the long grass, it is the parliamentary ombudsman—I am not insulting him, but the parliamentary ombudsman, again, can only consider administrative processes. Because of his work load, a complaint referred to the parliamentary ombudsman is unlikely to be determined for a significant period of time, by when the school will have a completely different cohort of pupils. That does not seem to be an adequate process of accountability. I would be interested to know whether the Minister—whom I am delighted to see in his place—agrees and whether he has any proposals for change, because the more emphasis we put on the regulatory and inspection process, the more important it is that it should be seen to be objective and above reproach. The trouble is that the consequences of such judgments feed into the school’s morale and the esteem in which it is held by potential pupils. That in itself can result in it suffering to a greater extent.

The school has now shown, through its results in the July exams, a significant improvement in the quality of its education. That is surely good news, but when one looks at the inspector’s follow-up letter, one does not get the impression that he is as pleased as the school is with the progress made and the way in which it is now outperforming many other schools in Dorset in the exam league tables. That raises another issue: because the school has a grade 4 assessment from Ofsted, while comparable schools in Dorset have grade 2 assessments—that is, good—people immediately reach the conclusion that it is less good than the others. However, because of when those other schools had their inspections, we may well not be comparing like with like.

That is one of the problems, which we know is not unique to Dorset or to Ferndown upper school. Evidence from throughout the country shows that Ofsted will quite often fail to see things in a school that are going badly wrong. Just to show that the debate is not purely about the Christchurch constituency, I will refer briefly to what happened at Saltley school and specialist science college. The International New York Times had an exclusive interview with the former principal of that school who talked about “harassment” from the local board over courses. He referred to the “relentless criticism” that he faced from a “Muslim-dominated school board”—he being a Sikh—and spoke about how he was eventually forced to step down as principal.

We now know that that school was the subject of an emergency report, “Report into allegations concerning Birmingham schools arising from the ‘Trojan Horse’ letter”, which was published in July 2014 and made severe criticisms. In a statement issued to Parliament yesterday, the Government drew attention to the gross inadequacies of Birmingham city council in dealing with those and other issues and they have proceeded, as near as they can, to put Birmingham city council under special measures. At a time when the Government are talking about the importance of devolving even more power to local authorities, that finding shows that one of the largest local authorities—I think Birmingham has more children under its control than any other local education authority—is severely lacking.

One might ask, “What do Ofsted think about Saltley school and specialist science college?” It was inspected on 9 and 10 May 2013 and under every category—achievement of pupils, quality of teaching, behaviour and safety of pupils, and leadership and management—it was marked as good. The report said that the school was “good” and that:

“Students made good progress from their low starting points,”

and so on. It also said:

“The new head teacher and senior leaders have accurately identified strengths and weaknesses in the school and have continued to improve teaching and raise achievement.”

We now know that that was substantially wide of the mark, yet does anything in Ofsted’s annual report explain how it was able to produce that inspection for Saltley school on 9 and 10 May 2013, when just over a year later, in July 2014, it became clear that what was alleged to be a really good school was far from that?

I give that as another example of Ofsted’s inconsistency and lack of accountability. When parents who were thinking about sending their children to Saltley school and specialist science college looked at the Ofsted report, they must have thought, “This is brilliant; this is fantastic.” Yet just over a year later, they would have been ashamed about having made that judgment.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Does he agree that the increasing numbers of educational practitioners who it is hoped will be on Ofsted teams from now on will decrease the likelihood of his experience being repeated in the future?

[Mr Chope]

I certainly hope so, but whatever system is in place—this is the essence of the debate—there needs to be some means of appeal, if needs be, into the substance. In such situations, conciliation and discussion is much better than formal, adversarial appeals processes. Ultimately, there must be a way for a school head to engage with an inspector or a group of inspectors and say, “Sorry, you’ve got this wrong.”

One of the difficulties in the case of Ferndown upper was that the moderation process was not allowed to be developed early on. It was said that because the school had been assessed as grade 4, it needed to be dealt with first by the inspectorate before the concerns expressed could be moderated. We need a system that ensures that where schools feel they have been judged incorrectly, they can have that put right in a timely fashion, because there are implications for their viability. In this debate we are talking about publicly funded schools, but if we look at how inspection processes can affect commercial organisations, we can see that the consequences of an unjustly bad report may be disastrous for their viability.

I am delighted that other people have come along to participate in the debate. When we get to the conclusion, I hope that the Minister will set out exactly how we can improve Ofsted’s accountability to teachers, parents and pupils—everyone involved.

Nothing I have said is designed to detract from the importance of ensuring that we have the highest standards in our schools. Standards have been improving, and a lot of credit is due to the Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), who will respond to the debate, as well as the previous Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), and the current Secretary of State for being vigorous in saying that we must try to move away from a culture in which producer interests prevail to the disadvantage of the consumer. I am all in favour of these reforms, but they would be even better if we could get more objectivity into the way Ofsted is held accountable to the public, to the Secretary of State for Education and ultimately, through the Secretary of State, to this House.

15:00

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on securing this important debate. He has made a compelling case for ensuring the accountability of Ofsted. He has given a number of examples where it has fallen short and made arbitrary and subjective decisions.

Of course, Ofsted inspects not only schools but whole children’s departments and the protection and care of children. I will talk about a report that Ofsted produced on Manchester city council’s children’s department on 1 September, but first I want to reiterate what the hon. Gentleman said: inspection and monitoring are vital parts of public services. They are necessary parts of the accountability process, and it is important that we get them right and understand what is happening.

It is also important that the metrics are right. I will give just one example of how difficult metrics can be. When the Conservative Government in the early ’90s brought in metrics to measure the performance of planning departments and introduce a level of accountability, they said that planning applications should be determined within 40 days, and if they were not, the department concerned was seen to be failing. I was leader of Manchester city council then, and our average time for turning applications round was about 43 days. We were very pleased with that, because there were very few appeals against our decisions. As a lot of work was put in beforehand, the decisions were often better and all parties were happy. However, an arbitrary metric misguided the public as to the competence of the department.

One also has to look at who the inspectors are. My guess is that people do not start out life deciding to be an inspector of planning or an Ofsted inspector. Ofsted inspectors probably start off in child protection of some sort, as a social worker, or as a teacher. Sometimes they become inspectors because they have not done so well, or have failed, in those professions, and sometimes it is because they want more money, but my experience is that as a result they often have a jaundiced view of the inspection process. One has to be wary, and aware that that is a possibility, when looking at how effective these inspections are and what the accountability should be.

I will talk about Manchester’s children’s services department, but I want to place on the record that this is not a defence of that department. I have been concerned about a number of areas; I have written to the council; and I have published statistics that did not show the council in the best light with regard to what happened to referred children, because often they were not dealt with quickly enough, and in some cases they were not dealt with at all.

I have expressed public concern about referred children. I knew of a number of cases where the culture of the department had inhibited the fostering and adoption of children: the process was too lengthy; people had not turned up on time, or at all, to interview potential foster parents and adoptive parents; and interviewers often asked questions that were intrusive and—to my mind, and the minds of the potential foster and adoptive parents—irrelevant. So this is not a mindless defence of Manchester city council’s children’s department from an ex-leader of that department. It is really a case of asking whether we understand more about what is going on in the children’s department after Ofsted’s inspection.

On 1 September, Ofsted said in its report that for

“Children who need help and protection”

the service is “inadequate”. Similarly, it said that for

“Children looked after and achieving permanence”

the service “requires improvement”. Adoption performance was judged “inadequate”, and

“Experiences and progress of care leavers”

also “requires improvement”. Finally, it said that “Leadership, management and governance” were “inadequate”. That is not a glowing report. It was produced by eight inspectors over a period of about five or six weeks, and it must have been quite expensive.

Having complained about the department previously, I went to the report with some interest, but I have to say—this is the core of my contribution—that I was extremely disappointed. The department had had inspections in 2010, 2011 and 2013. The 2013 inspection was on fostering, the 2011 inspection was on adoption, and the 2010 inspection was on safeguarding looked-after children. Those inspections produced two “good” ratings and one “adequate” rating, so they were not cause for concern. However, as there had now been a report giving an “inadequate” rating, I wanted to look at numbers, to see exactly how the service had deteriorated during the period in question.

Although there were some numbers in the report, they were absolute numbers, telling us how many single assessments had not progressed, for example—there was a number in the report for that. However, that was not compared with any of the previous reports, and the comments were generally things such as “slow”, “quality of care record keeping: not good”, “could do better”, “too long to get help” or “too many children waiting for help”. Not only were there not absolute numbers but it was not possible to compare the numbers in the report with those in previous reports.

There was one particularly odd thing. It was not really a metric, but a comment that too many of the looked-after children did not go to good schools. The report did not say how many of the schools in Manchester were good and whether it was possible for all the looked-after children to go to them.

I wrote to Ofsted and asked if it could produce the comparative tables that would enable me to see if the department had gone backwards or forwards, and to see what the situation was that had justified the change to “inadequate”. Ofsted replied to me within about a fortnight; I have no complaint about its speed of response. The response was from Jo Morgan, Ofsted’s regional director, north-west. She said that it was not possible to produce those tables and she gave the reasons why. I will quote from her letter:

“The recent inspection differs from previous inspections as it has a different methodology. It is therefore not possible to make any direct comparisons between judgements. The current single inspection framework is an unannounced universal inspection. It is conducted in a three year cycle and judges local authority services for looked after children, alongside the arrangements to protect children. Ofsted acknowledges that the ‘bar’ has been raised in two ways. Firstly, ‘good’ is now the minimum acceptable standard. The new framework sets out the criteria for ‘good’ in respect of the protection of children, the care they receive, and the arrangements in place to lead and manage services. Any local authority that is unable to provide evidence that the characteristics of good are in place will be will be deemed to ‘require improvement’. The second aspect of our raising the ‘bar’ relates to our explicit and unrelenting focus on both the experiences of children, young people and families and the difference that the help they receive makes to their lives and life chances. Whilst it is recognised that this methodology presents a challenge to local authorities, our priority remains the contribution inspection can make to the help, protection and care of vulnerable children and young people.”

