Westminster Hall

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Westminster Hall

Tuesday 20 January 2015

[Mr Mike Weir in the Chair]

Holocaust Memorial Day

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Westminster Hall

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

09:30

[Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)]

It is a privilege to have this opportunity to mark Holocaust memorial day. As colleagues will know, Holocaust memorial day falls exactly one week from today, on 27 January. I thank colleagues who supported the application for this debate, many of whom are here today: my hon. Friends the Members for Ilford North (Mr Scott), for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw), for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer), for Watford (Richard Harrington), for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), for Eastbourne (Stephen Lloyd) and for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans). I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and the hon. Members for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), for Dudley North (Ian Austin), for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) and for Bassetlaw (John Mann). I am grateful to them for their support.

I pay tribute to the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust—I declare an interest as a member of the council of the trust—and I pay tribute to all that it does to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust to ensure that its lessons are never forgotten, and that we also keep in mind other holocausts that have taken place since 1945. It does very important work in giving young people the opportunity to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau. It does other good work as well, but that is very good work indeed. I know that many Members will have participated in those visits, as I have done. It is something that one needs to see for oneself.

This year is an important anniversary, because it is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet forces. When they arrived there 70 years ago, they found the remnants of the unique horror that had taken place there and in other death camps throughout occupied Europe. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, they found 348,820 men’s suits; 836,500 women’s dresses, all neatly folded together; pyramids of dentures and eyeglasses; and seven tonnes of women’s hair. As colleagues will know, some of the physical evidence can still be seen at Auschwitz-Birkenau and at some of the other camps.

I want to draw particular attention to the living evidence of the Holocaust in the form of testimony of survivors of the camps, many of whom were young children at the time, but who now spend their time telling groups of young people of their experiences. I pay a special heartfelt tribute to them for the work that they do.

This 70th anniversary is in some ways a special milestone in keeping such events in living memory, because the survivors are all getting older. I am always struck by their vigour, but they are getting older. It is important to keep their testimony alive for future generations to listen to and to understand what took place. I have listened to the survivors both in my constituency and elsewhere. It is a remarkable experience and a privilege to hear them. I pay special tribute to the survivors of the Holocaust in my constituency who visit schools, meet young people and tell them of their experience.

Take Alec Ward from Borehamwood. After a happy childhood in Poland, he found himself put in the ghetto at a very young age and was selected for work. His younger brother did not pass the selection and was taken away to be shot. Alec was then put to very hard work on the most meagre of rations. When studying and reading his accounts, one wonders how he survived. He received one slice of black bread, some black coffee and half a litre of watery cabbage soup, and had very little protection from the minus 30° cold of the winter in central Europe. He was put to work on building roads and doing other slave labour. He summarises his experience of the Holocaust and remembers:

“The hangings of prisoners, the selections, the dead bodies lying at the barbed wire fences early in the morning of Jewish prisoners who tried desperately to escape...and were shot. The painful hunger and malnutrition. The beatings. The man who cried every time he saw me as I reminded him of his young son who perished at the hands of the Nazis.”

It was remarkable that Mr Ward survived, but he was eventually liberated from Mauthausen camp by the allies in May 1945.

Another remarkable man is Mr Josef Perl, who lives in Bushey, but was born in Czechoslovakia. In the spring of 1940, at the age of 10, he was crammed on to a railway wagon to be taken to Poland. On arrival there he witnessed his mother and four of his sisters being shot and falling into a pit only a short distance ahead of him. He also saw other members of his family suffer the same fate. It seems he survived only because of an air raid when it was his turn to be dealt with. He somehow survived amidst all this and he was put to work and passed from camp to camp, including Auschwitz-Birkenau. He describes his arrival at Auschwitz in memorable terms:

“There was screaming and shouting, guards were lashing out and beating anyone who could not get out of the way. Dogs on the end of short leads were barking and jumping up at new arrivals, viciously biting many of them. I saw old people, ill people, people so weak they were almost dead, come tumbling out of the wagons when the doors were opened.”

He saw a baby being thrown away by a guard “like so much rubbish”.

Mr Perl was eventually put to work as well. Remarkably, he survived and was liberated from Buchenwald camp on 11 April 1945.

Listening to such remarkable men and women, it is hard for us to comprehend the scale of human loss in respect of those who perished and the severity of suffering of those who survived the unique horror of the Holocaust. It is important that we continue to hear their views. We know that there have been subsequent genocides since 1945 in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. Holocaust memorial day reflects such tragic events, which stand as a rebuke to the post-1945 world and remind us that genocide can still occur.

Recently, we have seen evidence of hatred and extremism closer at hand in Europe—as well as anti-Semitism—and extremism has entered the body politic in several places. It is not on the same scale as genocide, but we know from history that hatred and extremism were the precursors to what took place in 1939 to 1945. We have seen a very extreme party—the Jobbik party—capture votes in Hungary, and, in the European elections last year, Golden Dawn captured nearly 10% of the vote in Greece. There are disturbing echoes when the deputy leader of a party such as Jobbik can stand up and call for the state to draw up a list of Jews who constitute a national security risk.

I welcome the robust statement by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minster that he has a policy of zero tolerance in respect of anti-Semitism. As he says, although the situation in this country is better than in many other countries, it is unacceptable that we have seen evidence of anti-Semitism here, including boycotts and attacks on Jewish charity shops and the disturbing survey of attitudes published by the Campaign Against Antisemitism recently.

I also welcome the work that is being done by the Holocaust Commission, which was launched by the Prime Minister last year and is due to report later this month. I look forward to the fruits of its work being brought forward, and I hope that the living testimony of survivors of the Holocaust will be preserved for future generations. We need to ensure that this country has a permanent and fitting memorial to the Holocaust and educational resources for future generations to learn about it.

Seventy years ago this year, the gates of the death camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau opened and the world saw the full extent of the horrors perpetrated under the auspices of an extreme ideology. I hope—I am sure—that colleagues agree that we should never allow those experiences to be forgotten.

09:40

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on securing this important debate and on his comprehensive, graphic and informative speech. As we mark Holocaust memorial day 2015, it is important not only to remember what the Holocaust was and what happened during it, but to relate it to the ills of today in this country and elsewhere. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the way in which he did that.

This year’s Holocaust memorial day is special, marking as it does the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is important, too, to remember that we mark the day in Parliament because of a decision we took, and that we did so on an all-party basis. The first Holocaust memorial day commemoration in the UK took place in 2001 because of a decision taken following a private Member’s Bill promoted by the then Member of Parliament for Hendon, Andrew Dismore. The House of Commons decided to commemorate Holocaust memorial day and has done so ever since. When the Bill was being debated in Parliament, some Members were, perhaps not opposed, but doubtful, and they questioned whether it was right to mark out one genocide. What has happened since has shown the value of having Holocaust memorial day, because we ensure that new generations know about the Holocaust while relating it to genocides that have taken place since.

The strength of the commemoration of Holocaust memorial day is that it is not an isolated event. It brings people together and provides a focus for commemorating the Holocaust and learning the lessons of it, but is not something that takes place once a year; it is part of a series of events taking place throughout the year. I too commend the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust, of which I am a council member, in particular its educational work through the year with educators and students, including “Lessons from Auschwitz” and other programmes. We are talking not about one day a year, but about all the year.

I want to reflect on a recent event in which I took part, which has significance for Holocaust memorial day and for Holocaust remembrance. Last Sunday, I took part in a meeting of the Board of Deputies of British Jews—I am indeed a deputy—which was dominated by horrendous recent events: the murder of journalists at Charlie Hebdo, of a policewoman, and of Jews at a kosher supermarket, who were murdered simply because they were Jews. The anti-Semitic murders of French Jews did not take place in isolation—it was not one isolated event, but one of a series of anti-Semitic murders and attacks on Jews that have taken place in France in recent times, including the murder of three pupils and a teacher at a Jewish school in Paris. The cumulative effect of the murders and the series of attacks on French Jews has been for many of them to decide to leave France. We should all reflect on that.

At the meeting on Sunday, I heard excellent addresses from the Home Secretary and from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. They both pledged their support for British Jews and promised to increase security for British Jews in view of what was happening. I also watched the inspiring Ben Helfgott light the first of 70 memorial candles that are to be lit throughout the country to commemorate this year’s Holocaust memorial day and listened to his wise words. As I sat in the meeting, listening to what was being said and watching what was happening, I reflected on what it all meant.

I am shocked and outraged that we still have to concentrate on and be concerned about anti-Semitism in Europe. French Jews have felt the need to flee their homes because of their fear of anti-Semitism and their experience of killings and a series of attacks, and their sense that they were not getting support from the wider community—at least until last week, perhaps. In the United Kingdom, the situation is different: Jews are not being murdered because they are Jews, but disturbing trends must not be ignored. The Community Security Trust has monitored the numbers of anti-Semitic incidents, which are up sharply, as well as the increasing intensity of anti-Semitic discourse. Anti-Semitic comments that at one time would have been seen as unacceptable now seem to be accepted almost as the norm. Not so long ago, during a demonstration, managers at a major supermarket in London felt that a Jewish kosher counter had to be closed because of the pressure of demonstrators outside. Such things are deeply disturbing.

British Jews do not feel that they are in the same position as French Jews, and they are not. British Jews feel very firmly part of British society and themselves to be strong members of the British as well as Jewish communities. Nevertheless, a sense of unease is growing among the Jewish community here in the United Kingdom. That should be registered, not only by other Jews but by the community as a whole. When the Home Secretary and the Communities and Local Government Secretary spoke to the Board of Deputies of British Jews on Sunday, they spoke about anti-Semitism and what had happened, as well as about how Jews and other minorities form part of the fabric of British society. We are all part of British society. As we approach Holocaust memorial day, we should all reflect on that.

The Holocaust was a horrendous event. The fact that anti-Semitism remains, that the virus of anti-Semitism has not gone, is something that should concern us all and give us all reason to reflect not only on Jews and other minorities, but on the nature of our society. An attack on minorities in the United Kingdom, whether on the Jewish community or other communities, is an attack on all of us. When we reflect on Holocaust memorial day and on the Holocaust, we should register what is happening and be determined as a society to recognise that minorities are part of our community and that anti-Semitism is not to be tolerated.

09:48

[Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on way he introduced the debate. I am not Jewish; I am Catholic, but I would have been proud to be born a Jew. As I look around the Chamber, I can see that many of us are post-war babies. We cannot imagine the horrors that took place all those years ago. For that very reason, we must never forget what happened.

The 27th of January this year marks 15 years since representatives from 46 Governments met in Stockholm to sign a declaration committing to educate, remember and research the dreadful events of the Holocaust. As my hon. Friend said, the date commemorates the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp —a place that was witness to perhaps the greatest failure of humanity ever. Holocaust memorial day also commemorates other genocides that took place in the decades after the second world war, including the genocide that took place between 1975 and 1979 in Cambodia under the radical leader Pol Pot, the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994, the genocide in Bosnia in 1995, and the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

It is pitiful to see that the world has not learnt enough from the Holocaust. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) just said, we once again find ourselves watching such events without making a sufficiently decisive response. But the genocide in which the Nazis killed 6 million Jews still remains the most appalling failure of humanity: millions of human beings were tortured, used for forced labour and killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kulmhof, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec and other places across Europe. Many of the victims underwent inhumane pseudo-medical experiments carried out by Nazi doctors in concentration camps before being sent to gas chambers.

It is now our duty to remember and to learn lessons from the terrible events of 1941-45 and make sure that we prevent genocide from happening again. Professor Gregory Stanton, who is famous for his work in genocide studies and prevention, has identified eight stages leading to genocide. The classification stage is when differences between people are not respected and a simple division between “us” and “them” is created—German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. That leads to the stage of symbolisation, when various symbols are applied to members of groups: as part of the symbolisation process, the yellow star was forced upon Jews under Nazi rule, as was the blue scarf upon people from the eastern zone in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. That leads to dehumanisation, where victims are refused any human rights, liberties, or dignity. During the following stages of genocide—organisation, polarisation and preparation—the destruction of a people is planned by the regime. That leads to extermination. What follows is the last stage, denial, where perpetrators or later generations deny the existence of the crime.

The Holocaust was more than a war crime or a genocide. It undermined the foundation of our civilisation, as it was carefully planned and executed by the authorities of Nazi Germany. That is why it is so important for us today to understand the mechanisms leading up to genocide—to ensure that we are ready to prevent it in the future by promptly punishing any hate crimes or atrocities.

As I said, the Holocaust was the greatest failure of humanity, but it was also a display of humanity at its finest. The Talmud teaches:

“He who saves a single life, saves the world entire.”

It is important that we remember those who, in the dreadful circumstances of Nazi propaganda and callousness, put their own lives at risk to save others. Irena Sendler, a Polish nurse and social worker, smuggled some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, providing them with false identity documents and safe housing. Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and member of the Nazi party, is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunition factories. Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian, is recognised for saving tens of thousands of Jews in Nazi-occupied Hungary during the second world war through his Schutz-Pass device. That hero is especially close to my heart, as I campaigned for many years to have a statue erected in his honour. I am pleased that the statue was eventually installed at Great Cumberland place in London, where it was unveiled by Her Majesty the Queen and the President of Israel. More than 25,000 non-Jews were recognised as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, which speaks volumes about the good side of human nature.

[Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I need to be somewhere else at 10 o’clock, so I hope my hon. Friend will forgive my intervening. Before he leaves the topic of the triumph of the human spirit, will he also reflect on one of the memories that all of us who have been to Auschwitz-Birkenau carry with us, of the number of young people from Israel carrying the Israeli flag who go round singing songs, whose spirit has not been dampened by what has happened and whose existence is a demonstration of the triumph of the human spirit over the evil that they are confronting?

[Sir David Amess]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. What he describes gives us hope for the future.

I am happy to see many wonderful initiatives taking place in my constituency to mark Holocaust memorial day, including a tree planting in Cockethurst park in Eastwood organised by the wonderful Southend and Westcliff Hebrew Congregation. As the Nobel peace prize laureate Elie Wiesel warned some years ago:

“To forget a Holocaust is to kill twice.”

I am therefore pleased to see that Holocaust memorial day has gained such momentum in the past 15 years, reaching out to thousands of people across generations and inspiring them to learn lessons from the past and keep the memory alive.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

Order. I intend to call the Front-Bench speakers at about 10.40 am, leaving us just over 40 minutes for Back-Bench speakers. Five or six Members are trying to catch my eye and although I will not put a time limit on speeches at the moment I encourage Members to bear that in mind when speaking.

09:56

[Dame Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I will keep my remarks brief, as I appreciate that other Members want to speak. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess). Like others, I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison). I also wish to pay a special tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), who has shown significant bravery over many years in standing up against anti-Semitism in this country and others.

I will give a few personal reflections about visits to Auschwitz and to Terezin in the Czech Republic, which I have visited a couple of times. That site is not as well known as some other camps associated with the Holocaust but a visit there can have an equally profound effect, because of the sheer cynicism that was shown there in what was, effectively, an industrial process of slaughtering people of all ages.

My first visit to Auschwitz, which I made thanks to the Holocaust Educational Trust, was an emotional experience for myself and the other Scottish MPs and Scottish schoolchildren on the trip. One thing from that trip that has stayed with me is that at the end of our visit, a young woman said, “I don’t believe this happened.” Once I had got over the initial shock, I realised that perhaps she could not understand what had happened because it was beyond her experience as a modern young person who uses electronic equipment and sees lives in colour. It was inexplicable to her. Despite seeing the evidence that the hon. Member for Hertsmere mentioned—the clothes, shoes, glasses and cases—she still could not get her mind around the Holocaust and what had happened in Auschwitz. If ever we needed evidence why the Holocaust Educational Trust needs to continue, she gave it to me that day—it came as such a shock.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

I am grateful to have had the opportunity to visit Auschwitz with the right hon. Lady last year. Is she concerned that the Campaign Against Antisemitism has found that one in eight people believe that Jewish people talk about the Holocaust to get sympathy?

[Dame Anne McGuire]

Everyone will find that shocking. Although we were not born when these things happened, we lived with the aftermath, and those of us who, like the hon. Member for Southend West, grew up in the post-war period, saw the images of the Holocaust on BBC television in black and white and had a broadening knowledge of it. That is why such debates, as well as the work of the Holocaust Educational Trust and other organisations, need to be kept alive and to be re-energised.

My second thought is about going to Terezin. On the second occasion, we took two young people with us. For those who do not know much about Terezin, I should say that it was, effectively, a show camp—it had been disguised by the Nazis. They even brought the Danish Red Cross in. They dusted everything off, they painted the walls and they made it look as though this was quite a nice place to be held, but it was, in fact, a transit camp to Auschwitz. For me, that epitomises the fact that we are not talking about some random act of genocide or something that happened because of a few Nazis at the top: this was the industrialised extermination of people. That is very difficult for us to get our heads around.

None the less, some hope came out of Terezin. Despite the lives that people had to lead, the children still had art and music classes. Some of the beautiful pictures by the children, who led a horrible life, can still be seen in, for example, the Jewish museum in Prague and at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. Anybody who goes to Terezin, or Theresienstadt, which is the German name for it, will see a small town that carries the weight of history on its shoulders. It is a town of sadness, even though people still live there today. The people in the town appear to carry that burden with them.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I have also visited a number of the places the right hon. Lady has been to, including the museum outside Jerusalem where tributes are paid to a lot of the people whose names have been mentioned today for the work they did. Will she join me in congratulating the Friends of Israel on the work it does, especially in Northern Ireland, where it has started going to schools to teach young people about the Holocaust and its aftermath?

[Dame Anne McGuire]

As the chair of Labour Friends of Israel, I like to think that, although we are not there to be apologists for any Israeli Government or any politician in Israel, the existence of the state of Israel is an important element not only in post-Holocaust history, because of the Holocaust, but in the future of the Jewish people.

I want now to talk about the visit to Auschwitz to commemorate the 69th anniversary of its liberation. It seemed a bit unusual to go on the 69th anniversary, not the 70th, but that was because of concerns about the survivors making the arduous journey—many, but not all, came from Israel. We joined politicians, clergy, rabbis, local government officials and others from across Europe, who came together under the sponsorship, and at the invitation, of the Polish President.

What struck me—I hope the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) will have an opportunity to say more about this—was that we were sitting in a marquee, fully clothed in warm garments, in temperatures of minus 10 or 13° C, and listening to the words of survivors who had not had the luxury of having such clothes or the shelter of a marquee. We then went to say prayers with Christian clergy and rabbis for those who died in that awful camp. For me, that was the voice of Auschwitz—those survivors being there and saying to the world, “Auschwitz happened. We have to recognise that. It is not a figment of anyone’s imagination.” Given that it happened, democrats and people of good will across the world have to keep that flame alive and to make sure that these things never happen again.

09:59

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir, and to follow the right hon. Member for Stirling (Dame Anne McGuire). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on securing the debate. These debates are almost becoming a ritual, and I say that as someone who comes from a faith where ritual counts.

As usual, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) put the emotional finger on it. When we woke up this morning—in England, in 2015—we heard accounts on the radio of children at a Jewish school lying on the floor practising for a possible terrorist attack, so there is no question but that we should be doing what we are doing today.

I want to say one or two personal things. First, when I was elected in 2010, a previous holder of the seat and honourable Member of this House, Stanley Henig, was just about keeping Holocaust memorial day going there. In 2011, it was held in a small room in the chaplaincy in Lancaster university—the actual constituency has a minute Jewish population, so this was perhaps more of an issue in terms of the campus. Then, however, the National Coalition Building Institute, to which I pay tribute, and particularly a lady called Liz Neat, got hold of things. With the support, to be fair, of Lancaster city council, we then began to hold a much bigger event on 27 January around the war memorial next to Lancaster town hall, and we have done so ever since. My job is to read the dedication to the righteous gentiles, whom my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) talked about. Next week, I am proud to say, we will be in the centre of the town, outside Lancaster castle, which has now opened for the first time—it was a prison, but that closed.

Hon. Members have paid tribute to survivors who can deal with the emotion. I pay tribute to Stephen Breuer, who turns up every time to read the dedication. This year, we are quite proud, because we are going to host one of the 70 candles mentioned by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside, which were designed by the artist Sir Anish Kapoor for the 70th anniversary.