The philosophy behind that is sound, but if the local authority and anybody interested in what is happening are to know whether those serious criteria are being met, they have to be able to measure things and put numbers on them, but the letter and the report make no attempt to do that. Therefore, when Ofsted says that the methodology presents a challenge to local authorities, I would say it makes it impossible for them to know, other than in terms of a generalised report, why they are succeeding or failing. Unless a percentage or a rate of improvement is given for the speed at which children are assessed when they are referred to the local authority, or for the number of children placed in foster care or accepted for adoption, it is difficult for the authority to know what is happening.

Ofsted is failing in terms of inspectors’ basic task of enabling those who want to hold it to account to do so. One does not have to be too cynical to say that in Rotherham, Rochdale and, previously, Haringey, and a number of the other terrible situations we have seen in many of our towns and cities where children were not properly protected by the local authority, the police and others who should have been looking after them, Ofsted had given virtually all the local authorities involved a clean bill of health. After Rotherham was given a clean bill of health, we found that 1,400 children had been abused. From memory—I did not look it up—Haringey had been given an excellent rating before the baby P case.

[Mr Chope]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point. Does he share my hope that the Minister will be able to explain how Ofsted was held to account for its manifest failures of judgment in those cases?

[Graham Stringer]

I am looking forward to the Minister’s reply to the hon. Gentleman’s contribution and mine. After those awful events, I am led to the conclusion that, when Ofsted raises the bar, as it puts it, without giving quantified criteria, it is engaged in an exercise that is about not inspection and the accountability of child protection services, but the protection of Ofsted. If Ofsted says that Manchester city council or some other local authority is inadequate or requires improvement, and something terrible happens—I sincerely hope it does not—Ofsted is not to blame, whereas it clearly could be blamed for the reports it gave on the authorities I mentioned earlier. What we are seeing is not an inspection regime that helps us to understand whether our children are being protected, but one that puts out a lot of propaganda for its own protection. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

15:13

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I wish to make a short contribution, and the title of the debate enables me to do precisely that. I want to raise a matter on behalf of a constituent.

The debate relates to the accountability of Ofsted, and we all hope that Ofsted inspectors do their work in a fair, constructive and objective way. However, occasionally, judgments can go awry, and they sometimes have a serious impact.

A constituent submitted concerns to Ofsted about her son’s school and his treatment in that school. She was assured by an Ofsted inspector in writing that Ofsted had not revealed to the school that she had made a complaint. However, she has had sight of official documents showing that Ofsted did make the school aware that she had been in touch with inspectors.

I would like to ask the Minister specifically how my constituent and I can challenge Ofsted about its behaviour, which is unacceptable, a complete breach of trust and contrary to the whole notion of whistleblowing.

15:14

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on securing the debate and on his thoughtful and important contribution, in which he sought to outline the experience of a school in his constituency of going through the Ofsted inspection process.

I intervened on the hon. Gentleman earlier about the school’s exam history, and it would have been helpful had he been able to tell us a little more about it. Perhaps the Minister knows the details and can tell us whether it was a factor in Ofsted’s judgment. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman raised some important issues.

The hon. Gentleman made the important point that, in making serious judgments about the quality of schools, we should not forget the wider aspects of schools or the wider curriculum. I certainly agree that no school should be able to be rated as outstanding unless it has a broad and balanced offer for its pupils, including an excellent cultural offer. Perhaps we need to think more about that, and I might say more about it later.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Trojan horse affair in Birmingham. I do not intend to go through it in any great detail again today, but it would be useful if the Minister told us his view of what has happened since the Trojan horse affair, and of how Ofsted is inspecting schools in the light of the newly introduced need to teach British values in the aftermath of that affair. If he could update us on the Department’s view of how that is going, that might benefit the House and would certainly relate very much to Ofsted’s accountability, which is the subject of the debate.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) on his contribution. He expressed concerns about the quality of inspections of children’s services in Manchester. He made some important points about safeguarding and the failure of inspections sometimes to pick up problems with safeguarding children. Those are serious issues, and the Minister will have taken those remarks on board and will want to say something about them.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), who was born on the same day as me, although she looks a lot younger. She raised a serious constituency issue, which should be the subject of a formal complaint. I am sure that she, as a constituency MP, will take that up directly, but it would be useful to hear the Minister’s response.

As many Members here know, I used to be a teacher, so I have been through the process of being inspected, albeit not under the current dispensation. I can tell Members, and any teacher will agree, that it is not necessarily a pleasant experience, but it is a necessary experience. I absolutely accept that inspection forms an important part of the process. Before the Minister starts looking up how I did in that inspection, let me say that I was perfectly happy with how it turned out.

We should acknowledge that inspection is a stressful process and that head teachers, teachers and even pupils and parents can find it stressful. Although inspection is an extremely necessary process and must focus forensically on ensuring that children are not being failed in our system—a principle that the Opposition absolutely support—we should bear in mind the human side of things when schools are inspected.

One of the sad things about discussions of Ofsted is that they are very much based on the headlines we tend to see in the newspapers when things such as the Ofsted annual report are published. Very few people read beyond the headlines and into the detail of what the chief inspector says in his report. People tend to take up political positions on what has been said, but Sir Michael Wilshaw made some extremely sensible remarks in his commentary on the annual report, some of which are things we have known for a long time, such as that for a school to be outstanding it needs great leadership. It is also necessary for it to have great middle-level leaders; and that depends on the great senior leadership. We could do a lot more to strengthen the role of middle leaders, particularly in secondary schools. Sir Michael said in his report today that he is concerned that they are not making progress and that more children are being taught in schools rated inadequate. The necessary things include good leadership and good teachers, effective and accurate assessment, and dealing with such things as low-level disruption.

As a former teacher I do not think it is really possible to teach without first creating a quiet, orderly environment. Beyond that, many things are possible and teachers can move on to all sorts of innovative and interesting activities; but it is and always has been the starting point—the basis and foundation of the craft of the classroom. I would not go as far as saying, as we used to when I was teaching, “Never smile until Easter,” but it is necessary to establish the proper quiet and orderly environment in a classroom if a teacher is to teach effectively and make sure that learning happens. I understand why Sir Michael is concerned about low-level disruption; about the stretching of able pupils; about many schools’ failure to do enough to narrow the gap between disadvantaged pupils and those from better-off backgrounds; and—topically, after the Government’s announcement today—about the current poor careers advice in schools, which is almost universally accepted, except by the Department for Education, to have worsened significantly since 2010.

Perhaps the Minister will expand a little further on today’s announcement about the new careers company—particularly why it was not put out to tender and how the choice was made to give a particular sum of money to a particular individual and group to run it. I should be interested to know what thinking was behind that. Was it to do with the time it would take to get that done before purdah, or was there a genuine operational, strategic reason for doing things in that way instead of by the normal governmental tendering process? The Public Accounts Committee might be interested to know about that.

Sir Michael Wilshaw also talked about governance not being strong enough. We all need to listen to that, and to address the issue. He also flagged up a severe concern about teacher supply. I know the Minister is interested in that, and he noted the 17% fall since 2010 in the numbers entering initial teacher training. I should be interested in his view of Sir Michael’s remarks. Does he agree that teacher supply is an emerging issue, and if so what will he do about it?

Under the present Government there have been problems relating to the proper relationship between the Department for Education and Ofsted. Indeed, there have been accusations of an attempt by the Department to politicise Ofsted in the current Parliament, not least because of the sacking of its chair, Sally Morgan, and the memo from senior advisers to the former Secretary of State suggesting that it might be right to sack Sir Michael Wilshaw. Those revelations have led to accusations by people speaking on behalf of the Schools Minister—he is here this afternoon—of a Government attempt to politicise Ofsted. The report of 9 October in The Guardian said:

“A Liberal Democrat source close to schools minister David Laws said: ‘The fact is that, Gove, Cummings and others around them have been deeply disappointed by Michael Wilshaw’s refusal to play ball. This is almost certainly what lay behind their previous attempt to politicise the inspectorate.’”

So that is confirmation from the Schools Minister, or rather his spokesperson, whom he might perhaps want to identify—it might have been him; I do not know, but whoever the source close to him was, I am sure he would like to tell us—that the previous Secretary of State and his advisers have been involved in an attempt to politicise Ofsted. Of course, that is a dangerous path to take, so when the Minister talks about the accountability of Ofsted, perhaps he will tell us how he valiantly fought off the attempts in his Department to politicise it, who was involved in them, and what he is doing to rein in that tendency in the Department.

That is not to say that Ofsted is a perfect organisation, as anyone would admit. Concerns are frequently expressed to Ministers, shadow Ministers and others. We have heard in the debate some of the concerns about the way Ofsted inspections are carried out. We need to think about how to move on and reform it. It might help if I say something about Labour policy on Ofsted. The Opposition recognise that school inspections play a crucial role in upholding standards in schools, but we oppose the Government’s attempts to politicise Ofsted, which the Schools Minister has complained about, because they would ultimately undermine the integrity and independence of the schools inspectorate. National systems of inspection and accountability should be collaborative rather than confrontational—an issue that perhaps contributes to some of the concerns expressed in the debate. Otherwise, the effect of inspection could too often be to narrow children’s educational experience.

We need to prevent that from happening. We want schools to be innovative; we do not want them to operate in an accountability framework that makes them fear innovating, developing new pedagogies and using new technologies. Of course they must meet the requirements on standards, but we do not want an atmosphere in which schools always play a conservative part. We want innovation and we need pedagogies to be developed. We need to use and unleash the talents of teachers in what Ofsted called in 2010 the finest generation of teachers we have ever had in this country—albeit one dreadfully undermined by the Government’s disastrous policy, with which I understand the Schools Minister also disagrees, of allowing unqualified teachers in schools.

Labour believes that the role of the schools inspectorate needs to be examined. In government we will ensure that the inspection process is more collaborative and that school improvement involves schools reviewing one another, and monitoring by the middle tier. We have talked about creating directors of school standards to clear up the muddle that has occurred since the present Government’s piecemeal, rapid and politically motivated timetable of academisation. What Sir Michael Wilshaw said today about the obsession with structures, rather than the things that really matter for school improvement, was extremely helpful. The name over the door does not matter. What matters is the quality of leadership and teaching in a school, not the name and title. An end to a Government-favoured brand of school will be a positive step forward, and I am glad that Sir Michael said what he did.