It is perhaps more important that those things are happening, and recognised, in the small town of Lancaster—officially, it is a city—with its minute Jewish population, than it would be in other areas. Hon. Members have talked about the post-war period, and I grew up in the 1950s, after the second world war, but I do not remember any mention of the Holocaust. If we read the history—I taught history—there was some mention of the Nuremberg trials when they were going on, but there was little mention of the Holocaust when I was growing up in that part of Lancashire, certainly not in school. That remained the case until—this was another anniversary—Adolf Eichmann was put on trial, having been taken from Argentina, when these issues were suddenly mentioned again.

Quite rightly, survivors who had escaped the Holocaust and come to Britain—I think of people I met when I was a councillor in Hackney, representing Stamford Hill, which has a significant, visible Jewish population; I have talked about that before—wanted to get on with their lives, and many were able to do that. I am extremely proud about that, and I know they are proud about it too.

As I say, these things perhaps only got talked about after Eichmann. Of course, we were also involved in the cold war, so that raised other big issues. When I was a teacher in the 1980s—I have mentioned this before, but it still needs to be underlined—the Government brought in the national curriculum, and the Holocaust was to be taught at key stage 3 of the history curriculum. As I have mentioned in previous debates, we should not underestimate the arguments that went on in the teaching profession about whether the subject, which is taught particularly in year 9, was suitable and whether children of that age would be able to deal with it.

Having been a teacher for 38 years, I can tell the House that children can deal with almost anything, and they were able to deal with being taught about the Holocaust. It was quite eye-opening. I have mentioned before that when I was teaching the subject, children—sixth- formers or 14-year-olds, so hardly children, really—said that they knew nothing about it until they got to the classroom. That is another reason for continuing the ritual, if we call it that, of Holocaust memorial day. The day must be recognised.

I pay tribute, as other hon. Members have done, to the Holocaust Educational Trust, and Karen Pollock particularly—she is sitting just behind me. I am thinking particularly of the trips to Auschwitz, and the school ambassadors. At Holocaust memorial events, it is incredible the way those children can describe their visits and articulate their experience, as hon. Members have done this morning.

When I was a teacher, I avoided going to Auschwitz-Birkenau; I had mixed feelings about whether it would be just a museum, and how I would deal with it, having taught it over and over. In fact, it was because of Karen nagging me that I finally went a few years ago. The emotional experience is difficult for me to articulate, as it is for everyone else. It is powerful in many ways that we might not consider. The thing that still stands out for me is the sheer scale and size of Birkenau.

Having seen school visits by Holocaust survivors—I remember one such visit to Cardinal Allen school in Fleetwood a couple of years ago—I do not think that there is anything that the children, pupils or young adults, or whatever we want to call them, cannot take in this context. Hearing someone’s experience produces an impact, and leads to questions, and I pay tribute to that work and to the survivors. I do not know how they relive those experiences again and again; I suppose it is through their determination that those things should not be forgotten. They are right about that.

We hold town commemorations, but it occurred to me that a new Holocaust Educational Trust project might be to consider individual school commemorations. When I was teaching, it was a struggle for us, given that schools are now multi-faith, to create assemblies that covered everything, but there may well be a way to take that further, particularly as everyone is concerned about what will happen when there are no survivors to provide their testimony. Perhaps we can think about doing something as part of the curriculum within schools; the Holocaust is rightly still part of the history curriculum.

As I have said, waking up in the morning and hearing what now has to happen in Jewish schools in England gives us clarity about why we feel we must continue with Holocaust memorial day. We must take pride in the country that gave a home to so many. There is worry among my Jewish friends, but I hope that small things such as today’s debate will reassure the Jewish population of this country—those who came across to make a home here before the war and those who survived the war years and came here afterwards—and that they will still feel part of this country. Today is significant as the 750th anniversary of the first Parliament. Its duty was and still is to protect the people who live in this country.

10:13

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Weir. I commend the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) for ensuring that we have the opportunity to mark Holocaust memorial day in Parliament.

Holocaust memorial day was first formally marked in Northern Ireland in 2002. I was then Deputy First Minister and I spoke at that event in the Waterfront hall. I believe it is important, for me and every other representative, to continue to mark the day every year; it was not just because of the office I held at the time that I felt the burden of remembrance. Like other hon. Members, I have benefited from one of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s visits to Auschwitz, as part of the “Lessons from Auschwitz” project. The only trip from Northern Ireland happened in 2007. I was struck by the number of young people from all over Northern Ireland who did not have a full sense or appreciation of what the Holocaust entailed.

We began our trip with a visit to a Jewish cemetery, and many of the children thought that we were going to see the graves of victims of the Holocaust. The children from Northern Ireland were particularly struck by the explanation that they were being brought there so they could understand that there were real, full, thriving Jewish communities living even in a town such as Auschwitz, which were wiped out—and that there were attempts to destroy and desecrate the cemetery and use its very headstones as paving stones around the town. They were struck more by the sense of Jewish communities and families being systematically destroyed—with little trace left, to this day, other than a small synagogue—than they were by the big statistics and the figure of the slaughter of 6 million.

Hon. Members have described their visits and how they looked at the suitcases and glasses, but it was the pigtails that really stuck with me—perhaps because I had a two-year-old daughter. Those things make us realise what was involved and what was destroyed, and how many were lost, including the complete families that were destroyed so that there is no one left to remember them. That is why there is a burden on the rest of us to ensure that they are not forgotten to this day.

Reference has been made to what went into achieving the Holocaust. It was not just slaughter on an industrial scale; an infrastructure was created and organised to achieve that. That all stemmed, of course, from idle prejudices that were easily and evilly exploited and manipulated. That is part of what we must remember to this day: how easy it is for anyone, even in a supposedly democratic context, to start to mobilise prejudices in that vicious, pernicious way, so that people go against the expected judgments of their system of values and ethics. We must be vigilant because of that.

Prejudice is voiced in many forms, with many excuses. It uses events to construct constant criticism, to denigrate a faith or outlook, and to generalise in a vicious and nasty way. We must be conscious of the dangers and recognise anti-Semitism’s new guises in our age, when it tries to recruit particular events and circumstances and turn what might be valid criticism of events into a sweeping attempt to dehumanise and caricature everyone of a particular faith outlook. That is why this year we must, as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust says, reflect, respect and remember, and continue to learn the lessons and show vigilance.

In my constituency, on 28 January, we in Derry will mark Holocaust memorial day in the garden of reflection, which recently hosted a month-long Anne Frank Trust exhibition. People in my city will join in the same spirit that is reflected in the debate by hon. Members.

10:19

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in this debate and to follow such thoughtful and heartfelt speeches. So much has already been said, and I am conscious of time, so let me make a modest contribution through two stories—one personal to my family and one pertinent to my constituency—that converged at the end of last year.

A few days before Christmas, I took my parents-in-law, who were visiting us for the holidays, to a museum in my constituency; hon. Members may be aware of it. The National Holocaust Centre, a few miles north of Newark, is, remarkably, the only museum dedicated to the Holocaust in this country.

My parents-in-law are the children of Holocaust survivors. My wife’s grandfather and grandmother were Jews who lived in what was then Belarussia at the outbreak of world war two. The Nazis came to their village near Minsk, rounded up the able-bodied young men and took them to labour camps, where, as one can imagine, they experienced enormous hardship. The young men were told that if they tried to escape, their families back in the village would be killed. That threat held the line for some time until, through various back-channels, word came to the camp that every member of the village had been shot. Many had been burned to death and their bodies had been dumped in an open grave. The village had been razed to the ground; young and old alike were slaughtered. Furnished with that reality, which had been long-feared, my grandfather-in-law narrowly succeeded in escaping from the camp and spent the remainder of the war fighting the Nazis as a partisan, predominantly in the vast forests on the Polish-Russian border and in Ukraine.

At the close of the war, my grandfather-in-law returned to the smouldering, blood-stained ruins of his former village and, amid the ruins of the world he had lost and on discovering that every member of his family, including his six brothers and sisters, had been killed, found my wife’s grandmother—herself a survivor with a story equally remarkable. They fell in love, and the rest is history. My mother-in-law, my wife and my two beautiful daughters are the result.

On that wintry morning prior to Christmas, I drove my mother-in-law to visit the National Holocaust Centre outside Newark. It gave me great pride not only that the only museum in our country dedicated to that cause should be in my constituency, of all places, but that I could take the daughter of a Holocaust survivor to it. I suspect that she was proud to visit it with her son-in-law, a Member of Parliament.

Let me briefly tell hon. Members who are not familiar with it the extraordinary story behind the museum and its founders. It is worth retelling on this day. Twenty years ago, two brothers from Nottinghamshire, who were not Jewish and did not have any intimate family connection with the Holocaust but whose parents possessed a deep social conscience, visited Israel and were captivated, if that is the right word, by Yad Vashem, the great Holocaust museum that was being developed outside Jerusalem. On returning to their parents’ farmhouse in an idyllic but remote village north of Newark—the worst place, one might think, to build a museum—they conceived a remarkable vision to turn their home into a Holocaust museum. That is exactly what they achieved.

James and Stephen Smith are remarkable individuals from a remarkable family, and they are well known to those who follow this subject. They are now world leaders in their field, but they deserve further recognition. I cannot speak for their motivations—they are humble people who do not tell their story—but I suspect that they felt a moral duty to give dignity to the victims of the Holocaust, to acknowledge the crimes, to contribute to justice and healing and to preserve memory, through education, as a warning. That seems a fair summary of the ideals behind Holocaust memorial day.

I recommend to everybody a visit to that museum. It has two profound missions for Holocaust memorial day, for the commission, whose report will be published next week, and for all who do its work and preach its message. The first is the journey of the Smith brothers to ensure, as the direct memories fade away and the children of survivors, such as my mother-in-law, grow old, that the records, pictures and stories do not die and that people are always able to visit the museum and meet on this day. There are many museums in this country—many, even, in my constituency—but that museum is our conscience. If it is here for future generations, our conscience will be here forever.

Secondly, the museum reminds us of our common humanity by showing that whatever motivated the attacks on the Jews was a virus—the idea that all that matters in life is our differences. That virus takes different forms all over the world, but it is alive and well today. We see it in ISIS, in Boko Haram, in anti-Semitism in Paris and, I am afraid, in anti-Semitism and extremism in this country. It is still the major cause of suffering in the world, and it is the greatest threat to my children and the children of others, who have reaped the extraordinary benefits of an interdependent world.

I drove home from that visit to our museum to my two beautiful children—the great-grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, who were not meant to be here. I looked into their eyes as I tucked them into bed, and I thought of the Smith brothers of Laxton. I felt that in those four lives, brought together by my election to this place, there is a source of optimism. We have decisively triumphed over the evil that tried to devour our lives and those of my ancestors. There is nothing more beautiful than seeing undaunted, undamaged optimism in human beings, which the Smith brothers displayed.

The Holocaust Centre in Laxton needs our support. I hope that the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission, which is due to report next week, will recommend an endowment fund to recognise explicitly that extraordinary outlier in this cause and make a commitment to it and other projects out in the British regions, not just those in London. The Smith brothers were motivated to act. The message of Holocaust memorial day, which is not simply about remembrance or fine words, to which we are all accustomed, is that there are no bystanders in history. History flows through us; we are of it and we cannot look away. The Smith brothers acted, and I applaud them for it. That is the message that I send out today.

10:27

[Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) on securing this debate. Like many others in this Chamber and beyond, I pay particular tribute to Karen Pollock and all the staff at the Holocaust Educational Trust for the vital work that they do—not only for all of us, but for the whole country. If we do not educate young people, I fear history could repeat itself.

Let me speak briefly about a few personal issues. Since becoming a great Member of the House of Commons—[Interruption.] I mean a Member of this great House of Commons—that was a Freudian slip. Over the years, I have received death threats and anti-Semitic abuse. Most recently, just before the end of last year, I was called a “dirty Jew” and told I should die.

I saw something on TV this weekend that saddened me greatly; I do not know whether other hon. Members saw it. A French lady said on one of the news channels that she told her young child that if a man or a woman came to school with a weapon, they should not say they were Jewish. It saddened me greatly and made me reflect on some of the things I saw when I visited Auschwitz and Terezin.

What I saw also made me think of something else—I say this not only for myself; I implore other people to say it. I am proud to be British, I am honoured to be a Member of Parliament and I am proud to say that I am a Jew. That will never change. No matter how many people tell me that I should be killed for being a Jew, while I have the honour of being a Member of Parliament, I will continue to fight for all communities and all religions because prejudice against anybody is unacceptable. If we have not learned anything from history, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

This goes completely beyond party politics. I express my gratitude to the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) and the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who came and offered their support to me when I was going through these problems recently, as did the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. I am not going to name everyone who did this, but the most encouraging thing was that I had hundreds and hundreds of e-mails from people around the whole country deploring anti-Semitism.

We live in a great country where everyone can feel safe. We have a great police force, a great protection unit, and no one should fear living in our country. These vile people who persecute others—whoever that is, whether it be Jews, Muslims or Christians—want us to live in fear. They want us to be scared of them, and they want us to get out, but they are not going to achieve it. We are not going anywhere. We are part of Britain. We have been part of Britain for hundreds of years and we will continue to be part of Britain.

In the few minutes I have left, I want to reflect briefly on my visit to Auschwitz. I am not somebody who cries easily—I have cried a few times—but I did cry when I visited Auschwitz. I have been to other camps and I have seen what happened, but it did not impact on me in the same way as it did standing there in the freezing cold—I am sure that did have something to do it. The hon. Member is perfectly right, and please forgive me for not knowing her constituency—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Glasgow North—

[Dame Anne McGuire]

Actually, it is Stirling.

[Mr Scott]

We are having a great day, Mr Weir—Southend has become Basildon, Stirling has become Glasgow North. The right hon. Member for Stirling (Dame Anne McGuire) is right. I was wearing a thick jacket, a scarf, a thick shirt and thick trousers, and I knew that I was going home in the evening, but the people who perished there did not have that. They were persecuted because of nothing more than hatred and misunderstanding.

Whenever things are tough, everyone needs someone to blame—so, “Let’s blame the people who are the easiest to blame.” That is the importance of Holocaust remembrance day and of the work done by the Holocaust Educational Trust: to remind people and keep reminding them. When, sadly, no survivors are still alive, we have to keep on reminding people, because if we do not, I fear history will repeat itself. The onus is on us to stop that from happening.

10:32

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow my friend and Jewish brother, my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott), who made the most moving comments, and my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who spoke about the moving life story of his own family.

I know that Holocaust memorial day is next Tuesday, but it is appropriate that this Parliament should be talking about this issue today. On 20 January 1275, on the other side of the street, in the Westminster chapter house—one can see it through the windows—our first Parliament was founded. That is what the British people are about. Where does the word “Parliament” come from? It comes from the French word “parler”—to talk together and understand each other, and to understand our differences and try to sort them out. It is important that we have this debate to try to recognise what in human nature creates these appalling events. It is still here; there is some of it in all of us. Unless we recognise that, we are doomed to repeat history.

Solzhenitsyn said in “The Gulag Archipelago”:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

That sort of hatred, somehow and inexplicably, rests in human beings.

After the war, a German officer, who had had a normal war and done nothing very remarkable, was being interrogated. He was in the pen with thousands of other people. He had not been the commandant of a camp or anything like that—he had fought in Germany and Russia and all the rest of it; there was nothing remarkable about him. However, when he was being interviewed, there was a gap in his war, so the American officer interviewing him asked, “What were you doing in that gap?” The German officer could have given any answer; he was being interviewed with thousands of other people. He said, “I was just working for the Einsatzgruppen.” The interviewing officer knew what they were doing. He said, “What were you doing for those nine months working for the Einsatzgruppen in Poland?”, and he replied, “I was killing Jews.” The officer said, “Well, how many did you kill?” He said, “Oh, about 90,000.”

This was just a normal person, a German officer, and somehow he had been infected with this appalling evil. It is there. Germany was the most advanced nation in Europe, with an extraordinarily successful economy, and we still do not understand why Jewish people—who were largely integrated, were a tiny proportion of the population, were making a wonderful contribution to Germany and had fought patriotically in exactly the same proportion as everybody else in Germany for their nation in the first world war—were treated like that. It is something in human nature, and it is here now.

Only last year, we had a debate on Srebrenica, which happened not 70 years ago, but in our time. Boys and men—hundreds of them—were carried out of a village and shot simply because they were Muslim. It is here now, and we have to recognise it in all of us and root it out; that is why this debate is so important. It is also important for us to proclaim that because this great and appalling act of murder was committed against the Jewish people, they have the absolute right to live in peace, freedom and security wherever they are in the world. Because they, almost uniquely, were subjected to this appalling act of genocide and torture, they deserve our special protection.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North spoke most movingly about the Jewish people who have settled in this country. We should proclaim loudly in this Parliament, on the day of our 750th anniversary, how much we value the contribution of Jewish people to our nation. This is a people who came here and sought shelter, often from pogroms at the end of the 19th century —although, as my hon. Friend said, some have been here for centuries—and they have given so much to our country. They have integrated so well, and they are an object lesson to all immigrant communities.

Although my hon. Friend has talked about a particularly horrible incident, I do not personally believe there is much anti-Semitism in this country; there certainly should not be. We are a tolerant nation and we welcome our Jewish brothers and sisters; we welcome them for the contribution that they make. However, this debate is an opportunity to say that we shall never forget what happened to them in the past, and in never forgetting, we hope that we can stop it from happening again.

10:38

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

It is an absolute privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. Members on both sides of the House have made very moving and powerful contributions, sharing stories, memories and facts that should never be forgotten. As has been said, it is a matter of deep shame that despite the proclamation of “Never again” after the Holocaust, from the killing fields of Cambodia to the desert sands of Darfur, to the mountains and savannahs of Rwanda, we—the international community—have failed to prevent genocides from taking place.

The theme for Holocaust memorial day this year is keeping the memory alive, which is particularly appropriate, as we have heard, given that a week from now marks 70 years to the day that Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated by the red army. The SS knew they were coming and attempted to destroy the evidence of their heinous crimes. They built bonfires of documents detailing their atrocities. They blew up crematoriums II and III and set fire to Kanada II, the barracks that held property plundered from the victims. The Nazis did not want us to know about the systematic, state-organised murder of Jews, Roma Gypsies, the disabled, homosexuals, communists and socialists. However, by keeping the memory alive, we reaffirm that they are not forgotten. The voices of the 11 million echo still across this Chamber and, indeed, the world. Those voices will be heard.

About 1.5 million children were murdered during the Holocaust, and the young suffered the most brutal treatments, tortures and punishments, often for the smallest offences. A 16-year-old boy, Czeslaw Kempisty, was hanged from a post for several hours with his hands twisted behind his back. What was the reason? He had thrown some turnips to famished Soviet prisoners of war. Thirteen-year-old Halina Grynstein was shot for approaching the camp fence to exchange words with another prisoner. Seventeen-year-old Benkel Faivel was shot in the head by an SS guard for trying to pass a piece of bread to a woman prisoner. Those were small but very real rebellions. They shout against the idea that the victims of the Nazi Holocaust were passive.

Everyone in this Chamber will have heard the stories of the Warsaw ghetto uprising—the Jewish community held out longer in Warsaw than the entire Polish army did to protect their borders against the Nazi army—the Bielski partisans and the Sobibor uprising, but I want to talk also about the small acts of resistance, which are not as well known. In that way, when we think of Auschwitz and remember the emaciated bodies, the piles of corpses or, indeed, the shoes, suitcases, artificial limbs and human hair plundered from victims, we also remember the vital acts of resistance: a prohibited conversation, the passing of some bread or the throwing of a few turnips to starving prisoners. Those acts showed a real determination on the part of the prisoners, including children—and they knew full well the price that they could pay for their actions—to retain their basic humanity.

Some of the most unforgivable actions in Auschwitz were the experiments by the so-called camp doctors, including the notorious Josef Mengele, who inflicted inconceivable levels of suffering on children with his quasi-medical experiments. Eva Mozes Kor describes her arrival at Auschwitz with her identical twin, Miriam:

“Everything was moving very fast...I noticed my father and my two older sisters were gone. As I clutched my mother’s hand, an SS man hurried by shouting, ‘Twins! Twins!’…Once the SS guard knew we were twins, Miriam and I were taken away from our mother, without any warning or explanation. Our screams fell on deaf ears. I remember looking back and seeing my mother’s arms stretched out in despair as we were led away by a soldier. That was the last time I saw her…”

Eva remembers her introduction to life at Auschwitz:

“The first time I went to use the latrine located at the end of the children’s barrack, I was greeted by the scattered corpses of several children lying on the ground. I think that image will stay with me forever.”

During their time at Auschwitz, Eva and Miriam were put through many brutal surgeries and experiments. Their survival was a miracle in itself; only a few twins were left when the camp was finally liberated. Eva is still with us. She founded the Holocaust museum and education centre in Indiana and CANDLES. That is the acronym for Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors, an organisation whose dedicated aim is

“to heal the pain; to teach the truth; to prevent prejudice.”

What a remarkable woman! I pay tribute to her.

In many ways, simply refusing to give up and die in spite of it all was the ultimate act of resistance—living on, like Eva. However, resistance came in many different forms and shapes: active and passive, violent and non-violent, and written and spoken. I shall now tell another story. In the spring of 1943, 19-year-old Ester Wajcblum arrived at Auschwitz and was assigned to work in the munitions factory, where she met Regina Safir and Ala Gertner—women who were engaged in resistance activities. Together with Roza Robota, they began smuggling out gunpowder.

The Sonderkommandos were Jewish prisoners who worked in the death camps. Their duties included guiding new arrivals into the gas chambers, removing the bodies afterwards, shaving the victims’ hair, removing their teeth, cremating their bodies and disposing of the ashes. Due to their knowledge of the camp’s inner workings, the Sonderkommandos were marked for certain death—it was a choice of die on arrival or die in four months’ time. As the time of the Sonderkommandos’ execution approached, they planned their revolt. They fashioned crude grenades by using sardine tins filled with the smuggled gunpowder and, on 7 October 1944, the workers of crematorium I began the revolt. That was followed by uprisings in crematoriums II and III. Crematorium IV was victoriously blown up. However, the SS guards counter-attacked and brutally suppressed the uprising. About 200 of the Sonderkommandos were rounded up and executed with a single shot to the head.

The gunpowder was traced to Ester’s munitions factory—Ester, Regina, Ala and Roza were betrayed. They were tortured: they were beaten and raped and electric shocks were applied to their genitals. But they never gave up the names of people who were not already dead. On 5 January 1945—so close to liberation—the four women were hanged in front of the women’s camp. Their last words were:

“Be strong and be brave.”

As we reflect on the Holocaust and consider the genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur, we all have a duty to use these memories as a catalyst to rid us of the cancers of racial hatred, intolerance and discrimination. We should be immensely grateful to the Holocaust Educational Trust and the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, which do vital work in keeping alive and accessible the stories and lessons of the Holocaust as the number of survivors, sadly, dwindles over time. I join others in commending their work and that of Karen Pollock and Olivia Marks-Woldman in particular.

However, each of us has a responsibility to keep the memories alive and to challenge and defeat the politics of racism and hate at every turn. Evil must be resisted, and if the people of whom I have spoken could resist the evil that they faced, despite their apparent powerlessness, that tells us that we all, as individuals, have a part to play in combating evil. It also tells us how much more responsibility there is on the state to fight all forms of racism and the politics of hate, whether at home or abroad. We must hear the voices of the past and keep their memories alive.

10:48

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

I am glad to join other hon. Members in thanking the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) for initiating our discussion. I also thank all hon. Members for drawing on their understanding of the past and their personal experiences, conversations and visits in order to give such thoughtful speeches.

While listening to all the individual stories told by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), I noted that we often think about those times in terms of victims and perpetrators, but it is important to remember that among the group of people who were meant to be victims were those who refused to be victims, those who resisted, those who escaped and those who survived through it all and gave us the individual testimonies, which have been handed down the generations to today, and among the group of people who were the perpetrators were those who dissented and those who protected their fellow citizens, either through diplomatic channels, as the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) mentioned, or simply by protecting their neighbours. I have heard a story from one of my Hungarian friends of how her mother protected their piano teacher during the Holocaust. From such stories, we remember the hatred and we can despair of it, but we can also draw hope.

Many hon. Members have reflected on their visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau through the agency of the Holocaust Educational Trust and other bodies. I visited Auschwitz-Birkenau as a young man while I was inter-railing in the autumn of 1992, and there was hardly anyone there. I, too, was shocked by the paraphernalia and the remains of death, which the hon. Member for Hertsmere mentioned—the piles of glasses, the suitcases and the discarded passes—and by the sheer scale of the machinery of death, as the hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Eric Ollerenshaw) has said. One can appreciate it only by walking up to the now-familiar brick railway arch at the entrance to the death camp itself at Birkenau, as I did 23 years ago, and standing there, looking at the vast expanse of land and asking, “How could people do this?” People have to see it for themselves, but once they have seen it, it is not something that they want to see again.

The array of commemoration plans proves that the passage of time does nothing to impair our collective memory. It is our duty to recall the horrors and lessons of the Holocaust and to keep the stories of the survivors alive. It should not, and will not, fall to the survivors and their relatives to keep the memory and lessons of the Holocaust alive, especially as the voices that offer such significant witness to the Holocaust’s atrocities are gradually fading. If we do not encourage everyone to remember, it will be no wonder if many start to forget.

Today is also about remembering genocides since 1945, as well as remembering the persecution of the Jews and other minorities by the Nazis and their collaborators. As has been mentioned, Holocaust memorial day, which this year is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, is also the 20th anniversary of the genocide at Srebrenica. I recall, as will many hon. Members, the dreadful events of 20 years ago when the full horror of the Bosnian civil war was beamed into our living rooms every night for three years, and the ghastly phrase “ethnic cleansing” became part of the language of war-zone reporting. Such things took place in modern Europe during our lifetime, half a century after the continent had last been convulsed in a war in which civilians were the main casualties.

Following our debate on the subject last year, when I mentioned Bosnia, I went, in April, to Srebrenica with a delegation of British youth leaders. I was shocked by what I saw there, including photographs in various exhibitions and the cemetery at Srebrenica, where more than 8,000 obelisks mark Muslim graves. I met some of the survivors, including the mayor of Srebrenica, a man in his 30s who is the only male survivor of his class. I ask my male colleagues to imagine being the only male survivor among the people with whom they went to school. I met Hassan, whose twin brother was killed. Imagine the horror of that. I met a remarkable group of people, the Mothers of Srebrenica, who are keeping alive the memory of what happened to their husbands, fathers, sons and uncles. Women spoke to me of the other side of genocide, which has not been mentioned today. We have spoken about the death that is caused by genocide, but those women told me of the acts that were perpetrated against the survivors, particularly the women, many of whom were raped, humiliated and robbed of their dignity. We must not forget that aspect of genocide.

We will always remember the innocent lives that have been lost, no matter where that happened, whether it was in the killing fields of Cambodia or the churches of Rwanda. An understanding of history is important to ensure that we learn from the past in education, policy and how we, as individuals, treat others. The Holocaust Educational Trust, which most hon. Members have mentioned, is now in its 27th year of educating children through “Lessons from Auschwitz”, which is surely the most poignant way to help children understand what happened. We revisit painful memories and shocking scenes not merely for the sake of doing so, but to ensure that history is never repeated.

This year, the theme of Holocaust memorial day will be “Keep the memory alive”. Pledging to keep the memory alive is a way in which we can pay tribute to those who have lost their lives and those who have lived a life beyond those terrible experiences. As we utter those immortal words, other words associated with holocaust remembrance come to the fore. “Never again” is a phrase often uttered in such debates, but night after night our television screens are filled with images that show man’s inhumanity to man. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) mentioned the terrible events that have occurred in Paris during the past month. Just as it was appropriate for people to say, and to hold up signs that read, “Je suis Charlie”, it is appropriate for those of all denominations and none to hold up signs that read, “Je suis Juif”.

We need, more than ever, to ensure that never again means never again. That is why the Holocaust Commission, which was announced by the Prime Minister, will report on its recommendations on Holocaust memorial day a week from now. The importance of the commission cannot be over-emphasised at a time when the link to those who survived the Holocaust is becoming ever weaker. The current generation of young people will be the last to have the opportunity to hear at first hand the testimony of holocaust survivors. That was brought home to me only yesterday when my Department hosted its annual Holocaust memorial day, and our special guest, Auschwitz survivor Susan Pollack, was unable to attend because her husband and fellow survivor Abraham had sadly just died. That is why I ask all who are present to pay tribute to Holocaust survivors who bear testimony in schools and colleges across the country. It is because of people such as Susan that the commission is tasked with ensuring that future generations never forget the Holocaust, and that the stories of survivors are not lost when they can no longer bear testimony.

I join many colleagues in paying tribute to the Holocaust Educational Trust, and in particular its chief executive, Karen Pollock, who has been key in ensuring that Holocaust education has been at the forefront of our efforts to ensure that we reflect on and, we hope, learn the lessons from the past. Holocaust education brings to life the names, the memories and the identities of those who suffered; not only the 6 million Jews and many other minorities who were persecuted between 1933 and 1945, but the more than 1 million Cambodians who were murdered by Pol Pot, the 1 million who died in Rwanda, the hundreds of thousands who died in Darfur and the thousands who were killed in Bosnia.

Holocaust education reminds us that behind the statistics were real people, who lived, loved and laughed, and who might have gone on to be mothers, fathers or even Nobel laureates. That is why we continue to support the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. I thank its chief executive, Olivia Marks-Woldman, and her team for their work to ensure that we all remember. This year, the trust has commissioned the artist Anish Kapoor to design candles that have been placed in 70 locations around the country. My colleague the Secretary of State will take one of those candles to Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of the 70th anniversary commemorations next week. I pay tribute to the Anne Frank Trust and to Sir Andrew Burns for their work on making sure that people remember the lessons from the past.

As has been said, such events repeat themselves, and the UK is experiencing a reported increase in anti-Semitism. We must say clearly that that is completely unacceptable in modern Britain. It is important never to stand aside when we encounter prejudice and hatred of any kind. Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel said,

“I swore never to be silent whenever wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation.”

Today, reflecting on our democracy, as the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) has said, our duty is to remember the past, and never to be silent about prejudice, bigotry and hatred in our own time.

Drugs (Ultra-rare Diseases)

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Westminster Hall

10:59

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

I am delighted to have the opportunity to raise this hugely important issue, which affects a number of children across the country represented here today by a good number of right hon. and hon. Members. Although the debate is scheduled for only half an hour, I will take interventions from Members who wish to raise constituency cases. I am happy to do so because this is an important issue that affects families across the country. At the moment, 88 children in the United Kingdom have Morquio. There are 2,500 people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, but 50 have a nonsense mutation, which falls into the category of an ultra-rare disease. We are talking about 138 people, 111 of whom are currently on treatment trials with the two drugs that are relevant to this debate.

I am delighted that there was a powerful lobby last week on behalf of the group with the nonsense mutation of Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Families from across the country gathered in Portcullis House and then presented a 24,000-strong petition calling for Translarna. I was with the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), who chairs the all-party group on muscular dystrophy, and the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), who was there with her constituent Archie Hill. We were joined by Liam and Saul, two other boys with the condition. We were all delighted that the hon. Member for Blaydon managed to ask a question at Prime Minister’s Question Time, and the answer gave hope to all those children because the Prime Minister gave a very personal answer comparing his own son to Archie—he had a picture of Archie playing football. The Prime Minister came to speak to us, and he said that he would personally do what he could, which echoes the Minister’s work. I thank the Minister for his personal assistance, which has been extremely helpful. I have met him twice, and I know he is very engaged on this matter, which I appreciate.

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

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I pay tribute to him for his work on this subject, which is second to none. I also thank him for mentioning my constituent Archie Hill and his parents, who have campaigned tirelessly for Translarna for their son. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is important that NHS England takes on board what the Prime Minister said to us, and to the families whom we represented, at Downing street last week by introducing a plan that enables Translarna to be available to those children who could benefit now, rather than waiting for the bureaucracy that is tying the drug up in knots? It could be available for those children now.

[Greg Mulholland]

Absolutely. It is a pleasure to be working on this issue with the right hon. Lady and other right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House. This is a personal issue for me, too. My attention was drawn to the issue when Simon and Katy Brown came to see me with their son, Sam, in 2012. Sam was then four, and he is now six. Sam is receiving Vimizim, which is the only drug that clinically works for Morquio. Both drugs have been shown to have a very significant impact on the health of these individuals, changing what they are able to do with their lives, which is crucial.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I congratulate him on securing this debate. Is the supply of drugs purely down to finances, or is it totally bureaucracy? What is it? Why is there a hold-up on such an important issue?

[Greg Mulholland]

That is a good question, and it is the nub of the issue. It is not finances. Finances are clearly an issue, but it is important to get the message out that they are not the cause of the hold-up. There is an element of bureaucracy in the process, which I will address. I know that the Minister is seeking to ensure that we have a proper process, but ultimately we have to make decisions based on the effectiveness of the drugs. In this case, both drugs have been shown to work and are licensed and used by health systems in other countries.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way, and I congratulate him on securing this debate. On effectiveness, would he agree—I hope the Minister also concurs—that it is about timing, particularly with Translarna? The drug will extend the ability of young boys to maintain their mobility and to keep out of a wheelchair, which is why it is so critical that the bureaucracy is speeded up for individuals such as my constituent Jagger Curtis and his dad, James. They need the drug now, not in six, 12 or 18 months’ time. It comes down to ensuring that the drug is available when it will be effective.

[Greg Mulholland]

Absolutely. That is very much the case with Morquio, too. Simon and Katy Brown have told me that the drug is having a huge impact now. I met Sam and saw him running around when he visited my surgery. When there is deterioration in such conditions, the clock can never be turned back, which is why we are urging the Minister to address the situation. I am delighted that we had meetings with him. All the organisations involved, the MPS Society, the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, Action Duchenne and Joining Jack, are urging the Minister and NHS England to find a way to ensure that all these children, not only the 111 who are currently on the trials—some of whom are, of course, receiving placebos—but all 138 children with these conditions, are able to access the drugs now. We have asked for a decision on that by the end of January.

We are in this situation because a decision was supposed to have been taken by NHS England on 15 December 2014, but a letter was sent by the MPS Society and a young man with Morquio syndrome, Kamal—I am delighted that his family are visiting Parliament today—and on receipt of that letter NHS England, realising that its process was potentially discriminating against people with ultra-rare conditions, pulled the entire process, leaving all these families in limbo. NHS England has a responsibility to put another proper, robust process in place.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. I will be meeting my constituent Angela Paton on Friday afternoon. She was part of the trial, which helped her immensely, but she is worried that the drug may now be withdrawn. Would my hon. Friend like me to report to him after that meeting on Friday?

[Greg Mulholland]

Absolutely. It is critical that we all work together on this issue. Indeed, I would like to hear from the MPs for all these families across the country so that we can have one voice to say to NHS England and the Minister, who has been very helpful, that we need a solution and that we need to hear some news by the end of January.

NHS England is now consulting on a new process, and it has said that it will take 90 days. That may seem a reasonable time to come up with a process, but considering that the old process was flawed, there needs to be something to fill the gap that enables all these children to access the drugs now. At the moment, the drugs in this case are being supplied through the good will of the drug companies: BioMarin in the case of Vimizim and PTC in the case of Translarna. Both companies are engaged in the process, both have a part to play and both are involved in dialogue with the Minister and NHS England.

I will briefly explain the two conditions so that people understand. Morquio is caused by the lack of an enzyme needed to break down certain chains of sugar molecules used in building bones, cartilage, tendons and other bodily tissues. Those unbroken molecules are stored in parts of cells called lysosomes, which become swollen, disrupt cell functions and cause progressive damage. Babies with the syndrome grow normally, but growth slows significantly after 18 months. Those severely affected stop growing at about age eight, and their final height may be three or four feet, which has many effects on their quality of life. There is no cure for Morquio, but the enzyme replacement therapy Vimizim, for which clinical trials are ongoing at the moment, has been shown to be effective. As we have said, any delay with the drug will cause damage that cannot then be reversed.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Before I came in, I was speaking to my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), who would have liked to be here but who has a meeting and sends his apologies. When reading the testimonies from the MPS Society UK, I was struck by how significant a difference the drug makes to children’s energy levels. Obviously, clinical trials and other formal assessments are important, but the personal testimonies from the families about the changes that they have seen in the children and how much energy the drug gives them are far more compelling than any scientific assessment could be. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that listening to the families is important?

[Greg Mulholland]

It is crucial, but that also tallies with the medical evidence. It has been shown that that particular treatment stabilises symptoms, slows deterioration and has a hugely positive impact on quality of life. Children can do more and lead more normal lives; they have more energy and stamina. People with Morquio can live full lives and go on to education and employment, but childhood is their only opportunity to take a drug to slow the effects of the disease.

Duchenne muscular dystrophy, also caused by a mutation, affects young boys specifically. It also has no cure and gets worse over time. It begins by affecting a particular group of muscles and then muscles more widely, leading to difficulty walking, running, jumping, standing up and climbing stairs. Children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy may end up in a wheelchair fairly young, and are certainly predicted to become wheelchair-bound between the ages of eight and 14 as their muscles weaken and they lose their ability to walk.

[Mrs Gillan]

The thing that came home to me was that those children need to access such drugs quickly, while they are still walking. Is that not why the time scale is so urgent? As soon as the child is no longer ambulatory, the drug will not have an effect. That is why we must have a speeded-up timetable and access to personal budgets for such drugs.

[Greg Mulholland]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right. Without such drugs, boys with Duchenne and children with Morquio are deteriorating now while waiting. They were expecting a decision on 15 December about whether they would be able to access those two drugs.

Translarna changes the natural course of the mutation in Duchenne muscular dystrophy, slows the decline in physical functioning and can therefore also play an important role in reducing the burden that the condition places not only on the boys who have it but on their families. They can do more, lead normal lives and see their boys do normal things with their siblings.

The number of people affected by the nonsense mutation in Duchenne is very small: there are only 50, 34 of whom are currently in the Translarna trial. The number expected to be eligible for Translarna is about 80 to 90 people, so we are not talking about huge numbers. Some of those people, incidentally, are not yet diagnosed; it is believed that that is the largest potential figure. Vimizim is already licensed in various countries: more than 20 European countries have access to it outside clinical trials, including France, Germany, Italy, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Translarna has been given conditional approval by the European Medicines Agency to treat boys with the nonsense mutation. Data gathered from clinical trials of Translarna indicates that the drug, as well as being effective, is safe. Results of the phase 2B trial were encouraging. Boys who received a low dose of Translarna could walk an average of 31 metres farther than boys receiving the placebo. Translarna is already available in Italy, Germany, Spain and France.

The clear message from all the families and organisations representing people with both those conditions is that we cannot wait for the drugs. NHS England has a responsibility, but so does the Department of Health, because the abolition of the previous highly specialised commissioning service led to an unfit-for-purpose process that had to be scrapped in the face of the pre-action. There is a moral and potentially a legal responsibility to find a way to make that decision. We are now already more than a month past the day when those families were expecting a decision that could literally be life-changing for them.

We understand, of course, that NHS England must put in place a proper process, but I urge the Minister to carry on doing what he is doing and the Prime Minister, who has taken a personal interest in the issue, to find a way to allow all those children to access these two drugs, which have been shown to be effective and to have a hugely transformative effect on their lives and those of their families. I will carry on working with the Minister and the two drug companies, but I urge him to listen to this message. We cannot wait 90 days. We need an interim solution, and I hope that we can have that by the end of January, soon as that is. I will carry on working with him and colleagues throughout the House until we get that news.

11:16

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (George Freeman)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds North West (Greg Mulholland) on his tireless work on this issue, and colleagues across the House, including the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and others here today.