[Mr Chope]

On that point, does the hon. Gentleman accept, on behalf of the Labour party, that there should not be an obsession with being for or against academies, free schools or maintained schools, but that we should look at each school on its merits?

[Kevin Brennan]

Yes, I accept the hon. Gentleman’s proposition that each school should be considered on its merits, but we should be creating a framework of fairness within which schools of all types and denominations can operate, with a fair and proper admissions procedure, an effective admissions code and a stronger adjudicator on admissions, to ensure that schools are operating together in a collaborative framework. We do not believe in using naked market forces to drive schools out of business. We believe in weaker schools being helped by stronger schools in the system and insisting that such collaboration must happen, because ultimately that is how an increase is standards is achieved. That is what happened under the framework of London Challenge, for example, through a collaborative approach, rather than relying on creating an over-supply to drive schools out of business and, ultimately, putting pupils in ever-failing and declining schools over time and ruining their lives with an obsession with market forces. Unfortunately, that certainly was the philosophy of the previous Secretary of State and some of his closest advisers.

We will ensure that there is more collaborative work on school improvement, involving schools reviewing one another and monitoring by the middle tier; we have talked about creating directors of school standards, as well as the national inspectorate. We will ensure that early years settings and primary schools are judged against how well they develop children’s knowledge, skills and qualities through a broad and balanced curriculum, alongside tests in English and maths. We have already called for Ofsted to have the power to inspect academy chains and we are committed to monitoring its role. That confirms what I said to the hon. Member for Christchurch: we want the same treatment for all schools, so that, as well as inspecting local authorities, which may have responsibility for groups of schools, Ofsted can inspect not just individual schools in an academy chain but the operation of the chain itself.

I hear concerns that schools in some academy chains have less autonomy and are given directions from head office about exactly what they have to do. That head office is sometimes in a remote part of the country, far away from where the school is operating. Those schools’ policies are being determined from far away and there is little accountability in the system, so inspecting academy chains is important. I hope the Schools Minister agrees. We were not able to persuade the previous Secretary of State or the current one to permit that, but Sir Michael Wilshaw has asked for it and we support it. I hope the Schools Minister confirms that he supports that, too, because he seems to support an awful lot of what we say nowadays about schools and education policy, in contrast with his colleagues in the Department for Education.

Does the Minister agree with Sir Michael Wilshaw, who said today that in the last couple of years 70,000 more pupils are being taught in inadequate secondary schools? If so, what is his policy response and how should we deal with it? Obviously, if that is so—I have no reason to believe that the chief inspector of schools is wrong—there needs to be some policy response. It is not adequate simply to say, “Our academisation programme and our free schools policy will solve all problems”, because we know that is not true. What are we actually trying to do to put that right? It is a challenge to all of us, if such a process is occurring.

I recognise the improvements made by many schools in recent years, under this Government and the previous one, and their raising of standards. That is to be celebrated and commended but it is down, principally, to the hard work of school teachers, school leaders, governors and others, probably far more than to politicians and education policy makers, who often have little experience of the front line—the classroom—and more experience of policy think-tanks. However, if over the past couple of years 70,000 more pupils are being taught in inadequate schools, the Government should be concerned about that and should have something to say about it. I hope that the Minister has.

Will the Minister update us on what is happening about accusations that the Inspiration Trust in Norfolk was given prior notification of inspection? As has been said, this system has to be fair across the country and everybody must have the same notification—or no notification—of inspection. I am sure that Members would be grateful for any information the Minister could provide to update the House.

Will the Minister comment on the following, from an article in The Guardian on Tuesday 9 December?

“In September 2013, an Ofsted stipulation that inspectors should ‘consider the food on offer at the school and atmosphere of the school canteen’ was introduced, following pressure from organisations including the Jamie Oliver Foundation. But this August, it I was quietly removed, in a streamlining of inspection guidance. Ofsted’s latest consultation on a new inspection framework, which closed last Friday, has also omitted to mention school food.”

I know the Minister has a genuine interest in this subject. Can he shed any light on whether there is to be a dilution of the inspection of the quality of school food?

What does the Minister think of the following remark by Sir Michael Wilshaw in the annual report?

“The proportion of secondary schools in which leadership and management are judged inadequate has…doubled over the past two years.”

Again, that should be of direct concern to the Department. Does the Minister agree with and recognise Sir Michael Wilshaw’s observation? If so, what is his response and what does he intend to do about it?

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

Minister, before I call you, although I am sure there could be a temptation to go into the wider education debate, I have to remind you that the parameters of the debate are the accountability of Ofsted and we have to keep to those.

15:29

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea, and I will certainly follow your wise advice, in spite of the temptations of the shadow Schools Minister to draw me off into all sorts of other areas.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on raising this issue, giving us an opportunity not only to address the issue of his local school, but to reflect on the accountability of Ofsted and the appeals processes that our schools inspectorate operates under. He has also, as he said, given us an opportunity to touch on issues arising out of Ofsted’s annual report published today, within the constraints of the debate.

I think that, by and large, Ofsted does a difficult job well, and most hon. Members would recognise that. It is a job that is necessary. Few of us would want to go back to 30 or 40 years ago, when the oversight and accountability of the school system was much weaker and, as a consequence, there was a risk that underperforming schools could continue, failing their local communities and young people for long periods. We certainly do not want to go back to that. Ofsted is a good organisation and the current chief inspector is one of the best we have had. Of course, the Government will reflect carefully on the annual report and the comments the chief inspector made today on its launch.

I should also say, as I believe the chief inspector said on the “Today” programme this morning, that Ofsted carries out some 30,000 inspections every year, not only of schools but in other settings. The chief inspector will be the first to acknowledge that when carrying out inspections in such a number of settings, there are bound to be imperfections in a small minority of cases. It is important that we ensure that, where there are issues, those are taken seriously and dealt with. Of course, we need to make sure that the overall quality of the inspection process is as high as it can possibly be.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and others who have participated in this debate have pointed out that the judgments made by Ofsted are important and have big consequences for people’s livelihoods, schools’ reputations and the decisions parents take. In fairness to parents and schools, it is therefore important that we get those judgments right. If we err on the side of generosity in any judgment, that has serious consequences. We could end up with schools not doing well enough and failing their local communities for long periods and, as the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) mentioned, what is important in the schools system is even more crucial in safeguarding. We should be fair to all those involved in that important work, but we should be rigorous in our inspection to ensure that vulnerable young people are not at risk.

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman, because I did not know he was going to raise issues on children’s services and safeguarding. I am not the lead Minister on that issue in the Department; the Minister with responsibility for children, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), will have been particularly involved in the oversight of some of the services in Manchester and elsewhere, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman following the debate to follow up on some of the points he raised.

Before coming back to the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, I will respond briefly to my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), who raised concerns about information that her constituent gave Ofsted anonymously to inform the inspection of a school. I am sure that the chief inspector would take the same view as me and her—that information given anonymously should be treated in that way; the source of that information should not be revealed to the institution being inspected. I am concerned to hear that there may have been an instance where privacy was not respected. I will look into that. I will see the chief inspector shortly, and I will raise the issue with him and ask whether he can look into it, if my hon. Friend can give me the details—in confidence, of course—of her constituent and the circumstances.

I will pick up on a number of the points that the shadow Schools Minister raised, but specifically on accountability and the situation in Norfolk, I can update him and the House by saying that the fresh independent review ordered by Sir Michael after questions were raised about the earlier inspection is under way. We expect that review to be completed by the end of the year.

I will touch on the annual report, and then I will comment on Ofsted’s inspection and appeals process. I will then touch on Ferndown school, which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned. Today’s annual Ofsted report on schools provides a timely reminder of the importance of Ofsted’s inspection work. Earlier today, the chief inspector announced that good and outstanding schools now account for 81% of all schools inspected, up from 68% in 2010. We should all acknowledge that that is a significant increase. In spite of some of the concerns about secondary schools, that is the highest proportion of good and outstanding schools at any time since Ofsted was set up. Primary schools, as the chief inspector mentioned this morning, have done particularly well, with 82% now good or outstanding, which means that 190,000 more pupils are in good and outstanding primary schools than last year. That is 700,000 more than in 2012, and we should celebrate that.

The report also shows that schools are responding positively to inspection. Two thirds of schools that were previously judged as requiring improvement secured good or outstanding on re-inspection this year. There is also positive news on the performance of pupils from lower-income backgrounds. The disadvantage gap, particularly in primary schools, is closing rapidly. All that means that more than 1 million more pupils are in good or outstanding schools than in 2010. While much of the credit for that must go to hard-working individuals in schools, we believe that inspection is also contributing to the improvement in the system.

The shadow Schools Minister mentioned the less encouraging recent statistics for secondary schools. Significantly more work needs to be done to ensure that improvement is maintained in the future, rather than schools remaining at existing levels. The percentage of secondary schools graded good or outstanding is up from 68% in 2010 to 71%. The number of pupils of secondary age being educated in schools in the secondary sector classed as requiring improvement or inadequate dropped from 1,073,000 to 793,000 last year, which is encouraging.

The inspection and regulatory functions of Ofsted are vested in Her Majesty’s chief inspector, who is primarily accountable directly to Parliament. He appears before the Education Committee at least twice a year, giving evidence on the work of Ofsted and on his annual report. He is also subject to other parliamentary scrutiny. As recently as last month he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee, so there are many parliamentary opportunities for the work of Ofsted to be examined. The Education Committee can also conduct inquiries specifically into Ofsted and its work. In April 2011, the Committee conducted an inquiry into the role and performance of Ofsted. The report from that inquiry concluded:

“Ofsted’s independent status is broadly valued by inspectors, by professionals, and by the public, and we strongly support the retention of that status.”

As the Department for Education is the lead policy and ministerial Department covering Ofsted’s work, the Secretary of State for Education meets the chief inspector regularly, as do I, to discuss the work of Ofsted.

Every year Ofsted conducts approximately 6,500 school inspections and 30,000 inspections of all settings. It has a massive job of work to do. As part of its procedures, Ofsted sends out a feedback questionnaire after every inspection. The latest figures for the second quarter of 2014-15 show that 93% of respondents said that they were satisfied with the way an inspection was carried out. That is against an overall response rate of 71%, which indicates that in the majority of settings, there is contentment on the effectiveness and fairness of the Ofsted process. As good as those figures are, there is no room for complacency.