I thank the hon. Member for Leeds North West for his kind words about the work that I have been trying to do for him, and about the Prime Minister’s signal of support. The issues are incredibly complex and do not lend themselves to an easy waving of a ministerial wand, but we are committed to finding a solution.

The hon. Gentleman has been tireless in his support of one of his constituents, six-year-old Sam Brown from Otley, who has the very rare Morquio syndrome. A new treatment is now available called Vimizim, from which Sam has already benefited as part of a clinical trial. I wish to state my support for Sam and his family, and for all those who suffer from the disease, including those in the trial who have access to the drug when others currently do not. I also pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s support for the family of another young boy, Archie, who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a very rare form of muscular dystrophy that affects only boys. Archie’s family want him to be treated with a new medicine, Translarna.

I will say a little about the background to the diseases and what we are trying to do about them. Both conditions are very rare—there are about 80 children living with Morquio syndrome in England, and about 140 boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy—so we are talking about a very small number of children with those life-limiting conditions. However, rare diseases are not rare: there are between 5,000 and 10,000 known types of rare disease, and an estimated one in 17 people will be affected by a rare disease in their lifetime, amounting to some 3 million suffers in the UK alone.

The truth is that the more we know about the human genome and the behaviour of genes in disease development, the more we understand its complexity. In cancer particularly, we know that the tumour itself mutates at different stages of the disease. The more we know about genetics, the more we discover that diseases that we thought yesterday were one disease in fact break down into different bundles of rare disease. New knowledge, technology and advances in biomedicine are a wonderful thing, but that does not detract from the fact that the NHS operates with finite resources and that difficult funding decisions must be made daily.

I was delighted to meet Sam’s mother and Archie’s family early in December, along with the hon. Gentleman and representatives of the Society for Mucopolysaccharide Diseases, to whose work I pay tribute, and of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign. As the hon. Gentleman mentioned, we had a number of meetings over the Christmas period. I was delighted to meet patient groups and the manufacturers of Vimizim and ataluren just before Christmas. In that meeting, I asked the patient groups and companies to set out their proposals, which they have now done. I am grateful to them, and I have passed on that information to NHS England.

This morning, I met NHS England’s clinical director of specialised services, James Palmer, and its director of specialised commissioning, Richard Jeavons, and I will convene a further meeting shortly to pursue the issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised this morning. Since he first made me aware of this issue, I have been absolutely determined to bring as much ministerial focus to it as I can. I am also grateful for his acknowledgement of the Prime Minister’s support. The Prime Minister and I are both determined to ensure, without compromising due process, that the case for these children and their families is properly heard, and that the system works as it is supposed to.

I am acutely aware of the urgency behind the hon. Gentleman’s comments today and that is why I have taken the unusual step of trying to broker an agreement on what we might do to help children affected by these diseases, but I must stress that it is for NHS England, which in the end is the responsible commissioner, to make any decisions about making funding available so that the treatments are available on the NHS. It will act on the best clinical advice from the UK’s specialist body, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

I will say a little more about the options for accelerating that process in a moment, but first I will talk about our approach to improving access to treatments for rare diseases generally, because I know that this debate is being watched closely by others who have an interest in a number of other drugs and conditions, in the commissioning process, and in NHS England’s prioritisation and decision-making framework. In setting the scene, I remind right hon. and hon. Members of the pressures that the NHS faces, particularly on budgets for rare diseases. The emergence of new treatments, the increasing personalisation of medicines, the end of the one-size-fits-all model and the possibilities offered by the rapid advances that we are making in genomic medicine and diagnosis are all putting immense pressure on NHS England’s resources for the commissioning of services for rare conditions.

Ideally, of course, we would want to fund all the treatments that are shown to benefit patients in any way, but we have to make difficult decisions about how we spend the money that we have available. That is why we have put clinicians in charge of the process, so that they can make decisions based on patient benefit and on the best health economic assessments that we can make. The painful truth is that with finite resources, when we make a decision in one case to accept a drug, we will make a decision elsewhere to reject, and we have a duty to all to ensure that we make those decisions fairly.

For people with rare conditions, their families, carers and clinicians, having access to the latest and most effective treatments is obviously critical, and I am absolutely committed to ensuring that patients with rare diseases have access to the latest and most effective treatments that represent value to the NHS and the taxpayer, as well as delivering benefits to patients. That is why we recently introduced the early access to medicines scheme, which aims to give patients with life-threatening or seriously debilitating conditions access to medicines that do not yet have a marketing authorisation or licence where there is clear unmet medical need. I am delighted that initial products have been brought forward in the last six months under that scheme.

More generally, our strategy for life sciences sets out an ambitious longer-term plan to improve the wider environment for health and life sciences companies in this country. Recently, I launched a major review of the landscape in the UK for bringing innovative medicines and medical technologies to patients much more quickly, and I will soon announce the chair, the terms of reference, the scope and the timetable of that review.

We are not in any way complacent. The truth is that the challenges in this sector, which are being driven by the pace of technological change, demand that in our policy-making framework, in the Department of Health and in NHS England, we adapt the way in which we handle these processes. Because of their rarity and the low patient populations, services for rare conditions are directly commissioned nationally by NHS England as specialised services. They account for approximately 14% of the total NHS budget and represent spending of about £14 billion a year. Both Morquio syndrome and Duchenne muscular dystrophy fall within these national specialist commissioning arrangements.

As right hon. and hon. Members are aware, NHS England is considering draft clinical commissioning policies for both Vimizim and ataluren. I understand that they are being considered as part of NHS England’s wider prioritisation process for funding in 2015-16. NHS England’s clinical priorities advisory group formulates recommendations on the commissioning of new treatments for rare diseases in England. It is made up of clinicians, patient representatives and commissioners of health services.

In summer 2014, a decision-making aid for the prioritisation of new interventions and treatments was developed by a partnership of stakeholders, including more than 250 patient representatives. It was due to be used for the first time in early December 2014, but on 28 November 2014 NHS England decided to postpone its introduction, in response to concerns that some patients affected by rare diseases might be disadvantaged by its application. The legal process about that must now run its course. I understand that NHS England is, rightly, reviewing the appropriate approach to prioritising new treatments and interventions within specialised commissioning in response to those concerns. A 90-day consultation on the prioritisation framework and decision-making process for commissioning decisions on new treatments will be launched by NHS England shortly. This morning, I again raised the importance and urgency of that consultation process.

I know that patients and their families are understandably concerned that it may take a long time for a decision to be made by NHS England on whether it will fund the drugs, and that in the interim the children affected will not receive them. However, I am delighted to say that NHS England has assured me that the consultation will have no impact on the decision-making timetable for commissioning NHS services from April 2015 onwards. In addition, it has assured me that existing treatments will continue to be commissioned, ensuring that support for patients is maintained. NHS England understands that the manufacturer, Bio Marin, is providing Vimizim under an expanded access arrangement to those patients who are on the clinical trial until an NHS England policy decision has been made.

Since April 2013, NICE, which is responsible for the evaluation of selected high-cost low-volume drugs under its highly specialised technologies programme, has been playing an important role in ensuring that commissioning decisions are based on a robust and thorough assessment of the available evidence. NICE has recently been asked to evaluate Vimazim under this programme, and it is also considering whether to develop guidance on Translarna. That is a very positive step, and I look forward to receiving NICE’s proposals on future topics that will be considered. I know that NICE will also be keen to learn lessons from its recent experiences with the new highly specialised technologies process, to make that process as efficient and effective as possible.

For my part, I am absolutely determined to continue playing the active role that I have taken on in the last few months, to drive this process and give it the focus that it requires. I am delighted to have confirmed with NHS England that it will continue to meet the treatment costs. I have signalled, and will continue to signal, to NICE, without compromising its processes, the strength of the case that has been made by Members and patient groups to put Translarna on the list, and to consider whether it can expedite its process in any way, but I do not want to compromise that process in any way. I will also ask NICE to ensure that it uses its review of the experience of the HST programme to explore how we can speed up both this process and others in due course.

Finally, I am committed to continuing to work with the companies to see whether I might be able to help broker some kind of planning arrangement that might encourage NICE to make the decision that I know everyone in Westminster Hall today would like to hear.

[Mrs Gillan]

I am grateful to the Minister and I congratulate him on taking up the cudgels on this issue and trying to move it forward. The Muscular Dystrophy Campaign has asked whether the individual funding requests from patients would be a route to secure access to Translarna while the Minister is waiting for due process to take its course, because I am afraid that muscular dystrophy waits for no man and no process.

[George Freeman]

I understand; my right hon. Friend makes an important point. In fact, I raised it this morning in my meeting with NHS England. My understanding is that NHS England will continue to consider individual applications for Translarna through its individual funding request process from patients who may be exceptional. However, my understanding is that such cases really do have to be exceptional. In reality, the members of the whole group that we are considering are more or less suffering from the same condition and therefore they may not qualify under those criteria. I merely share that with my right hon. Friend because I myself raised that point this morning with NHS England.

[Greg Mulholland]

I stress to my hon. Friend the Minister that we are discussing two conditions and two drugs, Translarna and Vimazim. I also have to say to him again that we understand that NHS England has to put a process in place; of course it does, because the process it had put in place was not fit for purpose. Does he accept that NHS England has a legal, as well as a moral, responsibility in this regard? It certainly has a moral responsibility. Having said that the decision will be made on 15 December, NHS England cannot now hide behind saying, “There needs to be a new process,” when this situation is its fault in the first place. We are now a month on from that initial deadline, and there needs to be an interim solution to somehow allow these 138 children to access the two drugs in the meantime, and before that process is complete.

[George Freeman]

I certainly accept the moral case; I think that everyone would accept that there is a moral duty to get this matter right and to try to make these decisions on the right basis and on the basis of the right evidence. The legal position, given the legal challenge, is more complicated, and it has triggered a formal process of reappraisal. As I have said, I will meet NHS England officials to urge them to try to expedite that process as best they can. However, I must stress that I do not want to get into a situation where we compromise due process and inadvertently undermine a case. What I want to see is a NICE decision being made as quickly as possible, and I will urge NICE to expedite that process in every way it can, so that we get the right decision that we all want.

11:30

Sitting suspended.

North Sea Oil and Gas (Employment)

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gary Streeter in the Chair]

14:29

[Mr Frank Doran]

(Aberdeen North) (Lab): It is a pleasure to operate under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. We are here to discuss United Kingdom oil and gas, which is in severe difficulties, partly because of a substantial drop in the world oil price. In these debates, it is always important to get the facts right. One key thing about the industry is just how important a part it plays in the UK economy. According to Oil & Gas UK, the industry body, the industry supplies 73% of the UK’s primary energy: oil for transport and gas for heating. The UK balance of payments benefited from oil and gas to the tune of £30 billion last year. The oil and gas supply chain achieved sales of £20 billion outside the UK. The total expenditure in services and infrastructure investment from oil and gas companies in 2013 was £20 billion. Since 1970, the industry has invested £500 billion.

In recent years, the expenditure has been particularly high. In 2014, the industry invested around £14 billion of capital investment in UK oil infrastructure, following on from investment of £11.4 billion in 2012 and £13.5 billion in 2013. Across the industry there is a total committed expenditure—that is, projected future expenditure—on projects in production or under development totalling £44 billion. Figures like these have not been seen since the 1980s. They are massive figures: there is no question about that.

The industry claims to support 450,000 jobs in the UK. These break down as follows: 36,000 employed directly by offshore operators; 200,000 in the supply chain, providing goods and services to the industry; 112,000 jobs in services such as hospitality, taxis, and so on; and 100,000 jobs in the export of goods and services. It is difficult to visit any foreign oil base or complex without hearing a Scottish or English accent. We are operating throughout the world.

Many of these jobs are now under threat because of the collapse of the oil price. Major companies—Shell, Chevron and, last week, BP—have announced redundancies. Some of these have been expected for some time and were part of company restructuring as well as the downturn in the oil price. More announcements are inevitable.

I can find no reliable figures showing the numbers so far made unemployed, but I know from union sources, for example, that roughly 600 people have been made redundant in companies where there are recognition agreements. However, most cuts are likely to be made to the self-employed, who comprise a large number of offshore and onshore employees; they are the easiest and cheapest to remove. At the moment it is estimated that there will be around 2,000 job losses in total. I think that is a fairly realistic projection.

How things will proceed from here on is difficult to judge at the moment. Many jobs lost so far have been lost onshore and it may take time before large numbers of offshore jobs are put at risk. Everyone will be mindful of the need to retain skills for when the upturn arrives, whenever that might be.

In the history of the North sea oil and gas industry there have been at least three serious downturns. The worst and most damaging was the downturn in the mid-1980s, when 20,000 jobs were lost in Scotland, most of them in Aberdeen and the north-east. Some 50,000 jobs were lost in the whole country. The fact that the job losses were higher in the rest of the UK than in Scotland reflects the fact that, although the industry is centred in Aberdeen, the supply chain and the work force is spread throughout the UK.

There is a risk that this year’s downturn could be as serious as the one in the 1980s, but I think it is possible to take steps to mitigate that. In the first place, the industry has changed substantially from the industry we had in the 1980s. For example, it is much more widely spread with fewer of the majors involved. I believe that with the right sort of focused support from Government and the industry, this very difficult time will not develop into the tragedy that we saw in the 1980s. Of course, there is very little we can do about the global price of oil, but we can look at the other issues that have faced the industry for some time now and consider how we can soften the blow and minimise damage.

Exploitable oil and gas are proving harder to find, and discoveries that are made are often in places that are difficult and expensive to exploit, particularly if there are issues around access to infrastructure. Some of these problems will be addressed when the recommendations of the Wood report are fully implemented, but that is likely to be some time away, although there are moves to accelerate the process.

Then there is the skills shortage. Until relatively recently, few companies offered apprenticeships in technical skills. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the industry attracted engineers, welders, boilermakers and others from the collapsing smokestack industries: mining and shipbuilding, and so on. That supply has been exhausted and the work force are ageing. Trainee and apprenticeship programmes have been introduced in recent years, but those take time to make an impact. In the meantime, labour costs have risen enormously and companies have poached skilled staff from each other, driving wages to high levels. With my trade union background, I am the last person to complain about that, but it has a serious impact on costs offshore.

Oil & Gas UK says that contracting prices have doubled since 2010. One executive from a major company told me recently that the cost of scaffolding alone—there are 6,500 workers working on scaffolding in the North sea—has tripled in the last two years. It is obvious that a slice of the money that previously would have been spent on research and development, exploration and appraisal, which are all things to take the industry forward into the future, has been diverted into meeting these wage costs.

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this timely debate. He is making some important points. Does he agree that if we—the industry and the Government—get this right, and indeed make the industry more efficient, as and when the recovery happens we will be much more competitive than we have been? The point he is making is that we have been in danger of pricing ourselves out of the business.

[Mr Doran]

That is the sole point that I planned to make in this speech. [Interruption.] No, the right hon. Gentleman is right to raise the issue. It is important that Government and industry work together to try to tackle the problems that we have all identified.

In addition to labour costs, there are real issues about the way in which equipment is purchased by companies operating in the North sea. In Norway, for example, there is standardisation of equipment. The state is a more engaged regulator and Statoil, the state-owned company, has by far the largest stake in the industry, with a share of around 60% of production. Its purchasing powers are enormous and most companies will buy the standardised equipment developed or ordered by Statoil at much cheaper prices than bespoke equipment. Our largest operator in the UK has only 10% of production. There is no company that can lead standardisation in the way that Statoil can in Norway, so everyone purchases to their own requirements.

One example I heard about recently was the purchase of light switches. That may be an odd place to start, but it is relevant. In Norway, the norm is standardised plain light switches. In the UK, company insignia or another unique requirement is demanded by many operators, usually at double or more of the cost. Scale that up through the requirements of offshore operators, from light switches to drilling rigs, and you have very expensive processes that I think are holding the industry back. Of course, this has an impact on Government, too. Every bespoke item has a higher cost than a standardised one, which reduces profits, which reduces taxes paid.

The sooner the Wood review recommendations are fully implemented, the better. I do not think that that will affect the price of light switches, but I hope it sends a clear message. I know that the industry is developing a strategy at the moment, but it will take time to put that in place. Cutting costs that are incurred at present is a must if any progress is to be made.

Probably the major issue for the industry is the tax system. Every Government since oil was first discovered in the North sea have treated the industry as a cash cow. Tax increases, occasionally unannounced, are the norm. The tax system is complex and expensive. The Government are anxious to protect their income from the industry, but that will become more and more difficult if current problems persist. Profits have to be made for taxes to be paid. I understand that in the last financial year the overall performance of the industry was negative—this year might be even worse.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing today’s debate, which is on an issue of deep concern to all of us from the north-east of Scotland, where so many jobs are dependent on the oil and gas sector. I want to add to his point about taxation. Does he agree that we need those tax changes now? I have no doubt that we will see more announcements of job losses in the coming weeks. We need changes to the fiscal regime now, not a couple of months down the line.

[Mr Doran]

I think there is a case for what the hon. Lady says, but I disagree with her. We will have a Budget in two months’ time, and announcements will be made then. In the meantime, we know that the Treasury is working on the position. As she will see from the rest of my contribution, I am more concerned about how the tax cuts are made, rather than that tax cuts are made. I want focused and targeted tax cuts, not just a chop off the supplementary charge that was introduced in 2011.

It is important to look at the responses that should be made to the current situation. In the 1980s, there was virtually no Government response. There may have been one behind the scenes, but it was not visible to those of us who were involved at that time and were concerned about what was happening in the industry. We have the opportunity to mitigate substantially the impact of the collapse in the oil price. Members would expect me to say this, but I was pleased when Councillor Jenny Laing, the leader of Aberdeen city council, announced in December her plan to host a summit in Aberdeen to consider the challenges facing the industry. That summit will be held on 2 February. It is supported by Oil & Gas UK and will be attended by the UK and Scottish Governments, as well as by industry experts. That announcement caused the various other bodies with an interest to consider their reaction. Since then, Government Ministers and MPs have been queuing up to visit Aberdeen. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) has made her trip there. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change was there last week. The issue is being taken much more seriously than it was in the 1980s.

To go back to the question from the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), tax reliefs are back on the table. The Chancellor has made it clear that they are being considered, which suits the oil industry, because it has been asking for them. Since the collapse in the oil price, industry representatives and others have insisted that there needs to be a tax cut. Oil companies are still angry about the increase in the supplementary charge made in the 2011 Budget, and they would like to see it removed completely. The Chancellor has met them a small part of the way by introducing tax reliefs for brownfield sites and for high-temperature and high-pressure fields, and after his much hailed tax review last year the mouse of a 2% reduction in supplementary charge was announced.

Regardless of the 2011 increases, both field reliefs are important and have resulted in extra activity from the industry, even in these difficult times. The lesson from that is that it is in the interest of the industry and the taxpayer that any tax reliefs that are given should be focused and not random. There are many areas where more targeted and focused tax reliefs would create a win-win situation for all sides. For example, an investment allowance would encourage more activity and create more income and thus more tax revenues. Investment in research and development has slowed significantly in the industry, yet that is crucial in the search to find and produce oil and gas, whether by enhanced recovery techniques, better infrastructure to improve recovery or whatever other area that could improve the industry. The Government should also consider targeted reliefs to protect jobs and skills. Health and safety is a major issue for me. For many years, I have been heavily involved in that issue offshore. It must remain a priority. The Government should consider a specific targeted relief to support the continuing maintenance of infrastructure and the improvement of health and safety systems and equipment.

The consequences of the 1980s downturn were not only job losses. All projects that were in progress were stopped. The platforms that were producing oil and gas carried on producing, but many costs were cut to the bone. In particular, areas vital to safety, such as fire safety equipment, deluge systems and others, received little or no maintenance. The consequences of that approach were not immediately apparent, but on the night of 6 July 1988 they were there for the whole world to see. The Piper Alpha platform exploded with 167 deaths. It is still the most serious loss of life from any incident anywhere in the offshore oil and gas industry. If there is slippage in maintenance through the downturn, the dangers for offshore workers will increase significantly.

[Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. On safety, is he as alarmed as I was to hear from a constituent who runs a business in my area and who came to my surgery on Friday—he offers safety courses to oil firms operating in the North sea—that he has seen a significant reduction in the number of people that firms are placing on those courses and on refresher courses for safety?

[Mr Doran]

I think my hon. Friend is talking about the sort of work on offshore that I mentioned at the beginning of my speech. Those who are self-employed—probably with their own companies where they are often the sole employee—are the first to be removed. I am concerned to hear that people operating in safety are part of that process, and we should all be concerned by that.

For offshore oil workers, working on offshore platforms is dangerous, but the dangers do not stop on the platform. The only realistic form of transport offshore, because of the distances involved, the difficulty of access to platforms and the hostile weather conditions, is by helicopter. In the UK sector of the North sea, there have been 13 helicopter-related incidents, in which 118 people have died. The most recent one, just 17 months ago, saw four deaths. For most of the history of the North sea oil and gas industry, helicopter transport companies have been treated in exactly the same way as other contractors and subjected to often severe cuts in contract costs. That might suit the oil industry accountants, but it makes no sense to companies that have to keep helicopters flying safely. I hope that the oil industry is taking a much more cautious and sensible approach this time round, and that the Government and the regulators will strictly monitor how health and safety standards are maintained on both sides of the industry.

There are difficult times ahead, but they need not be as damaging as the downturn in the 1980s. The industry has allowed costs to spiral out of control and needs to address the problems it has created. Everyone—the industry and the UK and Scottish Governments—should be focused on maintaining employment, jobs and skills. The economic climate will change, and it is important that the oil and gas industry is capable of getting into gear as quickly and safely as possible when that happens. A key player will be the Chancellor, and I urge him to consider seriously further tax reliefs, which, in the interests of the taxpayer and the industry, should be focused on maintaining employment, training in skills, research and development and investment that will ensure the future success of the industry.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Colleagues, the winding-up speeches will begin at 3.40 pm. Six colleagues are seeking to catch my eye, and we have 50 minutes. By my calculations, about eight and a half minutes each should do the trick.

14:49

[Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (LD)]

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to take part in this debate, Mr Streeter.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on bringing this timely and important debate to the House. He has set out how important the industry is to the north-east of Scotland and the whole of the UK. I declare an interest recorded in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests to do with the oil and gas industry—a shareholding in Shell—but I am participating in the debate because mine is one of those north-east constituencies and many of my constituents are affected by what is happening out in the North sea, and because of how important the industry is to the country.

It is not only the specialist jobs that are at risk; in fact, some of those jobs might well not be so much at risk in the long run, because of the skills shortage and the need for people globally to sustain oil and gas production. I worry about the cascade effect on jobs: as companies reduce their use of catering facilities, for example, those who work in catering will lose their jobs locally, and they will not be able to go to Angola or Azerbaijan to find other employment. I have written to the Department for Work and Pensions to find out what it is doing to gear up its facilities and resources to tackle that challenge in the local economy. Perhaps the Minister will chase up the Department for a reply.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen North mentioned 1986, and some people have said, “We’ve been through this before. We’ve had downturns. We had one in 1986 and we bounced back.” He was right to say that there was a difference going into this downturn, but even without the cut in oil price, a restructuring was needed in the industry and there were concerns about the cost base and the profitability of the North sea, as it was becoming more challenging. In 1986 the platforms were younger; the neglect of maintenance showed through only later on in their life. Also, in 1986 the finds and the reserves were bigger, so the temptation was to hang on, see through the trough and still be there when the upturn came.

Now we have much smaller finds, but we still need the larger hubs to be sustained and maintained throughout the downturn. It is not only a matter of price; there is still a future. BP is coming forward with investments that will last for 40 years, and that is before they get an extension of life—almost every field seems to last longer than originally planned. It is the scale of the future that we need to be worried about, as well as the size of the tail and how it is to be sustained.

As the hon. Gentleman said, it is very important to deal with tax incentives and the implementation of the Wood review. That review should result in swifter and more independent regulation, and bring the industry together to co-operate in maximising production from the North sea. The crucial message to the Treasury is that it does not have the skills to produce oil and gas from the North sea; with the Treasury acting alone, there would be no oil and gas production. It needs to incentivise skills so that tax can be taken off the profits that come out of the North sea, and we need a cross-party consensus.

The hon. Gentleman highlighted some of investment incentives needed. We need to build on the work that the Treasury has already done. The 2% cut was small, but it was symbolic of the fact that the Treasury is beginning to understand how important the long-term signals are to the industry. The wider investment allowance will be helpful and investment in more seismic will encourage greater exploration, but the current negotiations to see what else can be done to encourage exploration are extremely important. We still need to look at the message that a cut across the board in the supplemental tax would send to investors. If they can see that more of the profit will be retained by them after an investment, they will see that this country wants to see us through this trough and come out the other side.

An important message to the Treasury is that a smaller percentage of a real cake is better than a bigger percentage of no cake. It is crucial to optimise those signals to the industry, not just for the benefit of getting more of our energy out of the ground rather than importing it, or for the jobs in the north-east of Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom, but to sustain that jewel in the crown of the industry: the export potential of the skills that we have developed in the North sea, particularly in subsea engineering, where we are world leaders. By keeping the North sea as vibrant and as active as possible, we maintain the anchor that keeps those industries here in the United Kingdom, exporting and earning us considerable amounts of revenue and keeping many people in employment.

We have a Budget coming up that can be used, following the negotiations, to produce the best signal and incentive to see us through this trough and through to a brighter future, when we can maximise the jobs, the energy production and the tax take for future generations.

14:55

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing this debate. It is perhaps a sign of the times that we have decent turnouts in debates only when a disaster or something bad has happened. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the work he is doing in his constituency, along with his fellow Members of Parliament in the area, and I thank the shadow Chancellor, who, along with the new leader of the Scottish Labour party, is in Aberdeen today to help to fight for jobs. I do not want to make a political point about it, but it would be a lot better if the Secretary of State for Scotland and the First Minister and various others were with them, putting up a political united front to help the industry and jobs.

According to Oil & Gas UK, about 450,000 jobs are associated with the oil and gas industry. The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) asked about jobs and the number of people who have been hit in the north-east, but only 202,000 of the jobs are actually in Scotland; the rest are outside Scotland. With 130,000 jobs in the Aberdeen area and all these other jobs, the whole country is suffering. It is not just one small area.

[Dr Whiteford]

I fully accept that many jobs throughout the UK depend on the oil and gas sector. The difference in the north-east of Scotland is the concentration of jobs. It is not just the direct oil jobs that depend on the oil and gas sector; it is not even just the jobs in the wider supply chain. It is the small shops, our retailers, our service providers, our construction companies—our whole economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas, so the ramifications of this go far further than simply just jobs in the oil and gas sector.

[John Robertson]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, but a small company in my constituency that makes goods that are used up in Aberdeen also uses local shops and local people. If the jobs of 450,000 people in the United Kingdom are in danger, we can multiply that by goodness knows how many, but it would probably be millions of people who could be affected.

We know from previous times in the North sea that there will be losses. It has happened before and, sad to say, it will probably happen again, but the fact of the matter is that the North sea is in a particularly unusual position now. It is not what it was back in the ’80s, when we were getting oil and gas into the country. We are still getting oil and gas, but we are getting it from other places. We are not self-sufficient any more in these commodities; we now rely on other areas, so we have to fight to keep these jobs.

At a time when America has been diversifying into shale and is now the biggest seller of oil in the world, rather than the middle east, we have to look at where we are going in the future, but as the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North said, we also have to look at skill shortages and how to increase our knowledge of how to work in these areas. Some of the experts I have talked to tell me that this depression in oil and gas will go on for at least two years. If it lasts that long, that might be fair enough and we could recover, but I have a horrible feeling it may last a lot longer than that. The price of oil is now down to less than $50 a barrel and the middle east countries are talking about continuing to supply oil and gas at the same rate, to ensure that the price remains low. That will have a knock-on effect for the North sea.

As my hon. Friend—we are on the same Select Committee—the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine said, oil and gas jobs have a knock-on effect for everyone. The rigs and everything else out in the North sea grow old and rust; they have to be maintained, but there will be no point in maintaining them if they do not get used. We have to find something like £40 billion over the next 30 or 40 years to clean up the North sea. That is not so bad if it is still in operation, but if the North sea is not in operation, we have to find that money from somewhere else.

My point is that we are talking about only the North sea at the moment. Some jobs in various companies have been lost already, but if we, the politicians of this nation, do not get our act together and do not work together to preserve jobs, not only will Aberdeen and the areas where the other 200,000-odd people are working suffer, but the whole nation will suffer. All the parties should get together and we should all fight for those jobs.

15:01

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) for securing the debate. As has already been remarked, his timing is appropriate. Although the fall in crude oil prices is good for the UK generally, it has serious implications for this important industry, which provides highly skilled jobs and forms an important part of the UK economy. Much of the sector is concentrated in Scotland around Aberdeen, but the industry is important in East Anglia as well, employing approximately 105,000 people directly and in the wider supply chain.

The immediate problem was caused by the dramatic slump in the price of crude oil, but that served to highlight the challenges facing the North sea oil and gas sector, which Sir Ian Wood considered in his excellent report. They include the growing difficulty and escalating associated costs of finding and extracting oil and gas from what is now a mature basin. In a sector that is globally footloose, most investors have no particular allegiance to the UK—they will do business wherever in the world conditions are most favourable. Our fiscal and regulatory framework is now not fit for purpose and does not encourage them to come here. It is in need of a major overhaul.

We have a regulatory regime that Sir Ian Wood noted was appropriate for the industry in the early days, but it is no longer suitable for a basin that now has more than 300 fields, much smaller new discoveries, many marginal fields and much greater interdependence in exploration, development and production. That model needs to be updated for the 21st century. In addition, a complex, unfriendly and outdated tax structure makes today’s smaller fields a riskier bet.

From my perspective, I am interested in the specific problems of the southern North sea. A significant number of potentially attractive gas prospects could generate much economic activity, create jobs and improve the country’s energy security, but their exploration is not viable, due not only to rising costs and the falling wholesale price of oil but to the relatively low price of gas in relation to oil. That is having a negative knock-on effect on East Anglian businesses, resulting in investment in new facilities and assets being deferred or postponed; a reduction in business investment in advance of the anticipated growth in the offshore wind sector; and a reduction in the ability to attract investment into an area in which many of the larger businesses are owned by overseas companies.

It is necessary to reflect for a moment on the vital importance of the industry to the UK economy. Sir Ian Wood himself drew attention to the industry’s substantial contribution to energy security, the economy and employment. In 2012, production on the UK continental shelf met 67% of the UK’s demand and 53% of the gas demand, and the sector directly supported the employment of 450,000 people throughout the UK. Moreover, in 2012-13, the industry paid £6.5 billion in corporate taxes on production. Despite the challenges and the downturn in production in recent years, Sir Ian points to significant momentum from current production and major investments in capital expenditure over the past two or three years enabling the industry to continue to play the key role that it has been playing over the past 50 years. In that time, many skills and considerable expertise have been developed in the industry and its supply chain, resulting in thousands of well paid jobs and the generation of significant export earnings.

Another advantage is that those skills are largely complementary to the ones needed in the emerging offshore renewables sector. If the potential jobs in that industry, whether in the construction of wind turbines or their subsequent operation and maintenance, are to be fully realised for the benefit of the UK and not exported to foreign yards and ports, it is vital that we retain the skills and develop them further. As a country, we have built up considerable expertise and experience that we must now build upon and not lose or squander.

The Government’s announcements in the autumn statement show that they recognise the importance of the industry and its challenges. The industry must reduce costs and improve efficiency so as to ensure its long-term sustainability, but the further reductions in crude oil prices since the autumn statement in early December mean that more action by Government is now required. There is a pressing need to change the tax regime and to address the industry’s regulatory shortcomings, and the recommendations of the Wood review must be implemented as quickly as possible.

Looking at the industry in East Anglia, an early priority action for the new regulator should be the development of a regional plan for the southern North sea. As Sir Ian Wood himself pointed out, the southern North sea is the most mature region on the UKCS, with first production from the West Sole field in 1967. It is a gas-producing region, now vulnerable to rapid decline, but still with great potential, which has been illustrated by the recent Cygnus development and the Tolmount discovery. Wood commented that the southern North sea is especially vulnerable to premature contraction and decommissioning. He emphasises the pressing need to prepare a regional plan to address all the challenges that the area faces.

In conclusion, the North sea has produced significant benefits for the UK economy over the past 50 years—we must all wonder where on earth we would be without it. With the right stewardship, it can continue to play a similar role for the next two decades and, in doing so, increase GDP, sustain jobs and facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy. Time is very much of the essence. There is now a need for immediate action.

15:08

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) on securing this timely debate.

Despite current difficulties, the North sea oil and gas industry remains vital for Scotland—north-east Scotland, in particular. The industry makes a huge contribution not only to the Scottish economy, but to the economy of the whole UK: since its inception, it has contributed more than £300 billion in taxation to the Treasury. We have built a world-class industrial cluster in the North sea, and we now export the skills and services required to support it around the world.

In my constituency, for example, many people work in the oil and gas industry, increasingly not only in the North sea, but in various parts of central Asia, Africa and the far east. Many companies in Angus are also part of the supply chain for the North sea industry. The low level of oil and gas prices and the difficulties that that is causing are obviously of great concern. Clearly, we have experienced such falls in prices before; the previous time it happened was as recently as 2009, when the price plunged from $144 to $40 a barrel. Nevertheless, the current low price is of concern, and action must be taken to ensure that the industry is assisted through such a turbulent period.

Despite the rather dramatic headlines in some newspapers and other media reports, the North sea oil and gas sector continues to have a bright future. Indeed, when I spoke to BP about the job losses that it announced last week, it emphasised that it remained committed to the North sea, with the Kinnoull field coming on stream and the Clair field due to continue operations well into the 2050s. We should not, therefore, get too downhearted about what is going on. Immediate action is needed, however, to ensure that employment and exploration continue.

[Sir Robert Smith]

We need to realise that we face quite a large challenge. There is an undercurrent of jobs going, and that is not necessarily being reported. Contracts are being lost, especially by subcontractors, but that does not necessarily show up straight away in unemployment figures.

[Mr Weir]

I accept that. This is going on throughout the industry—in direct employment and among subcontractors.

Within their limited powers in this area, the Scottish Government have taken action. The First Minister has announced a new taskforce to focus on supporting jobs across the energy sector, with an initial emphasis on the oil and gas sector, and to secure an employer apprentice guarantee, under which firms would commit to taking on apprentices facing redundancy to ensure that they completed their training. That commitment would be supported by the Adopt an Apprentice recruitment incentive—currently, there is a one-off grant of £2,000, which is to be increased to £5,000—and by Skills Development Scotland staff.

If we are to protect Scotland’s vital oil and gas sector, however, the UK Government, specifically the Treasury, need to step up to the plate and to make immediate tax changes. We have already called on them to take urgent action to support investment and exploration. The Scottish Government have consistently called for measures to be implemented without delay, including an investment allowance to provide support for the development of fields that incur higher costs. That would support technically challenging, high-cost fields and sustain future investment. Professor Alex Kemp, a respected oil economist at Aberdeen university, estimates that an investment allowance could increase investment by £20 billion to £36 billion to 2050 and boost production by 1.2 billion to 2.2 billion barrels. Scottish Government estimates suggest that it could support between 14,000 and 26,000 jobs per year across the UK.

The Scottish Government have also called for a reversal of the increase in the supplementary charge implemented by the UK Government in 2011. The high overall tax burden faced by the sector is damaging its international competitiveness. The supplementary charge was increased by 12% in 2011, and the 2% cut announced so far does not go far enough in the current context of falling prices. Professor Kemp estimates that a reversal would increase production to 2050 by 500 million barrels and boost investment by £7 billion. Scottish Government analysis suggests that such a move could support up to 5,600 jobs per year across the UK.

In addition, the Scottish Government have called for the introduction of an exploration tax credit to help increase levels of exploration and sustain future production. As most of us are aware, levels of exploration in the North sea are low, which will inevitably reduce future discoveries. An exploration tax credit would help to increase exploration and, in turn, sustain future production. A similar approach was adopted in Norway in 2005. In the three years following its introduction, the number of exploration and appraisal wells drilled in the Norwegian North sea increased fourfold.

We have previously highlighted and backed industry concerns about the speed with which the new Oil and Gas Authority is being established, and we have called for appropriate resourcing of the new OGA to be put in place swiftly. The industry is concerned that the investment allowance the Chancellor is expected to announce in the March Budget will not be nearly enough at current oil prices, and we share that concern.

It has also become evident that an early commitment to reduce the supplementary charge rate would have the benefit of instilling confidence in operators and the sector, while discouraging premature decommissioning, which is obviously important for future work in the North sea. To significantly enhance the industry’s long-term competitiveness, we have recommended that, at the very least, the industry requires a reversal of the supplementary charge increase implemented by the Government in 2011.

That substantial package of measures should be announced without delay to safeguard investment, jobs and the long-term sustainability of the North sea. If it is not forthcoming, UK Government policy on the industry will be found seriously wanting once again. Despite what other Members say, reform of the fiscal regime must not wait until the Budget, but must be implemented now, and that should include a commitment from the UK Government to a substantial reduction in the supplementary charge rate.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I have a genuine question on a point of interest. Is Scottish Enterprise putting together a taskforce at this time? I understand what the hon. Gentleman says about the fiscal measures that may be needed, but what is Scottish Enterprise doing right now in terms of practical help on the ground?

[Mr Weir]

I have already referred to that; the hon. Gentleman should listen a bit more carefully. I did mention the First Minister’s announcement about what the Scottish Government were doing.

The Scottish Government have endorsed the findings of Sir Ian Wood’s review on maximising recovery on the UK continental shelf and particularly his recommendation of a stronger, more effective regulatory body, and so, too, did the UK Government. We welcomed the long-awaited announcement of the appointment of the OGA’s chief executive. However, it is imperative that progress is much quicker so that we can start to reap the benefits that an effective, well resourced authority has the potential to bring the industry and the nation.

[John Robertson]

Has the hon. Gentleman taken into consideration the fact that the Saudi Arabians and the Russians have enormous resources in this field, which we are trying to maintain? If they wish to keep undercutting us, the policy he outlines will become useless.

[Mr Weir]

In a way, I am surprised by that comment from the hon. Gentleman, because it seems to be a counsel of despair. We must do what we can to keep our industry going. Unfortunately, we cannot influence what the Saudis or anybody else do with their oil prices. As far as we can, however, we must take the action necessary in the UK to make sure that the North sea industry, and particularly the employment that it provides, survives.

Even if the Saudis do try to do what the hon. Gentleman says, they cannot do it for ever. At some point, oil prices will start to come up again; indeed, the International Energy Agency has predicted—obviously, this is only a prediction—that the price will probably return to about $80 a barrel in the current year. We will have to wait and see whether that happens and, if so, how fast.

The OGA is particularly important, given the pressures being felt by the industry. The Scottish Government were pleased to see Aberdeen confirmed as the location for the OGA’s headquarters in June, and the suggestion that there will be an increase from 59 to 145 full-time equivalent staff by 2019 is welcome, because it might help to address the serious understaffing identified in Sir Ian Wood’s review.

The challenge is to ensure that the appropriate level of expertise and knowledge is secured, but it is critical, given present circumstances, that appropriate resourcing is put in place swiftly at the new OGA, with the correct level of industry experience and expertise. Industry is clearly concerned about delays in the process. As Malcolm Webb, the head of Oil & Gas UK, has pointed out, it looks as if it will take until summer 2016 before all the processes involved in setting up the OGA are completed. I agree that that is far too long, and I would appreciate an explanation from the Minister of why the process is taking so long and what action will be taken to speed it up.

The Wood review must be implemented effectively and with increased speed and resources, in the light of the growing challenges facing the industry. On the website Energy Voice, on 6 January, Malcolm Webb said:

“Years of confused and confusing energy policy, not helped by a revolving door approach to the appointment of ministers (we’ve seen a total of 35 different Energy and Treasury Ministers given responsibility for our industry in the last 14 years), have raised serious questions about our politicians’ awareness and understanding of this industry and its vital importance to the UK economy.”