I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that Sir Michael takes particular interest in the quality of inspectors’ work. He recognises—I believe he has said this publicly—that more needs to be done to ensure that all inspections are delivered to a consistently high standard the first time around. That is why he appointed Sir Robin Bosher, one of Ofsted’s directors, to take direct responsibility for inspection quality and the training of inspectors. As a result, Ofsted has put in place more stringent quality checks and monitoring of inspections and reports. It has also invested more in the training of inspectors, in place of having detailed written guidance documents. I know that Sir Michael is working hard to ensure quality and consistency, and I am confident that he will tackle any underperformance in the inspection work force. He is prepared to take tough action where necessary to remove inspectors, or to require additional training where inspectors fail to meet his high expectations.

Looking ahead—my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned this—Sir Michael has announced that he will bring the management of inspections, including all inspector training, in-house from September 2015. As part of the programme, Ofsted will change how it sources and selects additional inspectors, and how it trains, contracts with and performance-manages them. Much of that is currently arranged through contracts with three inspection service providers: Tribal, Serco and CfBT. Under the planned changes, however, all complaints will be handled directly by Ofsted.

Another important step in trying to improve the quality of inspections is making more use of serving practitioners—something to which Sir Michael Wilshaw is committed. The latest figures from Ofsted show that 56% of school inspections include at least one serving practitioner, which could be a head teacher or a senior leader from a high-performing school. That is up from just 15% in 2011, so there has been a massive increase in the involvement of serving practitioners. Many of them are also national leaders of education and play a wider part in the overall leadership of the school system.

I will briefly turn to how the Ofsted complaints procedure works. I appreciate that this might seem unnecessarily detailed, but as it is at the centre of my hon. Friend’s concerns, it is important for me to set out just what the process looks like and to consider whether it needs any change.

Ofsted has a clear, published complaints procedure. During an inspection, those with concerns are strongly encouraged to raise issues with the lead inspector as soon as they arise. If a complainant feels unable to raise concerns directly with the lead inspector during the inspection, they can contact the Ofsted helpline directly. If concerns have not been resolved, a formal complaint can be raised with Ofsted within 10 working days of the incident of concern. If the concern is about an inspection, the complaint should be made no more than 10 working days following the publication of the report. When Ofsted receives the complaint, it will investigate and send a written response to answer the agreed main points of concern within 30 working days. It does not normally withhold publication of an inspection report or withdraw a published inspection report while it investigates complaints unless there are exceptional circumstances.

There is a second, appeal stage to the complaints process. If a complainant remains dissatisfied, they may appeal to the Independent Complaints Adjudication Service for Ofsted, which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch mentioned. The Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution has been appointed by the Secretary of State to undertake that important role. If complainants are not satisfied with the outcome of the adjudication service review, they can contact the parliamentary ombudsman. That is quite a prolonged process, and I appreciate my hon. Friend’s comments about the ombudsman’s potential role and the time that such things can take, but it is relevant that in 2013 only 12 cases concerning schools were referred to the independent complaints adjudication service, which is a small proportion given that Ofsted inspects approximately 6,500 schools a year. That suggests to me that the number of schools that are seriously concerned about the quality of their inspections is relatively small.

[Mr Chope]

Might not another explanation be that schools realise that ICASO cannot really do anything? All that it can do is look at the process rather than the substance.

[Mr Laws]

It might be that my hon. Friend would seek to put that construction on it, but that is unduly pessimistic, not only because the appeals process has previous stages, but because a body that seeks to escalate a complaint to the independent complaints adjudication service can seek to raise concerns about the substance—although they may appear to be addressed to the process—if it feels that aspects of the inspection process have not been respected. I will return to that with regard to the school mentioned by my hon. Friend in a moment.

The independent complaints adjudication service also reported that it saw an improvement in the quality of Ofsted’s complaint handling from previous years. All but four of the general recommendations made to Ofsted were accepted fully, with the others being accepted partially.

I know that my hon. Friend has exchanged correspondence with the chief inspector and Ofsted’s south-west regional director, Bradley Simmons, about the inspection of Ferndown upper school in January 2014. My hon. Friend is concerned that the school was graded inadequate, with serious weaknesses. I note that the inspection reported several areas of concern, including that students were not making enough progress, especially in English, that work set was not suitable for the least or most able students, that progress was too slow for students eligible for the pupil premium, for boys and for students with special educational needs or disabilities, that fixed-term exclusions and persistent absence figures were too high and impacting on the progress being made by those pupils, that sixth-form students were not making enough progress and that leaders, including governors, were not tackling weaknesses quickly enough.

As Schools Minister, I cannot comment personally on all those judgments, as my hon. Friend will understand. However, I can reflect on the data and what they indicate for the school. At the time of the inspection, the proportion of students gaining five good GCSE passes, including English and mathematics at grade C or above, had been significantly below the national average for three years. It was 47% against 58% in 2011, 49% against 59% in 2012 and 50% against 60.6% in 2013. As I understand it, the school has a lower than average number of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds in receipt of, for example, the pupil premium. GCSE English language passes at grade A* to C were 69% against the national average of 82%. Attainment was significantly below the national average in nine curriculum areas, and above in just two. Just 59% of students made expected progress in English against 69% nationally. I will not comment on the precise judgments in the Ofsted report, but we should reflect on the fact that data do suggest that the school has performance issues and challenges.

On accountability, I know that the school followed Ofsted’s published complaints procedure. The head teacher complained about the outcome of the inspection. His complaint was investigated by the inspection service provider, Tribal, but was not upheld. He requested that his complaint be elevated, and a further investigation was undertaken by Her Majesty’s inspectors to ascertain whether the original had been fair and thorough. The outcome of the original investigation was validated. The head teacher then took his complaint to the Independent Complaints Adjudication Service for Ofsted. The adjudicator reported that Ofsted had

“addressed the complainant’s concerns in significant detail and in a fair and reasonable manner”

and went on to say:

“I do not find that I can provide any advice or make any recommendations to further improve Ofsted’s practices for dealing with complaints in this instance.”

Picking up on some of the concerns that the school raised about being marked down for attendance, I understand that the investigation into the complaint found that inspectors had considered the school’s own attendance data alongside those available nationally. That is correct procedure. Inspectors should use RAISEonline as a benchmark and should ask questions as necessary. The response to the school’s complaint mentioned there being no national comparison data on attendance rates for sixth forms only.

[Mr Chope]

On that point about no data being available, that is not correct. Does my right hon. Friend accept that?

[Mr Laws]

The response to the school’s complaint mentioned there being no national comparison data on attendance rates for sixth forms only, but attendance data are available and show that, although improving slightly recently, persistent absence has risen for girls and for some students with special educational needs. It has fallen for students eligible for free school meals, but remains seven points above the national average as in 2013.

Attendance is not a separate judgment and does not alone determine the behaviour and safety judgment. A school cannot be marked down for its attendance statistics alone, and this particular school was not. Behaviour and safety were judged not to be inadequate, but to require improvement. My hon. Friend is concerned that performance data should be correctly assessed in a local context, but while local comparisons are important, Ofsted makes comparisons on attainment and progress against national data, taking account of pupils’ prior attainment. That is clearly set out in the inspection handbook, so it should not come as a surprise to any school. If one looks at the attainment data, it is clear that the school has some questions to answer about its performance against comparable national figures.

I understand that Ofsted has undertaken two monitoring inspections of the school, in May and September, since the original inspection. The first visit found that the school was planning appropriate action for improvement, supported by the local authority. The second visit judged senior leaders to be making reasonable progress towards the removal of serious weaknesses. However, it also found that school leaders lacked rigour and urgency in their approach to improving the school. While recognising improvements, Her Majesty’s inspectorate found that

“the school lacks a consistently rigorous and relentless focus on improving the achievement of those students who could, and should, do better, regardless of their background, ability or starting point”.

We should expect all schools to serve the interests of all pupils.

It is important to remember that, for the vast majority of schools, the current inspection system works well. I would, however, encourage any school that feels that its inspection has fallen short of normal expectations to raise its concerns with Ofsted at the earliest possible opportunity, as many have done. However, the chief inspector’s decision must be final if inspection is to remain credible. Without that, every school that disagreed with the judgment would seek to challenge the outcome of its inspection, delaying critical action to start to bring about improvement for the children at the school who, after all, will not get a second chance.

I hope that I have demonstrated that there are many stages in the process of scrutinising an Ofsted decision. In fact, the only way that we could really meet my hon. Friend’s requirement for an additional degree of scrutiny would be to have another school inspection service. There is no evidence at present that that would be value for money given the overall level of complaints. We will, however, keep a close eye on the issue and seek to improve the quality of inspections in future.

Mental Health (Cambridgeshire)

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Westminster Hall

16:00

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I am delighted to have secured this debate on a key issue for my constituents: health care and in particular mental health.

Our national health service is something to be proud of, the brainchild of a great Liberal, Beveridge, and brought into being by the pioneering Labour Government after the second world war. It is an amazing institution, providing care for all of us, free at the point of use. I pay tribute to the excellent and tireless work of NHS staff—and incidentally, I hope the Government will ensure that they are paid appropriately, because independent pay recommendations should be honoured.

Our NHS is, however, not perfect and is under strain. During debates when it was established, the predictions were that it would run more cheaply every year as people became increasingly healthy. In fact, the opposite has happened. People live longer because we are learning to treat more and more conditions, but that costs us more and more. Demand grows rapidly, the range of things we can do increases and NHS inflation outstrips standard inflation, leading to huge cost pressures. Much of the solution lies in preventive measures, because it is of course cheaper to keep people healthy than to treat them when they are not, but we never spend enough money on that as it is so often needed for treatment.

Some areas are shamefully neglected. Mental health in particular has always been left behind. A lot of that is a product of historical, outdated social attitudes—questions of shame, how people ought to be and what was “normal”. Indeed, many believed that mental health problems were a deficiency of character. That is of course rubbish, and I do not think anyone in the House would share such a view today. Nevertheless, a stigma that simply should not be there is still attached to mental health conditions. People are not prepared to talk about mental health, to admit problems or to seek help.

The stigma not only causes anguish for many people and their families, but materialises in discriminatory policies. For example, when the previous Government introduced waiting times in our NHS—arguing, perfectly reasonably, that that would improve provision for cancer patients and mean they were not left waiting for treatment—the Government did not include mental health. It was almost taken for granted that mental health delays were less important than physical health ones. Funding bodies reacted, pulling more money away from mental health in order to hit the new targets in physical health, which was an understandable reaction.

I am glad that that policy era is over. We have now legislated for parity of esteem between physical and mental health. Thanks to the excellent work of the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), we are introducing the first ever waiting-time standards for mental health next year, described by charities as a watershed moment, although far too late in coming. Other improvements include the recent provision of £150 million to tackle eating disorders, but we have to go much further, because people are suffering and simply cannot wait.

On Saturday, I was at the wonderful Mill Road winter fair. We had a Lib Dem stall, where we were asking people to come and talk to us about mental health, to get some information and to sign a petition supporting our call for an extra £500 million for mental health, which I reiterate today. Huge numbers wanted to sign—many people care about the issue—and we raised lots of money for Centre 33, which helps to provide free and confidential counselling and support for young people.

We also heard some astonishing tales. Let me paraphrase just one of the stories of one of the people who came by, a woman who had felt suicidal for a year and had no fixed address. She went to see a GP, who asked her to come back regularly to check that she was okay. She went for a bit, only to stop going, but that triggered no alarm bells, even though a suicidal patient who was being monitored had stopped showing up. Eventually, she went to another GP and was told that she would be referred to a community mental health team, but nothing happened. Some time later, a third GP also suggested referral, but found nothing in her notes to suggest that she ever had been referred before. Three months after seeing the first GP, she was finally given an appointment to see a psychiatrist, but it was in five months’ time. The appointment happened and she was put on an 18-month waiting list for therapy. She is still on that list. In the meantime, she has lost her job and is in an extremely difficult situation. No wonder she and many others say that we need change.

Such a situation is not new. Eight years ago, my predecessor David Howarth spoke out against £3 million of cuts to mental health services in Cambridgeshire that led to the suicide of Julie Deloughery. There are many such stories across the country and across the decades. I heard some more when I worked with service users at Lifeworks, a mental health drop-in centre in Cambridge. The centre was threatened with closure, which I am delighted has now been stopped. I am proud that I was able to help with that by talking to service users and the mental health trust, and by raising the issue in Parliament, but I am far prouder of the work done by service users themselves and their friends. In particular, I pay tribute to Ann Robinson for her efforts. Too often, things are done to people with mental health issues, rather than done with them.

The now reversed decision on Lifeworks was partly the result of funding problems, so let me focus on the funding situation in Cambridgeshire, which has one of the most troubled health economies in the country. We are very underfunded. In 2013-14, our clinical commissioning group received the second lowest funding per head in the entire country. It has improved slightly since, but we are still far below where we should be. Somewhere has to be second lowest, but that is not a fair share. The Government have a fair share formula, but since it has been revised, rightly, to take account of deprivation, we have been left £35 million below the fair funding calculation. We get £961 per head in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG, whereas the figure for next-door West Norfolk is £1,255 per head. We are getting a slightly larger increase than others, at 2.9% rather than 2.14%, but at that rate it will take about a decade to catch up, with no compensation for the years of underfunding. I accept that NHS England makes decisions on how we get to the fair rate, but I hope the Minister will agree that the pace of change is simply too slow.

We have other problems. Our population is growing quickly: Cambridgeshire’s population growth is the fastest in the country and Peterborough is the fastest growing city. That means an even greater strain on funds, because the population increase is not properly taken account of. Our funding per head is going up slower than the national average, in spite of being low to start with. Will the Minister ensure that growth is no longer penalised? We also have a legacy of poor decisions, such as the two massive private finance initiative projects under the previous Government at Hinchingbrooke and Peterborough hospitals, the biggest and perhaps worst PFI projects in the country. They are still sucking money out of the system. When preparing for the debate, I was shocked to find that the PFI repayments for Peterborough represent a staggering 18% of the hospital’s budget.

We have less money than elsewhere, and we have more of that taken away from us before we even start, but we also have other legacy issues. Cambridgeshire is repeatedly used as a test bed for experimentation, such as the £1 billion privatisation of Hinchingbrooke hospital, led by and legislated for by the previous Government. They put the hospital out to tender and had not a single NHS bid among the final five bidders—Addenbrooke’s hospital pulled out because the cost was too large—so a list of three private bidders was left to the Government to choose from, which is not exactly a great choice to have to make. That is why I find it frustrating when the shadow Health Secretary claims to have clean hands over what happened with Hinchingbrooke. He claimed that one of the three bidders was an NHS provider, as he did in the House today, and I have been trying to find out which of the three—Circle, Ramsay or Serco—he considers to be part of the NHS. He said on Twitter today that it was the one associated with an NHS mental health body, but the day Serco counts as an NHS bidder is one I hope we will never see. Problems remain at Hinchingbrooke.

I am pleased, by the way, about the recent tendering for Cambridgeshire older people services, which I will talk about later. However, under the current Government’s legislation—which, incidentally, I opposed, because doing things in that way was not right for this Government or the previous one—the bid went to the NHS, with the mental health trust and Addenbrooke’s hospital providing the better services.

Cambridgeshire starts off with a particular historical situation and no money, so it is no wonder that we struggle to fund mental health properly. Things get worse. The CCG ran a small deficit last year, which is hardly surprising, but that makes it ineligible for quality premium payments, which could have brought in another £1 million. How can it make sense to starve CCGs of funding as a punishment for not having enough money to do the job properly? No one will be surprised to find that there is a correlation between budget outcomes and how well funded CCGs are: areas with funding above their fair-share calculations run surpluses, while those funded below their fair share run deficits and get punished for it. The deficit of £4.9 million from last year has to be repaid this year, putting even greater strain on the CCG, given an underfunding level of almost 10 times that figure.

In fairness to the CCG, it provides proportionately about the same allocation to mental health as everywhere else. We start off with far too little, however, so mental health gets far too little—one of the worst levels of funding in the whole country. That is in spite of long-term underinvestment and the huge pressures of growing demand—a 12% increase in the number of people with serious and enduring mental illness, but no extra money to cope with it. Given that the previous Government introduced a payment by results tariff system for physical health, but left mental health using the block grant system, extra demand—extra work—does not lead to extra funding. Yet again, changes were made to help physical health care rather than mental health care. As we rightly reduce stigma and tackle the huge unmet need for mental health support, more and more people will realise they need help and will seek it, but will discover that it is not there for them.

We have seen other problems. There was a suggestion from NHS England that there should be differential deflators—larger savings on mental health treatments than on physical health treatments. I know that infuriated my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk, and I understand that the situation will not be repeated, which is welcome. I was disappointed to see that my own CCG complied with the suggestion, although in fairness it gave an extra £1.5 million for mental health services and as of next April will give a further £2.2 million to help meet targets for improving access to the psychological therapies programme.

The Nobel laureate Ernest Rutherford said, “We haven’t got any money, so we’ll have to think”, and providers in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough have had to be creative to cope with the awful funding position. We have seen many innovations. The mental health trust has set up a single point of access known as ARC—the advice and referral centre—reduced out-of-area placements and focused more on community teams. Its recovery college is doing good work in advancing the recovery model of mental health care.

We are doing some amazing things to use resources more efficiently in joint working. The £800 million contract for Cambridgeshire older people’s services—as I said, that stayed in the NHS—will combine acute trusts, mental health and community care, to help people seamlessly so they are not passed between one organisation and another. In particular, it should mean a sharp decline in the number of delayed transfers of care, where an older person is stuck in an acute hospital bed—at great expense and not to their benefit—because there is no alternative available in the system. No longer will Addenbrooke’s hospital have to negotiate desperately for community care beds; there will be one system. The contract design, with outcomes-based contracting, means that, rather than rewarding activity, there is an incentive to reduce the need for treatment. Keeping someone healthy longer is better for them and cheaper for us than treating them when they are ill.

We have to do much more on prevention, an issue I know the Minister cares greatly about. In his Five Year Forward View, Simon Stevens called for a radical emphasis on public health and prevention; promoting public mental health must surely be a key part of that, with resilience and well-being as the core. Mind recently called for local authorities to prepare public mental health strategies. Cambridgeshire county council’s health committee, chaired by the excellent Councillor Killian Bourke, has already commissioned such a strategy and plans to spend £120,000 on it. It will attempt not only to promote mental health in the very widest sense but to target groups that are particularly susceptible to experiencing problems, investing in effective, evidence-based interventions.

We also need to focus on recovery, on which the mental health trust’s recovery college is leading the way. Recovery is an approach to mental health that recognises that full recovery is not always possible—some conditions are lifelong—and seeks to enable patients to recover their lives from their conditions so they can live more fulfilled lives. That is in contrast to the attachment model, in which people are stuck as service users for ever. However, a recovery-led approach has to be properly resourced and must not simply be used as an excuse to close down services; otherwise, discharged patients will just be shut out of services and will return to being bounced around the system, looking for crisis care.

We need good crisis care as well, so that people can receive help. I again pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk for his work on the crisis care concordat, bringing organisations together to deal with such crises. Currently, a huge load is placed on the police and acute hospitals—they end up dealing with people who should not be there but have nowhere else to go.

We must also make sure that there is a wider understanding of mental health throughout the health system. Primary care is key. I am astonished that GPs do not have compulsory training in mental health care. They will surely deal with mental health issues regularly, given that one in four of us will have a serious mental health condition at some point. Why are GPs not expert in mental health care? They could do far more to help people recover, remain independent and live better lives.

The voluntary sector is also key. I pay particular tribute to organisations such as Mind in Cambridgeshire, led by its very able chief executive Sarah Hughes; she has driven forward the crisis care concordat which was signed for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough just a couple of weeks ago. I also pay tribute to organisations such as Rethink Mental Illness, the Richmond Fellowship, Lifecraft, Centre 33, pinpoint, the SUN network, Arts and Minds and many more, whose work is hugely valued.