I agree, and the UK Government need to take urgent action to assist the industry at this difficult time.

15:18

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

I congratulate my neighbour, the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran), on securing this debate at a critical time.

I have been connected with the industry since I first arrived at the North-East Scotland Development Agency in 1971—two months before BP announced the discovery of the Forties field. We have certainly had ups and downs before, but my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) was right to point out that we are much more vulnerable in a mature province than we were in the early stages. That is why it is much more important that we take appropriate and considered action—not panicky action—to get ourselves to a place where the industry has a secure future. One thing that we all have to accept is that the UK has no control over the world oil price. We must deal with it although it is, as all commodity prices are, erratic and unpredictable. It is certainly not a good basis for planning economic policy.

The other thing that we should recognise is that the good thing about our mature province, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North pointed out, is that we have created a centre of excellence and a critical mass that are incredibly valuable to the UK domestic economy, and which sustain a £10 billion export industry; that industry, however, depends on an active domestic market and levels of activity, which we must secure. It is interesting that Sir Ian Wood, who inevitably has been quoted several times, is taking a characteristically calm and considered view of the situation. He has explicitly said that the Budget is the entirely appropriate place in which to determine the tax cuts and the timing, and he recognises that they need to be balanced and considered.

Having mentioned Sir Ian and the Wood review, I want to commend my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whose initiative it was to invite Sir Ian to conduct his review, on the basis of discussions with the industry and in the wake of its reaction to adverse tax changes in 2011. My right hon. Friend wanted to see how we could better co-ordinate the infrastructure and future development of resources, which the industry admitted were being undermined by its commercial rivalries; unusually, an invitation was issued to partnership with Government, to try to create a framework to secure and unlock a lot more resources than would be done if the industry was just competing within itself. That was a powerful initiative, and although I agree about the importance of establishing the new authority as quickly as possible, we should recognise that it would not exist at all without the initiative of the Secretary of State. I think we all agree that the sooner it can be set up with the right mix of people—who might just be available now—the better it will be able to get on with its important work.

Oil & Gas UK made the point that, with $50 oil, 20% of North sea activity is uneconomic. There are perhaps too many projects in the North sea that have become conditioned to looking at $70 to $90 oil as the essential basis. Frankly, from every discussion that I have had with an oil and gas economist, that is not a wise basis for planning. It has partly been necessitated by the escalating costs that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North addressed. We have a unique opportunity to tackle several problems at once.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

Like the right hon. Gentleman and, I think, everyone else present for the debate, I received an Oil & Gas UK briefing. It deals with the immediate problem in the sector, but there is no mention of how it arose, with the downturn in China and India, and oil and gas fracking in the United States. That is a longer-term issue. Something of a quick fix may be required, but in the longer term we must take cognisance of what is happening globally.

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

That is a fair point; I would say only that I have never yet met an oil economist who was any good at anything other than explaining why prices did what they did, rather than what they would do next. Yes, the hon. Gentleman may be right, but people have told me many times that the oil price would stay low, and then it has gone up. When they have told me it would stay high, it has gone down. We have to live with that.

Those of us close to the industry, and the taskforce, of which many of us are members, are aware that in recent years prices have escalated unrealistically and unreasonably on the back of the high oil price. I want to make it clear to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North that that is no excuse for a slash and burn response on employment; it is, however, a recognition that a lot of fat has built up in some of the contractual arrangements.

With the right approach, it would be possible to slim down and maintain skills and capacity for the future. The wrong approach means, of course, making people redundant and losing their skills, so that if and when there is an upturn we will have lost capacity as well. I argue that we need to manage things proportionately. The industry has been rather late in tackling that problem. Quite a few of the redundancies that have been announced since the oil price fell were part of reviews that took place because of the escalating costs before we knew that the price was going to fall.

[Sir Robert Smith]

One of the lessons of history is that if downsizing in the current crisis is inevitable, the way it is handled and the way people are treated, so that they are still interested and willing to come back in the good times, are important. There is a lesson for the industry about the way it behaved in the past.

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

I completely agree.

Finally, I want to set out what things the Government must consider—for which the Budget seems to be the appropriate place. First, the investment allowance that has been announced needs to be confirmed in the Budget. Secondly, there must be a review of the supplementary charge. In my view the Government will get none of it anyway in the present climate, so getting rid of it would not cost much.

There should also be a review of the petroleum revenue tax for the future. The industry has traditionally been taxed at about double the rate of any other sector. Perhaps that was all right in the good times, but in a mature province, in the present situation, asking for a review is not asking for subsidy; it is asking for a realistic tax regime that can secure an industry that has made a massive contribution to the balance of payments and contributed 25% of our fixed industrial investment every year for the past 40-plus years, and which has a great future if we manage it now. If we do not get it right, there is an existential threat to the industry—certainly to an industry on the scale that we have looked for. We do not need to score points off each other. We need to work together and come up with a systematic package of measures that will restore confidence.

I accept that one thing that has damaged the industry is constant change. It now needs a clear, simple, strategic regime that says that the UK wants its investment and will provide a climate in which, provided it can make itself competitive, the Government will work with it to enable it to secure jobs, exports and investment for the future. If we can do that, whenever the oil price turns up, the industry will be much stronger than it would have been if the crisis had never happened.

15:27

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once more, Mr Streeter. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I believe in clarity. I received some hospitality from ExxonMobil last year.

I have a strong constituency interest, because not only is FMC Technologies a major employer in my constituency, but in the neighbouring seat, represented so ably by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), is Mossmorran. I want primarily to talk briefly about them. However, I want to pick up on the point ably made by my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown): Members may be interested in the fact that today the executive director of the International Energy Agency, Maria van der Hoeven, has been quoted as saying that there can be no expectation of a quick fix on oil prices—that the situation we face is a long-term one. Therefore, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) is right to draw the conclusion that we need to move away from Governments blaming each other and work together to achieve a sustainable future for the industry, across the United Kingdom and more specifically for interests in the North sea.

I have mentioned two companies working in West Fife and the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) are right: there is, rightly, a great deal of focus on the north-east of Scotland, but we should not forget that across Scotland and the United Kingdom the North sea industries are significant employers. To take FMC Technologies as an example, it employs 1,000 people across Scotland, a couple of hundred of whom are based at two sites in Dunfermline in my constituency. It has going on for 250,000 square feet of fabrication plant and engineering facilities in Dunfermline and it supplies the North sea market, among many others. It is located in West Fife because of the ready access it provides through the port facilities at Forth Ports and elsewhere, so the company can send around the world.

The company is fortunate in that it has a diverse market share and operates right around the world, so the North sea is not its critical life-support system, but without doubt it will be facing challenging times in the coming weeks, and I will seek to provide whatever assistance I can. However, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West was absolutely right to remember the knock-on effect that such industries can have in the communities where they are based.

[Mrs Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)]

Specifically on that point, which has been made by others, that is also the case for places such as Tyneside and the north-east of England, where there are fabrication companies such as OGN. It is currently providing 2,000 jobs, but they will dry up next year. There is bound to be a massive knock-on effect across the whole of Britain. Our region has the highest unemployment rate and cannot afford to lose more jobs. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Thomas Docherty]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the diversification of interests in this important sector across the United Kingdom. These are highly skilled engineering jobs, which are highly regarded and greatly sought after. She is also right that such jobs are particularly sought after in areas of relatively high unemployment. I used to work in the nuclear industry, and I was based in what was then part of the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway and is now in the Minister’s constituency. Unlike in the south-west of England, where the engineering and scientific industries were in competition with other companies, there was almost a monopoly on the work force in places such as Dumfries and Galloway. To an extent it is the same in the north-east of England and the north-east of Scotland, where there is not the same diversification in jobs. It is important that the two Governments recognise their responsibility to work together.

[John Robertson]

I was in Belfast yesterday, right beside where Harland and Wolff used to be. There are some oil rigs sitting there that are now being fitted out because the contracts are signed, but what will happen to the companies that have invested in that kind of industry if we do not start getting work back in the North sea?

[Thomas Docherty]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. That is why I was genuinely asking the hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) what practical steps Scottish Enterprise will be taking. Many of us have had a slightly cynical or bitter experience of Scottish Enterprise as being great at putting out the initial press release, but when it comes to taking tangible, practical measures to help communities—I do not need to tell my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway or the Minister this—it comes into such situations with great promises but 10 years later everyone is scratching their heads and looking for the diversification it is supposed to have delivered.

I am conscious of the time and the important contributions that will be made by the two Front Benchers. On the other issue I mentioned, Mosmorran plant, which sits just over the border with the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath, is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Natural gas is brought ashore at St Fergus, primarily from the Brent field and from the Goldeneye field in the North sea, and is brought down from there in a pipeline that is about 140 miles long—my calculation might be slightly off—to Mossmorran, where it is split. The ethane goes across from the Shell plant to the ExxonMobil part of the plant, where it is heated to 800° so that it can be cracked, to use the scientific term, and turned into ethylene. Of course, ethylene is a daily part of our lives, as it used in a huge variety of products—perhaps even in the cups we are using today.

That work sustains jobs for more than 200 people, many of whom are my constituents. They will be looking to see that when we talk about long-term sustainability for the oil and gas industry we make sure that those crucial scientific jobs, which are also highly sought after, often by graduates—in both Parliaments we talk so much about encouraging those sorts of jobs—are protected. We need to see genuine substantive steps to do that for the sake of our constituents and their families. I hope that the two Governments will set point scoring aside and get on with standing up for all of our communities, whether they be in Aberdeen, Glasgow, my own area of Fife or across the border.

15:35

[Margaret Curran (Glasgow East) (Lab)]

Mr Streeter, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairpersonship—I do not know whether I am permitted to use that word, or whether that is a precedent, but I have done it now, so so be it. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran), whose contribution demonstrated his depth of knowledge of the industry and his enduring commitment to it and the people who work in it, which is greatly respected in this House and throughout the country.

The entire debate has demonstrated the magnitude of recent events and the sweeping impact of such a significant decline in oil prices. As we speak, oil is currently trading at below $50 a barrel. In July 2008, the price stood at $145 a barrel, and as is well known in Scotland the White Paper that was used by the Scottish National party during the recent referendum was based on financial planning with an oil price of $110 a barrel. This debate is therefore a significant one.

It may not have been said today but it will certainly be said in other forums that although the price might offer some relief to Scotland’s motorists it has significant impacts on the oil and gas industry. Many Members have referred to the key facts and figures, which I will emphasise once more. The production of oil and gas contributed £30 billion to the UK balance of payments; the supply chain, which has been a focus of the debate and is of great importance throughout the country, generated over £20 billion in the past year and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) said, the industry supports 450,000 jobs across the United Kingdom.

It is an industry of international importance that is vital to the UK and iconic for Scotland, and has particular significance for Aberdeen and the north-east of Scotland—the effects of the fall in oil price will be felt throughout the country, but most deeply there. We heard about the loss of 300 jobs announced by BP but know that there are more to come.

[Dr Whiteford]

In the past half an hour or so, while we have been having this debate, a further 300 job losses have been announced by Talisman. I have stressed the importance of urgency and am worried that there will be further similar announcements between now and March. The Government need to give confidence to the industry that they will cut taxes. Does the hon. Lady share that view and will she urge the Government to act with more haste rather than waiting for announcements of yet more job losses in the North sea industry?

[Margaret Curran]

I will indeed emphasise that very point when I come to it later. I will begin by addressing the hon. Lady’s primary point about job losses. We are deeply concerned about them. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North made clear, operators and trade unions are warning about job losses and their impact. Of the 30,000 jobs directly linked to the industry, 23,400 are in Aberdeen itself. One can only imagine the conversations taking place not only in companies but around kitchen tables in Aberdeen and the north-east. Jake Molloy of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers drew parallels with 1986, when the fall in oil prices led to long-term job losses and a very significant impact on the industry. We certainly do not want that to happen again, and need to take action. Sir Ian Wood, who has featured in many contributions this afternoon, indicated that there could be between 30,000 and 40,000 job losses. It would not be surprising if that were the long-term impact.

The Scottish Parliament information service said that 15,750 jobs could be lost in Scotland as a result of what is happening. The core question we must ask ourselves is, can we be assured that the Government and the Scottish Government get the magnitude of what is happening and what needs to be done? The trade unions have said that it would be the largest loss of jobs since the Ravenscraig steel works closed its doors 23 years ago in Scotland—23 years later, we still remember the impact of Ravenscraig. Let us take action now to ensure that does not happen again. The message of this debate must be that we have to work together on a cross-party basis to properly challenge the Government when they are not doing enough. The oil and gas industry is a strategic industry of critical importance, and it needs a long-term, predictable context in which to operate.

I congratulate, as one Member did, Jenny Laing, the leader of Aberdeen city council, who took immediate action, called for an oil summit and managed to get all the key players together. That was the right thing to do, and I expect that it will be successful, but the UK and Scottish Governments must take decisive action.

The UK Government’s 2011 tax reforms created difficulties and undermined confidence—I hope the Minister will acknowledge that. In the autumn statement, the Chancellor indicated the difficulties that it caused, and he hinted that there must be a new strategy for oil and gas. I concur with the hon. Members who said that we need action now. I hope the Minister will indicate that the Government will take action and respond to the industry’s call for support.

I ask the Minister to use his good offices to put pressure on the Scottish Government to publish the oil and gas bulletin as soon as possible. Scottish National party Members have said that they are looking for a range of actions, but we are asking the Scottish Government to provide the evidence on which they based their recommendations. They previously published a number of oil and gas bulletins and figures showing the impact that the industry will have on their revenues. I hope they will publish another one as soon as possible so our approach can be evidence-led, and so we know the basis on which we can take action.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) called for a resilience fund to help strategic industries and to enable us to address local needs, including issues affecting local companies, local industries and the devastating impact the downturn will have on local communities. He has also talked about reducing business rates to help people through the downturn. As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North said, my right hon. Friend is in Aberdeen this afternoon with my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls). They are calling for profound, strategic action to address these issues. We need a road map—a strategic plan—for the industry that is not about short-term changes but comes to terms with the profound shifts that we are seeing. It must create certainty so the industry can be sure about the tax rates over a Parliament and firms can invest in the long term. It must be about sustainability, and it must put oil revenues in a UK public finances framework so we can protect ourselves against oil price volatility. It must not create high levels of risk that could jeopardise Scotland and our public finances.

We must ensure transparency. We must not make short-term, ill-thought-out tax changes, but consult with the industry to ensure a transparent regime. We must have the flexibly to meet immediate challenges. As many hon. Members have said, we must implement the Wood review. Will the Minister tell us when the new Oil and Gas Authority will be established? That demand is coming straightforwardly from the industry.

This has been a very good debate, and we have covered a lot of ground. Hon. Members have demonstrated a great depth of knowledge about the industry’s demands. We need to tell people—not only those in the north-east, but those in Scotland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom—that we understand the scale of the job losses that may be imminent, and that we can take action to address that. We must let them understand that, as we gather here together, we will challenge the Government, who must stand up and do more. That is what the industry is asking the UK and the Scottish Governments. We are prepared to work together to support our iconic oil and gas industry, of which we are so proud in Scotland, through this challenge to prevent job losses and to ensure that it has a healthy, sustainable future. We do that best when we recognise the true depth of what is happening and do not try to duck it. Government action can have results, but we need to see it now.

15:45

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Mr Doran) not only for securing the debate but for his well known support of the sector and, as his time in Parliament draws to a close, for his contribution to politics in the north-east over many years. I welcome his considered contribution. Many other Members also made valuable contributions. I apologise for the absence of the Minister for Business and Enterprise, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), who is currently overseas and would otherwise have responded to the debate.

[Mr Doran]

The Minister is apologising for the absence of his right hon. Friend; I should have noted the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), who is with my right hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Mr Murphy) in Aberdeen, but would otherwise have been here.

[David Mundell]

I echo the comments of all contributors, who pointed out the importance and timeliness of the debate, given the challenges faced by companies operating in the North sea and all those who work in the sector in the United Kingdom; that was emphasised by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon).

The Government are committed to the long-term future of the sector in the North sea. We recognise that the sustained fall in oil prices presents real challenges for the sector. Announcements of job losses, such as those we have heard about this afternoon, are a real concern and particularly affect Aberdeen and the north-east. The effects will be felt not only in the north-east of Scotland and by big international companies, but by the hundreds of small and medium-sized businesses that are an integral part of the supply chain. Those businesses work across the UK to service the sector, and they play a role in the whole of the UK economy.

We are committed—I hope that the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) accepts this—to working in partnership with others. I welcome the tone of the contribution of the shadow Scottish Secretary, the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran). We are committed to working with the Scottish Government, local authorities and the industry to provide all we can for those affected by job losses. I will pursue the issue that the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) raised about the Department for Work and Pensions. My colleague, the Secretary of State for Scotland, has committed to participate in the First Minister’s jobs taskforce, which was announced last week, and the Aberdeen city council’s oil and gas summit in February.

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

I apologise to the Minister and the House for not being at the earlier part of the debate; I was at a Committee speaking about, among other things, the issue of autism.

As the Minister was referring to the supply chain and jobs that link to the wider oil industry, may I remind him that in my constituency 30,000 people work in the Bellshill industrial park, and many of them fit that description? All of them are asking for honesty and transparency about the flexibility of the oil market and the oil industry.

[David Mundell]

I certainly take that point on board; it reinforces the fact that this issue is resonant not only in the immediate area of Aberdeen, but in the whole of Scotland and the rest of our United Kingdom.

At the PILOT meeting in London last Tuesday, industry leaders expressed real concern, but recognised the need and opportunity to work collectively with Government to introduce a range of efficiency measures that would help them through the downturn and ensure that the industry was stronger in the longer term. The right hon. Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) made the point strongly that the industry could emerge fitter from this time, without the necessity for sustained job losses.

The sector is a vital economic asset—one that supports growth and investment and one that we will do all we can to support. There are other events in Parliament today, one of which was the Chancellor’s appearance before the Treasury Committee. Given the signal that was asked for, he has made it very clear that he will take further steps in the Budget. As we heard in the debate, Sir Ian Wood and others in the industry have indicated that they think the Budget is the right time to take such steps. I do not think that that message could be clearer. I will undertake to convey the comments and thoughts of everybody who took part in today’s debate directly to the Chancellor, and I am sure that he and the Prime Minister will continue to engage directly with the industry.

The Government have already taken action in a number of areas. Our recent headline cut of the supplementary charge from 32% to 30% sent an important signal, as some contributors have mentioned, that the North sea is open for business. Last year, we commissioned Sir Ian Wood, one of the world’s foremost industry experts, to examine how we could maximise the North sea oil and gas industry economic recovery. Without being unduly partisan, I am very pleased to hear Sir Ian being lauded again for his contribution to the oil industry; only a few months ago, some people—I do not think they are in this room—were deriding him because he said he did not feel independence for Scotland was in the industry’s best interests.

On this matter, Sir Ian’s response is twofold: get the right regulator in place and get the right fiscal regime. The Government have moved fast to implement his recommendations. We have set up the regulator in the form of the Oil and Gas Authority. It will be up and running this year and based in Aberdeen, under the expert stewardship of Andy Samuel. Since starting in his role as chief executive at the beginning of the year, Mr Samuel has been working at pace to ensure that the authority will be ready to start operating effectively by the beginning of April.

Last week, in light of the recent falls in global oil prices, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change asked Andy Samuel to accelerate work with industry to identify key risks to oil and gas production in the UK continental shelf and what further measures might be taken by Government and industry to mitigate them. In addition, we have carried out the oil and gas fiscal review to examine how we can build on the success of our existing field allowances and put in place a regime that is internationally competitive.

The oil and gas industry has acknowledged that our system of allowances has been transformational in incentivising North sea investment. Allowances were directly responsible for £7 billion of 2013’s record-breaking £14.4 billion investment in the North sea. That investment has supported more than 50,000 jobs in the United Kingdom. At the autumn statement, we announced a new allowance for high-pressure, high-temperature oil and gas projects. That allowance will reduce the tax rate on a portion of the company’s profits from 60% to 30%.

Last year, we also announced further reforms to the fiscal regime—reforms to generate investment. We will be introducing a basin-wide investment allowance to simplify and replace the existing system of offshore field allowances over time. We are also taking action to encourage companies that are already investing by extending the ring-fence expenditure supplement from six to 10 years for offshore oil and gas activities, helping the short-term cash flow of companies looking to invest.

Our third area of reform is exploration, where access to good-quality seismic information has been an issue for the industry. Our commitment to provide financial support for seismic surveys in under-explored areas of the UK continental shelf will help the situation.

We want to reward investment in the North sea. As the UK’s economy grows and our recovery strengthens, our direction of travel will be to implement further measures to increase investment. Of course, decommissioning also has to be considered; in the coming decades, that will be increasingly important as the UK continental shelf moves into the decommissioning phase ahead of many other basins. The challenge here is that the North sea, owing to its maturity, will often have to be the site of pioneering methods. Industry will need to develop new operating models and bring in skills and expertise. However, the opportunity is immense. Get this right and we will develop highly valuable—and saleable—expertise here in the UK and reap great rewards down the line. It will be vital to attract new entrants and specialists into the basin to take on decommissioning work.

[Sir Robert Smith]

The Minister is making an important point about the value of decommissioning, but we really want that to be as far away in the future as possible. The crucial thing is to sustain production. I would be grateful if he took the message back to the Treasury that when people drill for oil, they take a big risk, and if they find something, they would like a larger share of what they find as a reward. The supplemental tax needs serious review.

[David Mundell]

I think I had set out in my initial remarks that the issue is a combination of ensuring that what future production there can be is maximised and of taking advantage of the opportunities that may arise through decommissioning.

I want to address a point that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North raised on health and safety and the ageing infrastructure. As many of the UK’s onshore installations are working beyond their original design lives and have been exposed to a harsh environment and heavy usage, it is absolutely essential that asset integrity is maintained. Asset integrity is critical to effectively managing and controlling major accident hazards, protecting the work force and maintaining production. Maintaining such arrangements, even during a period of low oil prices, is essential for the two key reasons that he set out: first, to comply with legislation to manage major risk hazards; and secondly, to maintain these assets for use in the future. I assure him that the Health and Safety Executive will continue to inspect thoroughly asset integrity issues and raise those with the industry at every opportunity to ensure that regulatory standards are not compromised.

It is by bringing a package of measures together and by working together—I think that is the sentiment of this afternoon’s debate—that we will maximise the potential of the industry and support vital jobs across the sector and the supply chain in the north-east of Scotland, as well as in areas such as East Anglia, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney drew attention so adroitly. We have been talking about those jobs today; it is because the UK has such a large and diverse economy, of course, that we are able to commit to these long-term support measures.

We can deal with the volatility of oil prices and continue to provide the stable regime that is so important to the industry. The hon. Member for Glasgow East drew our attention to the many predictions that have been made about oil prices, but it is in a country on the scale of the United Kingdom that changes can be sustained. On that basis, having listened to today’s debate and set out the measures that the Government have taken, I conclude my contribution.

Football Broadcasting Rights

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Westminster Hall

16:00

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

We now move to the next debate. Will colleagues who are leaving please do so quietly and speedily? We are turning to the important issue of the Ofcom consultation on football broadcasting rights, and it is a pleasure to call Thomas Docherty.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again so quickly, Mr Streeter. The subject of this debate is probably slightly less pressing for many people, but is none the less of great interest to all our constituents.

You will recall, Mr Streeter, that John Major famously evoked an image of cricket being played on village greens for the Britain that he thought we should all aspire to, but of course the reality is that football holds a special place in people’s hearts in all four parts of the United Kingdom and is, indeed, our national sport. On Saturday afternoons, up and down the United Kingdom, football supporters put on their coats and woolly scarves and hats and travel to support their teams. This cultural phenomenon stretches back 150 years in the United Kingdom. More recently, the growth of television has enhanced people’s enjoyment of football. It is probably fair to say that “Match of the Day” still holds a special place in everyone’s heart—the theme music, which I will not try to emulate this afternoon, still makes the hairs on the back of everyone’s neck stand up when it comes on. It is great to see “Match of the Day” enjoying its 50th anniversary this year.

Of course, there has been a revolution in football in the United Kingdom in the past 20 years with the advent of the Premier League and, in particular, Sky Broadcasting. I should probably declare a constituency interest, in that Sky is our third largest private employer, employing some 2,000 people in my constituency and contributing, at a conservative estimate, more than £30 million a year to the local economy. I am incredibly grateful for the work that Sky does locally and for the opportunities it provides to local people.

I share the concerns of many—I do not know whether the Minister would care to comment on this—about the way Sky is advertising gambling products alongside football. I do not know whether the Minister is aware of whether Ofcom or the Advertising Standards Authority plans to look at gambling and particularly the spot gambling that we see on Sky Sports News and during football matches. None the less, Sky has been an absolute force for good in revolutionising the way football is understood and enjoyed and the calibre of football. Football is now without doubt a cosmopolitan sport, not just in the Premier League but throughout the English leagues and in Scotland, with players drawn from throughout the European Union, from the Commonwealth and, indeed, from emerging footballing nations. That is a sign of a multicultural sport. I believe that it is not just because we have got away from mullets and short shorts that there is no great desire to go back to 1980s football.

It is interesting to look at the attendance figures for football grounds—as always, I am indebted to the House of Commons Library for its assistance. When the Premier League began in 1992-93, the attendance figures for Premier League grounds showed that only two thirds of the capacity was being taken up by supporters—average attendance in the stadiums of Premier League clubs was only 70% in 1992-93. Now, despite the economic conditions and the fact that the cost of football has risen for supporters, 95% of seats are taken at Premier League games. If we bear it in mind that 40% of games are on television—live to broadcast—that goes to show that the Premier League and the broadcasters have delivered a product that people want to buy.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

It is worth making the point also that of course a number of larger stadiums have been built, from Old Trafford to the Emirates. The capacity at many of the premiership clubs is markedly higher than was the case before, so the statistic possibly slightly understates just how much more popular the game has become, notwithstanding the televisation. Many of us remember that in the 1970s and ’80s, when only a handful of games were shown at the weekend, it was felt that TV would be the ruination of football, yet in many ways it has proved to be the absolute opposite.

[Thomas Docherty]

The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. That, indeed, is my point. Vast sums of broadcast revenues are paid in. From memory, the deal that BT and Sky have with the Premier League is worth just over £3 billion for the current broadcast period. The hon. Gentleman refers to the very modern stadiums. I was at the Emirates a couple of years ago for a Champions League game. It is an absolutely modern, first-class, wonderful facility, and that is repeated up and down the country.

The problem, if I may digress for a second, involves those clubs that aspired to get into the Premier League, because of those riches, and have fallen along the way. They built those stadiums because they were holding on to the dream, the aspiration, of reaching the top flight and then found themselves in great difficulty. I do not believe that that is the fault of the Premier League or the broadcasters; it was a business decision taken by the boards of those clubs. Those of us who are a little older, Mr Streeter, will recall some of the great names of English football that have found themselves in very difficult situations in recent years. One need only think of Leeds United, whose board gambled everything. Reckless decisions were made by the board to aim constantly not just for Premier League status, but for Champions League status, with the additional riches that that brings.

It is worth remembering that the broadcast deal brings huge benefit to the grass roots as well. I am very grateful to the English Football Association for the briefing that it provided to me and, I think, to other hon. Members, which shows that hundreds of millions of pounds are coming down to grass-roots football as a result of the deal. The Premier League is also right to point out that through the parachute payments and the solidarity payments paid to lower league clubs, it continues to support grass-roots football. Whether we represent constituencies in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland or Wales, it is without doubt the case that every young boy’s ambition is to play in the Premier League.

[Mark Field]

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly valid point. It is important that we stress that although many people feel that footballers are earning untold riches, certainly compared with those of a generation or two ago, and perhaps too much money, from the television funds does go directly to the talent, there is still huge investment in the grass roots of the game, which has transformed the game over the past 20 years. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that unfortunately in terms of this debate relating to Ofcom, there has not really been any serious attempt to demonstrate how just showing more matches, as Ofcom suggests, would lower the cost to the subscriber? The TV deal that has been done, which has gone onwards and upwards, none the less does sustain and is of interest to—

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. Thomas Docherty.

[Thomas Docherty]

I am grateful for that short speech. The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) makes a serious point, which I have raised with Ofcom myself, that there is frustration among many fans that even after Sky lost a quarter of the fixtures, it did not reduce its price by a quarter. Can the Minister say whether he believes that Ofcom should be taking that up with Sky—whether the fact that the reduction in the number of games has not been passed on as a reduction to the subscriber should be considered as part of the broader picture?

I want to talk specifically about the splitting of the packages. At the moment, some 154 of the 380 games are shown live on BT or Sky. In the next round, the intention is to increase that to 168, so we are talking about approximately 40% of fixtures now, rising to 45% in the next period. Genuine concerns have been raised by the FA and supporters’ groups about the drift away from Saturday afternoon. Football clubs and publicans report a pattern: a lot of match day customers either watch a game beforehand and go along to their local club at 3 o’clock, or go to their local club first and then watch the 5.30 pm game at the pub or elsewhere. Ofcom has refused to rule out allowing the 3 o’clock slot to be looked at, but even if it is prepared to allow that, there are real concerns that moving more and more fixtures away from 3 o’clock to Saturday lunchtimes, Saturday afternoons, Sundays or even Friday nights—I believe that there are 10 games planned for Friday nights—will have an impact on the wider football community.

I am sure you know, Mr Streeter, from your constituency that many local, grass-roots clubs play on Sunday or on Saturday morning. If more and more fixtures are shown on Saturday at lunchtime or on Sunday, they will attract people who otherwise would go along to support a club or to play grass-roots football. Ofcom must bear that in mind, because not only does it have a duty towards competition in the narrow sense as it relates to broadcasters, but it has a broader social responsibility for the good of the game in the United Kingdom.

I am aware that many fans, particularly of some bigger clubs—I include Chelsea in that for the benefit of the Minister, who I know is a Chelsea fan—complain that their clubs’ fixtures are regularly moved. They see the initial fixture on a Saturday afternoon, so they make travel arrangements, book time off work and spend a lot of money on tickets for their families, but at a relatively late stage the broadcasters shift the game. My cousin, Philip Morgan, complained to me about that on Facebook the other day—a big Manchester United fan, he is very frustrated about that practice. I hope that the Minister will assure us that the Government will make it clear to Ofcom that it must bear those things in mind when it carries out its investigation. The interests of the supporter who goes through the turnstile are absolutely critical.

I wish to make two points before I conclude. One is about individual deals versus collective bargaining. I am conscious that Conservative colleagues in the room do not always agree with collective bargaining, but I am sure that Members of the House would agree that collective bargaining is one of the strengths of the Premier League. That is not the case in La Liga, for example, where Barcelona, Real Madrid and other major clubs negotiate their own deals. As a result, large clubs become richer and richer, while smaller clubs struggle a lot. In last year’s Premier League payout, however, the total payment to the winner was only 1.5 times the size of the payment to Cardiff City, who finished bottom of the table. All clubs receive the same amount of money as the initial broadcast share, there is an element based on prize money and there is a small element based on how many times they are shown. It is important that Ofcom understands that collective bargaining must be maintained.

My final point concerns a good book that can, I am sure, be found in the Commons Library: “The All American War Game” by award-winning British journalist James Lawton. It came out about 30 years ago, when Channel 4 was covering American football for the first time, and it looked at the state of American football in the United States. James Lawton talked at great length about the fact that in the US, people can watch American football on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday; if they have cable, they can watch college games, the NFL and the local high school game. He was absolutely blown away by the idea of American football saturation, culminating in the Monday night game. At the time, of course, we only had four channels in the United Kingdom, and Channel 4 was very new.

Fast forward—pardon the pun—30 years. We now have a situation where football is readily available seven days a week. We can watch a Friday night game, perhaps a Scottish game or one of the 10 Premier League games that will be available; there is a Saturday lunchtime game, and there is a Saturday evening game. There are two games on a Sunday and there is a Monday night game. This evening, League cup fixtures are taking place—I am sure that the Minister will be taking a close interest in those. We have Champions League and Europa League football on a Thursday. My constituents tell me that, as football mad as they are, there is a limit to how much football we need on the television.

I am conscious that I am eating into the Minister’s time, but I think that the issue is important. I respect the fact that Ofcom has the lead on it, but I hope that the Government will make it clear to Ofcom that they expect the regulator to be the supporter of the supporters and not the champion of media interests.

16:16

[The Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

I am grateful to appear under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I thank the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue, in which Members of the House clearly take a significant interest. It has been useful to hear the range of views—both of them, thanks to the able contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). Today’s debate concerns a topic about which the public and many Members of the House are passionate—football—and a far-reaching issue that directly affects consumers and the economy, namely competition in the broadcasting market.

The last time I debated football matters in this House, I engaged in some good-natured football banter. That spectacularly backfired on me, but it taught me a valuable lesson: football fans are extremely passionate about their clubs. Let me say on the record that although I am a Chelsea fan, I have nothing but admiration for all other football clubs, particularly Manchester United.

Competition in markets is important in all parts of the economy. It can drive down costs, improve consumer choice, encourage innovation and boost growth. A thriving, competitive industry reacts readily and at low cost to changing consumer demands. In an ideal world, made up of highly competitive markets, new entry would be unimpeded, products would be supplied at minimum cost to the consumer, there would be a lot of innovation and we would encourage economic growth.

Football remains as great a passion for people in this country as it has ever been. The hon. Gentleman pointed to the extraordinary success of the Premier League over the past 20 or so years. It has been a phenomenon, and it has become part of the fabric of our country and our culture. It is arguably the most exciting, compelling and competitive league anywhere in the world, with many of the best managers and players in the world coming here to ply their trade, and has some of the safest football stadiums to be found anywhere.

The popularity of football is making a big impact on our creative industries. As Minister for Culture and the Digital Economy, I note that clubs have not only their own websites and but often their own TV channels. Football is almost an anchor tenant for some television channels, radio, print and internet media, all of which use it to attract consumers.

[Thomas Docherty]

Although Crystal Palace are my second team, I forgive the Minister his Chelsea links. I have seen Sky’s new XD technology, which it piloted at the Ryder cup—XD is 16 times the quality of high definition. Does the Minister agree that that is the type of creative technology breakthrough that we should be supporting in the United Kingdom?

[Mr Vaizey]

I do. Football and sport are a mode of content that encourages technical innovation. I remember watching football broadcast in 3D by Sky, and I thought it was compelling, although for some reason it has not had the consumer impact that we expected. HD television was probably partly driven by football, and it is another example of the kind of innovation that the hon. Gentleman talks about.

Sports content remains critical to the success of a lot of our broadcasting industry. It is common sense to say that the success of pay TV has been built on sport. It could be argued that it is a chicken and egg situation in the sense that the Premier League has benefited greatly from the innovation that has come from the way in which Sky has broadcast the Premier League, but equally Sky has benefited from having those rights. Indeed, about one in four people who watch pay TV say that sport is their must-have content. Premier League football is hugely valued by those customers, particularly as it is not available live on free-to-air platforms. Content such as the Premier League drives consumer decisions about pay TV subscriptions, so it is not a surprise to find such an inquiry taking place.

Broadcasting rights to key content remain in the hands of a small number of providers, mainly BT and Sky, and there was a complaint to Ofcom by Virgin Media last September. People often miss this point—they think that Ofcom has somehow woken up one morning and just decided to call an investigation, or that perhaps the Government have asked Ofcom to call an investigation—but the investigation, like most Ofcom investigations, emerged from one part of the ecology, in this case Virgin Media, complaining about its perception of the behaviour of another part of the ecology, namely the Premier League and, behind it, Sky and BT. As a result of that complaint, Ofcom decided to open an investigation into how the Premier League sells the live UK audiovisual media rights for Premier League football matches.

Virgin Media’s argument is that the collective selling of live UK television rights on an exclusive basis by the Premier League for matches played by its member clubs is in breach of competition law. Virgin Media’s key argument is that the proportion of matches made available for live television broadcast under the current rights deal is lower—154 out of 380 matches a season—than in some other leading European leagues. Although, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the new auction will see the figure go up to 168 matches a season, Virgin Media would argue that more matches are available for live television broadcast in other European countries.

[Thomas Docherty]

The Football Association and the Premier League point to the fact that the attendance of away fans in other leagues, such as La Liga, is very poor because there is such availability of broadcast. Does the Minister accept that point?

[Mr Vaizey]

It is not for me to accept or reject that point, but I will elaborate on my answer. Virgin Media would say that, because fewer matches are broadcast, consumers pay more money for their pay TV packages because there are fewer matches to go around and therefore less competition—that is the argument in its crudest form. If this were a court or a competition appeal hearing, an extremely expensive Queen’s counsel would no doubt pick me up on how I have characterised the argument.

As the hon. Gentleman indicates, there is a counter-argument. First, the Premier League would talk about its success over the past two decades. Both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster have pointed out the increase in live attendance at Premier League matches over the past 20 years and the commercial success of clubs due to the way the Premier League sells the rights to live matches. I was inadvertently in the position of, in effect, supporting a socialist solution: the Premier League selling its collective rights. The hon. Gentleman made a compelling point, which will be of particular interest to my hon. Friend, on whether we could introduce collective selling into the City of London, whereby the top-performing traders collectively negotiate their salary with the rest of the company, so that the difference between the highest earners and the lowest earners is somewhat smaller—but I digress, and no doubt that is not helpful.

[Mark Field]

I would not describe myself as a socialist in any way, but the collective system has worked very well, which is greatly to the credit of all concerned. It is worth putting it on the record that Sky has done a terrific job of transforming the broadcasting of the game, in tandem with the BBC and other providers. I feel that Virgin Media’s complaints are unfounded. There is no evidence to suggest either that there is dissatisfaction with subscription rates or that subscription rates would be lowered if we had more games on TV.

[Mr Vaizey]

I cannot be drawn on that point, except to say that I have described Sky’s acquisition of Premier League rights as a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Sky’s success has been built on having those Premier League rights, but there is no doubt that Sky has brought extraordinary innovation to broadcasting Premier League games.

[Thomas Docherty]

On attendances and popularity, is the Minister aware that, even with so much live football on a Saturday and even with the high attendances, the BBC reports that 4.5 million people tune in on a Saturday night to watch “Match of the Day”? Another 1.5 million watch the repeat and 2 million watch “Match of the Day 2” on a Sunday. Does he agree that that shows that football fans have a genuine appetite to watch recorded highlights and to see the punditry and technology to which he refers while also going along on a Saturday afternoon to support their team? We should protect that.

[Mr Vaizey]

I absolutely agree. The post-match punditry on the Chelsea victory at Swansea on Saturday’s “Match of the Day” was some of the best punditry I have seen for a long team. As I said earlier, we have talked about solidarity and the Premier League’s business model, which is heavily reliant on its broadcasting deal. The deal is important for Premier League clubs, but it also helps the football league pyramid. Having put Virgin Media’s arguments, I stress the hon. Gentleman’s point that the FA’s position of preserving the 3 o’clock kick off for a number of matches that are not broadcast in order to maintain attendances at live football matches is very important.

I have little time left, so I will simply help the hon. Gentleman in the best way I can by explaining the process. Ofcom will gather further information using its powers under the Competition Act 1998. The case is still at an early stage, and it does not mean that the Ofcom investigation will go the full length. Ofcom has to reach a view on whether there is sufficient evidence of infringement of competition law, and I understand that it hopes to reach an initial view towards the end of March. Ofcom is also mindful of the timing, given that the auction of UK audiovisual rights is under way and is expected in the spring of 2015.