Finally, I will focus on an issue particularly close to my heart: child and adolescent mental health. It is a very important issue, because those who experience their first mental health problems at that stage can often be helped to recover completely. Often, the problems are a product of their environment, so early intervention can be radically preventive; however, waiting lists are far too long. In Cambridgeshire the health committee is trying to work with Centre 33 to provide more counselling support for young people. We have to go further on that and sort this issue out. Pinpoint and Healthwatch have recently contacted me about the urgent need to do more for child and adolescent mental health services. Many of my constituents have been in touch on that matter, as well.

There is far more that I could talk about. For example, I could discuss the troubled implementation of the Epic e-hospital system at Addenbrooke’s and the lessons we have to learn from that, the ongoing problems in the East of England ambulance service, or the desperate need to reopen community care beds in Brookfields hospital so that people can be moved from Addenbrooke’s into appropriate care. I could also talk about many positive things, such as the move of Papworth hospital to the Cambridge biomedical campus, which is proceeding apace, planning permission having recently been granted after my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury approved the funding.

I will conclude instead with a plea. Mental health services in Cambridgeshire, and indeed across the country, are simply not good enough. I welcome the Government’s commitment to change that, and the idea of parity of esteem in particular, but it is not enough. We also need more money in mental health care across the board—hence my plea to the Minister for an extra £500 million targeted on mental health care.

In Cambridgeshire, we face a financial crisis across all forms of health care. Our low funding levels, historical commitments and growing population create a triple whammy. However, there is a way forward. Just yesterday, I took the chief executive of the mental health trust and the chair of the clinical commissioning group to see my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk to make the case, and I think he was sympathetic to our position.

I will say here, to this Minister, what I said then to that one. There is an opportunity now, given the extra money that I and others campaigned for in the autumn statement. That extra £2 billion will have to be allocated somehow, so what formula should be used? I urge her in the strongest terms not to use the current ratios. That would mean giving extra money to areas already getting more than their calculated fair share, and less to those of us who are behind that fair share. Instead—I hope she will press NHS England on this—the money should be used to jump-start the shift to the new fair formula.

I understand why the transition is being made slowly—those areas with more funding than the fair share probably do not feel overfunded, even though they are able to run a surplus. But the new money allows us to correct the deficiencies for low-funded areas without creating losers. I am aware that £200 million has been earmarked for challenged health economies, and we are one of the 11 that have been so labelled. Although I welcome that, the Government should allocate all the money to move people up to the fair share if they are below it. I know that if our clinical commissioning group got the missing money—the £35 million that the fair shares formula says we should have, plus our share of the extra £2 billion—a high proportion of it could and would go on mental health care, transforming, helping and saving many lives. I hope the Minister will do what she can to make sure that that happens.

16:17

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on securing this debate and commend him on his ongoing interest in local health matters. I know from meeting the chair of his CCG only yesterday that my hon. Friend is a consistent champion of local services.

I am sorry that the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), cannot be here to respond to the debate, but he has already shown a keen interest in its subject, and I know that he will take action forward. I also echo the tributes that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge quite rightly made to NHS staff at the beginning of his remarks.

We all agree that good-quality patient care has to be expected regardless of where in the country we live. As my hon. Friend quite rightly said, for too long, mental health services were the forgotten area of the health service. That is changing under this Government, and I will touch on that later. There is still, however, much to do; I am sure that we would all acknowledge that.

Although I will not dwell on the subject too much in this debate, my hon. Friend was right to comment on prevention and on building resilience. As the public health Minister, those issues are close to my heart. He was also right to talk in broader terms about building resilience in individuals. I know considerable thought is being given to making it possible for people—young people, in particular—to withstand more of what life throws at them.

I move on to questions of national funding. For 2014-15, NHS England allocated £64 billion to CCGs for hospital, community and mental health services—an increase on the previous year of 2.54%, or £1.59 billion. In making allocations, NHS England relies on advice from one of our many health acronyms, ACRA—the Advisory Committee on Resource Allocation. ACRA gives advice on the share of available resources provided to each clinical commissioning group to support equal access for equal need. Much of our debate will revolve around those funding formulas and how they are evolving. The calculation is based on the age of populations, their relative morbidity and unavoidable variations in cost. The objective is to ensure a consistent supply of health services across the country. The greater the health need, the more money is received, because more health services are needed. The CCG model covers only non-specialised hospitals and community care, plus primary care prescribing.

I understand that the baseline varies systematically between locations. To some extent, that reflects different historical commissioning priorities in the predecessor organisations—the primary care trusts—or different mixes between the local and area commissioning responsibilities.

NHS England reviewed the funding formula for 2014-15 and the following years, and it now uses the person-based resource allocation approach, which was developed by the Nuffield Trust. Unlike the previous target models, it allows information about individuals—including their age, gender and recent hospital diagnostic history—to be combined with information about the area in which they live; that information, as my hon. Friend knows, is frequently linked to deprivation. The PBRA formula estimates the relative need of each individual. At a CCG level, the estimates are the most accurate ever used for allocations, so there has obviously been a change in how resources are allocated.

In debates such as this we often discuss the pace of the change from the actual allocation towards the target allocation. The option that NHS England agreed for CCGs reflected the challenge of directing additional funding to the CCGs that are the most under target, while not destabilising areas whose allocations were above target—I have seen that happen in London. If people have had an allocation for a long time, we must ensure that they plan for the change; such things must be done sensibly. That is a continuation of the policy of maximising growth for those furthest below target. We appreciate that CCGs in the east of England are further below their target allocations than those in many other parts of the country—my hon. Friend is right to draw attention to that—and that Cambridgeshire is one of the furthest behind target by some £45 million or 4.85%.

NHS England is already spending £500 million in 2014-15 and 2015-16 to bring under-target CCGs, such as Cambridgeshire, towards their target allocations. That approach was discussed and decided at a public board meeting in December 2013—nearly a year ago. My hon. Friend is pushing us to speak about what will happen in the future. Following my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s announcement in the autumn statement of a further £2 billion for front-line services, NHS England is reviewing the 2015-16 allocations. I hope that NHS England shares the hopes of my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, and that it will consider how some of that extra £2 billion can be used to help the CCGs that are furthest behind—including Cambridgeshire—to get closer to their fair share. My hon. Friend has already discussed that issue with my ministerial colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk, who takes it extremely seriously and is committed to raising the matter with NHS England before it makes a decision at its board meeting on 17 December.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge, I recognise the commitment and dedication of the staff who provide mental health service, including those who work in specialist trusts and settings, and those who work in primary care and provide services daily. I was pleased that my hon. Friend spoke about the large army of people who are absolutely critical in mental health. They are often not formally part of the NHS composition of services, but their support is invaluable to it. They are the carers and volunteers, who sometimes work in charities or voluntary organisations—my hon. Friend referred to Centre 33 and a number of other organisations in Cambridgeshire. Sometimes they are simply individuals who help or care for a parent, a friend or a neighbour because they think it is the right thing to do. Without those people, the job of the health services would be immeasurably more difficult. Like my hon. Friend, I pay tribute to them.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

On that point, will my hon. Friend the Minister praise West Essex Mind, whose annual general meeting is this Friday? It does so much to help mental health services in Harlow and across Essex, and it is an example of a charity that is deeply rooted in our community.

[Jane Ellison]

Of course I join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to that organisation. It is obvious from the comments of many hon. Members in this House that local branches of Mind and other groups do terrific work. My hon. Friend clearly has a good relationship with his local branch, and I thank him for placing his regard for it on the record.

The Government have increased funding for mental health by £120 million in 2014-15. Total mental health spending in England will rise from £8.5 billion in 2013-14 to £8.62 billion in 2014-15. The Department of Health and NHS England continue to work together on that important issue. I recognise the challenge faced by the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough health economy. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge about the private finance initiative decisions that the previous Government made about Peterborough, and about the legacy of problems that they left.

As my hon. Friend knows, action is being taken. NHS England, the NHS Trust Development Authority and Monitor are working on a programme to support 11 of the most challenged health economies, of which my hon. Friend’s is one, and to address those with long-term integrated plans. In Cambridgeshire, a programme jointly funded by all local NHS partners and underpinned by a concordat on joint working has been put in place. Its purpose is to find a collectively agreed solution to closing the financial gap facing the economy as a whole, while improving quality of care for my hon. Friend’s constituents and everybody else who is served by the local health economy. That work is due to identify proposals by the end of June 2015.

Mental health is an important part of that work, and emerging ideas focus around closer integration of physical and mental health, and an expanded role for mental health input in a range of hospital settings and community pathways, such as those for long-term conditions. As the Minister with responsibility for public health, I know only too well that people often have extreme co-morbidities, so we must look at them in the round and at all the things that interact with and affect their personal health care.

I know that there are concerns that mental health services could be disproportionately affected, which would not be acceptable. Although payment for mental health services is agreed locally, we expect local commissioners and providers to have regard for the national tariff arrangements. However, they can be flexible when there is good reason to be so.

The tariff arrangements for 2015-16 give a clear signal to the mental health sector to move away from simple block contracts, which currently apply in Cambridgeshire and are not transparent, to local payment models that support recovery and outcomes, as my hon. Friend highlighted, and that reflect the needs of local communities.

My hon. Friend is right that Cambridgeshire and Peterborough CCG invested an additional £1.5 million to address capacity pressures. His CCG is clearly committed to that, and he will continue to champion it. It has also committed to investing a further £2.2 million from next April to deliver the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme.

My hon. Friend is right to pay tribute to my ministerial colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk, who has championed mental health policy in this Parliament very effectively. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge drew attention to the Government’s commitment to parity of esteem, which has been made explicit in legislation. Some 2.4 million people have entered treatment under the IAPT programme, and more than 1.4 million have completed that treatment. We invested £54 million in the period from 2011 to 2015-16 in the children and young people’s IAPT programme. My hon. Friend is right that child and adolescent mental health services are a critical part of our local care pathways.

For the first time ever, we have a mental health crisis care concordat to improve the system, signed by more than 20 national organisations. As my hon. Friend said, Cambridgeshire has already put it in place. We invested £25 million to ensure that vulnerable offenders are identified when they first enter the criminal justice system. The aim is to achieve 100% coverage by 2017.