I have obviously been briefed on Ofcom’s investigation process. Ofcom has emphasised to me—this will be music to the hon. Gentleman’s ears—that the heart of its investigation is the best interest of fans and consumers and that it is aware that fans and consumers benefit from the principle of collective selling. This is a complex issue with a number of arguments to be made. I have outlined some of those arguments, but it is important to stress in my last few seconds that Ofcom, quite rightly, is an independent regulator. I assure anyone watching this debate that the hands of politicians will not be directing how Ofcom goes about its investigation. The arguments on both sides of this debate have been well rehearsed. I have every confidence that Ofcom will conduct its investigation in a scrupulous and fair manner and will come to clear decisions at each stage in a timely and helpful way.

Planning (Community Right of Appeal)

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Westminster Hall

16:30

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

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. This debate is about the potential for changing the planning system to give communities a genuine stake in the planning process. My proposal is to introduce a community right of appeal.

The Government rightly recognised when they came to office that there was a significant housing problem, and that one of the challenges was unburdening the planning system of bureaucratic processes so that the houses we so badly need could be developed. The Government said that while liberating planning processes to make them easier, they would give communities a greater say in what happens in those communities and in planning decisions.

However, the reality was that the changes in the planning system and in communities’ rights did not move at the same pace, although the legislation was passed pretty much in parallel. The benefits of the community legislation—the Localism Act 2011—inevitably lagged, because neighbourhood plans, the last stage of the planning process, could not be put in place until local plans were in place. Although there was some grey debate about whether they could precede local plans, in reality, neighbourhood plans must conform with a local plan, so one had to follow the other. Clearly, they will give communities great benefit, as they bring community infrastructure levy benefits, but they are late.

There were many other provisions in the Localism Act 2011: for example, communities’ ability to identify community assets, which could therefore be considered for preservation for community use, and a further provision enabling them to be acquired. The problem is that many such community assets are owned by local authorities, which decide whether or not an asset can be listed, giving them an inevitable conflict of interest.

Likewise, although the potential sale option was not intended to give communities a particular financial advantage to give them time, the reality is that it will not help communities acquire time, because if the local authority owns the asset in question, all it has to do is wait for the months to expire and then sell to a developer who will give a better price. I have some concerned constituents in Shaldon and Kingsteignton who have suffered as a result of those deficiencies in the legislation.

Meanwhile, the planning side of the balance—the national policy planning framework and local plans—moved ahead apace. The Minister wrote to me recently to advise me that 80% of all planning authorities now have local plans in place. That is much to his credit, but the problem is that during that tortuous three to four-year process, developers have been able to develop without communities feeling that they have a real say. Clearly there are provisions for consultation, but that is not quite the same thing. Communities feel that they are in no better position now than in the old days, when parish councils used to be consulted and then, they felt, roundly ignored. As I am sure the Minister will tell me, where communities are agreed, there is the option of judicial review, but the problem is that it is an expensive process that few communities can afford.

I will give some examples from my constituency of how the process has frustrated constituents and made them feel that they are not being listened to and do not have a voice. As local plans were introduced, the Government indicated that as a plan got closer, more weight would be given to it. In Shutterton, in Dawlish, an application was made for 350 houses. Those houses were not part of the local plan provision, and the council and constituents violently opposed them. None the less, three weeks before the local plan was adopted, the application went through. After our local plan was adopted, the council continued to authorise infill development. Although some infill development is understood and accepted, the amount in this case was substantial.

In other cases, we have found that a number of developers applied for more housing on the site allocated than was in the plan. On other occasions, due to density changes, where a site would not take the designated number of houses, the local authority extended the land on which the development could take place. The result in Dawlish was that instead of the expected 1,200 houses in the area, the community are now facing 2,000. That seems to be a significant mission creep from what was originally intended.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. Does she agree that what ought to be at issue is not a question of more or less development but of the quality of planning decisions? Would not the right of appeal for which she advocates correct an asymmetry in the present system, whereby an applicant who thinks that a refusal is contrary to the planning framework can keep appealing to get the decision that they want, whereas a community that thinks an approval is contrary to the planning framework has no right of appeal other than judicial review, which as she says is prohibitively expensive? Therefore, it would empower people to balance things out.

[Anne Marie Morris]

I could not agree more, and I commend the right hon. Gentleman on his comments. The point that he makes entirely supports the point that I am making. It is about creating a balance and fairness in the planning system that do not currently exist.

The final complaint, which it is worth articulating for the Minister, involves the infrastructure challenge. Although stakeholders involved in roads, schools and so on are consulted, some stakeholders who are relevant are not statutory consultees, including the NHS. There is no obligation for the NHS to put forward its views about whether there is an adequate number of GP surgeries and the like. It is probably fair to say that although county councils have a duty and will consider infrastructure issues carefully, if one looks at how they justify some developments, it is in the hope and expectation of a school that might open in five or 10 years’ time, or a road that might be built if some other development occurs in two or three years’ time. Sometimes, communities feel that that is a bit fanciful. They perceive—I share that perception—that some communities have significant infrastructure issues that seem to have been ignored.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does she agree that infrastructure is not just about roads and schools? One huge concern in my constituency is drainage. Local communities are absolutely terrified that new development will be granted permission and built without an adequate upgrade to the existing sewerage system.

[Anne Marie Morris]

My hon. Friend makes a key point. When houses are joined to the system, it puts far too much pressure on it, resulting in the flooding problems that many of us have experienced in our constituencies. She is absolutely right, and her point is well made.

I emphasise first and foremost that the concept of a community right of appeal is for the community. I am not advocating a third-party right of appeal. It would clearly not be appropriate for anybody who simply does not agree with a development in their neighbour’s garden to be able to bring back the bureaucracy that the Government has rightly tried to get rid of, just in order to complain about an issue next door. It would not be a nimbyist charter; it would be a proper rebalancing of the planning system to be fair and balanced. The idea would be to ensure that between the developer and the community, both sides’ arguments would be properly considered and have some power in the process.

It would also ensure that local authorities think long and hard about their decisions. Clearly, there is a great incentive for them to develop, because then they get community infrastructure levy moneys, but if they recognised that there was potential for an appeal from both sides, they might give some thought to it.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for calling this debate; I am listening with interest to what she says. I declare my interest, having introduced a ten-minute rule Bill back in 2012 to call for a community right of appeal. What does she think about neighbourhood plans? It is unfair that local plans get precedence over neighbourhood plans. Could a community right of appeal be linked to neighbourhood plans, which would give those plans teeth and put rocket boosters under them, convincing people that they are the right things to produce?

[Anne Marie Morris]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. What one could certainly do is to link a right of appeal to those communities that have adopted a neighbourhood plan. However, we could go further than that and perhaps at this point I can set out what a community right of appeal might look like.

First, there must be true planning grounds for such a right of appeal, including a situation in which the local authority was ignoring Government guidance. The case in Shutterton was not entirely on-point here, because clearly the decision there was made by the inspector. None the less, there could be a right of appeal if it is seen that Government guidance is not being followed. Secondly, there would be grounds for appeal if there was a failure by the local authority to abide by the provisions of a local plan. Thirdly, and this addresses my hon. Friend’s point, there could be an appeal if there was a failure to abide by the neighbourhood plan. Finally, there could be an appeal if there was a failure to provide infrastructure properly.

Those are my suggestions; I am sure there are many other planning grounds that could and should be included in that list. Perhaps, however, they could be a “starter for 10”.

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing a really important debate. Does she agree that a community right of appeal would help residents not only where they oppose developments but in situations where, for example, the council has set a limit on the number of houses in multiple occupation, specifically student homes, in a designated area, and yet it fails to take enforcement action against predatory landlords who are disregarding the planning rules and already exceeding the limit? Alternatively, perhaps the council is granting permission for HMOs in apparent contradiction of its own rules, leading to a situation in which neighbourhoods are up in arms against the people who are supposed to help them.

[Anne Marie Morris]

That is an interesting point. Clearly, the devil will be in the detail, once this proposal is properly worked up. In a way, however, the hon. Lady leads me on to my next point, which is this: for this appeal system to work, we must define what a community is. For me, a community will be something like a ward, or a neighbourhood as defined under Localism Act 2011, but it also needs to be the people in an area who will be truly impacted by a development. I do not have a precise solution, but that is a way forward.

Clearly, there must be weight, and therefore a percentage of the community that feels strongly about an issue. There cannot just be nimbyism, so there has to be quite a high threshold before a planning appeal can be triggered.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is the champion of communities and we are all grateful to her for securing this debate. On the specific point of a community right of appeal, does she agree that one aspect that councils and therefore the Department for Communities and Local Government should look at is situations in which a council has already listed something as being an asset of community value but then decides to give a developer permission to do something that effectively destroys that asset? Does she agree that that is entirely contradictory, and that we need to include consideration of such situations in a community right of appeal?

[Anne Marie Morris]

I strongly support that suggestion and it would be an excellent addition to the list of things that might be considered.

If the appeal mechanism is to be effective, it must be easy to use, low in bureaucracy and cheap. However, it cannot be beyond the wit of the Government to come up with a set of forms and a formula that will make it accessible to communities. I also believe that there are communities, community groups and charities out there that will be more than happy to put forward proposals for support.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Before the hon. Lady gives way again, I must say that interventions are becoming rather long, and we want to give the Minister plenty of time to respond to the debate.

I call Jim Shannon to speak—very briefly.

[Jim Shannon]

I will be very quick. The hon. Lady mentioned the figure—the number of people—that would trigger an appeal. In every case, the number of people living in an area who are impacted by a development might vary. There would be occasions when the impact of a development would be great, but the number of people living in the area impacted would be small. So I just wondered what the trigger figure would be.

[Anne Marie Morris]

Again, the devil would clearly be in the detail. However, the challenge is to create a relatively simple system. If we make things too complicated, including the definition of the “group” or “community”, this system will never be established. So, while I take the hon. Gentleman’s point, we must look at how we would make the system work in practice.

The appeal would need to be an appeal to the inspector, to give communities a right equivalent to the one that developers now have. In the same way, it is right that the council would have to pay a penalty if it refuses an application but the developer then succeeds in overturning that decision. Similarly, if the community succeeds on appeal, having initially been refused, the council would have to pay a penalty.

The benefits of this process would be that the community would at last see some fairness; that developers would be encouraged in a proactive way to better engage with communities; that local authorities would have to think long and hard, and not only about the community infrastructure levy, when making their decisions; and that in the future we would create communities rather than blocks of houses.

I commend the Government for what they have done in dealing with our housing issues and problems. However, I hope that the Minister will recognise and accept that there is a challenge here, and that communities feel aggrieved at their lack of engagement in the planning process. I also hope that he will agree to give this issue some proper attention, and will consider whether or not such an appeal is workable. Clearly, the matter would have to go out to proper consultation and I appreciate that this close to an election it may be more of a manifesto issue, rather than something to be done today.

Nevertheless, this is not just a case of amending existing legislation, and it would not be an adequate response to say, “We have done a great job.” We have; the Government have done a good job. And—dare I say it?—if the Opposition’s view held sway instead, communities would have no rights or say in where housing was located. However, we need to take this issue seriously and come up with some positive proposals. So I ask the Minister—through you, Chairman—to acknowledge that there is an issue and to agree to take some concrete steps.

16:39

[The Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis)]

Thank you, Mr Streeter, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris) on securing this debate. In her closing remarks, she said something that I absolutely agree with: what is important for us, as we go forward, is that we are building communities and not just houses. I myself have said that we cannot afford to see lots more big housing estates built just to hit various targets that people set from time to time; we had 13 years of top-down numbers and hitting targets, rather than building communities. The changes that we have made to the planning process are specifically designed to ensure that we are building communities—homes that not only make the people who live in them proud, but are welcomed by the communities that those people are becoming part of. I will touch on that issue in the next few minutes.

It is also worth noting that one of the reasons why we are having this debate is the frustration that many of us have experienced—I myself was in local government for a decade or more—about the lack of power that people have had over what is happening around them compared with the power of somebody in a suit in Whitehall saying, “This is what will happen in your area.” It will take some time for people to realise that we have moved on from that situation and that we should attack this issue from the front end of the planning process instead of from the back end. The appeal system itself is at the back end.

Local authority decisions overturned during the course of a year still represent just 1% of all local planning decisions, although at the same time a record number of planning applications—about 240,000—were approved in the last year. One of the reasons for that small percentage is that more and more parts of the country are now having development in areas where they have specified they want development through their local and neighbourhood plans.

The planning reforms introduced by this Government have gone further than ever in ensuring that planning is centred on community involvement, by maintaining and strengthening a plan-led system rather than just the development control system of the past. We are removing regional strategies and introducing neighbourhood planning. We are also making the system not only fit for purpose but more accessible to everybody in terms of its understanding and outline.

The system currently gives statutory rights for the views of communities and individuals to be heard at each stage in the process—for example, in the preparation of the local plan. That is achieved most directly through neighbourhood plans, but also, of course, in making representations in any applications or appeals that arise. As I said, we are looking to create a much more collaborative and effective planning process in which people are engaged and able to take the lead from the beginning, not at the back end, particularly regarding the future development of their area. Our reforms are empowering communities to take a leading role, and we want to continue to see development proposals being determined locally, through plan-led and community-led planning decisions.

[Caroline Nokes]

Does the Minister share my frustration that, particularly in places such as Bassett in Southampton, where the local community has been working on its neighbourhood plan for some years now, it still takes a phenomenally long time for neighbourhood plans to be worked up, consulted on and come to fruition?

[Brandon Lewis]

I have been determined about speeding up the neighbourhood plan process. I hope that my hon. Friend is pleased that we have made some new announcements in the last few weeks. I will drop her a note about them to outline how we can speed the process, although we can probably still do more. I can certainly get some details to her on that.

Our aim is to make sure that everywhere has a clear local plan: that is where people’s local views on how they want their community to develop, consistent with the national planning policy framework, and against which planning applications will be decided, are going forward. Local plans form the basis for decisions on planning applications and appeals, of course, under planning law. Plan preparation is the best way for communities to be involved. Good progress has been made. Some 62% of all authorities now have an adopted plan and 80%, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot said, have now published theirs. That is up from just over 30% in 2010.

The NPPF reminds local authorities that the community should be proactively engaged in the process as far as possible, reflecting a collective vision on an agreed set of priorities for the sustainable development of their area.

[Anne Marie Morris]

The Minister is making some good points. I do not for one minute disagree that there has been change and improvement, but I still cannot see any movement on his part beyond consultation. The crux of the matter is that communities do not feel that consultation is enough; they want some form of right.

[Brandon Lewis]

Actually, they do have a direct right because a local plan, when adopted by a local authority, has not only been consulted on with the local authority, but is voted on, adopted and approved by the elected councillors. It is part of that democratic process.

Going further than that, neighbourhood plans are the real key to what my hon. Friend is talking about. They can, and in some areas do, go ahead of the local plan and they have weight in law. They were introduced by the Government, and for the first time communities are able to produce plans that will be used in determining planning applications: as well as having powers to grant planning permission for development, they want to see through neighbourhood plan development orders. Neighbourhood planning gives a community direct power to develop a shared vision for its neighbourhood and deliver the sustainable development that it needs. The local community gets a vote on this by referendum in the community.

It is clear that communities have positively embraced these new powers, going beyond the old approach and giving real community involvement at every stage. Let me outline that by mentioning that we now have just over 1,300 designated areas, so more than 5.2 million people are now covered by neighbourhood planning. Four areas in my hon. Friend’s constituency are going through the neighbourhood planning process. I hope there will be more to come, because with that process people get direct involvement and a say in what development will go on, how it goes on and the look and feel of it—in relation to not just residential, but commercial, retail and infrastructure.

[Anne Marie Morris]

Will the Minister clarify? He said that the neighbourhood plan went beyond and above the local plan. Can a neighbourhood plan override and rewrite what is in a local plan? I thought not.

[Brandon Lewis]

That is not what I said; I said it could go ahead of it and lead. There can be a neighbourhood plan where a local plan is not necessarily adopted and finished, so it can move ahead. It obviously has to fit with the local plan—it might need to be reviewed down the line—but if an area is getting on with a neighbourhood plan, it does not necessarily need to wait for the local plan. In some areas there have already been planning decisions. I point my hon. Friend to case law in relation to Coates road in Devizes, where a planning appeal decision was made, backing up a neighbourhood plan that had not yet been to referendum.

There has been overwhelming support for neighbourhood planning. So far in referendums, an average of 87% of voters have said yes to a neighbourhood plan or an order, on an average turnout of 33%. That means that local people are directly involved. The NPPF clarifies that early engagement has significant potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the planning application system for all parties. Good quality pre-application discussions enable better co-ordination between public and private resources, as well as improved outcomes for the community.

We have been determined to make the planning system more accessible to everybody through the publication of the NPPF and by simplifying the system—moving away from documents and often complex, repetitive technical guidance found in 230 separate documents and 7,000 pages. We have moved to the NPPF, which has just 50 pages, dropping away from the more than 1,300 pages of sometimes impenetrable jargon in 44 separate documents. We now have the NPPF with 50 readable pages. That is making the planning system easier to navigate for everybody.

Interested parties already have statutory rights to contribute their views as well—at each step of the process in the production of the local plan or, as I outlined, even more directly in the neighbourhood plan, as well as at the planning application stage and in response to any appeal by the applicant against a local authority decision. Interested parties can raise all issues that they are concerned about at each stage of the process, in the knowledge that the decision maker is required to have regard to their views in making a decision.

The existing right of appeal recognises that, in practice, the planning system acts as a control on how an individual may use their land. As a result, the Government believe it is right that an applicant should have the option of an impartial appeal against the refusal of planning permission. The existing right of appeal compensates for the removal of an individual’s right to develop.

We do not, at this stage, support the proposal for a community right of appeal; this would create a further opportunity to challenge development proposals in a system that is already geared towards ensuring that the views of third parties are heard and understood.

[Richard Graham]

On the point that I raised with my hon. Friend the Member for Newton Abbot, will the Minister clarify something about assets of community value? Once an asset has been listed as of community value, is it appropriate or inappropriate for a council then to give permission to a development that would inevitably mean the destruction of that asset?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend knows that I cannot comment on any particular case, although I appreciate that he was not talking about a specific case. These things sometimes come down to specific cases. Obviously, listing an asset of community value gives protection—potentially, if an asset is to be sold or changed—for six months so that the local community can come together to consider acquiring it. However, it does not move to the next stage of stopping somebody from developing, changing or using that property should the community not be able to come together. The listing of an asset of community value gives the opportunity to pause the sale for six months so that the necessary capital can be raised, but it does not necessarily stop it ad infinitum and was never designed to.

[Richard Graham]

rose—

[Brandon Lewis]

I see that my hon. Friend wants to intervene again.

[Mr Gary Streeter (in the Chair)]

Order. I would prefer him not to intervene again. I think the Minister should respond to the person who has actually secured the debate.

[Brandon Lewis]

Absolutely—that is a fair point, Mr Streeter. I will happily liaise with my hon. Friend after this debate.

I return to the point that I made at the outset. Inherently, the idea behind the planning reforms is to make sure that there is community involvement through local plans and neighbourhood plans—I cannot stress enough that those are a key way for people to be involved—by getting public involvement where development should be: what it should look and feel like, what it should be built like and how it should be supported at the beginning of the process, not at the back end.

[Anne Marie Morris]

You are being very indulgent, Mr Streeter. The Minister’s point is that the appeal system was intended to provide redress for the individual owner. I understand why that change was made. I think we are at a point in history where we should review again the importance and value of a community, and we should seriously consider its having a voice now, given how closely we live together and how many houses are built in such close proximity.

[Brandon Lewis]

We believe that the best way for communities to have a voice in the planning system is for them to be engaged in the development of local and neighbourhood plans at the beginning, not to wait till the back end of the process, because that forms the basis of decisions on planning applications under planning law.

A community right of appeal at the end of the process is too late to allow meaningful engagement and has the potential to slow down or even prevent sustainable and appropriate development at a time when our other planning reforms are geared towards speeding up the planning system, to drive our economy and provide the homes and jobs that we need.

We want a more collaborative and effective planning system, where people are engaged early in the process and able to influence meaningfully the future of their areas. We want development proposals to be determined locally, in accordance with local and neighbourhood plans, and our planning reforms are already empowering communities to achieve their aspirations by taking an active role in planning their areas.

Question put and agreed to.

16:58

Sitting adjourned.