There is a lot going on. We all acknowledge that there is a long way to go on mental health, but we have passed several important milestones on the journey. The NHS—both nationally and in Cambridgeshire—is working hard on the wider funding issues, and I hope I have assured my hon. Friend that progress is being made. He has already had a commitment from my right hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk, but when I return to the Department I will reiterate that we want to make representations about the points he made to NHS England ahead of the critical funding meeting. I encourage my hon. Friend to keep closely in touch with his local NHS, although I can see that he does that. I thank him for securing this debate. I hope I have given him a measure of comfort and reassured him that considerable progress is under way on this important agenda.

Energy Policy and Living Standards

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

Government energy policy, put in place by Ministers of all three established parties, is pricing people out of being able to heat their own homes. The cosy consensus over energy policy here in Westminster is squeezing living standards across the country. According to the index of domestic fuel and light prices, helpfully reproduced by the House of Commons Library, prices have changed fairly dramatically over the past 40 years. From the early 1980s through to the early noughties, there was a slow, gradual fall in prices; it was a 20-year period of customers getting what they tend to get in a free market, capitalist economy—more for less.

Suddenly and dramatically, that picture changed in the early noughties. Since then we have seen a rapid rise in prices—sharper, indeed, than that experienced during either of the two oil shocks of the 1970s. Dual-fuel household energy bills in 2014 for the average home are forecast to be almost £1,400. That represents a real-terms price increase of over 50% in a decade—a decade during which average household incomes stagnated and during which, by some measures, the UK’s per capita income has fallen. Fuel bills have gone up sharply, but income has hardly changed. Living standards have been squeezed as a consequence. Pensioners and those on low incomes tend to pay a disproportionately high proportion of their incomes on energy. The definition of fuel poverty may have changed, but one stark fact cannot be overlooked: a large number of households—4.82 million households—now spend over 10% of their income trying to keep warm.

Why have energy prices gone up so rapidly? Why did the historic decline in energy prices suddenly turn around in the early noughties, and why have costs gone up in this way? Is it because there is not enough of the stuff? Are we perhaps running out of gas? Not at all: wholesale energy costs have actually been falling as a proportion of the total. According to Ofgem, for every £1 we pay on domestic fuel bills, only about 44p goes to meet the wholesale price. People might think, “Is this all the fault of those beastly energy companies? Are they the ones to blame?” About a fifth to a quarter of the bills that we pay covers the cost of the energy companies distributing and supplying what they sell us. People might think, “If only energy companies were forced to lower their prices, perhaps we could have cheaper energy for everyone.”

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Douglas Carswell]

With a due sense of reluctance, yes.

[Albert Owen]

I am very grateful. I welcome the fact that the hon. Gentleman has secured this debate. I guess that his party is now an established party—now that they are here, they are part of the establishment. The serious point is that distribution prices vary considerably across the 14 regions and contribute to between 19% and 25% of the bill. Does he agree that it is possible to have a leveller so that across the United Kingdom—or certainly in Great Britain—those prices could be the same? Does he also agree that it should be possible for people off-grid to get a better bargain? He mentioned dual fuel, and many people in deprived and rural areas are not on the grid, so they do not get the benefit of dual fuel discount.

[Douglas Carswell]

The hon. Gentleman argues in favour, I think, of Government price-fixing and making it illegal for suppliers to charge different prices in different parts of the country. I think there are a number of flaws in that approach. For a start, it could quite possibly mean that some areas would have to go without supply at all. Generally speaking, if we try to fix prices, we interfere with the allocation of resources and we have to be prepared for black-outs. That is not something that I would want, but he is absolutely right to say that a fifth to a quarter of the bills that we pay cover the cost of the companies distributing and supplying energy. The hon. Gentleman then makes the leap that many have made, which is that if only we could force energy companies to lower their prices, we could have cheaper energy for all. That, at least, seems to be the level of logic from the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). However, a prices and incomes policy for energy in 2015 will no more work than a prices and incomes policy has worked for anything in the past. Prices and incomes policies do not work.

Energy prices are not going up because of a shortage of energy or because of beastly energy companies; public policy is driving up the cost of household energy bills. The renewable obligation requires energy companies to increase the proportion of energy they generate from supposedly renewable sources. That basically means that we have to pay more in order to subsidise the construction of wind turbines. The Government’s own estimate suggests that fuel bills have gone up by 7% to refund those renewable obligations. However, the Renewable Energy Foundation, for example, has pointed out that the methodology of the Department means that the figure of 7% is, by many ways of analysing it, an extraordinary understatement. If we measure the increase in terms of price per kilowatt-hour, the increase in prices is likely to be far greater.

According to data that the Department recently put out following a freedom of information request, in the central fossil fuel price scenario for 2020, low-carbon policies will result in a 50% increase in energy costs for small business. In the low fossil fuel price scenario for 2020, low-carbon policies will cause a 77% increase for medium-sized companies, which would rise to 114% by 2030. Whitehall officials have gambled on the price and cost of fossil fuel and they have got it spectacularly wrong. I wonder whether the Minister, with an ambitious eye on the world beyond May next year, is willing to defend those policies.

The Minister’s colleague, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, has pledged to treble the amount of electricity derived from renewables. Will the Minister defend that, too? Energy prices are increasing because we are switching off perfectly good gas and coal power stations while pouring billions of pounds into windmills. It does not make sense.

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

I am intrigued by what the hon. Gentleman has had to say, but his analysis has missed out the fact that the price of oil has been dropping. That can have an impact on the cost of living and on energy costs, particularly for poorer families in this country. How does he think we could get the oil producers to pass on that decrease to the consumer?

[Douglas Carswell]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and makes a very valid point. For a number of reasons—not least because of technology and innovation in the United States and the shale gas revolution—the cost of fossil fuel is being driven down. Unfortunately, we have a Government whose officials banked on the cost of fossil fuels being relatively high, so we are now locked into a position where people will have to pay higher costs for years, despite the potential for a great reduction. It is extraordinary that a Government who once pretended to believe in the free market are presiding over that. It is quite remarkable. We should be benefiting from the lower oil costs, but we are unable to because we have a Department that is committed to price-fixing.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that not only have the Government pushed up the price of electricity because of this infatuation with wind turbines, but that that in itself has led to distribution costs going up because the grid has to be reinforced, and that the carbon tax that is now imposed on the fuel used by the cheapest types of power stations is adding to people’s bills as well? The whole policy is directed towards high energy prices, which have reduced people’s standard of living and have furthermore chased industry out of the United Kingdom.

[Douglas Carswell]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely spot on. It is irrational and uneconomic on so many levels. The irony is that the Government talk about windmills and wind turbines, using the language of sustainability, but the truth is that without the subsidy, it simply would not be sustainable. Unlike solar, it simply will not make economic sense to generate electricity through 13th and 14th-century windmill technology.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Does he accept that the Government’s policy is very illogical in this area? For example, we are spending taxpayers’ money in order to enhance the setting of a world heritage site at Stonehenge, while at the same time using taxpayers’ money for subsidies for offshore wind turbines that are going to wreck the world heritage site on the Jurassic coast?

[Douglas Carswell]

The hon. Gentleman makes a brilliant point. He is extremely sound on this issue, as on so many other things. There are things on which it is good to spend public money, and securing the future of something like Stonehenge is wonderful, but one of the downsides of subsidising windmills is that they damage the countryside. It is not good conservation practice to industrialise the countryside with these subsidised wind turbines. It is not good for the environment or our heritage sites. It is not good, either, for people in Jaywick and west Clacton in my constituency, who are deliberately being priced out of being able to heat their home. Why? Because an out-of-touch elite in Westminster and Whitehall believes that that will somehow save the planet from excess carbon dioxide emissions. It is the Alice in Wonderland world of SW1 that has come to believe that. Ministers are competing to be the mad hatter, but it is a ridiculous state of affairs.

The Climate Change Act 2008 was a mistake. I should have listened far more carefully to the late, great Eric Forth MP and voted against it. My failure to do so is my biggest regret as a Member of Parliament. My new party looks to help me to right that wrong, or rather I look to help it to right that wrong.

Government schemes promising to insulate homes have been a flop. In Jaywick and west Clacton, in my corner of Essex, thousands of householders were led to believe that they could get free home insulation. For all that, it has happened only for a handful. The green deal has failed, and alongside it the Minister who presided over the scheme. Should we now follow the right hon. Member for Doncaster North, who has declared that he wants energy prices to be fixed and a prices policy for energy? He may have committed his party to a price freeze, but that will not mean lower energy prices for everyone. If we hold down the price of something by Government fiat, we end up constraining the supply of it. That policy will lead directly to black-outs.

The real reason for higher energy prices is the public policies that were put in place by the right hon. Member for Doncaster North when he was the Energy Secretary, and which all three parties now support. All three parties have had a say on energy policy and all three parties have got us to this sorry state of affairs. We need a return to the idea of an honest energy market. The Minister might pay lip service to the idea of a free market, but where it counts—when it comes to what he actually does in office—he is cheerfully defending a system of energy production that is anything but free, so let me remind him of what an honest market in energy production might look like.

If we had an honest energy market in this country, suppliers would compete to supply householders with energy at a price that they were willing to pay. There would be no requirements on them to produce a particular mix or quota of energy. Innovation and competition would mean giving customers more for less. Capital and technology would come together to satisfy customers. Instead, we have a system in which lobbyists and quotas meet in Government Departments in pursuit of renewable targets. It is a corporatist racket, not an energy policy that is remotely competitive or free. Coal, gas, fracking, nuclear—who knows what mix we might get if we had innovation, capital and a free, honest market in energy?

If the Minister finds it hard to imagine what a free market in energy might look like, may I suggest that he look across the Atlantic? Gas prices for domestic consumers have fallen by 26% in five years in the United States. As our prices have risen, over there they have fallen. It is not that the laws of physics are any different on that side of the Atlantic. The laws of physics are the same. It is public policy on this side of the Atlantic that is so fundamentally flawed and needs to change.

Voters who struggle to pay their heating bills this year should rightly blame those on all three parties’ Front Benches, who put this dreadful scheme in place. We need to make a change. We need to scrap the subsidies. We need to love the new technology, but subsidies must be abolished.

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

rose—

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

We will now hear a short intervention by Robert Halfon.

[Robert Halfon]

On a point of order, Dr McCrea. I have permission from the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) to make a short speech in this debate. Can I just confirm that that is the case?

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

Yes, you have permission to make a speech, but it needs to be short, because we have to give the Minister time to respond.

16:43

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

Thank you, Dr McCrea; I will speak for three minutes or so. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) for giving me permission to make a speech, and I congratulate him on securing this important debate. I will focus on different areas, but I do think that the Government have done good things—in particular, providing a rebate to every domestic electricity customer and reducing bills by £130 for 2 million of the poorest households through the warm home discount. And of course the hon. Gentleman will know about the huge fuel duty freeze that the Government have pledged to maintain across the Parliament, so that the price of fuel is 20p lower in tax terms.

As I said, I will concentrate on a number of areas. The first is the difference in the cost of energy depending on which payment method a customer uses. I have worked with the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on this issue. Earlier this year, I conducted a cross-party campaign, with the support of more than 100 MPs, against the practice by energy companies of charging customers extortionate amounts for not paying by direct debit. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister ordered an investigation into that, but all that Ofgem has said to me is that although there were some anomalies, such as the £390 extra that Spark Energy customers were paying, those cases were exceptional. However, Department of Energy and Climate Change figures show that the average person who does not pay by direct debit pays £114 more each year. That is just not good enough.

One elderly lady in my constituency of Harlow, who always paid on time via the post office, received a letter saying that she would have to start paying an extra £63 a year if she did not start paying by direct debit. That is unacceptable. Charges such as that are excessive and harm the most vulnerable in our society, particularly the 2 million people who do not have proper banking facilities, which makes payment by direct debit almost impossible. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister will clarify what the Government are trying to do on that.

Secondly, there is a problem, which has been raised, regarding prepayment meters. The cost of using those is often significantly higher than of using any other method. Traditionally, that was justifiable: companies had to pay people to go and empty the meters of coins. But there are now prepayment cards. Those who use prepayment meters are charged extra even though they are the least able to afford it. That needs to be looked at urgently.

Thirdly, there are other ways in which energy bills are increased, often through no fault of the consumer. The example has been mentioned of the 4 million households who are off the gas grid and will never be able to get the best deals as they cannot get a dual-fuel discount. It would be helpful if standard criteria could be introduced across suppliers to allow families with children clearer guidance as to whether they will qualify for the warm home discount.

Finally, I believe that the only way in which the situation can be improved is not by imposing an energy price freeze, which will only hike prices up in the long term, but by scrapping the existing regulator and creating an energy version of Which?, a consumer regulator that stands up for the customers, not the energy companies, and that has real teeth. As pointed out in The Sun newspaper today and as mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, The Sun is running a campaign for fuel companies to cut their prices following a significant fall in the international price of oil. I have previously handed a petition to the Office of Fair Trading with FairFuelUK calling for an inquiry into the rocket and feather effect, but there has never been a full inquiry.

In conclusion, stopping the premium on non-payment by direct debit, action on additional and hidden costs and turning Ofgem into a genuine consumer body would make a huge difference to residents of Harlow, and to energy bills and the cost of living for millions of people across the country.

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

rose—

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

One hon. Gentleman is standing, but convention demands that a Member has the permission not only of the Member who has secured the debate, which is Mr Carswell, but of the Minister, and he needs time to respond, so is the Minister willing to give a couple of minutes to the hon. Gentleman?

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Matthew Hancock)]

Of course.

16:48

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

Thank you, Dr McCrea; I am grateful to the Minister. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) on securing this debate on energy policy and living standards. This is a key issue for our party, and I think that this is the first debate that we have secured in the Commons.

Energy costs are being driven up through a levy control framework that shows the cost rising from £2.3 billion in 2012 to £9.8 billion in 2020. Much of that money is going on offshore wind. Rather than trying to develop leading, cutting-edge technologies, or some of the areas that have been improving in cost-efficiency such as solar, we are seeing the roll-out of absolutely masses—almost half the world’s production—of offshore energy, which costs about three times the market energy price. That is an absolutely extraordinary imposition on our constituents.

At the same time, we are bringing in a capacity market that even Mr Huhne, who was the Energy Secretary, did not want to see. At least he was an economist and realised, as I would have thought the Minister would also recognise, that as soon as a capacity market is announced, people will not build capacity until they start qualifying for the subsidy. That subsidy now seems to be available to almost everyone, rather than just those who have capacity that can be switched on reliably and immediately. That is going to be yet another imposition that drives up costs for our consumers.

Perhaps the most significant cost is what is happening to coal. The European Union is shutting down coal plants, including Kingsnorth in my constituency. Demolition of Kingsnorth has just commenced under the large combustion plant directive, and various pieces of successor legislation are even worse. The Government did not apply for a derogation that could have got us through a period in which there was a particular crunch in our energy demand. Why did not the Government at least try to obtain such a derogation? The Government, not the EU, are banning the construction of new coal-fired plant. E.ON, which owns Kingsnorth, would have liked to build a new supercritical plant, which would have provided much more efficient energy production, but the Government have banned it because of the emissions performance standard, I believe. Such projects are going ahead in Germany and other countries, but we are unilaterally driving up costs for our consumers, reducing the competitiveness of our industry and holding our country back.

16:50

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Matthew Hancock)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) on securing the debate and on choosing energy as the subject for his first Westminster Hall debate in his new iteration in this Parliament. My central response to his argument is that it is important to look at the facts and have a rational debate about the matter. Central to his big-picture hypothesis was the argument that energy costs have been rising since the early 2000s, before which they had gradually declined. He went on to say that wholesale costs were falling as a proportion of the total cost. However, the wholesale price has risen sharply during that period, and the wholesale price—the amount that is beyond the control of any Government—is a central driver of energy costs. Without acknowledging that core fact, it is difficult to have a rational debate on the subject, which I think we would all value.

[Mark Reckless]

The Minister says that the price is beyond the control of any Government, but Saudi Arabia has had quite a big impact on price by not increasing its oil production, and the US has done likewise by allowing and facilitating exploration for shale gas and oil, which we have held back so badly in this country.

[Matthew Hancock]

Nobody has direct control over wholesale costs, although I entirely take the point that Government policy that has an impact on the supply of energy, particularly hydrocarbon energy, can have an impact on price. I share the hon. Gentleman’s enthusiasm for shale, and the Government’s proposals will ensure that exploration for shale gas can happen as long as it is done carefully and within a regulatory framework that ensures that it is safe. I hope that he, his colleague the hon. Member for Clacton and all colleagues in his new party will support the local extraction of shale gas; his view is not shared by members of his party across the country. I welcome the support of the new establishment party for shale gas.

It is absolutely essential to ensure that we have security of supply at the lowest possible cost, while living within our international climate obligations. Perhaps there is a point of difference, because the risk of climate change is real and must be taken seriously, but the question is how we deliver on that in the lowest-cost way. On that, I think that the hon. Member for Clacton and I share some analysis. For instance, ensuring that taxes remain as low as possible is an important element of the Government’s programme. Even with the incredible deficit that we inherited, we have managed to keep petrol and diesel prices 20p lower than they would have otherwise have been. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) for the work he has done on that, which is widely recognised. As oil prices fall, I support him in the call for those reductions to be passed on to the motorist at the pump now, not later. The work that he has done, including on the front page of today’s Sun, is an important contribution to this debate.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

How will the Minister persuade oil producers to pass on the reduction in oil prices to the consumer? Price rises hit a lot of poor families because of their impact on public transport and the cost of living in general. Have the Government had any discussions about that, and how do they intend to achieve it?

[Matthew Hancock]

The Government have had discussions about that. Ultimately, those changes can be best driven by competition. I share the disdain of the hon. Member for Clacton for prices and incomes policies in energy. Indeed, I think that he has missed some of the changes that we have made over the past couple of years, not least in the Energy Act 2013. For instance, he argued for more competition between different technologies so that those with the most potential can drive down costs and improve the situation for consumers. By switching from a regime in which, as he described, subsidy is given out to whatever renewable technology was brought forward to a regime in which a controlled pot of subsidy is auctioned to ensure that we get the best possible value for money, we have made a change towards a market-oriented system.

[Douglas Carswell]

In the United States over the past five years there has been a 26% reduction in wholesale gas prices and gas prices to consumers. Does the Minister have something to learn about public policy from America?

[Matthew Hancock]

I have no doubt that the massive expansion of the extraction of shale gas in America has had a downward impact on gas prices. Allied to that is the fact that America did not have many export terminals—it is now building them—which meant that it had a relatively closed market. We are working hard to get shale gas extraction going in the UK, where I think that it has huge potential. The Infrastructure Bill, which is currently before the House, proposes changes to make it easier to get shale gas out of the ground in a carefully regulated and safe way. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for that.

The capacity mechanism and the changes to make our energy system more driven by competition are designed to ensure that we get that security of supply as well as the cheapest possible cost. That is best done through a market mechanism, but the market must have a strong framework around it, because we must ensure continuity of supply in order to keep the lights on.

[Robert Halfon]

Will the Minister make a brief comment about the continued problem of the big energy companies charging a premium to vulnerable people who do not pay by direct debit?

[Matthew Hancock]

That is something that I am actively looking into, and I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to take it forward.

[Albert Owen]

One area in the energy market where there is no competition at all is distribution. The regions have monopolies, and the differential between them is some 6% of the bill. Does the Minister welcome Ofgem’s review of that subject, so that we can have proper, fairer pricing across the United Kingdom?

[Matthew Hancock]

Of course I welcome Ofgem’s review into the matter, and I think it is an important question. If we simply socialise prices across the whole of the UK, somebody has to pay those prices. The key question is how we can sort that out in a way that represents the best value for money. We have always had a relatively market-based approach, but the central point of Government policy is to move even more in that direction. The other important point is that without the action that the Government have taken, the average household dual-fuel bill would have been £100 higher this year.

Energy efficiency is the most effective way to drive down costs while cutting emissions and to bring down electricity bills for people, families and households. I am focused on that, and on ensuring that we get the best possible value. The Government have expanded energy efficiency enormously. Home insulation has been expanded and the green deal has reached hundreds of thousands of people. Those changes will ensure that we get the best possible value for money and that people pay lower bills, as far as is consistent with security of supply and our international obligations. That is the Government’s goal and we have made progress, but I have no doubt that there is more to do.

Question put and agreed to.

17:00

Sitting adjourned.